United States Central Command Area of Responsibility prior to the creation of the United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM).

Known by the acronym USCENTCOM, the U.S. Central Command is, according to Lieutenant General William G. Pagonis, “one of ten unified and specified commands, under which members of the four armed services are placed while in the theatres of combat.” USCENTCOM was led by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Persian Gulf War.

Based at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida, USCENTCOM evolved from the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) formulated under the Carter Doctrine, enunciated as part of President Jimmy Carter’s State of the Union speech on 23 January 1980. Thus, the president foresaw a need for the expeditious deployment of American troops to far-off international hot spots. However, the formulation of such a force and the requirements to assemble it became mired in governmental bureaucracy. One joke ran: “What is the RDF? You and me and our M16s and two tickets on Pan Am.”

During the first term of President Ronald Reagan, the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) was used specifically during the Operation Bright Star exercises with Egypt to train American troops for potential desert warfare. In 1983, under Reagan’s command, the RDJTF evolved into the U.S. Central Command, devoted to establishing a single battle preparation and logistics program under one central command, a leader to be designated USCINCCENT (U.S. Commander in Chief, Central Command). According to the command, USCENTCOM “is the administrative headquarters for U.S. military affairs in 19 countries of the Middle East, Southwest Asia and Northeast Africa including the Arabian Gulf . . . it supports U.S. and free world interests by assuring access to Mideast oil resources, helping friendly regional states maintain their own security and collective defense, maintaining an effective and visible U.S. military presence in the region, deterring threats by hostile regional states and by projecting U.S. military force into the region if necessary.”

In November 1988, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf was named as USCINCCENT, and stationed at CENTCOM’s headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. He immediately began a rapid buildup of American experience in fighting a desert war somewhere in the Middle East. This buildup came about because of the rapidly waning influence of the Soviet Union in the area, and the rise of dictatorships (including those in Iraq, Iran, and Syria). Schwarzkopf made sure that CENTCOM was at the forefront in estimating the possibility of crises erupting in the region.

On 25 April 1990, CENTCOM estimated that the main source of tension in the Persian Gulf area was Iraq; consequently, it established the “Iraq Regional Warning Problem” to develop and extend the collection of military intelligence on issues involving Iraq. Less than a month later, on 21 May, CENTCOM evaluated the key trouble spot in the region as the border between Iraq and Kuwait, and issued an assessment that “Iraq is not expected to use military force to attack Kuwait or Saudi Arabia to seize disputed territory or resolve a dispute over oil policy.” Still, there was wide concern inside CENTCOM that Iraq was a threat to its small neighbor. In July, Schwarzkopf ordered a covert computerized war game called Internal Look, which indicated that while Saudi Arabia could be defended from a mythical Iraqi invasion, the cost in American casualties would be high. The editors of Triumph without Victory: A History of the Persian Gulf War reported: “A senior officer who was deeply involved in the running of the exercise said, ‘Schwarzkopf wanted to have an exercise to test the war plan as it was developing so that we could refine it.’ ”

At the beginning of July 1990, as Iraq began to threaten Kuwait over the oil question, American military planners began to get nervous, and started a full month of military moves and plans leading up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. On 18 July, the day after Saddam Hussein accused several Persian Gulf states of “stabbing Iraq in the back” with a “poisoned dagger” by exceeding OPEC oil production quotas, USCENTCOM issued a Worldwide Warning Indicator Monitoring System (WWIMS) status change to establish the growing American concern with the situation. On 19 July, CENTCOM secured its first intelligence reports of Iraqi troop movements near the Kuwaiti border. On 21 July, CENTCOM intelligence sources reported that 3,000 Iraqi military vehicles were spotted moving from Baghdad on the roads to Kuwait. This final action led to another internal war program (unnamed) in which CENTCOM planned for a possible Iraqi invasion of Kuwait using some 300,000 American troops and 640 combat aircraft. Finally, on 31 July, Schwarzkopf reported to President Bush that according to all standards, an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was “imminent.” The Defense Intelligence Agency, which had differed with CENTCOM over the seriousness of the Iraqi threat, concurred with Schwarzkopf’s appraisal. On 1 August, while meeting with Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, Schwarzkopf foresaw that while Iraq would invade and quickly conquer Kuwait, an Iraqi advance would end there and not proceed into Saudi Arabia. Further, Schwarzkopf presented Cheney with a blueprint of potential Iraqi targets that would be hit if American forces got into the fray.

Once the Iraqi onslaught on Kuwait began on 2 August, Schwarzkopf became the chief foot soldier of coalition forces in the Gulf. President Bush’s hands-off attitude—in effect allowing the military, with Schwarzkopf’s advice, to carry out its best plan for the war—allowed the conflict to be fought in a nonpolitical manner. Thus the war culminated in Schwarzkopf’s celebrated press conference on 27 February known as “The Mother of All Briefings.”

References:

Dunnigan, James F., and Austin Bay, From Shield to Storm: High-Tech Weapons, Military Strategy, and Coalition Warfare in the Persian Gulf (New York: Morrow, 1992), 51;

U.S. News & World Report, Triumph without Victory: The History of the Persian Gulf War (New York: Times Books, 1993), 29.