Rainbow Six - The CIA

Rainbow Six - The CIA is starting its own private army - again:

During the Balkan conflicts in the mid- and late 1990s, agency paramilitary officers slipped into Bosnia and Kosovo to collect intelligence and hunt for accused war criminals like Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic. But the newly formed teams did not have enough manpower for snatches even when they were able to pinpoint Serbian targets. "The CIA," complains a former senior Clinton aide, "didn't have the capability to take down a three- or four-car motorcade with bodyguards."

Today it does, and the sog's capacities are growing. Its maritime branch has speedboats to carry commandos to shore, and the agency can rent cargo ships through its front companies to transport larger equipment. The air arm, which Pentagon officials have nicknamed the Waffen CIA, has small passenger jets on alert to fly paramilitary operatives anywhere in the world on two hours' notice. Other cargo planes, reminiscent of the Air America fleet that the agency had in Vietnam, can drop supplies to replenish teams in remote locations. For areas like Afghanistan and Central Asia, where a Russian-made helicopter stands out less, the agency uses the large inventory of Soviet-era aircraft that the Pentagon captured in previous conflicts or bought on the black market.

"Waffen CIA", of course, is a play on "Waffen SS" - Hitler and Himmler's private army - and in that wry remark is the big danger.

While there are attractions in creating myriad small, specialized military units to do specific jobs, there comes a point where too much splitting of force, effect and budget causes you more problems than it solves. Nazi Germany's military was hampered (thankfully) by a maze of private armies; Himmler's SS had its own huge army (Waffen SS), lavishly equipped (at the expense of the Wehrmacht or national army), while Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe (Air Force) developed its own very large military force.

One of the big achievements in the last twenty years for the US military is, after forty years of our terribly inefficient (but politically expedient) Joint Chiefs of Staff system, having restored an element of unity of command and focus to our national military operations. Here's hoping we don't squander it.

Posted by Mitch at January 26, 2003 02:09 PM