Assigning an Army Division to Centcom: Possibilities and Pitfalls

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The CENTCOM area of responsibility (AOR) contains many aspects that are strategically vital to the United States, but before the abhorrent attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States military had not permanently assigned a significant land-component force to the region. The United States now has a National Security Strategy (NSS) that requires, among other things, U.S. military involvement in the region to defeat terrorism and those entities who may intend to use terror against the United States. Because of the terrorist threat to U.S. national security, for the foreseeable future, the U.S. military may find it necessary to maintain a permanent, forward-based presence of an Army division in CENTCOM. This concept of a U.S. Army division assigned to a combatant command is not without a historical precedent. U.S. Army divisions have been assigned to EUCOM and PACOM for a significant period of time, but those divisions have been assigned to those combatant commands under the auspices of a decade old Base Force model. To understand both sides of the research question: should a U.S. Army division be assigned to CENTCOM to more effectively accomplish the intent of the 2002 NSS, this monograph used the threat-based force planning model and capabilities-based force planning model. The two methodologies were used to discover the pitfalls and possibilities of assigning a division to CENTCOM. This monograph recommends the assignment of a division to CENTCOM in a manner that integrates both the capabilities-based and the threat-based planning methodologies.