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RJO
07-20-2007, 12:46 AM
As an outsider looking in, I wonder if anyone would be able to point me to any papers, books, or other publications that analyze the concept of adaptation from a military perspective. I'm an evolutionary biologist, and my people have been talking, thinking, and getting confused about adaptation for nigh on 200 years. But have there been specific, detailed analyses of this concept in the military sphere? It's popular now to say that forces must be adaptable, that quick adaptation is needed in small wars, that insurgents adapt to counterinsurgents, etc.

Since I'm coming from the academic side of the house, there may well be a three volume work by some nineteenth-century German on Theorie der militarisch Adaptation that everybody studies at the War College but that I don't know about; if so, I'd be glad to be educated.

If there isn't such an analysis, I might be interested in writing one. (Not in three volumes, though.)

Many thanks.

Bob

marct
07-20-2007, 11:35 AM
Hi Bob,

No idea if there is or not, I'll let others answer that one, although I suspect hat most of the use of the term comes via the management literature - a sort of watered down Spencerian version.

Personally, I would really like to see your thoughts on it. I've been playing around with the Gould's concept of punctuated equilibrium to try and get a handle on culture area modes of warfare. I also suspect that there could be some really good work done using Bill Calvin's concept of Darwinian Bootstrapping (http://cogprints.org/3217/01/1997JMemetics.htm) to explain the phenomenon.

Marc

TT
07-20-2007, 11:40 AM
There is a reasonably substantial literature that focuses on what I would call ‘change in military organizations’.

But a first question that needs to be asked is what do you mean by ‘adaptation’?

I know, I know, a picky semantic question but important nonetheless. ‘Adaptation’ has many meanings in this literature, which does lend to a degree of confusion about what is being discussed/analyzed. ‘Innovation’ is the other widely used term that often lacks semantic clarity.

To give you a starting point, some authors define ‘innovation’ (as in military innovation) as major change in the aims, strategies (ie warfighitng concepts) and/or structure of a military organization’. The emphasis here is on ‘major’. So, as an example, the adoption of the warfighting concept of maneuver warfare by the US Army and Marine Corps would be innovation in this schema.

Adaptation would, in contrast, be minor changes or alterations that improve (or not, as the case may be) something that the military does but that does not have significant.major implications for aims, strategies and/or structure. Hence adaptation covers a wide range of adjustments that military organizations and military organizations constantly undertake. As some examples, developing new foot patrol techniques would be adaptation; equally, the Army’s FCS as it was originally conceived be would be adaptation - to my mind but I am still working on this - for ultimately while the FCS entails the wholesale rethinking of the character of the platforms the Army uses, it was still be to based on a ‘division’ structure, the new platforms would do pretty much what the old ones did, only differently, and it would be used for the much the same purpose as traditional heavy armour divisions were to be used (to fight a peer on a conventional battlefield). So adaptations can small or large.

The foregoing is probably more confusing than enlightening (typically academic, then), but it does get at some of the distinctions. But the extant literature is substantial enough that even this somewhat rough and ready semantic nit-picking helps to distinguish what is of interest to you.

Also, of course, are you interested in organizational adaptation (or adaptability) or individual adaptability?

And if there is some 19th Century German military thinker who has dealt with this, I would be keen to know about him or her as well – though preferably with the reference to an English version. My Deutsche is pretty restricted to ordering a large beer, asking where the bathroom is and saying ‘thank you and ‘please’ …..

SteveMetz
07-20-2007, 11:47 AM
There is a reasonably substantial literature that focuses on what I would call ‘change in military organizations’.

But a first question that needs to be asked is what do you mean by ‘adaptation’?

I know, I know, a picky semantic question but important nonetheless. ‘Adaptation’ has many meanings in this literature, which does lend to a degree of confusion about what is being discussed/analyzed. ‘Innovation’ is the other widely used term that often lacks semantic clarity.

To give you a starting point, some authors define ‘innovation’ (as in military innovation) as major change in the aims, strategies (ie warfighitng concepts) and/or structure of a military organization’. The emphasis here is on ‘major’. So, as an example, the adoption of the warfighting concept of maneuver warfare by the US Army and Marine Corps would be innovation in this schema.

Adaptation would, in contrast, be minor changes or alterations that improve (or not, as the case may be) something that the military does but that does not have significant.major implications for aims, strategies and/or structure. Hence adaptation covers a wide range of adjustments that military organizations and military organizations constantly undertake. As some examples, developing new foot patrol techniques would be adaptation; equally, the Army’s FCS as it was originally conceived be would be adaptation - to my mind but I am still working on this - for ultimately while the FCS entails the wholesale rethinking of the character of the platforms the Army uses, it was still be to based on a ‘division’ structure, the new platforms would do pretty much what the old ones did, only differently, and it would be used for the much the same purpose as traditional heavy armour divisions were to be used (to fight a peer on a conventional battlefield). So adaptations can small or large.

The foregoing is probably more confusing than enlightening (typically academic, then), but it does get at some of the distinctions. But the extant literature is substantial enough that even this somewhat rough and ready semantic nit-picking helps to distinguish what is of interest to you.

Also, of course, are you interested in organizational adaptation (or adaptability) or individual adaptability?

And if there is some 19th Century German military thinker who has dealt with this, I would be keen to know about him or her as well – though preferably with the reference to an English version. My Deutsche is pretty restricted to ordering a large beer, asking where the bathroom is and saying ‘thank you and ‘please’ …..


Good point. The U.S. military, at least, uses the concept of "transformation" rather than "adaptation." Nagl's work on militaries as "learning organizations" (as well as Sullivan's Hope Is Not a Method (http://www.amazon.com/Hope-Not-Method-Gordon-Sullivan/dp/076790060X)) might be useful.

On the U.S. military's approach to transformation, Fred Kagan's Finding the Target (http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Target-Transformation-American-Military/dp/1594031509/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-0230470-1188870?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184931850&sr=1-1) is good. I published an essay entitled, ""America's Defense Transformation: A Conceptual and Political History" in Defence Studies last year. (I can send a .pdf if anyone wants it).

marct
07-20-2007, 11:54 AM
Hi Steve,


On the U.S. military's approach to transformation, Fred Kagan's Finding the Target (http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Target-Transformation-American-Military/dp/1594031509/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-0230470-1188870?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184931850&sr=1-1) is good. I published an essay entitled, ""America's Defense Transformation: A Conceptual and Political History" in Defence Studies last year. (I can send a .pdf if anyone wants it).

I'd like a copy of that one.

SteveMetz
07-20-2007, 12:01 PM
Hi Steve,



I'd like a copy of that one.

So send my your email already.

Tom Odom
07-20-2007, 12:14 PM
I would also suggest going to the Combat Studies Institute and CGSC Press page (http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp)

There are a number of books and papers that speak to adaptation, transformation, and learning. For starters look at:

Leavenworth Paper (LP) No. 1: The Evolution of U.S. Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946-76, Major Robert A. Doughty. (HTML) (PDF)

LP No. 4: The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During The First World War, Timothy T. Lupfer. (HTML) (PDF)

LP No. 12: Seek, Strike, and Destroy: U.S. Army Tank Destroyer Doctrine in World War II, Dr. Christopher R. Gabel. (PDF)

LP No. 16: Deciding What Has To Be Done: General William E. Depuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100-5, Operations, Major Paul H. Herbert. (HTML) (PDF)

Research Survey (RS) No. 5: Standing Fast. German Defensive Doctrine on the Russian Front During World War II: Prewar to March 1943, Major Timothy A. Wray. (HTML) (PDF)

RS No. 6: A Historical Perspective on Light Infantry, Major Scott R. McMichael. (PDF)

CSI Report (CSIR) No. 1: The Evolution of the Tank in the US Army, 1919-1940, LTC Kenneth M. Steadman. (HTML)

CSIR No. 8: Discussions on Training and Employing Light Infantry, MAJ Scott R. McMichael. (HTML) (PDF)

CSIR No. 14: Sixty Years of Reorganizing for Combat: A Historical Trend Analysis, CSI Faculty. (HTML) (PDF)

Secret of Future Victories, Paul F. Gorman, General, U.S. Army, Retired. (HTML)

Watershed at Leavenworth- Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Command and General Staff College, MAJ Mark C. Bender. (HTML)

In Tribute to General William E. DePuy, Generals Thurman, Talbott, & Gorman. (HTML) (PDF)

Center for Military History U.S. Army GHQ Maneuvers of 1941.

Understanding the "victory disease" from the Little Bighorn to Mogadishu and beyond, Timothy Karcher. Paper #3. (PDF)

TT
07-20-2007, 01:48 PM
RJO,

Tom has given you an excellent list of works. I can offer more but it would be helpful if I had an idea of what is of most interest to you. The literature is fairly extensive (as Tom's list makes evident) and some of it is very focused on particular aspects of change in military organizations (ie, a number of works on the role of organizational culture in military change, among other aspects). Some of it is historical, some is what might be termed 'analytical narratives' (they analyse a particular case, past and near present) and some of it is theoretical (or somewhat so). So the problem I have (looking around my office) is where to start.

TT

PS. Steve is quite right that the current buzz term for the US military is 'Transformation' but I did not want to go there.

TT
07-20-2007, 03:18 PM
It is a dreary day and I am stuck gutting an index as the publisher informed me that having a user friendly, helpful index is not acceptable. Not fun (sigh).

To add to Toms list, some of the central academic works are:

[Health Warning: you are now entering the realm of academic dispute:confused:]


Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Cornell, 1984) Neorealist explanation of interwar period

Steven Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War (Cornell, 1991)

Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars (ie Malaysia and Vietnam) (Cornell, 1994)

(these are on opposite sides of the question of whether mil orgs require civilian intervention to change or will change on their own).

Organizational Culture

(these include culture as organizational structure – promotion pathways, hierarchy and so on – or as self identity).

Jack Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive (Cornell, 1984) – lead up to WWI

Kimberly Marten Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation, 1955-1991 (Princeton 1993)

Peter J. Katzenstein, Culture Norms and National Security (Cornell, 1996)

Elizabeth Keir, Imagining War (Princeton, 1997) Interwar period

Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Cornell, 2005)

(Second health warning: the foregoing are theoretical or theoretical leaning, except Rosen’s book)



Adaptation/Learning (mainly at tactical level)

Michael Doubler, Closing with the Enemy: How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-45 (Uni of Kansas Press, 1994)

James Jay Carafano, GI Ingenuity: Improvisation, technology and Winning WWII (Praeger 2006).

(these two are analytical narratives)


Beware, there are other books, and there are many articles as well (including articles that are drawn from the books above).



And not to neglect History (well, more or less history)…..

Williamson Murray and Allan Millett, ed, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge 1996)

Harold R. Winton and David r. Mets, eds, The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918-1941 (Uni of Nebraska Press, 2000)

David E. Johnson, Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the US Army, 1917-1945 (Cornell, 1998)

Victor David Hanson: Why the West has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam (Faber & Faber, 2001)

And the counter arguments to Hanson:

John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (Westview 2003)

J.E. Lendon, Soldiers & Ghosts: A History of Battle in classical Antiquity (Yale 2005)

(poli types are not the only ones who engage in internecine fights)


PS. Yes, the interwar period has been flogged to death and then flogged yet again, and then again - and no doubt it will be flogged even further in future.

RJO
07-21-2007, 02:40 AM
I thank you all indeed for these excellent ideas and references. It's just what I was looking for, and I can see it could keep me busy for a long time.

One of the difficulties (and so one of the greatest delights) when jumping from a familiar field into an unfamiliar one is learning to line up your old vocabulary and conceptual world with the vocabulary and conceptual world of the new territory -- like being dropped onto the far side of a mountain range that you know, but one that you have to study for a while to figure out where you now are in relation to where you were before.

"Adaptation" as a keyword in evolutionary biology has been subject to technical debate for generations. It can refer to a state-of-being (fitted to one's environment) as well as to a process of change (the process of becoming fitted to one's environment). As an historical aside: "adaptation" as a state-of-being had been observed by naturalists from time immemorial, and the apparent fit of organisms to their environments was classically seen as evidence for a Designer (God) who created the fit, since it couldn't possibly have arisen by chance. (In philosophy this is called "the argument [for the existence of God] from design"). The historical reason that Darwin's Origin of Species was so important was that it provided a third alternative: "adaptation" was understood to be the result neither of (a) chance, nor (b) design, but (c) natural selection, the process that adapts populations of organisms to their environments over generational time.

So, coming back to our comparative disciplinary context, I guess there are two items I may want to explore further. First is the essential local-ness of adaptation. This is a basic idea from evolutionary biology: natural selection doesn't result in adaptation-in-general, but rather in adaptation to the immediate conditions right where you are. Whether a change is adaptive depends entirely on the local environment, and something that is adaptive at one moment may not be at the next if the environment changes out from under you.

A second item I may explore further concerns that conditions that promote adaptation. Darwin described a variety of general characteristics of populations that permit selection to work more effectively and rapidly. These can be extended to various other non-biological learning/adapting processes, and this I think might be a useful exercise. The practical bottom line would be something like, "Advice from Darwin: Ten ways to make your organization more adaptive."

Thanks again for all the excellent references.

Bob

marct
07-21-2007, 04:09 PM
Hi Bob,

On our first point, there is the problem of replication units within the organization. I think Calvin probably has the best form (Darwin's was truly lousy - gremmules indeed!).



1. There must be a pattern involved.
2. The pattern must be copied somehow (indeed, that which is copied may serve to define the pattern). [Together, 1 and 2 are the minimum replicable unit -- so, in a sense, we could reduce six essentials to five. But I'm splitting rather than lumping here because so many "sparse Darwinian" processes exhibit a pattern without replication.]
3. Variant patterns must sometimes be produced by chance -- though it need not be purely random, as another process could well bias the directionality of the small sidesteps that result. Superpositions and recombinations will also suffice.
4. The pattern and its variant must compete with one another for occupation of a limited work space. For example, bluegrass and crab grass compete for back yards. Limited means the workspace forces choices, unlike a wide-open niche with enough resources for all to survive. Observe that we're now talking about populations of a pattern, not one at a time.
5. The competition is biased by a multifaceted environment: for example, how often the grass is watered, cut, fertilized, and frozen, giving one pattern more of the lawn than another. That's Darwin's natural selection.
6. New variants always preferentially occur around the more successful of the current patterns. In biology, there is a skewed survival to reproductive maturity (environmental selection is mostly juvenile mortality) or a skewed distribution of those adults who successfully mate (sexual selection). This is what Darwin later called an inheritance principle. Variations are not just random jumps from some standard starting position; rather, they are usually little sidesteps from a pretty-good solution (most variants are worse than a parent, but a few may be even better, and become the preferred source of further variants).


So, what are the patterns and replication units? I think a good case could be made that in a military organization, one way of defining the replication units would be TTPs (Tactics, Techniques & Procedures) as the pattern, while you would have to define the workspace as training time and operational deployment (two different environments). Certainly there is a big fight going on inside the US military right now about COIN training vs. "real war" training :wry:.

You would also have to define the organism boundary - and that will be a nightmare given how personelle float back and forth between them. You will probably end up having to define it at the unit level.


A second item I may explore further concerns that conditions that promote adaptation. Darwin described a variety of general characteristics of populations that permit selection to work more effectively and rapidly. These can be extended to various other non-biological learning/adapting processes, and this I think might be a useful exercise. The practical bottom line would be something like, "Advice from Darwin: Ten ways to make your organization more adaptive."

A good idea, Bob. I'll look forward to seeing it :).

Marc

TT
07-21-2007, 04:35 PM
Bob,

Ah, I see said the visually impaired person as they looked through the knot hole in the barbed wire fence….

No, seriously, I do comprehend your thinking. Certainly there are at least some broad correlations between ‘evolution’ and what is in the literature on military change. To abuse your metaphor somewhat, you might find a rough sketch of the skyline of that mountain range you refer to useful, in as much it may help you to navigate your way through the literature. I emailed a brief ‘sketch’ to you, though, as my ramblings are somewhat long and boring.

The devil will be, as always, in the detail.



PS I find that sometime my messages sometimes get bounced back (possibly because I have degenerated from a computer geek to a computer klutz). So let me know if do you not receive it shortly.

RJO
07-23-2007, 01:25 AM
On our first point, there is the problem of replication units within the organization.... So, what are the patterns and replication units? I think a good case could be made that in a military organization, one way of defining the replication units would be TTPs (Tactics, Techniques & Procedures).... You would also have to define the organism boundary - and that will be a nightmare given how personnel float back and forth between them. You will probably end up having to define it at the unit level.

Yes, if one wanted to develop notions of "cultural evolution" these would be things that would have to be addressed -- replicators, unit individuals, etc. But with respect to features that promote adaptability, one can black-box the question of replicators and say, whatever form they may take, here are the systemic traits needed to promote their ability to adapt. I think there may be some clear sailing along that line of thought (famous last words...).

