Shaffer
10-01-02, 08:37 AM
The mission determines the alliance, and it is not the Alliance that determines the mission, as Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense once put it. The mission also determines the Supreme Commander in the Alliance, and each of them has his own time. The time will soon be ripe for General Jones, the present Commander of the US Marine Corps, to assume the office of Supreme Allied Commander Europe as from 17 January 2003.
According to American newspapers, General Jones was chosen because "he had the courage to be different". He is the first officer of the US Marine Corps to assume the office of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), who, at the same time, is the commander of the American forces in Europe. He is anyway the first officer of the Marines to be assigned a command outside the Marine Corps.
The Marine Corps is the smallest service of the USA behind Army, Navy, Air Force. It is the service that is best equipped, best trained and which takes the oath on the star-spangled banner with the greatest ardour. They call themselves "The Few, the Proud". As an elite expeditionary force specialized on ground combat operations and peacekeeping missions in an enemy environment, they are the vanguard and the spearhead of the American military power. Once a Marine, always a Marine, goes the saying.
The assignment of James Jones to the office of SACEUR is a signal of the new strategic orientation of the Alliance. Jones is a man for the new NATO which will soon enlarge far to the east under the primacy of counter-terrorism.
Once a Marine, always a Marine: "To win wars is our task and our purpose", said Jones when he assumed his post as commander of the Marine Corps in 1999. But he also knows the risks of his mission, the doubts and the question: "We can try to be perfect, a perfect organization. But we should also be constantly award of the fact that we will presumably never achieve this objective. Yet, we must not stop trying."
Jones was born in Kansas City in the State of Missouri in the middle west of America. He spent his early years in Paris where his father was a businessman, he studied International Politics at the Georgetown University in Washington. In 1967, he joined the Marine Corps, underwent basic training at the "Boot Camp" in Quantico, Virginia. This camp is a hell on earth, say those who have survived. Crushing heat over swampy ground. Nissen huts and bunk beds with mattresses with holes from mosquitoes and cockroaches. And everywhere present: the smell of putrid water. The officers' training of the Marines is the toughest in the world. In 1967, Jones, as a young lieutenant, is sent to Vietnam where he is a platoon leader and company commander. One year later he returns to America with a "Silver Star" distinction. He serves at Camp Pendleton, California, Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C., Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in Okinawa, Japan, in Northern Iraq and in Turkey. During his assignment to the US European Command headquartered in Stuttgart, he is in command of the HQ of a NATO-led unit in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in FYROM. And yet: always back to Washington, D.C. close to the political scene: he attends the National War College, is assigned liaison officer of the Marine Corps at the US Senate and is the closest military advisor to the former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen.
Jones is of big and lean stature at the end of his fifties who, with his shaven neck and fatigue dress, can hardly be distinguished from a young soldier at first sight. Unlike the present Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the Air Force General Joseph Ralston, Jones occasionally surprises the public with spectacular appearances: in summer 2000, he and his wife were aboard the vertical takeoff aircraft Osprey for a trial flight after a disastrous series of accidents which left more than 20 Marines dead. In October 2001, right at the beginning of the operation in Afghanistan, Jones visited his troops in the Persian Gulf "We do not train Marines for a life in barracks", he said.
Behind the office doors along the long mo-covered floors in the military headquarters of the Alliance, the staff from 19 NATO nations may have a presentiment that things will change with General Jones' arrival. One thing is sure: once a Marine, always a Marine.
According to American newspapers, General Jones was chosen because "he had the courage to be different". He is the first officer of the US Marine Corps to assume the office of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), who, at the same time, is the commander of the American forces in Europe. He is anyway the first officer of the Marines to be assigned a command outside the Marine Corps.
The Marine Corps is the smallest service of the USA behind Army, Navy, Air Force. It is the service that is best equipped, best trained and which takes the oath on the star-spangled banner with the greatest ardour. They call themselves "The Few, the Proud". As an elite expeditionary force specialized on ground combat operations and peacekeeping missions in an enemy environment, they are the vanguard and the spearhead of the American military power. Once a Marine, always a Marine, goes the saying.
The assignment of James Jones to the office of SACEUR is a signal of the new strategic orientation of the Alliance. Jones is a man for the new NATO which will soon enlarge far to the east under the primacy of counter-terrorism.
Once a Marine, always a Marine: "To win wars is our task and our purpose", said Jones when he assumed his post as commander of the Marine Corps in 1999. But he also knows the risks of his mission, the doubts and the question: "We can try to be perfect, a perfect organization. But we should also be constantly award of the fact that we will presumably never achieve this objective. Yet, we must not stop trying."
Jones was born in Kansas City in the State of Missouri in the middle west of America. He spent his early years in Paris where his father was a businessman, he studied International Politics at the Georgetown University in Washington. In 1967, he joined the Marine Corps, underwent basic training at the "Boot Camp" in Quantico, Virginia. This camp is a hell on earth, say those who have survived. Crushing heat over swampy ground. Nissen huts and bunk beds with mattresses with holes from mosquitoes and cockroaches. And everywhere present: the smell of putrid water. The officers' training of the Marines is the toughest in the world. In 1967, Jones, as a young lieutenant, is sent to Vietnam where he is a platoon leader and company commander. One year later he returns to America with a "Silver Star" distinction. He serves at Camp Pendleton, California, Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C., Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in Okinawa, Japan, in Northern Iraq and in Turkey. During his assignment to the US European Command headquartered in Stuttgart, he is in command of the HQ of a NATO-led unit in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in FYROM. And yet: always back to Washington, D.C. close to the political scene: he attends the National War College, is assigned liaison officer of the Marine Corps at the US Senate and is the closest military advisor to the former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen.
Jones is of big and lean stature at the end of his fifties who, with his shaven neck and fatigue dress, can hardly be distinguished from a young soldier at first sight. Unlike the present Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the Air Force General Joseph Ralston, Jones occasionally surprises the public with spectacular appearances: in summer 2000, he and his wife were aboard the vertical takeoff aircraft Osprey for a trial flight after a disastrous series of accidents which left more than 20 Marines dead. In October 2001, right at the beginning of the operation in Afghanistan, Jones visited his troops in the Persian Gulf "We do not train Marines for a life in barracks", he said.
Behind the office doors along the long mo-covered floors in the military headquarters of the Alliance, the staff from 19 NATO nations may have a presentiment that things will change with General Jones' arrival. One thing is sure: once a Marine, always a Marine.