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Victory on the Potomac: The Goldwater-Nichols Act Unifies the Pentagon. By James R. Locher III. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002. ISBN 1-58544-187-2. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Pp. xviii, 524. $34.95.
Accomplishing major change in a military institution in peacetime is a difficult process-as those now attempting to "transform" the American military have discovered. In this account of such a change, a chief architect of the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (GNA), James R. Locher III, has written an essential reference for those studying the GNA, its creation, and the reforms that it contains.
Locher begins with a well-written, thoroughly documented overview of the many attempts to improve the high command of the American military in the twentieth century. The author devotes the rest of the first section to the proposal by General David C. Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to reform the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and early congressional attempts to act upon Jones's ideas. His portrayal of Jones's successor, General John W. Vessey, Jr., as a status quo Chairman comfortable with the traditional JGS consensus approach does not do Vessey justice. At the time, Vessey and the Service Chiefs were busy devising strategy to counter burgeoning Soviet military power and with...