Bob

RJO
07-23-2007, 01:40 AM
No, seriously, I do comprehend your thinking. Certainly there are at least some broad correlations between ‘evolution’ and what is in the literature on military change. ... I emailed a brief ‘sketch’ to you...

PS I find that sometime my messages sometimes get bounced back (possibly because I have degenerated from a computer geek to a computer klutz). So let me know if do you not receive it shortly.

The message did come through to my personal email but didn't get stored here on SWJ for some reason, but it was very helpful and I thank you indeed. It does give me a better feel for the landscape and a sense that I might be able to map a bit of territory that hasn't been looked at yet with respect to adaptability (how to create a "learning culture" in an evolutionary sense).

RJO

marct
07-23-2007, 02:00 PM
Hi Bob,


Yes, if one wanted to develop notions of "cultural evolution" these would be things that would have to be addressed -- replicators, unit individuals, etc. But with respect to features that promote adaptability, one can black-box the question of replicators and say, whatever form they may take, here are the systemic traits needed to promote their ability to adapt. I think there may be some clear sailing along that line of thought (famous last words...).

LOLOL. I agree that it does look promising but, once you actually look at it, it still fails. BTW, that type of approach was taken in a lot of the management literature in the 1980's 1990's. The problem with it is that it assumes a teleological basis and proscriptive form. In effect, it isn't about adaptation so much as it is about a specific form of cultural engineering at the system level.

Actually, it is possible to define replication units (and systems) without going into individual details. That was the approach taken by the memetics crowd who defined the replication unit as a meme or "idea/perception" (not quite right, but close enough). Another way it could be defined is by environmental testing sequence, i.e. how does the organization process information from its environment. That sidesteps the individual unit of perception and looks at he development of perception systems instead - think of it as a parallel to the evolution of sensory systems in organisms.

There are other indicators that could be used as well, but you do have to have some type of unit, otherwise you have nothing to measure and you are back to prosciptive cultural engineering (aka Cultural Eugenics).

Marc

Rob Thornton
08-30-2007, 07:36 PM
We were discussing change today and I though about this thread and something the former CSA said about change to the effect of its easier during war. Up to this point I really thought he meant that it was easier to rationalize increased spending, but now I wonder if that was really what he meant.

On a couple of other threads we've discussed adaptation and change and we scrutinized how we'd done. I thought for a organization as large as we are, as layered as we are by echelon and as conservative as we are by nature and charter (preserve/protect/defend the U.S. culture) we've done pretty good.

But today I wondered why. Some of the questions I though I'd pitch are:

Is there a correlation between ease (meaning mentally or culturally accepting ) of change and how long a war lasts?

Do we innovate and justify as we find out what works and does not? Maybe that is why the most effective change seems to be bottom up and more of a gradual evolution?

How long is does this continue to occur after the war ends and we become more resistant to change (where an organization becomes stable and change resistant?)

How does this impact our ability to inculcate the required changes to remain successful, while not abandoning the ability to recognize new requirements?

Best regards, Rob

TT
08-31-2007, 01:03 PM
Rob,

Some very good questions.

As a passing view, I would have thought that what your former CSA was referring to was, to be very crude, that being shot at provides much, much more incentive for trying and accepting change than is the case during peacetime. The crucible of combat exposes weaknesses and problems very quickly, as you and many other know very well, and your questions suggest you have already figured out. The issue of ‘increased spending’ does apply, however, with respect to technology, as there would be greater tolerance of risk of failed efforts or of funding multiple reserach approaches simultaneously.

(hmm, sorry, I read a post on 'blue quotes' but I appear not to have succeed - my fingers appear to be dyslexic :rolleyes:)

Q1 'Is there a correlation between ease (meaning mentally or culturally accepting ) of change and how long a war lasts?'

I am not aware of any studies that have sought to correlate length of war vs an increased ease of adaptation. Intuitively one would think that the longer the war the more willing a military would be to try new things that would contribute to ending the war sooner rather than later (the use of two atomic weapons ‘may’ be analogy for this) – with such willingness being more pronounced if one were losing. As a very rough comparison that broadly supports this intuition one might compare the amount of adaptation (minor change) and innovation (major change) in either WWI or WWII and the three week US assault to Baghdad.

Nonetheless, I would think it would be situation specific, with a host of different variables at work (political culture, military culture, success or lack of success on the battlefield, leadership, political will to win, science and other intellectual capital, etc and so on). As a rough example of a military that did not learn, the Roman legions even after their resounding defeat by Arminius and his ‘German barbarians’ at Teutoberger Wald, seemed never to be able to adjust to this ‘new’ form of war and held to their form of war that had been exposed as wanting. This is, however, hardly a perfect example, for it is only one battle however very consequential it was, for the Romans only subsequently engaged pretty much in small and large forays across the Rhine as punishing acts, with lesser or greater military success.

In the past 5-7 years a number of academics have started to focus on the question of how and why militaries learn, including on the battlefield. If you are interested, one very recent book that looks at learning and adaptation by American soldiers in the European theatre in WWII is James Jay Carafano’s ‘GI Ingenuity’ (2006)

Q2 'Do we innovate and justify as we find out what works and does not? Maybe that is why the most effective change seems to be bottom up and more of a gradual evolution?'

If you mean in war, trial and error is evident in the historical record. In WWI the Brits tried several different methods to break the jam at the Central Front (none worked very well) while the Germans, as everyone here knows, developed infiltration tactics which were refined through the trial and error of actually employing these tactics. One can find other examples of trial and error (as a Canadian I am obliged to mention the disastrous Dieppe raid that was a trial for the eventual Normandy landings). Such a trial and error approach is natural as the enemy always has a vote and will expose flaws in the original conception.

The second part of your question is a bit trickier. Studies of major change in military organization suggest that, in peacetime, change most often occurs because of civilian intervention to force change, or due to the presence of a visionary military officer (or more than one) – the process is of course more complicated but the point is that the process is top-down. The only example of a bottom-up driven change in peacetime I can immediately think of that was is the introduction of maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps, though the ultimate success of this process depended on one of the advocates being appointed as Commandant (Gen. Gray). I say the ‘only’ knowing full well there are any number of academics would disagree, that there are lot of examples and point to particular weapon platforms/technologies – but this is an academic dispute.

During a war, again one intuitively would think that change is more likely to be a bottom-up process, for those who are at or near the face of battle have a much greater understanding for the need for change than those who are sitting well away from the tactical and operational level of war. I am tempted, albeit a bit hesitant, to suggest the development new the new approach to COIN by the US is a good case of a bottom-up approach in wartime. I am thinking here of the Army putting out a new COIN manual in the autumn of 2004 that was very widely criticized, especially, as I understand it, by those who had been in the field, and the subsequent development of FM3-24 that was led by Gens Petreaus and Mattis, both of whom had been at or very near the coal face. Putting on my academic’s hat (err, no, forget that, I cannot even fathom those mortar board hats that academics wear with those gowns, never mind want to wear one), this has all the appearances of a major change driven essentially from the bottom up.

By the same token, many of the adaptations undertaken at the war front are mostly tactical in nature and do not always trickle up. Or indeed may not even trickle out horizontally. On the other hand, the development, refinement and use of new adaptations, whether in technology or tactics, can spread across a military and the general accumulation of many such minor, incremental changes can lead to much broader and larger change as the military seeks to embed these many minor adaptations and make wider changes to account for their knock-on effects. And of course an adaptation on the battlefield can over time have an enormous effect – the bolting of armour plate onto trucks led to armoured personal carriers and all that changes that occurred to take advantage of these ‘new’ platforms.

To be continued.....

TT
08-31-2007, 01:04 PM
Q3 'How long is does this continue to occur after the war ends and we become more resistant to change (where an organization becomes stable and change resistant?)'

Part of ‘an’ answer to this I addressed above. The process will continue after the war, but most likely only in terms of making the many adjustments needed to fully integrate what was learned and successfully applied during the war (and deemed of continuing benefit). Equally, the historical record is replete with militaries undertaking major change after a having a lost a war to an opponent using different forms of warfare, or better tech, as they seek to redress their weaknesses and failures. I am not aware, however, of any studies that look at how long the period of such post war adaptation continues, for most studies examine why militaries change or why they do not (particularly when circumstances strongly suggest they should change). So the issue of how long this process may continue is just not something that is really examined for; this is reflected in the fact most studies do not really examine the detailed implementation of changes, rather focus on the circumstances and factors that influence the introduction and acceptance of a particular change.

Q4 'How does this impact our ability to inculcate the required changes to remain successful, while not abandoning the ability to recognize new requirements?'

This is an excellent question but I one I do not have a good answer to. My strong sense is that, at the end of the day, the willingness and capability to adapt in wartime has little real impact on whether a military will remain very innovative in preparing for some uncertain future. The is more than a grain of truth in the old saw that generals prepare to last war, or the last battle of the last war. Militaries are innately conservative, or, rather, cautious. If they undertake a ‘jump into the future’ there is risk that the change undertaken could be maladapted to the actual conditions they confront there, there may well be potentially disastrous consequences for them and the nation they serve. Being cautious, they revert to instrumentalism as a less risky approach (there are other reasons, such as military culture, political culture, and so on, that can strongly impact on this propensity as well). This tendency, it seems to me, is likely to be more pronounced when a military has been successful in the war just concluded.

This said, now to turn to the first part of your question. I am going to be bold and presume that you are thinking about how we inculcate the lessons and adaptations with respect to COIN and even irregular warfare. In very broad terms, I have argued elsewhere that what is required is a new ‘narrative’, ‘behaviour’ and demonstrated ‘benefit’, particularly if military organizational culture needs to be adjusted to ensure change takes place. And it usually does. You change behaviour through by altering education and training, you alter promotional pathways, and so on and so forth. The US military is changing education, training, etc. The hard question is whether these changes in the US military are merely a function of the expedience of needing to prepare personnel before deployment, due to the wars they are engaged in, or whether the change in behaviour is aimed to change the US military more permanently, or will have that consequence. My suspicion from I what have read, seen and been told is that the lean is toward ‘expediency’, as the changes are not as far ranging and as deep as I would think they would need to be to effect more permanent change.

And this points to changing the narrative, by which I mean that the military needs to change how it 'sees itself' and 'what it does'. Put another way, it needs to redefine its ‘self-identity’. To use the example of the US Army, its narrative is (or was) that it is, to keep it very simple, an armoured force (who we are) that fought wars against other like militaries (what we do). This 'narrative' is not so simple by any means, for it is composed of the entire history of the US Army, and more particularly about how the US Army has and does perceive, interpret and articulate this history (and here is where myths and legends creep in). To return to the US Army, this idea of what its narrative will be is bound up in the debates about whether COIN/IW is the future or whether it is conventional, classical state-vs-state warfare (ie the threat posed by China).

Demonstrating benefit is fairly straightforward – benefit on the battlefield through to benefit, at a more personal level, of, say, gaining promotion because of excellence in the practice of these new methods (as a very narrow example, it has been discussed elsewhere on these board, I believe, the problem of MiTT personnel and whether they are rewarded for this duty).

My view is that all three need to be achieved. Easy to say, much, much,much harder to do.

To come to one of the more specific points of your question, inculcating the new while retaining the capacity to ‘recognize new requirements’, my view would be that as part of the above process you need to inculcate or foster a mindset of innovation and adaptation, as well as a broad mindset that is forward leaning in outlook. I am of course leaving aside the capacity to analyze for new requirements, though I would think that this would be linked. Again, easy to say……

I apologize, Rob, for having twisted one or two of your questions abit. I also apologize, profusely, to one and all for going on and on, and then on some more.

Sad to say but one of the things they do not tell you when you start your doctoral studies is that when they hand you that particular sheepskin (all I got was a piece of paper - :() several big, burly guys grab you, hold you down and inject you with several serums that seem to make you genetically long winded and pedantic……

Best

TT

marct
08-31-2007, 03:27 PM
Hi Folks,

Rob, some really god questions; TT some excellent answers (BTW, hat serum we got injected with also seems to shift language use as well :D).

Roundabout into:

For a number of years, I have been trying to model the emergent properties of what we general call "culture" and its relationship to "society" and "macrosocial reality". Early on, I got hooked on the idea that if you can't ground your observations via a chain of causation back into biological reality, then you don't have a theory (you have a theology). Luckily, the version I subscribe to is "weak" in the sense that I hold that culture emerges from biological reality but is not determined by biological reality. Think of it as we all have to eat, but what we eat can be highly variant (i.e. non-deterministic as long as it meets certain minimal requirements).

This led me to look at just how we (Anthropologists and social scientists in general) apply the concepts from evolutionary theory in our work. What struck me was that most of us do it so poorly and fall into the teleological trap that grabbed Spencer (i.e. that we are evolving towards something). A lot of this seemed to cme from the use of certain terms, e.g. "adaptation", "evolution", "survival of the fittest" (another invention by Spencer), that were applied in ways that Darwin never intended.

I we go back to Darwin's original meanings, we end up with some interesting conditions that, I think, may help set the grounds to answer Rob's questions. BTW, I am using a set of conditions outlined by William Calvin in a paper called The Six Essentials? Minimal Requirements for the Darwinian Bootstrapping of Quality (Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission, 1 available here (http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1997/vol1/calvin_wh.html)or here (http://williamcalvin.com/1990s/1997JMemetics.htm)).




There must be a pattern involved.
The pattern must be copied somehow (indeed, that which is copied may serve to define the pattern). [Together, 1 and 2 are the minimum replicable unit - so, in a sense, we could reduce six essentials to five. But I'm splitting rather than lumping here because so many "sparse Darwinian" processes exhibit a pattern without replication.]
Variant patterns must sometimes be produced by chance - though it need not be purely random, as another process could well bias the directionality of the small sidesteps that result. Superpositions and recombinations will also suffice.
The pattern and its variant must compete with one another for occupation of a limited work space. For example, bluegrass and crab grass compete for back yards. Limited means the workspace forces choices, unlike a wide-open niche with enough resources for all to survive. Observe that we're now talking about populations of a pattern, not one at a time.
The competition is biased by a multifaceted environment: for example, how often the grass is watered, cut, fertilized, and frozen, giving one pattern more of the lawn than another. That's Darwin's natural selection.
New variants always preferentially occur around the more successful of the current patterns. In biology, there is a skewed survival to reproductive maturity (environmental selection is mostly juvenile mortality) or a skewed distribution of those adults who successfully mate (sexual selection). This what Darwin later called an inheritance principle. Variations are not just random jumps from some standard starting position; rather, they are usually little sidesteps from a pretty-good solution (most variants are worse than a parent, but a few may be even better, and become the preferred source of further variants).Okay, so within these conditions we have some terms that need to be puled out:

Pattern: let's leave this for the moment since it could be any type of information pattern. If we were talking tactics, we could use TTPs.

Replication: think education, training, stories / rumours about how to get promoted, etc.

Workspace: just another way of saying "environment", but a useful word shift since the term "environment" has more and more come to mean the physical environment solely.

Variation: new versions of a pattern. This is what biologists would call a "mutation" or, in some cases, an "exaptation" (it means taking something that evolved for one purpose and applying it to a completely different situation). In the case of a "mutation" it may be "simple" in the sense of just modifying one or two interactions (e.g. patrolling using a random walk rather than a pre-planned route every time) or it may be "complex" (e.g. leaving FOBs and living in the communities - think of this type as an "innovation").

"Success": ideally, this refers to one of two things; a) success at individual survival (individual level) and b) success at replicating itself (population level). This is sometimes called a "measure of fitness".

Adaptation actually refers to the combination of two of these - variation and success. In effect, "adaptation" is both the generation of "new patterns" and to competition of those variations within an environment.

part 2 ...

marct
08-31-2007, 04:11 PM
Is there a correlation between ease (meaning mentally or culturally accepting) of change and how long a war lasts?

I would have to say "no" on the whole since what seems to happen is that the workspaces ("environments") tend to generate successful adaptations within them in fairly short order (say 5-10 years). What does seem to happen is that you will develop an isomorphic vector along certain lines of variant selection.... think of that as the competition to be "the biggest and the best at X".

On the other hand, that only holds if you are dealing with a stable environment - shift the environmental factors and you will see another flurry of adaptive changes. this is what SJ Gould calls "punctuated equilibrium" and there is some indication from the neo-institutionalist literature that it holds up in organizations.


Do we innovate and justify as we find out what works and does not? Maybe that is why the most effective change seems to be bottom up and more of a gradual evolution?

"Success" is always tricky to measure, and this is probably most apparent in organizations like the military in a democratic society. For example, there are three major environments that the military has to adapt to: the battlespace (broadly conceived), the bureaucracy required for a large organization, and the civilian political environment. What "works best"in one probably does not "work best" in the others, so there is a constant toing and froing between models.


How long is does this continue to occur after the war ends and we become more resistant to change (where an organization becomes stable and change resistant?)

