Post-WW II, U.S. Employed 'Unified Command.' Here's Why

Following the experience of global warfare in World War II, the Services recognized the importance of unity of military effort achieved through the unified command of US forces. Generally, over the next 50 years, the Unified Command Plan did adapt to the changing strategic environment and to great advances in technology, particularly the growing global reach of US forces. But there were failures, notably the cumbersome command organization for the Vietnam War. The recurring difficulty lay in creating an organizational scheme that would centralize control without impinging upon what the Services saw as their basic roles and functions. Much of the history of the Unified Command Plan (UCP) involves debates over how commands should be organized. Such disputes usually pitted those who wanted commands organized by geographic areas against those who advocated forming commands according to functional groupings of forces. Command by forces or functions seemed to restrict Service prerogatives, while command by areas appeared to preserve them. The importance and intractability of this dispute is, perhaps, best demonstrated by tracing three particularly difficult sets of command arrangements, those for the Pacific Ocean and Far East, strategic nuclear forces, and general purpose forces based in the continental United States.