The U.S. Military Command Plan Needs a Reboot

By Seth Cropsey

Thursday, January 08, 2026

 

The capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife was a highly successful operation in which all branches of the U.S. military participated. Compared to a major conflict, however, its scale was small. Similar precision would be demanded in a European, Middle Eastern, or Indo-Pacific conflict — or more likely, some combination of them. Today’s U.S. military structure — in which operations in those three regions are commanded by different U.S. senior officers and staffs — would find it difficult to replicate the unity that was an important key to the success of Operation Absolute Resolve.

 

Soon, the Trump Pentagon is set to announce a major structural overhaul in the way the U.S. commands its forces abroad. Most will fixate on troop numbers in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. While these matter, they are fundamentally secondary considerations: This Pentagon is capable of making the bold choices that are needed to prepare the U.S. military for large-scale conventional combat. The Defense Department should follow this move with a concerted organizational effort to streamline command-and-control systems and accelerate realistic training and Eurasian-wide wargaming.

 

The United States fields the only truly global military in the world. Each administration expresses American interests differently, as its strategic concept demands: This administration, for instance, has focused more directly on Asia and the Western Hemisphere, albeit while still recognizing Europe’s fundamental importance in its National Security Strategy. U.S. military force posture, in principle at least, should follow these shifts. However, the U.S. must maintain a military that can fight a large-scale war in several different contexts, since even non-existential American interests may demand the use of military force.

 

The physical trappings of American military power — the U.S. Navy’s carrier strike groups that field more combat power than national air forces, the U.S. Air Force’s stealth fighters and strategic bombers, the Army’s rapidly deployable brigade combat teams, the Special Operations Forces that can infiltrate and execute against almost any target, the full nuclear triad — are what typically come to mind when U.S. military reach is considered. Yet these are only the muscles that generate power.  What coordinates them is a global command-and-control system that can lead combined-arms and joint forces on any continent.

 

This system is rooted in the Unified Command Plan, a schema for global military operations last revised in the late Cold War. As it stands, the Unified Command Plan splits the world into six regions — Europe and Russia, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, Africa, South America, North America — creating standing high-level military staffs for each area termed “Combatant Commands.” Each staff is headed by a Combatant Commander, a four-star flag or general officer, who acts as a supreme military commander-cum-proconsul. These Combatant Commands generate military plans and operational requirements, which are passed back to the Joint Staff and military Services, who then use these requirements to allocate strategic and operational resources. Alongside these Regional Commands, several Functional Commands exist, namely for Transportation and Special Operations Forces. The idea behind the system is to provide a direct chain of command for the president as commander in chief, ensuring a strategically responsive, civilian-controlled military. His orders, transmitted to and often refined by the Secretary of Defense, reach the Combatant Commanders, who then execute military operations worldwide.

 

Some sort of Unified Command Plan is necessary given American interests and the realities of American power. But it is not at all clear whether its geographical structure enables or inhibits strategy, military planning, or operational employment. Indeed, the current Unified Command Plan, with its neat regional divisions, is a mechanism for managing crises. It creates a commander for each region responsible for regional operations. It does not encourage strategic linkages between regions, a prerequisite for creative force employment that maximizes U.S. assets and new operational concepts.

 

This creativity is crucial for the current strategic situation and the coiled skein of hostile states that is tightening. China may pose the greatest threat to American strategic interests, in light of its economic power and military buildup. But it is actively sustaining Russia’s war effort in Ukraine while also providing Iran with invaluable economic support. Similarly, Russia shares military technology with North Korea and China in return for additional assistance. The broader implication is that, while the U.S. does not face a hostile alliance, it does face an axis of largely aligned, loosely coordinating powers. This means the U.S. should be prepared for a number of contingencies, including those in western Eurasia.

 

The result is that the Trump administration’s proposed reorganization, combining European Command, African Command, and Central Command, should be commended. This has little to do with what military analysts call force posture, the division and placement of military assets in different regions, although the Trump administration is likely to reduce force presence in Europe and the Middle East to reorient toward deterring China.

 

However, unifying Europe, the Middle East, and Africa under a single command actually ensures significantly greater strategic flexibility, particularly against Russia and Iran. Russia explicitly integrates the Mediterranean, Levantine coast, and North Africa into its strategy against Europe, hoping to use intelligence capabilities, mercenaries, and hard power to undermine U.S. interests in western Eurasia. Until last year, Iran also maintained a major Levantine Basin presence. Both powers have exploited the division of U.S. strategic attention and command between Europe and the Middle East and Africa. China also benefits through its economic and intelligence infiltration into the Middle East and North Africa, which also builds leverage over Europe. Additionally, it is reasonable to anticipate Russia capitalizing on a confrontation in Asia, driving forward its European ambitions and hoping to split U.S. attention and resources.  Integrating EUCOM, CENTCOM, and AFRICOM creates a more effective institutional mechanism for command-and-control in such a Eurasian-wide war.

 

But the Trump Pentagon must not stop with command-and-control reorganization. It should take two additional steps to bolster U.S. command-and-control for a Eurasian conflict.

 

First, the Pentagon should bolster coordinated, Eurasian-wide strategic planning beyond the Unified Command Plan. This involves empowering the Services to take a greater role in strategy-making, a role to which they are suited by virtue of their history and professional expertise. This would help trim the Joint Staff of its bloat as it returns officers serving on it to their military service where their warfare skills can be honed and applied to developing strategy.

 

Second, the Pentagon should accelerate global wargaming and training that breaks down the operational and strategic barriers between regions and commands, encouraging commanders to think flexibly about the military problems the U.S. faces. Global wargaming has not occurred regularly since the late Cold War. The U.S. faces a Cold War-style threat — it must therefore plan for a general war.

 

The eight decades since World War II ended have been the longest period of global peace. Regional fractures of that relative stability — in Ukraine and the Middle East — combined with the pace, scale, and ambition of China’s armament are the clearest reminder that peace, however prolonged, is neither assured nor permanent. The current administration’s plan to restructure its command plan to meet the foreseeable demands of a Eurasian-wide conflict acknowledges this and deserves support.