Basically, what happens is that the relative weighting of the importance of the three environments I mentioned earlier changes. This shifts the primary basis of selection from the battlespace and civilian political environment in wartime to the bureaucracy and civilian political environment in peacetime. Innovation and change are encouraged in the battlespace environment (individual level of survival), while they are discouraged in the bureaucracy (replication; population level of survival). The bureaucracy is the interface between the battlespace and the civilian political environment (which is probably one of the reasons they are clamping down on military bloggers - but that's another thread).


How does this impact our ability to inculcate the required changes to remain successful, while not abandoning the ability to recognize new requirements?

This is really tricky. "Adaptation" is, in general, a result of the production and replication of variant patterns while replication at the population level (think training) is the result of selecting individual variants rather than groups. Think of it like this; you have a large variety of possible patterns that can be replicated. Some of them are discarded ("selected against") by the civilian political environment (e.g. torture, indiscriminate carpet bombing, nuking Iraq, etc.). These types of possible patterns are basically considered as "toxic mutations" - they don't (generally, there are exceptions) live long enough to replicate inside the population.

Then we have a group of patterns that, in a hot war, are selected for in the battlespace - i.e. they promote individual survival. Some of these will "die" (i.e. be classed as toxic mutations) while others will work their way back into the bureaucratic environment for possible selection for replication in training or new FM's etc. Sometimes, you will see multiple centres of variation showing up in the battlespace - the convention vs. COIN is an excellent example of this. This may lead to a situation were population level selection (i.e. training and doctrine) are, de facto, selected by the civilian political environment - the new COIN manual is one case, Lincoln's firing loosing generals is another. The responsibility for implementing the population level selection is still in the hands of the bureaucracy.

Now we come to the second part of your question "the ability to recognize new requirements". This is really tricky. Under he current model where most variations are produced in the battlespace, the only way to do so is to be continuously at war - which is sort of self defeating on the whole. One way the Romans solved that problem was by grabbing a whole bunch of task areas that we would consider "civilian" or, at least, "non-military" (e.g. infrastructure construction). The move to create a Corps of Advisers is a move in this direction.

Another way to do to is to create a counter balance to the bureaucracy whose sole purpose is to act as if they were a permanent Red Team and who have the political authority to control the careers of bureaucrats, including firing them. Strangely enough, that was the role played by a number of priests in the various armies of the 16th and 17th centuries (usually done very badly). It was also the role played by the priesthood of Anubis in ancient Egypt - they could tell Pharoah (at least in the early and middle kingdoms) when he would die. This option isn't used much in industrial societies for a number of reasons.

Another option, similar to this, is to develop a group operating in the civilian political environment that has both civilian and military people who act as a Red Team watch dog. Again, they have to have some power / authority, but the influence would be on the political leadership rather than on the bureaucracy. Tricky.

Anyway, I've run on far too long so I'll leave it there.

Marc

Rob Thornton
09-01-2007, 01:49 AM
TT & Marc,
Thanks for the very thought provoking answers - you could not have followed each other better if you'd arranged it - the responses complimented each other very well. After reading them I had to go back and re-read LTC Yingling's piece on failures in generalship as well as F. Kaplan's "Challenging the Generals" (both of which can be found with associated threads & blogs on SWJ for those who have not read them). I'll get to why in a moment, but first I'd like to comment on an insight the TT made which I really liked:


the willingness and capability to adapt in wartime has little real impact on whether a military will remain very innovative in preparing for some uncertain future. There is more than a grain of truth in the old saw that generals prepare for the last war, or the last battle of the last war.

Its amazing to me how the human mind work. The last event, if dramatic enough, seems to shape the rest of an individual experience and becomes sort of Rosetta Stone or lens through which all lesser experiences are viewed until some other experience of equal weight is encountered. Its a natural bias which must be guarded against in order to look forward (at future problems) with objectivity.

I just hope we don't become that which we say stagnates our ability to innovate. I believe in investing first in leadership to provide the purpose and direction to the catalysts from which we derive change. I think only by investing in leadership can we be more certain of avoiding learning the wrong lessons and developing the wrong answers. Positive change then (I think) would begin by asking the right set of questions.

Not only is this a very relevant topic, but it would also seem to be one that fascinates so many of us. Consider how many related threads there are (the Great Generals thread, the FCS thread, the Generalship thread, the adaptation thread, etc.)

Again, thanks to both of you for some very challenging and thought provoking responses.

Best regards, Rob

TT
09-01-2007, 11:46 AM
I see from the missing words in the quoted sentence that my keyboard was drinking again yesterday :wry:

marct
09-01-2007, 12:05 PM
Hi Rob,


TT & Marc,
Thanks for the very thought provoking answers - you could not have followed each other better if you'd arranged it

No worries, mate! TT's answers set the stage for mine - hey, he had already used all the great lines, so I got stuck with the model building . Actually, this is an area that has been pretty much "top of mind" for me over the past decade or so.


I just hope we don't become that which we say stagnates our ability to innovate. I believe in investing first in leadership to provide the purpose and direction to the catalysts from which we derive change. I think only by investing in leadership can we be more certain of avoiding learning the wrong lessons and developing the wrong answers. Positive change then (I think) would begin by asking the right set of questions.

Over the years, I have had the great good fortune to work with a real range of leaders from the best to the worst. The best of them have a quality that I find absolutely fascinating - they "read" people and help them to become what they could become, even if they don't understand what this is. The worst tell you what to do, how to do it and accept no input.

Back when the quality movement started to really get rolling, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines hired a new CEO to help them regain heir market share, which had been slipping. Rather than imposing a solution, he decided to get out of his office and talk with the frontline workers. What he heard made him suspicious, so he "hired" himself as a new ticket agent. After two weeks, he "quit" and went back to being CEO with a totally new understanding of why they were loosing market share - way too any corporate regulations (62,000+) that actually destroyed the ability of frontline workers to solve customer problems.

His "solution" to the overall problem was to introduce two radical "innovations". First, he required all management to spend at least two weeks out of every quarter acting in frontline positions (stewards, customer service reps, ticket agents, baggage handlers, etc.). Second, he instituted a policy (actually more of a cultural schema) that said something like "get rid of any rule or regulation that makes it harder for frontline positions to solve problems". These two shifts ended up boosting KLMs market share significantly.

I have to wonder what would happen if the military had a similar set of requirements. What if every officer from O4+ had to serve as a corporal or seargent every quarter?

Marc

Rob Thornton
09-01-2007, 12:06 PM
TT,
Well, at least your keyboard is in good company - there are some great anecdotes of some 18th Century Scottish philosophers who did some of their best thinking over a pint:D - I think David Hume did a pretty good treatise over the physics of billiard balls and how it was applicable to almost everything while a wee bit intoxicated.
Best regards, Rob

TT
09-01-2007, 01:30 PM
Rob,

What was most annoying about my keyboard is that it did not share:D

(I have been trying to get the 'blue quote' thing to work but I give up:o)


'The last event, if dramatic enough, seems to shape the rest of an individual experience and becomes sort of Rosetta Stone or lens through which all lesser experiences are viewed until some other experience of equal weight is encountered. Its a natural bias which must be guarded against in order to look forward (at future problems) with objectivity.

I think your observation is spot on. To take this point onwards....

A very solid argument can be made, I think, that WWII, the ‘Good War’, provides the foundation for how the modern US military (well, not so much the USAF, ‘cause it did not exist during that conflict) sees itself and what it does. To grossly oversimplify, as each US service sees itself in a different way, WWII is in essence the last war that the ‘generals’ want to fight better (as opposed to the last battle). This form of warfare, state vs state, division vs division, has been, and to a degree remains today, the focus of the US military in spite of the many small wars it has engaged in since 1945, with the US military steadily refining and becoming ever more proficient in the form of warfare they fought in WWII.

This emphasis is partly reinforced and indeed propagated by the icons of each service. In the ‘Who are the Great Generals’ thread, I was struck by the fact that most – but certainly not all -- of the Generals named were those who commanded ‘conventional’ style wars (from Alexander to the present). I understand that the intent – particularly by the members of the SWB – is to identify Generals who exemplify the many leadership skills and attributes that are required of a good officer whatever the form of warfare. These men – and the few women mentioned – certainly do serve as role models. As such, however, the connection between their iconic status and the form of warfare on which their status is based carries a strong connotation or meaning about what is 'proper war', about what is the form of warfare that should be aspired to. Or to put it another way, such role models, consciously or unconsciously, reinforce ‘who we are’ and ‘what we do’, and the 'what we do' in many of the examples put forward is ‘conventional warfare’.

wm in his post on the ‘Generals’ thread titled ‘The "Greats" & America's Infatuation with Technology’, made what I think is a very astute observation. His observation was, ‘Maybe if we chose a different set of icons for our WWII heroes, we might find a better set of solutions for the current morass in which we find ourselves enmired.’ This is, wm, excellent advice.

Certainly the great Generals should be iconic symbols, but it seems to me that there is real need develop a new set of ‘iconic’ leaders, to elevate the many US military personnel from through out US history who demonstrated the same leadership skills and attributes as the ‘great generals’ but in small wars. A hard reality is that such potential ‘iconic’ officers would not make a Great Generals list, for many if not most of the officers you would be looking for would not have been Generals at the time and many, if not most, very likely never made it up the ladder to ‘General’ (or Admiral). So one way to try to forestall the ‘stagnation you raise, the US military should (to contribute to changing the ‘narrative’) is pillage through its history (and as small wars are largely on land, this means mostly the history of Army and Marine Corps) to find and rehabilitate those officers, whatever their rank, who engaged in small wars to provide modern day role models of leaderships to sit alongside .

Just as a brief example Chesty Puller was mentioned several times as a great general Even in the Marine Corps (where Puller is as Jon Hoffman has said, ‘is the mythological hero of the Marine Corps – the very icon of the entire establishment’) he is most well known for his actions and exploits in the Pacific Campaign and Korea – conventional wars. Yet Puller cut his teeth as a junior officer in the small wars of the USMC in the 1920s and 1930s, and from what I have read, he was very effective in these small wars (and yes, most Marines do know this, more or less, but the emphasis is on WWII and Korea).

Finding other officers such as Puller who were very good or excellant in small wars, who, while not great ‘generals’, were as more junior officers still great leaders in and practitioners of small wars. These men (and women) can serve as role models to exemplify what is required of the officers of today and tomorrow, while that same time indicating that small wars/COIN/irregular warfare is an important part of what the US military does, rather than being, as they sometimes appear to be, terms that are best not used in polite company.

TT

PS Marc - sorry for stealing all the good lines. Very inconsiderate of me.

Rob Thornton
09-01-2007, 02:32 PM
TT,
That as an incredible observation - I'm going to use it as a quote on the "general's thread" where it will get seen by those on that thread - and also hyper-link it back to this discussion.

Marc has led some great discussions on symbology before, but I don't know if it ever clicked with me in regards to how strong the "leadership symbology" is in affecting sub-conscious associations with problem solving.

To take your observation further:


wm in his post on the ‘Generals’ thread titled ‘The "Greats" & America's Infatuation with Technology’, made what I think is a very astute observation. His observation was, ‘Maybe if we chose a different set of icons for our WWII heroes, we might find a better set of solutions for the current morass in which we find ourselves en mired.’ This is, wm, excellent advice.

Certainly the great Generals should be iconic symbols, but it seems to me that there is real need develop a new set of ‘iconic’ leaders, to elevate the many US military personnel from through out US history who demonstrated the same leadership skills and attributes as the ‘great generals’ but in small wars. A hard reality is that such potential ‘iconic’ officers would not make a Great Generals list, for many if not most of the officers you would be looking for would not have been Generals at the time and many, if not most, very likely never made it up the ladder to ‘General’ (or Admiral). So one way to try to forestall the ‘stagnation you raise, the US military should (to contribute to changing the ‘narrative’) is pillage through its history (and as small wars are largely on land, this means mostly the history of Army and Marine Corps) to find and rehabilitate those officers, whatever their rank, who engaged in small wars to provide modern day role models of leaderships to sit alongside .

Just as a brief example Chesty Puller was mentioned several times as a great general Even in the Marine Corps (where Puller is as Jon Hoffman has said, ‘is the mythological hero of the Marine Corps – the very icon of the entire establishment’) he is most well known for his actions and exploits in the Pacific Campaign and Korea – conventional wars. Yet Puller cut his teeth as a junior officer in the small wars of the USMC in the 1920s and 1930s, and from what I have read, he was very effective in these small wars (and yes, most Marines do know this, more or less, but the emphasis is on WWII and Korea).

Finding other officers such as Puller who were very good or excellent in small wars, who, while not great ‘generals’, were as more junior officers still great leaders in and practitioners of small wars. These men (and women) can serve as role models to exemplify what is required of the officers of today and tomorrow, while that same time indicating that small wars/COIN/irregular warfare is an important part of what the US military does, rather than being, as they sometimes appear to be, terms that are best not used in polite company.

we would need to codify leadership examples into our doctrine of high level leadership (05 and above) that are atypical - possibly even outside our own service/national culture into our mainstream doctrine and professional military education system (although 3-24 has done this - by virtue of it being n the COIN manual it might be interpreted as being applicable only to those circumstances). I'd mentioned Orde Wingate and the Chindits on the "generals" thread - he, the guys like Edson and Carlson from the Marine Raider BNs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Raiders) & even example like Donovan might be great candidates.

I just never thought about how lionizing and and elevation to hero status effects so many other things - something to cogitate on I think:wry:

Best regards, Rob

Rob Thornton
09-01-2007, 02:42 PM
TT to get the BQ to work - first highlight the area you would like to quote (after you have pasted it into your reply) - then click the last button on the 2nd row of the top bar over your reply box. The button looks like a cartoon bubble and is to the left of the box with the sun and mountains in it (the import picture box).

After you click the button - the words "quote" should appear immediately before and immediately after what you intended to quote.

Hope that helps, Best regards,Rob

slapout9
09-01-2007, 03:02 PM
TT,Rob,and All.
1- Great points one of the first books I read on Generals was Liddell-Harts "Great Captains" which I thought was strange because it was about Generals??

2-Ayn Rand wrote a great piece on why we need heroes and if I can find it I will post it, but basically heroes provide "human" examples of what great is. As opposed to what she called Anti-Heroes. that our society is coming to admire such as well know criminals,revolutionaries "Che",etc. and if a society continues to worship Anti-Heroes it will end getting into trouble of the most serious kind.

3-The services should have a hall of fame for great Captains,Majors,Etc. to give examples of how to do it right. Not only that but in many cases the examples would still be alive and could perhaps be used for mentorship purposes.

4-And of course you should of hall of fame for great sergeants but their would be so many that you would have to build to many buildings.(this is a joke:)

5-Finally let's not forget Lt. Col. William E. Fairbairn and Lt. Col. Rex Applegate two that have never been mentioned here despite their huge impact on training special and/or Guerrilla forces. And what was really unique about them.....they were both Cops:eek:

Ken White
09-01-2007, 03:08 PM
I'd suggest that the critical point in the development of practices in generals is service as a Battalion commander. Puller was and is indeed an icon but his later career based itself upon his service as Cdr 2/4 and 1/7.

Westmoreland correctly wasn't on any list of greats but his experience as a Battalion Commander at the tail end of WW II pointed him in that direction. I worked for several Generals who had commanded Battalions in Viet Nam. Those who commanded early in the war with full, non-infused and generally well trained first string Army units were pretty laid back and willing to give subordinates a littler slack -- they were also willing to accept and try innovative ideas.

Those who had commanded later when they had to accept infusion from other units, when it was nominally illegal to move a unit outside artillery coverage, there were too few Captains and senior NCOs but a slew of 2LTs and SGTs who would do anything you asked them (but didn't know much and required considerable watching) were invariably over cautious and micro-management inclined.

I had earlier noted a similar phenomenon with WWII Army veterans, those who had commanded Battalions in the Pacific were generally far more flexible and less excitable than were their counterparts who had served in Europe. In the Corps, all were Pacific veterans and I don't recall meeting any that were excitable except Puller who was a minor force of nature... :)

Thus I think that a combination of the 35 year (± 5) old temperment and first command of a multi-unit echelon where the subordinates have to be granted considerable independence and are more frequently out of sight merge to produce the military and command techniques and methods of the Generals.

Perhaps we should look at that.

To amplify on one thing Marc mentioned, Ullman when III Corps commander IIRC had one of the Diviisions at hood on the way back in from the field. he ordered them to halt and bring all the Officers into the Garrison area for an Officers call and to let the NCOs continue the move to billets and insure accountability and get the cleanup started. I have been informed by a reliable source that a couple of LTCs had absolute panic attacks and I know that on hearing this anecdote, one former Battalion Commander in my presence said, very seriously and angrily, that had he been there, he would not have complied with the order and that Ullman was dead wrong to have issued such an order...

Perhaps we should also look at role changes and playing "Fallout One."

