This is gonna be a bit rambling and I hope to flesh it out so bear with me while I try and chew thru this mess that has torn at the Marine Corps family.
1. How did we get here?
If you listen to the advocates of the plan (trying to keep this one civil) this all originated in the 2019 NDA. We don't have access to the classified and I would assume more detailed versions of that plan but the advocates said that the USMC MUST TURN to the pacing threat that is China.
I think this is the first shatterpoint.
We don't know if the NDA pushed the Marine Corps to do this or was it the interpretation of the then Commandant Berger alone.
What do we know?
That the refrain of the USMC becoming a second land army was all the rage in General Officer circles.
No one explained exactly what that meant. The Marine Corps fought the battles that the nation needed. I never understood the rationale of the USMC becoming a second land army when it was carrying out the tasks assigned. Additionally whenever the OLD Marine Corps was talked about it was how affordable the Marine Corps was.
X amount of infantry forces. X amount of tactical air. X amount of this and that (much of it land forces) from what is statistically a small force.
What I DO KNOW is that the Marine Corps became a victim of Navy shipbuilding. I don't blame that all on the Navy though.
If you remember correctly the Marine Corps pushed for the formerly called Mobile Landing Platform. The idea was to have a key enabler for the Ship To Objective Maneuver scheme (which I still believe in).
So long short, the Marine Corps had an era where it was going for gold plated systems in the form of ships and the Navy was providing it while leadership was gyrating from concept to concept and seeing those same golden ships basically being tossed to the side when a new great thing arrived.
Looking back a bit more we had a series of what I now call "radical" commandants. Amos was all about air power and the ground suffered. We had Neller who seemed to be all over the place and lived in the social side of things in transforming the Marine Corps that way.
Then we got Berger that had gone native in the Pacific, seems scared to death of China and wanted to push his plan and basically break the Marine Corps to such an extent that it couldn't be replaced with the added idea of putting those supporters of radical change in positions of power to keep his ideas going.
Which leads me to MY conclusion of how we got here.
Berger and those who think like he does did not do change agent 101 shit that they teach in business schools.
He did not get buy in and did not consider any critique of his ideas. He would ram rod Force Design 2030, change an entire organization that emphasizes discipline while at the sametime asks its members/former members to always be faithful to the same organization.
He didn't sell this sea change.
He rammed it thru.
That's the rub too. Mattis was SecDef during that time and he's part of Chowder II. He's against Force Design 2030. So the whole reason for FD2030 that they insist is based on the NDA that the man in charge of it pushed says the FD2030 is fucked.
We're either faced with arrogant leadership, leadership that can't change when faced with new facts, leadership that used a directive to alter the Marine Corps to their personal desires or all three.
No matter how you slice it this whole thing is an example of poor communication at its lowest level.
Trust us is not enough and that's what FD2030 advocates are hanging their hats on.
