A To-Do List for the Next Marine Corps Commandant

If the U.S. Marine Corps still exists in 2028, It will be a far depleted force from what it was in 2018. It will have no tanks, much less tubed artillery, fewer combat infantry battalions, and less combat support aircraft. It cannot maintain a deployed Marine Expeditionary Unit/Amphibious Ready Group (MEU/ARG) in all four major global hotspots.  

The Marine Corps Commandant is not expected to command forces in combat nor is he expected to be a strategist. He is tasked with providing, equipping, and training Marine Corps forces to the regional combatant commanders.

Three times in the last seven years the Marine Corps has failed for the first time in its storied history to answer the call when a combatant commander requested marines as part of the MEU/ARG, the most requested military force.

At the time, the previous commandant blamed the Navy for the lack of availability of amphibious assault ships. This failure, however, is directly attributable to the 38th commandant and his current successor.

Deceitfully based on the 2018 National Defense Strategy, Gen Berger oriented the Marine Corps for a regional naval security mission, abandoning the long-standing requirement to provide a 24/7 global force in readiness. This would abdicate the Navy’s responsibility to provide rapid response forces around the globe, which has become an expectation for all combatant commands (i.e., Mediterranean and (U.S. European Command; Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East).

Instead of focusing on having multiple operational MEU/ARG’s at the ready in multiple combatant command theaters, Berger exposed the lack of Navy/Marine readiness to crises now emerging in the Caribbean and the Middle East, let alone a simultaneous Chinese incursion into Taiwan.

All this means that the Marines of 2028 will be far less capable than they have been since the beginning of World War II.

If a major war broke out in a place like Korea or the Middle East tomorrow, the Marine Corps would not be able to field a corps-sized combined arms team as they it did in Korea, Desert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom.

As in World War I, the Marine Corps’ ground contribution would be limited to augmenting the Army with regimental sized light infantry formations. If called upon the fight urban battles such as Hue City, Fallujah, and Ramadi the marines would have to beg or borrow army tanks and heavy engineers. This would cause critics to ask, "why a Marine Corps?"

In order to implement course corrections within the Marine Corps, the next commandant will be responsible for addressing a range of significant challenges. To rebuild the organization to its former self, he will have to divest from Force Design and invest in the global force in readiness that combatant commanders expect and demand.

The new commandant would need to restore Marine Ground forces with new armored vehicles, heavy engineers. and artillery. In the Korean War and in Vietnam, marines had to build expeditionary airfields to support classic battles such as the Chosin Reservoir and Khe Sanh. Heavy engineers are also required to replace destroyed bridges like what saved the First Marine Division in its breakout form the Chosin encirclement in 1950.

Next, the next commandant would have to convince the Navy not only to rebuild its amphibious fleet to thirty-eight ships, and that would still not be enough. He would have to get them to expand to fifty to support operations in the Western Hemisphere, such as the Caribbean. The Navy's deplorable shipbuilding and maintenance woes have exacerbated not just amphibious ship readiness, but the entire fleet.

If correcting the future course of the Marine Corps started tomorrow, it would take nearly a decade to return the MEU/ARG capability combatant commanders and the nation expect.

The hue and cry to do away the Corps, has already begun. General Berger wanted to preempt charges of the Corps being a redundant second land army by more closely aligning it with the Navy. Instead, he created a gordian knot with Force Design, a problem that didn’t exist since the other services already the capability to combat and defend China’s first island chain.

Berger's successor, General Eric Smith, has done nothing to correct the Marine Corps’ course. Former and current Marines, including those who have retired or transitioned from active duty, are actively engaging in discussions regarding which Commandant of the Marine Corps has been the least effective in its history. The candidates are Berger, Smith, and Anthony Gale who was convicted in the early 19th Century by a court martial and cashiered. Smith is the 39th commandant. I hope he isn't the last.

Gary Anderson is retired Marine Corps Colonel who served as a civilian Special Advisor the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He is the author of Beyond Mahan, A Proposed Naval Strategy for the 21st Century.