I routinely did it with NCOs at Platoon through Battalion level for many years and it works. Strangely, I could only convince one Battalion commander to do it with the Officers -- but that worked well also and he went on to get two stars...

We should be breeding trust, flexibility and innovative thought. My perception is that we're doing that better than we did in the mid-60s until recently period but perhaps not as well as we did it pre-MacNamara. I believe that all three attributes are going to be needed over the next few years and we should be developing rather than inhibiting them.

TT
09-01-2007, 03:13 PM
Rob,

Thank you for the explicit instructions! Fingers crossed this time.

I have read through some of Marc's discussions on symbology and they are excellent (well done to you, Marc!). Though I have to admit that he approaches the subject in a far more rigorous manner than I do (another case of those anthropolgist types showing up us dumb pol sci types ;))


we would need to codify leadership examples into our doctrine of high level leadership (05 and above) that are atypical - possibly even outside our own service/national culture into our mainstream doctrine and professional military education system (although 3-24 has done this - by virtue of it being n the COIN manual it might be interpreted as being applicable only to those circumstances).


Your suggestion of codifying into doctrine is excellent and consistent with my train of thought. I would add that such exemplars also be used where appropriate throughout doctine, say as examples of tactical or operational actions and further infused within the educational system to be used as examples where appropriate. And given the character and nature of small wars, such an effort should not be restricted to officer and training. Your suggestion, along with a range approach, will contribute, ideally, to instilling a new mindset.

Another aspect of this that occurred to me is whether the leadership skills and attributes of past generals (or officers) are the same as are needed today when our militaries are faced with increasingly complex ways of warfare, as used both by us and our opponents? Certainly many of the skills and attributes of part 'hero-warriors' are applicable today, but I wonder whether some may not be, and whether there are skills and attributes needed today for which there was no requirement for a leader to have. I am not competent to judge whether this an issue worth considering, but you and a great many of the SWB certainly are. If there is difference, this would suggest an emphasis on more modern leaders that better exemplify the traits you are seeking to instil.


I'd mentioned Orde Wingate and the Chindits on the "generals" thread - he, the guys like Edson and Carlson from the Marine Raider BNs & even example like Donovan might be great candidates

Edson and Carlson are two that I would have suggested for the Marine Corps to employ as examples from my knowledge of MC history. Each service obviously needs to find and define their own 'new icons'.

Best,

TT

PS. Yeah, it worked. Thanks Rob!

Rob Thornton
09-01-2007, 03:36 PM
Another aspect of this that occurred to me is whether the leadership skills and attributes of past generals (or officers) are the same as are needed today when our militaries are faced with increasingly complex ways of warfare, as used both by us and our opponents? Certainly many of the skills and attributes of part 'hero-warriors' are applicable today, but I wonder whether some may not be, and whether there are skills and attributes needed today for which there was no requirement for a leader to have. I am not competent to judge whether this an issue worth considering, but you and a great many of the SWB certainly are. If there is difference, this would suggest an emphasis on more modern leaders that better exemplify the traits you are seeking to instill.

We've got some doctrine out there on the subject - but the idea of using these type vignettes (in any but the most rudimentary sense) is new to me (if anybody has some examples with doctrinal references please help me out).

Surely there are probably a myriad of recent (within the last 20 years) U.S. and multi-national examples where innovation by a soldier or civilian serving in one capacity but faced with challenges outside that capacity has innovated a solution. I think at the GO level you can start with a Chiarelli type example, but we could quickly find a set of link examples that ends with a National Guardsman who deployed as an 11B, but whose civilian job might have been running a dairy or poultry farm, or power plant engineer and quickly found themselves in the spot light. Highlighting the importance (through a true vignette) of an individual as a mission critical enabler would be good I think toward fostering both an understanding of how such things are linked, and in flattening things out a bit.

Also of use might be using some examples:

- of indigenous partnerships to innovate and solve problems ranging from military to building capacity in other areas

- Inter-Agency/IO/NGO cooperation where the civilian is highlighted

- Tactical/Operational/Strategic problem vignettes that highlight the type of innovation required solve other then military problems - (they might also reflect some possible solutions sets)

I need to go back and look at some doctrinal pubs - I think the FM 3-0 is going to hit the streets in conjunction with the AUSA - I wonder how it will be different?

Best Regards, Rob

TT
09-01-2007, 05:02 PM
Rob,


We've got some doctrine out there on the subject - but the idea of using these type vignettes (in any but the most rudimentary sense) is new to me (if anybody has some examples with doctrinal references please help me out).

Surely there are probably a myriad of recent (within the last 20 years) U.S. and multi-national examples where innovation by a soldier or civilian serving in one capacity but faced with challenges outside that capacity has innovated a solution. I think at the GO level you can start with a Chiarelli type example, but we could quickly find a set of link examples that ends with a National Guardsman who deployed as an 11B, but whose civilian job might have been running a dairy or poultry farm, or power plant engineer and quickly found themselves in the spot light. Highlighting the importance (through a true vignette) of an individual as a mission critical enabler would be good I think toward fostering both an understanding of how such things are linked, and in flattening things out a bit.

Also of use might be using some examples:

- of indigenous partnerships to innovate and solve problems ranging from military to building capacity in other areas

- Inter-Agency/IO/NGO cooperation where the civilian is highlighted

- Tactical/Operational/Strategic problem vignettes that highlight the type of innovation required solve other then military problems - (they might also reflect some possible solutions sets)


Your example of CMO and SSTR type operations are definitely the sort of ‘new’ forms of operations I was thinking of that likely require different leadership skills and attributes than was the case in the past. And you have set forth some very good ideas of the types of officers and sorts of situations that it likely would be useful to highlight. Though I would not confine the approach to CMO and SSTR (though there probably is a more urgent need today with respect to developing these skills and attributes than ones required for other, more traditional operations).


I confess I do not know to what degree such vignettes are used in todays doctrinal manuals, particularly ‘tactical’ manuals, as my research does not really take me down to the tactical level and so I have no need to read these manuals (for the most part). I suspect that what may have sparked this idea for me is that in FMFM-1 (now MCDP-!) Warfighting a ‘fictitious’ story/example is used to illustrate the application of maneuver warfare. Real world examples, with real officers, seem to me to be a much better way to do this.

Cheers

TT

Rob Thornton
09-01-2007, 05:15 PM
Consider how such an example as outlined on the Medical Situation in Iraq (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=3466) thread could be used to help leaders and staffs consider problems and solution through a critical thinking and analysis exercise. We tend to think rotationally (but in a linear sense) -say - 12-15 months - because its a physical time frame we are integrated with. We have to think well beyond that - in tune with the overall end state in a local, regional and national sense - so the actions we take may be targeted at establishing the conditions 2-5 or even 10 years down the road.

Best Regards, Rob

Ken White
09-01-2007, 06:00 PM
Good points -- but I think that you're foreshortening the timeline... :)

The Officer Basic course to a very significant extent and the Advanced course to a lesser extent shape senior leaders.

I think that 25 years out starts the process and a bad start may never see recovery.

I also believe 15 or so years embeds it and 10 -- that Battalion command experience (and CGS or equivalent) locks it immutably.

We do not do that good a job in either of the first two (or did not, I'm sure they've improved) and the Marines do (or did) a far better job with a lengthy Basic School.

All of which negates nothing you said; I'm just trying to amplify on it and suggest we need to dump the "train for the next job" (only) syndrome and realize at greater than lip service level that a good foundation can go a long way to ameliorating some of our problems.

That we have good leaders today is a testimony to the fact that good folks can overcome mediocre beginnings. Think how many more good ones could be developed if gave it some thought.

Rob Thornton
09-01-2007, 06:58 PM
Hey Ken,


and suggest we need to dump the "train for the next job" (only) syndrome and realize at greater than lip service level that a good foundation can go a long way to ameliorating some of our problems.

That we have good leaders today is a testimony to the fact that good folks can overcome mediocre beginnings. Think how many more good ones could be developed if gave it some thought.

A great point! I honestly was not thinking in that direction, but more in terms of operations - but in truth, the road map on how to get to the type of problem analysis that looks long term (and solves problems in the operational environment) begins with getting people to think in those terms before they get to the operational environment- and that begins with the foundations you brought up. Without it, we'll never break the cycle


"train for the next job" may be the thing which typifies us most - and is one of the challenges we must overcome to change our behavior.

Best Regards, Rob

TT
09-01-2007, 08:24 PM
Ken,


The Officer Basic course to a very significant extent and the Advanced course to a lesser extent shape senior leaders.

I think that 25 years out starts the process and a bad start may never see recovery.

I also believe 15 or so years embeds it and 10 -- that Battalion command experience (and CGS or equivalent) locks it immutably.

We do not do that good a job in either of the first two (or did not, I'm sure they've improved) and the Marines do (or did) a far better job with a lengthy Basic School.

All of which negates nothing you said; I'm just trying to amplify on it and suggest we need to dump the "train for the next job" (only) syndrome and realize at greater than lip service level that a good foundation can go a long way to ameliorating some of our problems.

That we have good leaders today is a testimony to the fact that good folks can overcome mediocre beginnings. Think how many more good ones could be developed if gave it some thought.


I agree with Rob - excellent points!

If I understand you correctly, Ken, what you are speaking about is that the aim should be to achieve a fundamental shift in the mindset of the military ('good foundation') and that this is a long term effort. I wholeheartedly agree with this. In my comments I was not thinkng really about 'short term change, rather I was thinking about what needs to done to create, to use your phase, 'good foundations'. Certainly, as I noted, there may be an immediate short term (out 5 years) need , and this is worthwhile given what the near future is likely to be. But I did not intend to imply that the effort we are discussing should only be aimed short term and I apologize for not being more clear. The aim of influencing and altering the ‘narrative’ and behaviour’ is to alter the culture, or the mind set if you will, of officers (and I would add enlisted to this). To develop such a 'foundation', to me, is what is required over the long haul.

To accomplish a real wholesale change one does, as you say, need to start right from the initial training of officers, and you need to continue to reinforce this throughout the rest of their careers (via Advanced education, training exercises and so on). A rethinking of the type of iconic officers the different services want to extol, up to and beyond the inclusion of actual vignettes in doctrine and the education system, is only a part, and probably only a small part, of what is required. If we extract the general idea behind the concept of new ‘hero-warriors’ (which very broadly might be said, to take the current mantra, to develop a military that is ‘innovative, agile, adaptive, creative’), this concept, or rather the efforts to inculcate the required mindset, needs to be infused through the entire system. To make the changes throughout the entire system alone will take time, and the time line for actually seeing the desired change emerge would take much longer.

To achieve a ‘new mindset’ is not an act of ‘creation’, it is an act of ‘recreation’. ‘Recreation’ from something extant is much harder than ‘creating’ something new from scratch. What in effect we are discussing if we are speaking of wide ranging substantive change is, in effect, a Kuhnian ‘paradigm shift’. The anomalies in the ‘worldview’ (culture) of our militaries (which has been pretty much focused on 'conventional warfare', has been 'reactive', has been, well. ‘so and so forth’) have, because of operational experience, become too pervasive and too significant to ignore anymore.( it may be that Yingling’s and others’ critique of the ‘Generals’ are a symptom of these anomalies no longer being ignorable). In effect, we are talking about a paradigm shift in the mindset of the militaries, in, to repeat myself, how the military (and/or individual services) perceive ‘who are they’ and ‘what is it we do’. Paradigm shifts in the sciences these days are generally believedto occur gradually, rather than as a ‘revolution’. This seems to me to be very much the case in seeking to change our militaries, if only because, as I think it was Kuhn himself who observed, the shift from the old paradigm to the new one is only complete when the last believer in the old paradigm has died. ‘Recreating’ (or insert ‘altering’ or ‘changing’ here if you will) the mind set or culture of the US military (or any other) to create the 'good foundation' so that it becomes accomplished at traditional and non-traditional forms of conflict will take a lot of time.

So, Ken, a very worthwhile set of points. The desired change (and what precisely what this is is open to debate – whoops, that adds more time) absolutely needs to start right at the beginning of an officer's service, and continue throughout their service. We must remember that any such change will face massive obstacles - the commentary on this board about Col. McMaster being twice passed over indicates that everyone here understands any number of the obstacles such change will encounter (Old Guard, anyone?). It may well be, and I personally think may very likely be, that the achievement of the change desired will be a generational effort, that the success of any substantive change lies to a degree in the hands of today’s junior officers and, as you have rightly indicated, the hands of future officers. The crux of your points is that it will not just happen, this change needs to be made to happen.

Cheers

TT

marct
09-01-2007, 10:38 PM
Hi TT,


I have read through some of Marc's discussions on symbology and they are excellent (well done to you, Marc!). Though I have to admit that he approaches the subject in a far more rigorous manner than I do (another case of those anthropolgist types showing up us dumb pol sci types ;))

LOL - Thanks, TT. We've spent a lot of time and spilled a lot ofinc, on symbolism over the years :D.




we would need to codify leadership examples into our doctrine of high level leadership (05 and above) that are atypical - possibly even outside our own service/national culture into our mainstream doctrine and professional military education system (although 3-24 has done this - by virtue of it being n the COIN manual it might be interpreted as being applicable only to those circumstances).

Your suggestion of codifying into doctrine is excellent and consistent with my train of thought. I would add that such exemplars also be used where appropriate throughout doctine, say as examples of tactical or operational actions and further infused within the educational system to be used as examples where appropriate. And given the character and nature of small wars, such an effort should not be restricted to officer and training. Your suggestion, along with a range approach, will contribute, ideally, to instilling a new mindset.

I think it would be better to "ritualize it" rather than codify it in an educational setting. People have a tendency to remember rituals, and the associated symbologies and processes, much better than "formal" educational systems. Back in the late 50's, Gregory Bateson ran an experiment in his intro classes. In one, he gave a scientific explanation of ozone while in the other he told them a myth about Mother Earth raising her great shield Ozone to protect her children (us) from the harmful rays of Father Sun. This was at the start of the term. On their final exam, he asked them a question about ozone: 90% of tyhe students who heard the "story" remembered it and got it right compared with 10% of the other class.

If I were setting it up, I would create a series of rituals that centre around the worldview we wish to inculcate in young officers. I would make these a part of every school that graduates officers.

Marc

TT
09-01-2007, 11:54 PM
Marc,

Anthropologists may have spilled a lot of ink on the subject, but it seems that the ink has not been wasted, whereas in poli sci my view is that far too much ink is shed only to end up with the debate residing in that dark place where the sun don't ever shine. :confused:


I think it would be better to "ritualize it" rather than codify it in an educational setting.

Excellent idea! Wish I had thought of this......

A few passing thoughts just after midnight while I resist the siren call of my bed:

I agree that you would want to ritualize the concepts/ideas you want to embed. But being a dumb old poli sci type, it seems to me that the place to ritualize these is not 'in' the education system. All military services have sets of rituals and related symbols that exist aside of (or maybe this should 'outside of') the education system, that are played out and displayed in particular circumstances of special significance to that organization. Rituals and symbols, or so it seems to me, have their own special place within military organizations - rituals and symbols, and please correct me if I am wrong, are most notable in those events characterized by what might be called 'pompt and circumstance' which add power to the rituals and their meanings.

Yet might the military education system possibly (probably?) be the place where one might start to transform the appropriate aspects of the concepts/ideas/new culture that you are seeking to introduce into rituals? I do not really know how ideas/concepts become 'ritual', and so I have not the faintest idea of how one would go about 'creating' a new ritual to be included with older rituals or even if it is feasible to 'create' a new ritual and graft it into the extant culture. I would guess that introducing a 'new' ritual' (and associated symbols) would likely be (very?) difficult, given that any current rituals and symbols, and their meanings, are heavily sedimented into the culture as these are founded in the military organization's long history (where this history is a mix of the factual, legend and myth).

Alas, my bed still calls and resistance is futile.......

Cheers

TT

marct
09-02-2007, 12:08 AM
Hi TT,


I agree that you would want to ritualize the concepts/ideas you want to embed. But being a dumb old poli sci type, it seems to me that the place to ritualize these is not 'in' the education system. All military services have sets of rituals and related symbols that exist aside of (or maybe this should 'outside of') the education system, that are played out and displayed in particular circumstances of special significance to that organization. Rituals and symbols, or so it seems to me, have their own special place within military organizations - rituals and symbols, and please correct me if I am wrong, are most notable in those events characterized by what might be called 'pompt and circumstance' which add power to the rituals and their meanings.

Hmm, yes, I agree that most of the military rituals and symbology (at least the esoteric stuff) are outside of the education system, although their form does seem to mutate depending on the ritual emphasis (branch, service, regiment, etc.). Again, the "pomp and circumstance" version works for public displays and bonding, but I'm thinking of the more esoteric type of initiation rituals. Sorry, but this would be helped with a couple of pints :wry: - let me think about it some more and I'll post tomorrow.

