This article is the latest installment in our Quincy Institute/Responsible Statecraft project series highlighting the writing and reporting of U.S. military veterans. Click here for more information.
A senior Joint Staff leader once asked me a question I haven’t forgotten: “Are America’s big regional military headquarters still fit for purpose?” It’s an even better question now, as recent reporting suggests the Pentagon is considering consolidating and reducing some of these commands.
That question lands at exactly the moment Washington is promising a strategy built on priorities rather than wish lists. The White House’s 2025 National Security Strategy is unusually direct about what strategy is supposed to do: it must “evaluate, sort, and prioritize,” because “not every country, region, issue, or cause” can be the focus of American policy. The Pentagon’s new 2026 National Defense Strategy follows that lead, explicitly grounding itself in the NSS and then listing four top priorities: defend the homeland, deter China in the Indo-Pacific, push allies to carry more of the load, and rebuild the defense industrial base.
If we take those documents seriously, they point to a question that doesn’t sound glamorous but matters: does our military structure match our stated priorities? If Washington says it wants focus and restraint, why continue to operate a sprawling system of massive regional headquarters built for constant global management?
In December, Responsible Statecraft ran a strong case for consolidation as part of a broader effort to reduce bureaucracy and refocus U.S. defense policy. I agree with the overall direction. My contribution is practical: the tests consolidation must pass, and the traps to avoid, if it’s going to strengthen defense without fueling mission creep or putting troops at needless risk.
For readers who don’t live inside the Pentagon: these “combatant commands” are not obscure. They are enormous four-star headquarters that oversee U.S. military operations and relationships across broad regions: Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Indo-Pacific, the Western Hemisphere, and space. They can be useful: allies want a reliable point of contact; planning and crisis response do require coordination; and geography still matters. The risk is that engagement turns into permanent military management and reflexive escalation.
But these headquarters also create a predictable problem: big bureaucracies tend to justify themselves by expanding their mission. When a command has thousands of staff, a large budget, contractors, and a four-star leader whose relevance depends on visible activity, the institution naturally pushes for more “engagement.” Options multiply. Presence becomes a default. “Something must be done” turns into “the military can do it.” Regional headquarters don’t make top-level policy. However, they shape which options rise to the top and how difficult it is for leaders to say “no.”
That’s why this conversation is not just about trimming generals or admirals — that part is secondary. It’s about preventing mission creep: the slow drift from defense into open-ended management of other regions’ politics. The United States has lived through the consequences of that drift for a generation: prolonged wars, repeated “limited” missions that expand, and a permanent overseas posture that can start to look like empire even when that’s not the intent.
Both the NSS and the NDS call for fewer priorities and greater realism; the headquarters system should reflect that. If that’s the guiding idea, then consolidating and right-sizing regional headquarters is at least worth exploring to align how we run the military with a more restrained approach.
There’s also a home-front argument that should resonate broadly: overhead competes with readiness and people. Every dollar poured into bloated headquarters staffing is a dollar not spent on training, maintenance, housing, childcare, or care for veterans. Headquarters aren’t inherently bad. The problem is what happens when staffs and layers grow without discipline: they become self-protecting ecosystems that crowd out the basics. And even if the budget savings aren’t transformational, the discipline signal matters: priorities are taken seriously, and mission creep isn’t a reflex.
When done correctly, consolidation could also reduce the “everything is a military problem” bias. Fewer giant regional headquarters means fewer institutional engines generating constant military activity as the default response. That doesn’t guarantee restraint. But it does remove a built-in tendency toward doing more than we need to.
Still, this can be botched easily. Geography hasn’t disappeared. Allies and partners live in specific regions and measure U.S. commitment partly through relationships and continuity. A crude consolidation that feels like abandonment could spur instability rather than reduce it.
And consolidation can fail in another way: it can create enlarged “proconsuls.” Instead of several regional headquarters, you get a few mega-headquarters with even larger staffs and broader mandates. Power is centralized further. The labels change, but the incentive structure stays the same. That’s why consolidation should include hard caps on staff size and mission scope, not just new names on the org chart.
The next question is whether the Joint Chiefs’ military strategy and force planning translate these priorities into a headquarters design that supports them. What should guide reform?
Test #1: Fewer unnecessary wars. A reorganization that preserves the same interventionist reflexes but merely rearranges the org chart fails. The purpose should be to make it harder for the system to drift into open-ended military commitments.
Test #2: Readiness and troop safety. If savings disappear into glossy contractor programs, nothing improves. The point is to shift resources toward training, maintenance, quality of life, and veteran care — the sinews that actually strengthen national defense.
Test #3: Civilian control and accountability. Reorganizations done in haste can weaken oversight. A serious reform requires transparency, clear milestones, and congressional review so elected civilian leaders remain firmly in control.
Those tests point to practical principles rather than ideological slogans:
Phase changes deliberately. Don’t rip up regional structures overnight. Transition in stages and measure impact.
Preserve regional expertise. Consolidate headquarters if it strengthens defense, but keep the people and knowledge that make strategy intelligible.
Set an overhead target, and show where the savings go. If this is about stronger defense, prove it in the budget: more readiness and care for the force, less bureaucratic tail.
Don’t replace many headquarters with a few super-headquarters. Streamlining should reduce organizations and mandates.
Reorganizing the military headquarters system is one of the few reforms that can do two things at once: strengthen national defense while reducing the pull toward mission creep and unnecessary wars.
A serious strategy requires a corresponding structure: disciplined, accountable, and built for priorities rather than habits. As Quincy Institute co-founder Andrew Bacevich warned more than two decades ago, “today as never before in their history Americans are enthralled with military power.” That remains true today. It shows up in the command structures we build and the missions we normalize. This moment is a chance to build for the future, not the past.
