As we all know, almost every country has two major institutions, the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, to manage and control the troops.
As for the Ministry of Defense, we all know that it is either the highest military administrative body or the highest military command body. For example, the Philippine Department of Defense is the highest military administrative body, which is not responsible for directing the Philippine Army, Navy and Air Force; in contrast, the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan is not only the highest administrative body, it is also the highest military command organ of the Kazakh Army, and the President of Kazakhstan commands the whole army through the Ministry of Defense.
So what is the General Staff?
To put it bluntly, under the leadership of the Supreme Commander (or Ministry of Defense), organize and command troops to fight, equivalent to the Supreme General Headquarters at the front of the war.
According to the institutional differences of each army, the functions, tasks and names of the General Staff Are not the same, for example, the Chinese People's Liberation Army is called the Joint Staff of the Central Military Commission, the Russian army is called the General Staff of the Federal Armed Forces, and the US Military is called the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
That being the case, is there any difference between the "General Staff" of the three armed forces of the People's Liberation Army, the US Military, and the Russian Army? Are the chiefs of staff of the Joint Staff of the People's Liberation Army Military Commission, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army, and the chairman of the U.S. Military Joint Staff have the same powers?
We'll answer all of your questions.
First of all, let's talk about the rank of the top chief of the "General Staff" of China, the United States, and Russia:
Before the military reform in 2016, the organization that led the organization of organizing troop operations in our army was called the General Staff Department, and the top chief was called the Chief of the General Staff, and since the founding of the People's Republic of China, a total of 16 chiefs of the General Staff have been born, some of whom are marshals, some of whom are generals, some of whom are generals, and some of whom have no ranks.
Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff of the Central Military Commission
For example, Xu Xiangqian, Nie Rongzhen, and Ye Jianying, the three founding marshals, as well as Su Yu, Huang Kecheng, and Luo Ruiqing, the three founding generals, and Deng Xiaoping, who had no military rank, all of whom served as chiefs of the general staff. In 1988, our army restored the rank system, and the general with the highest rank as an officer of the People's Liberation Army became the standard for the chief of the general staff, and even after the military reform, the general staff was changed to the joint staff of the Central Military Commission, and the chief of staff of the joint staff of the Central Military Commission also continued the tradition of being awarded the rank of general.
Chairman of the U.S. Military Joint Chiefs
Since the establishment of the U.S. Military Joint Staff in 1949, only the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Omar Nelson Bradley, has belonged to the Army's five-star general, and the rest of the Chiefs of Staff has been a four-star general, which is the highest rank in the U.S. military in peacetime. And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff can come from any branch of the armed forces, not only the army, navy and air force, but even from the Marine Corps, such as the previous chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joseph Dunford, who is a marine general.
Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Since President Yeltsin formed the General Staff of the Federal Armed Forces in 1992, there have been seven chiefs of the General Staff of the Federal Armed Forces, namely Victor Dubenin, Mikhail Kolesnikov, Victor Samsonov, Anatoly Kvashnin, Yuri Baruyevsky, Nikolai Makarov and Valery Grahimov, all of whom are ranked as great generals.
Therefore, Compared with the rank level of "chief of general staff" in China and the United States, Russia's chief of general staff has the highest rank.
Second, let's talk about the affiliation of the "General Staff" of China, the United States and Russia:
The Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission of the People's Liberation Army is only one of the important members of the Central Military Commission, and together with 14 other functional departments of the Logistics Support Department of the Central Military Commission, the Political and Legal Committee of the Central Military Commission, and the Audit Office of the Central Military Commission, it forms the highest leading organ of our army- the Central Military Commission.
As everyone knows, the Central Military Commission directly leads the armed forces of the whole country, so the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission is only a subordinate functional department of the Central Military Commission, which is mainly responsible for operational planning, command and control of troops, and organizing and guiding the training of troops. Just as the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission, which has the same status as the Joint Staff Of the Central Military Commission, mainly performs the work of party building and organization of the whole army, they perform their respective duties in the Central Military Commission.
It is worth noting that there is no subordination between the Joint Staff Of the Central Military Commission and the Ministry of National Defense, which accepts the dual leadership of the State Council and the Central Military Commission, while the Joint Staff Department only accepts the leadership of the Central Military Commission.