Marc

Ken White
09-02-2007, 01:21 AM
aspect to good effect; the Army less so. Our theoretical traditions are abstract and while units pay them lip service, few have anywhere near the depth of meaning that they do in other armies, particularly those who adapted from the British Army.

Thus, I'm a little dubious that would work for us sans a major culture change in the US Army. Add to that todays attention spans and the fact that history in US Schools seems to be an almost proscribed subject...

Let's see what Marc comes up with. As he he says there are more esoteric rituals that might have merit. There are also some very practical efforts that could be pursued.

TT
09-02-2007, 10:35 AM
Hi Ken,

Again, a very good point. The Marines certainly do use ritual to good effect but I did not know that the Army was a ‘ritual-free’ service :). When I read your post, however, I was reminded of Shinseki and berets, which stands as a warning of the dangers and difficulties of trying to introduce new symbols.

The underlying points in your posts are important: to change a service culture involves a wide range of mutually reinforcing measures/initiatives (of which we have been discussing only a few), with an understanding that the specifics of any such package will differ across the services, and that it will take considerable time and concerted effort (which means continuity in leadership support). A daunting project for any service or its leadership to take on……


TT

Rob Thornton
09-02-2007, 02:11 PM
Can you really do this without an outside catalyst? What are the different stimuli for change? Seems there is the outside - which for us means civilian something, and an inside which might be a grass roots from the lower ranks.

How are the two different?

Which one is more effective? In terms of it being reinforced or accepted?

Can there be a blend?

I've only read the out takes of some of the JFK speeches on national service, and the thoughts on UW - not enough to gain the context - but I do know it was not real popular with big Army - for that matter I've found allot of evidence in our 20th Century military history where SOF units and attitudes have not been well received (the creation of special units during WWII) - the argument was a diffusion of resources, but I think it may have something to do with military culture as well.

To fast forward to more recent history, many of Donald Rumsfeld's policies were also not popular with the ground services, but his push toward technology and "Transformation" were more in synch with the USAF and USN - and certainly provided the impetus for the MIL Industrial Complex to push the envelope on US Military tech (however - in my opinion it did so at the expense of people by virtue of what it emphasized).

Its hard for me to consider the trends from any other perspective other then applying the context of the ones I've lived through (with my own set of biases) to the ones which preceded them.

My hunch is that meaningful change is an evolution that occurs over decades as its institutionalized and built upon. To speed this change up in a democratic state's military will require a frank and honest discussion between the civilian leadership outlining the requirements for its policy goals over a decade or two, and the military responding with what that is going to cost - and what the risks are. Somewhere, there has to be compromise and consensus. Since it is a democracy, it has to go beyond the executive branch and include the legislative (appropriations and allocations) in a bipartisan fashion. There is significant risk on all sides - and political risk is something that many professional politicians seem to be averse toward.

Best regards, Rob

Steve Blair
09-02-2007, 03:12 PM
The Army hasn't always been a ritual-free service. In fact, there used to be a pretty wide variety of rituals and traditions...but they were focused within the regiments. That all went away during World War II and never really came back.

I'd say in a way you could trace some of the anti-elite sentiments within the Army back to its Frontier experiences. Within Crook's commands there was always resentment toward his packers, who most soldiers felt got better treatment and field conditions from Crook. Scouts (both civilian and Indian) also came in for resentment; mainly because most of them made more than a corporal or (in some cases) a sergeant because they were paid on a different scale. At this time there was also a very clear distinction between Line and Staff duty, leaving a lingering resentment of any sort of service that might be considered special (most line officers were convinced that staff officers lived better - which was often true - and that they were promoted faster - which did sometimes happen).

During the Civil War there were also Volunteer units that existed mainly as headquarters guards, and for the first year or two of the war that was a common job for Regular cavalry. Cavalry was often seen as being an elite, so the saying "whoever saw a dead cavalryman" gained weight and left an impression that elites didn't do the hard work of warfare. Most of that changed after the Gettysburg campaign (when the Union cavalry really came of age), but it's an attitude that remained and would obviously find different targets within the system or culture.

marct
09-02-2007, 04:18 PM
Hi Rob, TT, Ken...


The Marines could -- can, do -- use the tradition aspect to good effect; the Army less so. Our theoretical traditions are abstract and while units pay them lip service, few have anywhere near the depth of meaning that they do in other armies, particularly those who adapted from the British Army.

You're absolutely right, it is much easier in a regimental system where there is a specific focal point (the Regiment) and a specific history. The USMC is, in some ways, a Regiment writ large and, as you note Ken, it is easy to craft rituals for it.


Thus, I'm a little dubious that would work for us sans a major culture change in the US Army. Add to that todays attention spans and the fact that history in US Schools seems to be an almost proscribed subject...

Let's see what Marc comes up with. As he he says there are more esoteric rituals that might have merit. There are also some very practical efforts that could be pursued.

Thanks for the vote of confidence :wry:. Okay, before I start a couple of caveats. First, as you know, I'm a Canadian and have never been in the US military (I know the Canadian military from family tradition) so I just don't know the specifics that would work for the US Army. Second, I can come up with a suggested model for how t build them and how they would work, but I would be relying on others to get the specifics.

Okay, here goes...

I'm going to make an argument from analogy at the level of social structure, so bear with me ;). In many ways, military organizations parallel kinship structures. The regimental system is surprisingly similar to tribal societies: roughly BTN=Sept (or Lineage), REG=Tribe, Army=Clan, Service=Confederation, "military"="nation". Within this system, it is simple to produce "meaningful" rituals since the segmentation (sept, tribe, etc) matches he organizational structure and their are obvious connections between structure, history and structural conflict.

Because you have a continuity of membership that flows with the structure, it is easy to see how rituals develop - they are often segment specific relating to historical events and using a segment specific hagiography (i.e. specific stories about the members of the segment). This is reinforced by segment specific symbology, e.g. things like battle honours on a flag, a unit patch or some other piece of unique clothing. In this type of system, segment specific rituals ("traditions") are often spontaneously generated and, if you really want to build new ones, it's not that hard to do at all - any halfway competent symbolic Anthropologist could do it after spending three months with the group.

Now to the US Army which, alas, does not follow a regimental system but, instead, mirrors kinship and social practices in the US circa the 1920's (i.e. the Fordist model of organization which is, today, totally obsolete). This is a much trickier situation since you just don't have either the historical or the structural continuity inherent in the regimental system. It's made even trickier because the career path within the system is based on an organizational model that is designed to destroy individual connections with most structural segments (except the "branch" which is roughly equivalent to a "professional designation" within Fordist organization). In effect, the system is designed to destroy loyalty to a segment while reinforcing loyalty to the overarching organization.

That type of organizational structure can, and has, worked, but it is currently on the wane in civil society and that is where the military recruits its members from. It also, in part, explains why civil society is so anti-military on the whole (but that is another thread), and why retention bonus' in money just aren't working too well (it's not s symbol that is all that attractive in the newer civil organization - again, another thread). All of this is compounded by the fact that the current conflicts, along with many projected future ones, are not "traditional" state vs. state conflicts. In effect, the US Army is an Industrial Age organization, recruiting from an Information Age civil population fighting Information Age wars.

The structural effects of this disjunction are appalling. None of the rituals or ritual systems that serve an Industrial Age organization will work because they do not match either the civil sociey or the battlespace experience. This disjuncture started showing up in Vietnam, and has really gotten much worse during current operations.

In civil society, we have evolved new structural relationships built around personal networks and virtual, contingent communities, and we are certainly starting to see these flow over into the military (SWC is a great example of this). Again in civil society, some of these communities mimic the segmentation system of the regimental system but, unlike that system, they cut across the formal structures. Just using the SWC as an example, we are starting to see the development of "rituals" - the "beer and burger (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=3776)" fest in DC is an example. Another, more germaine to the general topic, is the increasing use of the SWC as a place to get expert advice. Whether or not most people realize it, this is a return to the Socratic example of "ask the man who knows", and it is totally contrary to the Fordist model.

So, back to ritualization...

At the structural level, we are seeing a lot of "ritual spaces" starting to appear - again, SWC is a good example. In order to create more ritual spaces and appropriate rituals, we need to look at the current structural realities and encourage those spaces that will allow us to reinforce the "traditions" that will be important for the future. So, what are these traditions? I leave it up to the folks in service to complete the list, but there are a couple that we've talked about ad nauseum: adaptability and innovation.

Both of these share a common set of characteristics, i.e. operating outside of the book by getting external (to the Book) ideas and ways of thinking / perceiving (Regiments as Tribes?!?). This type of trait can best be introduced and reinforced (and "ritualized") very early in a military career, i.e. in the military education system. The simplest way to do this is to create assignments in courses that require students to go out to virtual communities and non-military sources for their data. Personally, if I was developing a curriculum stream, I would start this in 2nd year and run it through until graduation. I would certainly require it for any advanced education opportunities.

I would also require a course that teaches history at a structural level - i.e. patterns of action and interaction. Ideally, this course should be team taught by people who have totally different backgrounds. Think about Heilein's idea of History and Moral Philosophy as the exemplar for this.

Rob is absolutely correct that this would have to be institutionalized - the question is where such institutionalization should take place. I would suggest that many of the MOS' be used as the basis for institutionalization, possibly by arranging for "exchanges" between the private sector and the military (probably work best in the policy, analysis, engineering, law enforcement, etc. areas - definitely not the combat ones :D). In this case, we are attempting to "ritualize" personal networks by creating situations where people create non-military networks they can draw on.

With the type of structure we are seeing now, the best way to "create" traditions and rituals is to help create ritual spaces that allow for them to come into existence. If we go back to the kinship analog that started this post, we actually have seen this happen in a number of different cultures with the development of occupation based "secret societies", and this is the type of model that I can see working in the US Army.

Marc

Ken White
09-02-2007, 06:13 PM
Perceptive...


"Now to the US Army which, alas, does not follow a regimental system but, instead, mirrors kinship and social practices in the US circa the 1920's (i.e. the Fordist model of organization which is, today, totally obsolete). This is a much trickier situation since you just don't have either the historical or the structural continuity inherent in the regimental system. It's made even trickier because the career path within the system is based on an organizational model that is designed to destroy individual connections with most structural segments (except the "branch" which is roughly equivalent to a "professional designation" within Fordist organization). In effect, the system is designed to destroy loyalty to a segment while reinforcing loyalty to the overarching organization."

The Army not only follows that model, most of our education and training institutions and techniques DATE from that model. I could even make the case that most of our tactical, operational and strategic precepts do as well. The Army that came back from WWI really learned its lessons well. Those guys created an educational and social model that used the WW I experience to good, even outstanding, effect. That enabled them to relatively rapidly create a good (if not great), very functional and ultimately capable Army with which to fight WW II. The models and techniques were successful, no question. They also served us fairly well in Korea and to a lesser -- and obviously declining -- extent in Viet Nam.

Unfortunately, after each of those three wars, the Army went right back to the pre-WW II state and while that is a sweeping generalization and has many notable exceptions, it was the rule.

An example of this unfortunate trend is the Pentomic Army of the late '50s. The concept was not nearly as operationally and tactically flawed as it has been painted. It really could have worked well and it was tactically and operationally flexible. It suffered, really from three synergistic issues. (1) It was such a sweeping change that the support systems and infrastructure could not keep up. Extremely simplistic example; Companies had no Supply section -- yet the demands of the property book system and something as simple the Quartermaster Laundry system demanded such a section. (2) Many -- not all -- of the Field grades and the senior NCOs could not adapt their thinking around the tactical flexibility required to maneuver five elements instead of three (more on this later). (3) The physical demands were too much for fifty year old Colonels. All those factors seem inconsequential yet all combined with other factors to create a cultural resistance in the Army to the design.

Fast forward a few years; ROAD. The concept was that maneuver Battalions would serve in any rotational model under any Brigade, a small light tactical headquarters. A good, innovative and flexible design. That didn't even get off the ground; the Colonels insisted on full time Command of three battalions. They also complained of the potential burden of being tasked to control more than three maneuver elements...

Further forward; Shy Meyer was going to rebuild the Army. He tried and he did some great things. His remake of the Personnel System and a true Regimental concept foundered on the shoals of the bureaucracy; the Military Personnel system just waited him out; no way they were going to see their staff diminished. TRADOC also waited him out; not because his ideas on remodeling the Officer Basic and Advance Course were wrong, they, IMO, were not -- but they would have decreased Instructor Contact hours, the bureaucratic Staffing Guide measurement tool that determined service school staffing and thus, the Schools would have lost personnel spaces.

All that boring foregoing is a lead in to the point Marc makes; we are way behind the times.

The 1920s model served us well in one war and acceptably in two more, however we have been a PROFESSIONAL Army since the mid '70s --and we're still operating an education and training system that is designed to support a large mobilization of the nation to fight industrial age battles. We need to put that successful model on the shelf to be pulled out in event of future need and get into the 21st Century. It would to my mind be criminal to still be operating essential the same training model a hundred years after its inception, yet, that is precisely where we are headed.

That is partly due to bureaucratic inertia; it is also partly due to a societal anachronism. In the 1920s, the Signal Corps got the best and the brightest because Radios were complex. Aviators and FOs were officers due to the knowledge and raw intellect requirements. Not a single one of those jobs requires an Officer today (the Armys use of Warrant Aviators is a 1920s social construct designed to placate the Air Force, not a military requirement, same thing applies to the USN / USMC discontinuance of enlisted aviators). The Armed forces of the US are indeed operating on a non-egalitarian (and arguably not nearly as merit based as we like to think) 80 year old model. On the one hand, that is not a major problem -- yet, as it affects our military performance and capability, it is a problem. A big problem

Because that social model not only inhibits, it positively discourages innovation and initiative. It also is wasteful of manpower because it keeps many 'jobs' about simply because the innovators who wish to dispense with such waste are ignored. Not to mention that those 'jobs' amount to spaces for someone...

When I was at Knox, many years ago, there was a reorganization to improve training. We rearranged the deck Chairs. In the process, on long sought elimination of an organization with about a fifty space saving was halted dead in its tracks when it was realized that the elimination would cause the loss of one Armor Colonel space. So the Army got to keep fifty one folks plus or minus out of TOE units and in the tail to preserve one space. Yeah, I understand the 'whys' of that -- I also understand that it is wrong...

To look at the current organization. In all our wars, we have really fought as Brigades (or Legions, RCT, CC, Groups -- Brigades by another name) with two exceptions; North Africa in WW II and Desert Storm. Those two were exceptions because the terrain would support Division maneuver, in all other cases, Revolution through Iraq today, the Brigade echelon was better adapted to terrain constraints and was more flexible. Yet we resisted organizing logically because the social structure demanded Divisions. Recall the early plans in this reorganiztion eliminated the Division. Good plan, IMO -- yet they're still with us...

As Marc said:


"In effect, the US Army is an Industrial Age organization, recruiting from an Information Age civil population fighting Information Age wars."

The solution sounds quite simple:


"This type of trait can best be introduced and reinforced (and "ritualized") very early in a military career, i.e. in the military education system. The simplest way to do this is to create assignments in courses that require students to go out to virtual communities and non-military sources for their data. Personally, if I was developing a curriculum stream, I would start this in 2nd year and run it through until graduation. I would certainly require it for any advanced education opportunities."

However, that will be terribly difficult to implement because this:


"With the type of structure we are seeing now, the best way to "create" traditions and rituals is to help create ritual spaces that allow for them to come into existence. If we go back to the kinship analog that started this post, we actually have seen this happen in a number of different cultures with the development of occupation based "secret societies", and this is the type of model that I can see working in the US Army."

while generally correct will be absolute anathema to the social institution -- not the military institution -- that is the US Army. Lets hope the military institution wins this one. It's due...

TT
09-02-2007, 08:53 PM
Marc, Rob, Steve and Ken,

There is much food for thought in all this and it all requires a good think. The clashing of gears I am hearing in my head means these are but some initial tentative thoughts. And really any particular logical order.

First, Marc, thank you very much, that was extremely helpful, as it furnishes a useful way to approach to think about the issue. Our militaries are, as you say, based on an industrial age organizational model but I have never thought about the kinship structures the way you have. Yet what you say is does fit, for when examining any military organization one does take account of the individual services, or if looking at a specific service at the internal ‘tribal’ maps (infantry, artillery, and so on), as these may or will reveal different attitudes and mindsets.


In effect, the US Army is an Industrial Age organization, recruiting from an Information Age civil population fighting Information Age wars.

This in particular is neat way to think about the problem, with some added insight that may of potential value. This reminds of how Brian Michael Jenkins summed up the problem: ‘The enemies of yesterday were static, predictable, homogeneous, rigid, hierarchical, and resistant to change. The enemies of today are dynamic, unpredictable, diverse, fluid, networked, and constantly evolving.’ The issue is how to get from the organizational model that worked on these earlier enemies to one that is effective against the current enemies. But in thinking about this I never considered closely the point you make – our militaries are ‘recruiting from an Information Age civil population’.

