Politics & Power Quote by John W. Vessey, Jr.

Vessey’s line reads like a modest job description until you hear the strategic audacity humming underneath it. “Before they know they need it” isn’t just a promise of preparedness; it’s a claim about where real power sits in a system built on civilian control. The chairman’s authority is formally advisory, but Vessey frames advice as something closer to an early-warning radar: anticipatory, persistent, and designed to shape decisions upstream of crisis. In a city where everyone reacts for a living, he’s insisting that the military’s highest obligation is to be uncomfortably ahead of the political calendar.

The phrasing also performs a careful dance. He doesn’t say “tell them what to do.” He says “give…advice,” nodding to democratic accountability while quietly expanding the mandate. The subtext is a warning about the asymmetry between politics and war: presidents and defense secretaries may cycle, triangulate, and negotiate; the armed forces deal in capabilities, timelines, and irreversible consequences. If the uniformed leadership waits to be asked, it’s already too late - and someone else’s assumptions have already hardened into policy.

Context matters. Vessey served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the early 1980s, a period marked by Cold War tension, rebuilding after Vietnam, and a Pentagon still relearning how to speak truth to elected leaders without slipping into insubordination. The quote is a credo for that narrow channel: be loyal, be candid, and be early - because surprise is what wars and bureaucracies both love most.