The U.S. Military Joint Chiefs of Staff is a subordinate agency of the Department of Defense, which together with 11 joint operational commands such as the Navy, Land and Air Forces, and the Indo-Pacific Command, form the U.S. Department of Defense. However, it only acts as the supreme advisory body of the president and the minister of defense, but does not have operational command. That is to say, we often say that four-star generals with military ranks do not have the right to command operations, but civilians without military ranks have the right to dispatch and command US troops.
As for the Russian General Staff, it is divided into two periods. Before President Putin amended the Defense Law in 2004, the affiliation between the Russian Ministry of Defense and the General Staff was ambiguous, because the old law stipulated that "the Minister of Defense exercises command over the armed forces through the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff", resulting in an equality between the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff. After Putin amended the new law, it clearly stipulates that the Ministry of Defense has real-time command over the Russian national armed forces and leads the activities of the General Staff, which means that the General Staff is subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Defense, and the Russian Chief of General Staff has a tradition of concurrently serving as the first deputy minister of the Ministry of Defense, which is lower than that of the Minister of Defense.
Therefore, comparing the "general staff" of China, the United States and Russia, only the joint staff of china's PLA Military Commission has no affiliation with the Ministry of National Defense, and the joint chief of staff of the Central Military Commission and the minister of defense belong to the comrades-in-arms of the vice-state generals at the same level; while the chairman of the US Military Joint Staff and the Russian general staff are subordinate to the defense minister of the country to which they belong. Relatively speaking, the level of the joint chief of staff of the Central Military Commission is higher than that of the chairman of the US Joint Staff and the chief of the Russian general staff.
Finally, the operational system of the "General Staff" of China, the United States and Russia:
Before the military reform, under the leadership of the Central Military Commission, the chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army organized and led the military construction work of the whole army and organized and commanded the military operations of the whole army. However, after the military reform, in accordance with the general principle of "the Central Military Commission is in charge of the general administration, the theater is in charge of the main battle, and the service is in charge of the construction," the operational command function of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission has changed, and the five major theaters have become the only supreme joint operations command organ in various strategic directions.
At this time, the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission no longer specifically commanded the troops in the theater for combat, but provided them with services such as operational planning, operational command and support, and study and formulation of military strategies. In other words, under the general framework of the leadership of the Central Military Commission, how the front-line troops fight, how they deploy, and how the navy, army, and air force cooperate in the theater are all the responsibility of the theater.
Speaking of the operational system of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, since the US military implements the system of civilian officials governing the army, the Ministry of National Defense is responsible for the operational command of the three services of the US military, but the Ministry of National Defense is an organ composed of a group of civilians without military ranks, and they do not understand military strategy, operational command, and military deployment at all. At this time, the US Military Joint Staff Committee came out.
The members of the U.S. Military Joint Chief of Staff are mainly composed of the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Chief of Staff of the Space Force, the Commander of the Marine Corps, the Director of the National Guard, and other members.
In wartime, the US President and the Secretary of National Defense first determine the object of operation, the time of the operation, and the outcome of the war they want to achieve; after the US Military Joint Staff Committee obtains the military operational authorization from the president and the defense minister, the specific arrangement of troops and the deployment of troops and the dispatch of generals will be the overall responsibility of the Joint Staff, and the front-line combat units of the three armies, navy and air force will be issued with combat tasks. Without the authorization of the president and the defense minister, the U.S. Military Joint Staff could not mobilize a single soldier to participate in the war.
Russia is not as complicated as the US military, according to the Russian military's combat routine, the Russian president and defense minister are responsible for strategic decisions, decide whether to fight or not to fight, the question of who to fight, the General Staff department to take the combat task, coordinate the joint combat command to carry out military operations. In other words, the Russian General Staff, as the supreme command organ of the whole army, implements the strategic decision of the Ministry of Defense, the leading organ of the Russian army.
Therefore, it can be seen from the above that the Independent Operational Authority of the Russian General Staff is greater, and the operational command of our army has been concentrated at the level of the theater, and as for the US military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a club of generals without military power, and everywhere is subject to the civilians of the US Department of Defense.