This ties to a question Rob raised:


Can you really do this without an outside catalyst? What are the different stimuli for change? Seems there is the outside - which for us means civilian something, and an inside which might be a grass roots from the lower ranks.

How are the two different?

Which one is more effective? In terms of it being reinforced or accepted?

Can there be a blend?


My hunch is that meaningful change is an evolution that occurs over decades as its institutionalized and built upon. To speed this change up in a democratic state's military will require a frank and honest discussion between the civilian leadership outlining the requirements for its policy goals over a decade or two, and the military responding with what that is going to cost - and what the risks are. Somewhere, there has to be compromise and consensus. Since it is a democracy, it has to go beyond the executive branch and include the legislative (appropriations and allocations) in a bipartisan fashion. There is significant risk on all sides - and political risk is something that many professional politicians seem to be averse toward.


There are two different answers to this in the extant literature on innovation in military organization. One argument is that change requires the intervention of the civil authorities, but also suggests that the civil authorities are more likely to be able to effect change if they work with innovative officers. The other line of argument is that change can be effected by flag officers with the vision and authority to lead a campaign of innovation (and tied this is the observation that as part of this is a need to create promotional pathways consistent with the innovative practices for those more junior officers that join the ‘campaign’). The motivations for civil intervention are usually considered to be clear changes in the strategic environment that pose serious challenges, while for the ‘internal’ visionary officer(s) it may be the changed strategic environment (or defeat in war) or new technologies that suggest a new way of war (ie, the development of helicopters and there use in the 1950s ). Other internal motivations may also include institutional pressures to bolster military resources, legitimacy and/or effectiveness (these motives can be harnessed in support of change stemming from the other motivations as well).

I would add here that most innovation studies do not focus on changing culture (or the ‘organizational society’) which is a key part of any serious rethinking of our militaries but the change management literature also generally agrees that the right leadership is a requirement (the details on how to effect change are differing in this literature, however, and our military organizations are not quite the same as business organizations)

As I have mentioned earlier, the only clear case of a bottom-up (driven by junior to command rank – but below flag rank) that I am aware of was the introduction of maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps, and in this particular case the main motive falls under the changed strategic environment (which does include the perceived need to improve effectiveness on the battlefield) .

Can a blend of top down and bottom up exist and work? Certainly. The visionary officer needs to have other officers who buy into the vision. So, ideally what you want is a civil authority and a military leadership working in tandem, with a solid cadre of junior officers who agree with and work for the change this combined leadership advocates.. Moreover, although I am not aware of a particular case where this occurred, one would think that a large cadre of junior to field command officers could influence the civil and military leadership on the content (and direction) of the change, particularly if the leadership is willing to engage in open debate and listen to the debate.

This connects to the point Marc made about recruiting from an Info Age society. A civil and military leadership committed to transforming the industrial ages model into an information aged model, with the support of a significant proportion of the junior to field command officers and a steady inflow of new officers with an Info Age social awarne wsa and practice, would have a reasonable chance of success. And yes, even under these favourable conditions large scale change such as seems to be being argued for will take a lot of time (and so can be seen as evolutionary).

But, and this is a big but, there are host of potential obstacles. Ken in his post directly or indirectly identifies a number of these. One could add others, such as particular cultural traits of the organization (these are particularly tough nuts when they are linked to resource capture in the bureaucratic sense). But with respect to the model of change I have broadly outlined above, an important issue is continuity in leadership, for our civil leadership changes every 3 to 5 years, and our military leadership changes within a similar time frame. And it takes more than 3-5 years to implement the programme of initiatives to effect the desired change, to gain full acceptance of the required change (a paradigm shift), and then embed the change – and doing this is easier when one is speaking of a new operational concept or a new branch (again helicopters as an example) than is the case of changing the culture, which is pretty much what we are talking about. The many and varied obstacles to change that exist in a military organization are such that the time frame for accomplishing the change is long.

This model above maps on the approach I suggested earlier. To be repetitive (but hopefully not pedantic :eek:): changing the ‘narrative’ requires in part that both civil and/or military leadership articulate and support ad nausea the required change (and creating new rituals and hero-warrior icons). The second is to effect a change in ‘behaviour’ (which encompasses the junior to field command ranks) which includes revamping training, which teaches the tangibles of ‘what to think’ and what the answers ought to be, and revamping the education system to impart to these more junior officers the intangibles of ‘how to think’ and what the questions ought to be (Marc’s suggestions above re the education system fit very well here). And there should be convergence between education and training. And finally there needs to be a perception that the changes have ‘benefit’, which again where the junior to field command officer are important, for the most important benefit are on performance and success on the battlefield – if they do not see any benefits on the battlefield, the change very likely will fail, whereas if they see benefit they will continue to support and even drive the change.

I am with Marc, in that I would have to rely on others for the specifics. But I think Marc has provided useful food for further thought.

Best

TT

Ken White
09-02-2007, 10:34 PM
Some stream of consciousness thoughts.

From Rob:

"Can you really do this without an outside catalyst? What are the different stimuli for change? Seems there is the outside - which for us means civilian something, and an inside which might be a grass roots from the lower ranks."
Good question and there are several ramifications to any answer. "Civilian something" implies the Executive or Congress. Given previous efforts, I am not optimistic about either; there is a ferocious tendency to put quick fixes in place and these are rarely effective. I can cite my favorite whipping boy, DOPMA and there are other examples of well intentioned but ill informed and unproductive tampering. I suggest that given out governmental milieu, a better approach is to present a logical plan and expect them to tweak it (and they will...), hopefully not too badly.

I think Rob's comment implies that many of us would not expect a cutting edge solution from the current senior leadership and thus it will be a bottoms up -- or mid level up -- effort. Probably true. TT mentions the tribes and they are ever with us -- they dominate any talk or concept of reform. Simply put, it is illogical to expect a person who's spent 30 years or so in a tribe not to be colored by that and to expect him or her to oversee the diminishment of that tribe -- much less its dissolution.

"How are the two different?"
My suspicion is that the difference is the civilian solution will opt to the domestically politically attractive while the military solution will debase into a tribal squabble. In my view, it would be great if we could elect a broad consensus on a future strategy for the use of force (an extremely difficult proposition, I know) and the course of our Foreign Affairs ove the next decade or two (even more difficult). While that's in the 'hard' box, I do not believe it's in the 'too hard' box.

Then a design of a force to support that strategy could be undertaken. Blank sheet of paper type. That may well be in the too hard box...

However, I'm a firm devotee of "ask for 20, expect ten and get five..." :D

Which leads to:

"Which one is more effective? In terms of it being reinforced or accepted?"
My guess would be the military solution would be better accepted and reinforced. If a civilian solution is imposed, it if unloved will not be reinforced by the armed forces; deviously perhaps -- but there it is. Conversely, if the military solution is sensible and achievable, it will be supported by the civilians to include the Nation at large (as or more important than Congressional acceptance) and will be reinforced by the system that designed it.

"Can there be a blend?"
Obviously there must be but the key is who initiates.

TT says:

"I would add here that most innovation studies do not focus on changing culture (or the ‘organizational society’) which is a key part of any serious rethinking of our militaries but the change management literature also generally agrees that the right leadership is a requirement (the details on how to effect change are differing in this literature, however, and our military organizations are not quite the same as business organizations)"
Totally correct in my observation and yet, a MAJOR cultural change is what's needed. Ergo... :eek:

He also says:

"...And yes, even under these favourable conditions large scale change such as seems to be being argued for will take a lot of time (and so can be seen as evolutionary)."
Which is important and correct -- it will take a generation to get such a sweeping change implemented and embedded -- and our penchant for quick fixes will inevitably be at cross purposes to that. The interesting thing will be the tiffs between the "I want this done on my watch" types versus "This will not happen on my watch " types. The greater good of the Nation and the forces in totality should be the driving parameters but we're still dealing with humans.

TT again:

"...The second is to effect a change in ‘behaviour’ (which encompasses the junior to field command ranks) which includes revamping training, which teaches the tangibles of ‘what to think’ and what the answers ought to be, and revamping the education system to impart to these more junior officers the intangibles of ‘how to think’ and what the questions ought to be (Marc’s suggestions above re the education system fit very well here)..."
Raise them right and teach them well and they will do well. We have to start with the Basic Courses -- Officer and NCO, you cannot change one without changing the other -- and they will change the system and processes as they grow.

I'm also a firm devotee of "It is better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission" and the old Staff Officers watch words -- "Answer the question that was asked, answer the questions your answer will generate and answer the question that should have been asked." I alway liked the SAS Motto, too -- but I like the SBS Motto better, the original, not the new one... ;)

Rob Thornton
09-03-2007, 12:47 AM
You know we got this brief up in D.C. by a guy who was part of a team working on a pitch to Army leadership on how best to skin the advisory cat (there are several out there - this one was different then LTC Nagl's and John Bonin's). It was a pretty good pitch, but when he started off I asked him if he was pushing the Tom Barnett "SysAdmin" type force. The briefer told me jokingly that the Chief would hang me if he heard that. My remark was also kind of an ice breaker to see where the briefer was taking his pitch - but what it did tell me is that the institution is only willing to go so far in deviating from what it considers acceptable.

I picked up the Barnett books and I'm not sure that we should try and become something which might preclude us from doing the large scale breaking and killing if we ever have to do that task again either, but I think I am willing to consider new options in light of changing circumstances/conditions.

You know you hear historical figures sometime referred to as "ahead of their time" or as "visionary", but do you ever stop and wonder why? I think the answer might be as simple as the label itself - the conditions their their thinking addressed were not seen as solutions until after all the dust had cleared and the facts were known. Where these visionaries are comfortable operating in the unknown, the institution is not. If its a CEO of his own firm (a Google, Fed-Ex, Wal-Mart, etc.) risk is a more viable option then it is for an institution upon which a larger institution depends, and upon one where accountability/responsibility is ingrained.

I took the family out to Gettysburg again today (last time we just took in the cemetery and the Visitor's Center) to do the auto tour. We were up on Little Round Top above the Devil's Den and I was explaining to my son the value of the position - its discovery, its occupation and the fight for it. After pointing out that it commanded the field between Meade and Lee and while the Union owned it was useful in disrupting Confederate charges within range, but if the Confederates seized it they could in turn roll up the Union flank and put enfilade fire on and even behind Union lines my son asked a question: Dad, if this position was so important, why did it take so long for both generals to order its occupation and defense / try and seize it - I mean if you can see there from here, can't you see here from there?"

"Well son," says I - "they had a bunch going on at the time, and while there were people below them who could see its critical importance, the powers that be had other competing priorities and responsibilities."

Afterwards I had another thought - awful easy for me to sit up in the big NY monument and think, "man, this seems like a no brainer" without considering the many other things going on at the time, what went on before and trying to entertain what might happen the next day.

Considering change is hard enough, committing to it and departing from the past another one entirely.

All of that to say what Ken succinctly said (and said very well) in a paragraph:D


I think Rob's comment implies that many of us would not expect a cutting edge solution from the current senior leadership and thus it will be a bottoms up -- or mid level up -- effort. Probably true. TT mentions the tribes and they are ever with us -- they dominate any talk or concept of reform. Simply put, it is illogical to expect a person who's spent 30 years or so in a tribe not to be colored by that and to expect him or her to oversee the diminishment of that tribe -- much less its dissolution.

I continue to learn and think, so its a good day

Best regards, Rob

wm
09-03-2007, 01:08 AM
To achieve a ‘new mindset’ is not an act of ‘creation’, it is an act of ‘recreation’. ‘Recreation’ from something extant is much harder than ‘creating’ something new from scratch. What in effect we are discussing if we are speaking of wide ranging substantive change is, in effect, a Kuhnian ‘paradigm shift’. The anomalies in the ‘worldview’ (culture) of our militaries (which has been pretty much focused on 'conventional warfare', has been 'reactive', has been, well. ‘so and so forth’) have, because of operational experience, become too pervasive and too significant to ignore anymore.( it may be that Yingling’s and others’ critique of the ‘Generals’ are a symptom of these anomalies no longer being ignorable). In effect, we are talking about a paradigm shift in the mindset of the militaries, in, to repeat myself, how the military (and/or individual services) perceive ‘who are they’ and ‘what is it we do’. Paradigm shifts in the sciences these days are generally believedto occur gradually, rather than as a ‘revolution’. This seems to me to be very much the case in seeking to change our militaries, if only because, as I think it was Kuhn himself who observed, the shift from the old paradigm to the new one is only complete when the last believer in the old paradigm has died. ‘Recreating’ (or insert ‘altering’ or ‘changing’ here if you will) the mind set or culture of the US military (or any other) to create the 'good foundation' so that it becomes accomplished at traditional and non-traditional forms of conflict will take a lot of time.

TT--First, thanks for the positive strokes on my icon comments in the "Great Generals" thread. :) What's that British saying about blind pigs and acorns?

I agree in principle on the perspective of providing a paradigm shift. However, the world of armed conflict is not exactly like the world of scientific investigation. If, as Kuhn proposed, a paradigm only shifts when the last beliveir in the old one passes on, then we will probably never see a paradigm shift in armed conflict. One country's armed forces will always run ionto some other organization that is fighting " the old way." This seems to be a big part of our problem in the current AORs--the bad guys are fighting in ways that we have gone past long ago.

Instead, I propose that we work on a "tweaking" of the paradigm, one that places greater emphasis on the unconventional, small war but does so in the context of the conventional, large war. I submit that we ought to try to explain small war doctrine in terms of what folks already know about big fights. We can show the family resemblence between the two and then apply the big war principles to the small war situations, mutatis mutandis , extrapolating to develop new insights.

MarcT suggested that we need to ritualize the changeover. I am not so sure that ritualization would be appropriate in the sense that I think most of us understand that term. However, I do believe that we should do something akin to ritualization. THat would be to use military fables to inculcate the behaviors and traits we seek to emphasize. I am thinking of stories like the "noble lies" Plato suggested for the young Guardians in his Republic. Or stories like those used by the Japanese Samurai to stress bushido virtues; see the Hagakure for an example. (I'm sure readers remember the Samurai stories told by Lt Castillo on Miami Vice, as another example).

We can pull from history (and fiction) both good examples and bad examples--sometimes in the same person. Chivington in Colorado would be a bad exemplar; Lord Roberts at Kandahar might be a good one. Henry M. Stanley on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition falls in the "mixed bag" category, as does Lettow-Vorbeck in WWI East Africa. Perhaps most important would be to find appropriate mentors--people like LT Rasczak in Heinlein's Starship Troopers come to mind.

Not an easy task, but as Super Chicken is wont to say, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.":D

selil
09-03-2007, 03:43 AM
Mr. Thornton you bring up some interesting points about the concepts of visionary. In science many things we take to have been invented by such and such, or father of this and that, were actually copying somebody else even generations earlier. Bill Bryson wrote a book "A history of everything" that is quite readable and brings to the front all of the times in history when discoveries were blocked, ridiculed, and then finally adopted as the actual ideal.

In thinking about the institutional challenges of accepting new ideas it becomes obvious that the military is likely much like academia or science. The institutional inertia of past methods and concepts keep new ideas from being even evaluated and rarely adopted. In previous threads along this topic a book by General Hammes "Sling and Stone" was suggested and I recently picked that up. I haven't read it so if I misunderstood the context please forgive. What I'll be looking at are the changing techniques of war and balancing that on the ideas of paradigm by Thomas Kuhn. Not I believe a new idea but critical for some other work I'm doing.

The changes we see and the associated objections and obstructions to change we perceive even in the face of mission failure I think hinge on these concepts of paradigm and practices of adoption. With Bryson the earlier idea generator introduced ideas, and the later accepted inventor followed after the controversy had cooled and ideas had a chance to take hold. I'm no expert at organizational behavior we have anthropologists like MarcT who explain to us technologists in small words and pictures how people behave. I find though these concepts are linked to another concept of risk. If the cost of conservatism is so high that lack of adaption/adoption of new paradigms incurs financial or societal hardship there may be a way to quantify that and ameliorate any negative feedback.

Sorry if I went off on a tangent but the risks of adaption/adoption failure seem interesting.

Ken White
09-03-2007, 05:50 AM
Interesting you mention Barnett and the SysAdmin Force. My son and I were talking on the phone and I had belated flash when he mentioned it. When I first read Barnett's books a few years ago, I had two hangups on the SysAdmin thing. One was what you allude to. Which service is going to offer to be or do that? The very obvious answer is not one of them; they'll fight that to the death. However, I couldn't figure out what the other hangup was, just something that made me uneasy. While we were talking tonight about advisory training and efforts it finally, two years later, broke into my (nominal) conscious brainlet. Do we really want to do that?

Do we really want to wander about the world and get engaged in the Gap -- I'm not talking about the Armed Forces, they'll do what's required of them. I'm speaking of the US of A. Do we want to do that? I suspect the answer is no. We want the Gap eliminated, we want to help others, we want unfettered global commerce. Sure, no question we want those things but I'm not at all convinced that most Americans will buy into a military force -- no matter how benign -- that goes about doing good works.

An even more interesting question is does the Gap wants us to do that? My suspicion is that, again, the answer is no. If most Americans would be somewhat leery of SysAdmin and most recipients would be not enthusiastic about it, why should we consider it? I think we need a Plan B on that.

You mention breaking and killing. We do that well, always have. We do not have the patience to sit out a lengthy campaign -- we, the Nation -- and that is a critical shortfall that we should consider in our future planning. I mentioned that to my son and we started rambling and we both recalled that for a couple of hundred years, we pushed American commerce and unfettered access and rarely used force; when we did it was generally a short sharp action and we withdrew. Omitting the Phillipines because we're unlkely to do that again, only the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Nicaragua were exceptions but the general rule when confronted with force or bad attitudes was to land the Marines, burn the Pirate craft or the Customs House and get back aboard the ship and sail away.

I'm not advocating a return to gunboat diplomacy, not at all. I am suggesting that sending John Twiggs Myers to Tangier worked (well, sort of :) ) and that we should do what we do well and avoid that which we do not do well. I am suggesting that the use of better trained, equipped and more strategically mobile SOF DA elements for precise strikes is possible (given the political will and willingness to take some risk -- both sometimes dicey) and the reservation of the conventional forces for those warranted entry and destruction operations followed by a short stay deserves consideration as an alternative to extended forays into nation building and internal development by the Armed Forces when a revamped and enhanced State Department might be a better choice. With a few MAAGs here and there...

The above just some wild eyed thoughts for consideration. If you're going to trifle with the 'tribes' you'll probably need to offer them some blankets if you want a Manhattan. :D

Or, conversely, assure them they won't get sent to New Jersey...

Gettysburg was an interesting battle. The guy with the good eye for the terrain was John Buford, service on the plains with the 1st Dragoons taught him that. He also read enough to appreciate the value and sense of De Peyster's idea on skirmishers. He was bold and self confident enough to trust himself and try something new -- and risky. Even more important, he was an intuitive leader and commander. He did even more good things in the rest of his short remaining time alive. Guys like that are born, not made. Any recasting of the system needs to select those guys and the "anyone can do it" approach needs to go. We already do that for many jobs, we need to do it for combatant commanders and leaders at all levels.

Just like to complicate things for everyone.

Actually, instead of complicating Adaptation, institution of such a process might aid it... ;)

Rob Thornton
09-03-2007, 01:21 PM
Hey Ken,

I've done some thinking on the benefits of a permanent Advisory Corps. I think it has much merit. The down side of course it the cost (particularly if done right) - it would probably take 2-3 of the BCTs of the planned increase off line as conventional BCTs (but should allow the remaining BCTs more focus and less personnel turbulence with individual taskings for TTs.)

The benefits though could help bring about the types of changes we've been discussing. By having it set up as an assignment with a permanent HQs, soldiers would rotate through at the appropriate times in their development (based on the size and composition of the effort). The training and experience set they'd pick by virtue of the mission could be exported back into the main stream Army as they rotate back to regular BCTs, Higher HQs and the Institutional Army in general.

To do it right there would be a solid train up focused on an identified upcoming advisory mission (about 1 year out) that at least got the team in the right geographic ball park - for languages, specific culture type training, etc. - plus gave the team enough time to do its specific team training that allowed it to operate in a reduced support environment. If you had about 2 years left after that year you could break it up for something around an 8 month mission, 8 month break and refit, 8 month 2nd deployment. Or you could do a one year deployment, then come back and act as cadre for the next year. I think you could even break it up in a series of long and shorts, or just a series of shorts - the key is identifying it up front so the team leadership knows their cycle and can plan appropriately.

You remember the question in another thread I asked you about UW? I also think this could assist in providing a supporting effort to SOF in a campaign where UW required the bulk of our SOF resources, and a larger supporting effort was required.

In that regard, I'd almost say we need to go beyond labeling it an Advisory Corps, and consider something along the lines of a Special Service Corps for GP forces where one of the key METL tasks was FID (others might be associated with small unit UW), and the other tasks were related. However, this is going to make some people nervous for many of the aforementioned reasons. I do think it could become a clearing house for infusing soldiers and leaders in the non-SOF Army with some of the skill/abilities/traits and attributes we want in main stream Army.

Again, those are the general thoughts I have on the subject of why it might be a good thing beyond our identified requirements of OIF/OEF.


Best Regards, Rob

slapout9
09-03-2007, 01:33 PM
Hi guys, Zenpundit has posted a short video of a Barnette lecture explaining a lot of what you guys are talking about. The link is posted below, it is pretty funny to.

http://www.zenpundit.blogspot.com/

TT
09-03-2007, 02:56 PM
Gentlemen, one and all,

Again, thank you for furnishing more intellectual calories of the brain (will too many brain calories make me a fathead? :eek:)

Ken


My guess would be the military solution would be better accepted and reinforced. If a civilian solution is imposed, it if unloved will not be reinforced by the armed forces; deviously perhaps -- but there it is. Conversely, if the military solution is sensible and achievable, it will be supported by the civilians to include the Nation at large (as or more important than Congressional acceptance) and will be reinforced by the system that designed it.

In my view, it would be great if we could elect a broad consensus on a future strategy for the use of force (an extremely difficult proposition, I know) and the course of our Foreign Affairs ove the next decade or two (even more difficult). While that's in the 'hard' box, I do not believe it's in the 'too hard' box.

I agree that a solely civilian solution imposed on the military would not work – the military might adopt some changes that it thought worthwhile, but I strongly expect that many if most changes would be fairly superficial (amazing how every piece of desired technology and piece of desired equipment suddenly became ‘transformational’). Ideal, as you say, would be for the civil leadership to articulate a consistent foreign policy strategy for the next decade or so that would provide the framework for the military to make the appropriate adjustments. Yet such a consistent and sustained foreign policy strategy would indeed be, as you correclty note, 'hard', if only because of the consequences of subsequent real world exigencies and contingencies (never mind the attention deficit of many civil leaders).

The other approach that you suggest is for the military to provide the solution that the civilian authorise accept. I would agre that this seems the most plausible way forward given that few among the elected civil authority have any military experience and have at best a limited understanding of the military and the challenges to be faced. But once the civil authorities accept it, they cannot just ignore it, they need to continually articulate/demonstrate their support for the effort.

Rob

is that the institution is only willing to go so far in deviating from what it considers acceptable.

wm

I propose that we work on a "tweaking" of the paradigm, one that places greater emphasis on the unconventional, small war but does so in the context of the conventional, large war.

First, as a bit of an aside: I did not mean to imply in my discussion of ‘paradigm shifts’ that the US military should become little more that an irregular warfare military (or a SysAdmin force - yuck). For I do not believe it should – rather the US and indeed all of our militaries need to accept that COIN/IW is part of what they do, as well as being able to do ‘conventional, large war.’ (allied militaries that are small – which are almost all of them - will have some very hard choices to make, however). I do, however, believe that accomplishing this will take more than a ‘tweaking’ – altering the military mindset or culture usually takes a lot of sustained effort.

That noted, your observations are very astute. The important point both of you two (and Ken, re his Manhatten vs New Jersy analogy) are making is, I think, that the desired changes needs to be introduced in a manner that is as consistent as possible with the current mindset/culture of the military to minimize resultant organizational culture turmoil and backlash. This is a very important point – any changes that fundamentally challenge or clash with organizational cultural traits will certainly run into serious obstacles. So, even before any changes are implemented the military leadership (or whoever is driving the change) needs to think through the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order implications of initiatives to identify potential bureaucratic and cultural clashes (ie obstacles) and work through the means to manage and overcome those obstacles, up to and including ‘tweaking’ the initiatives so that they do not clash with cultural traits. Not easy, I agree, but essential, IMO, for the sort of substantial change in culture that is on the table.


Ken

Raise them right and teach them well and they will do well. We have to start with the Basic Courses -- Officer and NCO, you cannot change one without changing the other -- and they will change the system and processes as they grow.

I wholeheartedly agree – start at the very beginning of their entry and sustain it through out their careers. And definitely include NCOs. This, combined with the current generation of junior to field command officers, is essential to long run success. The process and the people, however, will face resistance from a great many quarters and for a great variety reasons, not least the top echelons of the hierarchy (the McMaster case?). For this reason I think that there is a real need for some senior military leaders with authority who are willing and able to fight the good fight if only to create space and time for the process to unfold.


Guys like that are born, not made. Any recasting of the system needs to select those guys and the "anyone can do it" approach needs to go. We already do that for many jobs, we need to do it for combatant commanders and leaders at all levels.


You are right that not everyone ‘can do it’ (my current HoD is a disastrous example of this – why so many academics think that a PhD in politics means they have leadership skills utterly baffles me :confused:). The education and training systems can identify these individuals, and enhance their skills, but it is the promotion system that needs to be fixed for them to succeed.

Rob

You know you hear historical figures sometime referred to as "ahead of their time" or as "visionary", but do you ever stop and wonder why? I think the answer might be as simple as the label itself - the conditions their their thinking addressed were not seen as solutions until after all the dust had cleared and the facts were known.

I would very much agree with this (and Selil’s follow-up on this). This is a very critical problem when considering effecting far reaching change to enhance or create capabilities for some uncertain and ultimately unknowable future. This is in effect the ‘benefits’ issue – if no immediate benefit is seen, then many members of organization will not buy into, or will opt out of, the attempted change.

This issue was the main problem that undermined Gen. Charles Krulak;s efforts as Commandant (95-99) to prepare the Marine Corps for future, 21st C battlefields. Most Marines seemingly could not make the ‘jump into the future’ that he was asking, even though there was a broad agreement on the general character of these battlefields, as most could not see any real benefit for what there were doing ‘today’ or tomorrow and the day after tomorrow that Krulak was aiming for was a step too far.
Interesting is that today the Marine Corps is picking up a lot of what he was back then arguing was required and picking up many of the initiatives through which he sought to create Marines who were prepared for the battlefields of the 21st C. (and kudos to the Corps for doing so – even though it makes wrong my ‘published’ conclusion that Krulak was only partially successful, for now I have to say that the jury is out on the success of what Gen Kulak was attempting to achieve :wry:).


wm

MarcT suggested that we need to ritualize the changeover.

I do not speak for Marc but to me developing appropriate rituals is part of embedding the process rather than part of fostering the change. Marc’s explanation was very helpful, for what he talked about was creating space for rituals to develop naturally, instead of trying to create rituals that are perceived as artificial and therefore very likely rejected.

Marc

In effect, the system is designed to destroy loyalty to a segment while reinforcing loyalty to the overarching organization.


I concur with this but your observatoin does raise a couple of questions for me. You do speak of creating space for rituals to emerge from informal networks, which is an interesting idea if for no other reason that this is a way to mitigate ‘service’ and ‘tribal’ boundaries (blockages). But I was wondering how this fits with the question of ‘loyalty’? I guess I am thinking here mainly of the hierarchical structure of military organizations, as I cannot see militaries becoming networked organizations (Info Age) as 'opposed' to hierarchical organizations (Industrial age). in addition, there is the question of how the hierarchy might react to such networks, particularly if they grow concerned that 'loyalty' might be shifting towards such networks? I ask this recognizing that every individual does hold multiple loyalties, but hierarchies do tend to be jealous.

So, a second order question is whether somewhere in your thinking about this you are contemplating some form of hybrid organization? To speculate, say a hierarchical command structure through which are interwoven formal (and informal?) crosscutting networks? The steady progress to jointness might possibly be seen as a form of developing crosscutting networks (and I suppose jointness could be used to foster such crosscutting networks).

Best

TT

marct
09-03-2007, 03:20 PM
Hi Folks,

First, a great big "Thanks You" to everyone - I start teaching my course in applied epistemology (aka theory and methods in interdisciplinary studies) this coming Thursday, and this thread is really helping to hone my mind for it :D.


What I'll be looking at are the changing techniques of war and balancing that on the ideas of paradigm by Thomas Kuhn. Not I believe a new idea but critical for some other work I'm doing.

The changes we see and the associated objections and obstructions to change we perceive even in the face of mission failure I think hinge on these concepts of paradigm and practices of adoption.... I find though these concepts are linked to another concept of risk. If the cost of conservatism is so high that lack of adaption/adoption of new paradigms incurs financial or societal hardship there may be a way to quantify that and ameliorate any negative feedback.

Sam, there is an interesting problem here that I've run across before, and it has to do with the concept of "cost". All too often in human history, we have seen that people are willing to pay almost any cost as long as they don't have to change their beliefs. I've been reading a fair bit of cognitive neuroscience lately (another project) and I think that the "conservatism" regarding paradigms (loosely construed) is actually rooted in how humans neurophysiologically construct their perceptions (I'd postulated that in my dissertation, but now we are getting some really good MRI evidence of it). Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that he key locus of resistance to change is not rooted in financial or societal risk but, rather, in personal risk - a point that Kuhn alludes to, even though he was writing in the neuropsycological dark ages (i.e. pre-1973).

I don't think that any form of quantification of risks will work, at a general social level, unless it is matched with a concurrent social movement that "re-programs", for want of a better term, cultural perceptions of those risks in personal terms. Basically, you have to convert a static symbol with positive emotional connotations, to a dynamic symbol with both positive and negative connotations. Or, in maketingspeak, "sell them a problem with a built in solution".

Marc

marct
09-03-2007, 04:00 PM
Hi TT,


I concur with this but your observation does raise a couple of questions for me. You do speak of creating space for rituals to emerge from informal networks, which is an interesting idea if for no other reason that this is a way to mitigate ‘service’ and ‘tribal’ boundaries (blockages). But I was wondering how this fits with the question of ‘loyalty’? I guess I am thinking here mainly of the hierarchical structure of military organizations, as I cannot see militaries becoming networked organizations (Info Age) as 'opposed' to hierarchical organizations (Industrial age).

I think we are already seeing a partial shift towards networked militaries. Part of this comes from the perceptions of the recruits, part from changes in communications technologies, part from tactical innovations, etc. Anyway, here's an interesting blindspot in most of the Information Age literature assumptions - that the adoption of networks means a disappearance of hierarchies. It doesn't.

In some cases, we have a situation of network nodes being loci for hierarchies (think about high tech project teams or SF detachments as examples). Even within networks, people are not equal, and no network which assumes they are will survive any type of conflict. What we tend to find developing is "situational leadership" (think "matrix organizations" in the ideal type).

You are right that this conflicts with the Industrial Age model where, at least in the bureaucratic ideal type, the person holding an office is assumed to have the qualifications, skills and abilities to do so. This is one of the problems identified in the Officer Retention thread when people are talking about the automatic promotions currently available, i.e. they are seeing "unqualified" people being promoted. One key change that must take place in the personelle system is a recognition that not all Captains (etc.) are "equal". Some limited type of situational leadership, at least in the field, has to be introduced, and there has to be the possibility of a "negative career enhancement" for failure. These are really minor modifications, but they can be spun as a form of quality control within the hierarchical system - something that has been popular within business for the past 30 years.


in addition, there is the question of how the hierarchy might react to such networks, particularly if they grow concerned that 'loyalty' might be shifting towards such networks? I ask this recognizing that every individual does hold multiple loyalties, but hierarchies do tend to be jealous.

Oh too true! One of the reasons for regularizing the networks or, at least, the ritual spaces for them, is to incorporate the networks into the hierarchical paradigm and use them. The RC church did this with the occupational groups during the middle ages (and there are a number of other examples - much more obscure :D).

The trick behind loyalty in this instance is to have the hierarchical organization holding "ultimate" loyalty, while the networks hold "proximate" loyalty. This was the type of system that was broken by the Fordist model, but it is easy enough to return to it - as long as the personal consequences of not supporting such a return are made brutally clear to anyone who would obstruct it <evil grin>.


So, a second order question is whether somewhere in your thinking about this you are contemplating some form of hybrid organization? To speculate, say a hierarchical command structure through which are interwoven formal (and informal?) crosscutting networks? The steady progress to jointness might possibly be seen as a form of developing crosscutting networks (and I suppose jointness could be used to foster such crosscutting networks).

Yes, it would actually have to be something along those lines. Let me think about how such an organization could work and I'll try and post later.

Marc

TT
09-03-2007, 06:43 PM
Marc,

Thank you very much for your clarifying answers! I look forward to your thoughts on how such an organization could work.

Best

TT

Rob Thornton
09-03-2007, 11:20 PM
On the drive back today I was thinking about the last post I'd put up on the benefits of some sort of Advisory Corps/Special Service something or another. I began wondering why Army SF changed into a branch vs. an assignment - and then I thought, well I'll ask Ken.

The reason I got to thinking about it was after I'd put the post up the two questions that keep coming back are:

Why not just take 3 BCTs and assign them the METL tasks we need vs. making something different?

and...

If we're talking about more SOF or SOF like capability, why not just invest more into those types of units?

One answer to the first question I think is that organizationally and culturally its a hard sell - you are basically telling them to break up the BCT and figure it out with an MTO&E and doctrinal references that are wrong for the tasks. Overcoming the natural tendency and loyalties would probably cause friction, inhibit change, and cause confusion.

One answer to the second question is that creating SOF of the utility and quality we now require is a longer and larger investment then perhaps what would be needed - GP forces are proving they are more capable then they might have been given credit for in the past.

A second answer to the second question goes back to my question to Ken. If this were exclusively a SOF mission set, then we lose this as a vehicle to change / adapt the mainstream Army

Ken TT & Sam - great posts - you guys are wearing out my grey matter:D - Marc - could you write a bit more on the relationships between the different types of risk?


Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that he key locus of resistance to change is not rooted in financial or societal risk but, rather, in personal risk - a point that Kuhn alludes to, even though he was writing in the neuropsycological dark ages (i.e. pre-1973).

Best Regards, Rob

Ken White
09-04-2007, 01:25 AM
SF as you know was -- is -- disliked by the 'conventional' Army. Several Chiefs of Staff (and even more DCSOPS of the Army and local commanders) had rocky relations with them. Because of that, a lot of Officers who rotated through SF jobs got confined to purgatories of one sort or another. The guys couldn't get promoted (similar to the then and current problem with Foreign Area Officers. Due to the Eagle Claw mission problems, there was a lot of fomentation in Congress to create a separate Special Operations Command. DoD and the Army fought it tooth and nail. Then MG Barbwire Bob Kingston was one of the people who disagreed and he spent a lot of time lobbying Congress during the early '80s to disregard DoD and set up the Command. Wayne Downing was at that time a BG and was in the five sided funny farm, he was also lobbying for a SF Branch. The formation of aviation Branch in 1983 had greased the skids a bit, Downing -- a persuasive guy -- worked on John Wickham, then the CofSA and the branch was created in 1987 IIRC. USSOCOM followed a couple of years later.

Mixed bag, in my view. Folks in the branch are better protected but that cross fertilization with the rest of the Army is sorely missed by both sides. Though I'm sure many disagree, I think it was it very beneficial. I also think USSOCOM should keep the shooters and some CA but that all SF should revert to the Army with the bulk of the CA units. Sigh. Nobody ever listens to me -- until it's too late and they've already stepped on their string. :)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the 1st ID supposed to be headed into that advisory role???

One problem with the SF (and SOF, though they're two different critters to my mind) expansion is the number of people who truly can adapt into the jobs. It is not for everyone. One thing I discovered in my SF time was that I do not have the patience required to do that job. I can kick doors with the best of 'em but instructing surly indigenous types who didn't want to be there on a half bowl of rice and a rotting fish every other day was, er, trying. I did okay but not as well as I should have, wrong temperment. I later got to be one of the guinea pigs for the SFSB and that proved I was too demanding and impatient. :(

My wife will not hear of that remark, please -- I can't stand it when she goes into the ROFLOL mode.

Anyway, I'm not at all sure they can be expanded much without a major quality problem -- and that, either use, DA or ID, is no place for quality problems.

I strongly agree with you the GP units can do much more than we ask of them; all that's required is proper training (and we do not yet have that right) for the job they're head for. That, as opposed to schools which should train to levels higher than the next job, is necessary due to unit turnover.. A decently trained Infantry Battalion can do anything a Ranger battalion can do -- and at far less cost; give any Battlion the training time, gear and money a Ranger Battalion has and he'll be close enough in capability for government work.

As an aside why on earth do we not send the same units to the same theater and to the same locations as much as possible. Guy learns the people and the territory, returns a year later and they stick him in another province. That ain't smart. :mad:

I don't think ID is a pure SF mission. The Army as an entity needs to do that and units can be trained to do what's required. It would be beneficial in my opinion to transfer the SF units back to the Army and they could assist in training GP units to do the ID mission as well as enhancing the ID effort itself in the country(ies) of choice. The Army has got to be a total spectrum force, not three block but rather two pastures, a date plantation, two industriail complexes, fifty blocks and the mountains beyond. The whole spectrum...

jcustis
09-04-2007, 02:15 AM
I'm going to have to re-read this entire thread...slowly...to ensure I get it all, but I think a few points are in order concerning one David Stirling, and LtGen J.N. Mattis.

I'm going to have to put a lot more thought into it, but I think Mattis' efforts as the architect of the Corps' return to Iraq in 2004 demonstrate how transition doesn't necessarily require years.

More to follow...

Rob Thornton
09-04-2007, 02:18 AM
I would not say old - that relates too easy to words like "musty" or "dated":D - how about I just say say that at 44 years service you have at least twice the institutional knowledge I do - and having seen something come around a time or two, you also have "professional wisdom" - (I don't think I even got any common sense till I hit 30 - now approaching 40 with 4 kids - that is still in doubt :wry:

Thanks for answering the question in depth - I wondered how it went down, I think it also has bearing on the problem we are discussing.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the 1st ID supposed to be headed into that advisory role???

Yes and no. A BDE is focused on training the advisers, but the taskers still cut across big Army. Its getting better in terms of training I think, but it still has the challenges of an organization built to do one thing, but executing another. The folks running it are doing some great things (the training has improved greatly from when I went through down at Hood), the question is do we want to commit to something permanent and different?


A decently trained Infantry Battalion can do anything a Ranger battalion can do -- and at far less cost; give any Battalion the training time, gear and money a Ranger Battalion has and he'll be close enough in capability for government work.

I agree with you there. I had the good fortune to be resourced extremely well and left alone for a long time as one of the two Stryker rifle companies to do the IOT&E in 2003. Our BN and BDE CDRs had a great understanding on how to extend those benefits to the rest of the BN. Since so much depended on how well we did, we were lavished with time, ammo and personnel - they made sure we had everything we needed in terms of resources to succeed. I took away from the experience that the big difference was that with the right resources, we could damn near do anything! Joe is capable of moving mountains, he just needs training and leadership (and some autonomy and opportunity to succeed!).

Best Regards, Rob

marct
09-05-2007, 03:24 PM
Hi Rob,


Marc - could you write a bit more on the relationships between the different types of risk?


Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that the key locus of resistance to change is not rooted in financial or societal risk but, rather, in personal risk - a point that Kuhn alludes to, even though he was writing in the neuropsycological dark ages (i.e. pre-1973).

Back in the 1960's there was a rather infamous series of experiments called "breaching experiments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaching_experiment)". What these experiments did was to"breach" social conventions and see how people reacted to them. According to one story I was told, Garfinkle (not of Simon & fame), was required to stop the experiments in his graduate class after one of his students had her head bashed in by her boyfriend while she was performing one on him. In this case, the experiment was not breaching a social rule but, rather, challenging individual perceptions by acting like a 2 year old always asking "why?".

In order to answer your question, I'm going to have to get into some rather esoteric stuff, so apologies in advance....

Basically, we can say that there are several different "orders" of risk. The range I am using goes from risk to the individual up to risk to the species. So, we have risk to the planet, risk to the species, risk to the general group (e.g. Western Civilization), risk to the specific group (i.e. the US or Canada), risk to "our" faction within the specific group, risk to our personal group (kinship group, "friends", co-workers, etc), risk to our immediate personal group, risk to ourselves that is consciously recognized and risk to ourselves that is sub-consciously perceived. BTW, for those of you who are Heinlein fans, yes, this does parallel his discussion of developing a science of morality in Starship Troopers (book, not movie).

I'm pretty sure that everyone is familiar with all of these levels of risk except the last one, and that is he one that, I believe, is the biggest impediment to organizational change. In order to explain how this operates, I'm going to have to get into the neurophysiology of schemas.

Basically, and I'm taking this from Daniel Levitin's This is your brain on music (http://www.yourbrainonmusic.com/) (at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0525949690)) which is a fantastic introduction to the area, a "schema" is shorthand for how our brains process sensory information and "make sense" of it. At present, we know a fair bit about these even if it is extremely technical. Anyway, the way it operates is that sensory information comes in through one or more of our senses, gets filtered through a series of parallel processing modules in the brain, and then comes into our "sensorium" (you know, the little "me" that sits behind our eyes and is the "real me"), often triggering actions along the way.

Now the brain is made up of neurons which we used to think were connected together and transmitted electrical pulses which were information. We now know, post 1973, that this was a very simple, and incorrect, model. We do have electrical impulses running along the neurons (that's what is picked up by EEGs), but the neurons are not physically connected. What we have instead is a chemical connection between neurons. Basically what happens is an electrical impulse runs along a neuron and tells the "end" of the neuron to release a certain chemical - these are jointly called neurotransmitters, and most people have heard of the big ones like dopamine and serotonin (there are actually hundreds of them).

Now, in addition to acting as ways to transmit a command to send an impulse along another neuron, neurotransmitters also appear to regulate many of our perceptions and emotions. For example, the latest versions of anti-depressants are called SSRIs which stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake_inhibitor). In order for us not to be depressed, we actually have to have a certain amount of free floating (technically extracellular) serotonin in our brains, and SSRIs get this by stopping serotonin from being reabsorbed by the ends of neurons.

Okay, another point about how the brain operates: whenever you get really heavy activity along certain neural connections, the neurons tend to be coated in a substance called myelin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelin) or myelin sheathing. Myelin acts like a turbocharger on an engine to speed up the impulses that move along a neuron. Loss of myelin slows down impulses and may lead to the dissolution of neural connections - MS is a form of disease that attacks myelin sheathing. Now, neural connections that get "myelinated" (i.e. sheathed in myelin) are about 3 times faster than non-myelinated connections. In order to get a connection myelinaed, you need to use that connection - this is what "training" does so, when you are teaching someone to, say, shoot a rifle, you are actually encouraging their brains to form neural connections that are myelinated.

Here I'm moving out from the totally accepted (it's still just starting to get reported in the literature). Myelinating or demyelinating neural networks changes the balance of neurotransmitters being released in the brain. In many cases, these neural networks also are tied into the amygdala which is sometimes called the "emotional brain" so, in addition to having a lot of influence on the release and reuptake of neurotransmitters, they also tie into a section of the brain that is like a neurotransmitter master switch. Attempting to demyelinate neural networks, i.e. to get rid of one schema and replace it by another, can actually set off all sorts of weird triggers for neuroransmitter production, causing wild mood swings, knee-jerk reactions, etc.

From my own fieldwork, it seems to take about 3 months in a very calm setting to demyelinate one network and myelinate a replacement. That three month mark, BTW, is when the changes in neural networks start to become balanced enough that the individual is able to hold them in their sensorium - St. John of the Cross described this as the Dark Night of the Soul, and his description certainly jived with a lot of the descriptions I got from my fieldwork.

So, to wrap it up, sub-consciously perceived risk is a risk to a neural network that is "protected" by emotional boundaries (i.e. the threat / reward of neurotransmitters) and is the basis for a schema.

I hope I didn't loose too many people and that any cognitive neuroscientists reading it don't freak too badly at the simplistic way I am presenting it :wry:.

Marc

Ken White
09-05-2007, 04:31 PM
"From my own fieldwork, it seems to take about 3 months in a very calm setting to demyelinate one network and myelinate a replacement. That three month mark, BTW, is when the changes in neural networks start to become balanced enough that the individual is able to hold them in their sensorium..."

A Company or Battalion Commander will constantly express dissatisfaction with the micromanaging and over cautious ways of the Staff of his or her Boss. If moved to that Staff, it takes about 90 days on the button for the former Commander to become totally Staff-ized and thus, as they say, a part of the problem... :(

Such is the way of the world.

There's an implication in there some where...

Rob Thornton
09-05-2007, 05:46 PM
Thanks for answering:D

90 days seems to be the right number for allot of transitions - I just never associated with the idea of overcoming personal risk - time to bump that one around a bit and see where it leads.

How about the idea of translating rationale for change (based on trends and projections) into a catalyst for change? Or how do we say "this rationale is important enough to the future vitality of the organization to meets its role, that change must occur?" Where is the "tipping point" where an organization commits? What role does external forces play?

I think its worth discussing this in the context of war, grass roots responses/adaptation, social and political forces, etc.

Thanks, Rob

Ken White
09-05-2007, 07:01 PM
In my observation, if one says "this rationale is important enough to the future vitality of the organization to meets its role, that change must occur," one should be prepared for even those in the organization that agree to an extent with one to join together and resist the proposed changes. Only a really strong leader can make that statement and then make it stick. Even such a leader will meet resistance. Witness Shy Meyer's problems with the bureaucracy; he got only about half his agenda in place before he retired.

That -- his retirement -- is another indicator of a problem that is as deadly as bureaucratic inertia. Our political system. Massive changes in leadership every four or eight years (civilian) or two or four years (military) mitigate against long range planning; the old will / will not happen on my watch syndrome. Long range planning is quite difficult in the sense of executing major reforms.

The old tactical dictum "Use two up one back, feed the troops a hot meal and hit 'em in the flank" has utility beyond the tactical realm. It also doesn't state what smart commanders really do, or at least, it gets some things wrong if the situation allows, the better followed rule is -- "Feed the troops a hot meal, hit 'em in the flank using one up and two back..."

Which is a suggestion to lay the ground work, do not make a frontal attack -- and have a really strong reserve to exploit a penetration.

TT
09-05-2007, 08:10 PM
Marc,

Thank you. You are to be applauded for your concise and easily understandable explanation (what, no clapping hands icon? :D). I confess that I have never thought even in passing to regress the analysis back to the physical working of our brains, and I find your argument intriguing.

It does suggest that when introducing change that efforts should be made not only to figure where the new ‘concept’, or whatever the change is, may clash with organizational cultural traits, but that it would be wise to identify ways that the ‘change’ many challenge or affect individual sense of risk.

As a possible example, one of the sources of resistance to the introduction of maneuver warfare into the Marine Corps was that some individuals (how many? No way to determine) felt that the claim that MW was a ‘better way’ to fight at least implied that that the way they, as officers or whatever rank, had fought in the past (and had done so successfully) was wrong, or was a bad way to fight (I do not think this was a major issue but it seemingly did exist). Thinking about your explanation of ‘subconscious risk calculation’, it makes me wonder to what degree this particular view may have reflected a deeper sense of risk to self that ‘calculated’ that acceptance of the new warfighting concept might in effect make them ‘obsolete’ – or to generalize, that it would put at risk their individual value and contribution to the collective whole (and who knows, possibly their sense of self worth and/or experience?).

Of course, it certainly is impossible to figure how a new concept or innovation will challenge every single members subconscious calculation of risk but even understanding that such a subconscious sense of risk to self could lead to a mediating of the way that change is introduced (ie the story that is woven around the new innovation or selected assurances).

Moreover, your analysis also indicates that there are multiple layers - the ladder of risk assessments that you identify - that we likely consciously calculate risk about, even if only in passing, and each one of these may need to be addressed. My above ‘musings’ assume that the subconscious calculation would be about risk to self – but would I be correct in presuming that this need not be the case? So a question would be whether we have developed a subconscious risk analysis for each of rungs of the ladder you use, and further, if this is suggestion is possible, that this subconscious calculus might be different from what we consciously think (Ken’s example sparked this musing)?

TT

Rank amateur
09-05-2007, 09:23 PM
From my own fieldwork, it seems to take about 3 months in a very calm setting to demyelinate one network and myelinate a replacement.

90 days is the "magic number" in rehab too. Does the fact that Iraq isn't "a very calm environment" mean that Iraqis, and our soldiers serving there, are more resistant to change?


the key locus of resistance to change is not rooted in financial or societal risk but, rather, in personal risk

Or, in maketingspeak, "sell them a problem with a built in solution".



It's interesting to me that the people who sold the war domestically understood this so well, "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" while honestly believing that people would be happy that bombs were dropping around them because they were going to receive a democratic society. I guess we're lucky AQI made similar mistakes.

In your massive array of cognitive - and other - knowledge do you have any theories/techniques on how soldiers involved in COIN can better perceive the needs of the local population. (As a marketing guy, it seems to me that we're selling what we have have - democracy, political reconciliation, security - when what the Iraqi's want is local autonomy, to settle old scores, homogeneous neighborhoods etc.) More Arab speakers, cultural advisors etc. isn't going to change that. A business that makes that mistake quickly starts producing more desirable products or goes bankrupt. Here the theory seems to be that if the proper tactics are applied long enough the people will change what they want. Of course, it's possible that the majority is right. Marc, do you have theories that indicate basic marketing principles don't apply in a COIN environment and that marketing guys like me should just keep quiet while the pros get their work done?;)

Rob Thornton
09-05-2007, 09:36 PM
RA,


Of course, it's possible that the majority is right. Marc, do you have theories that indicate basic marketing principles don't apply in a COIN environment and that marketing guys like me should just keep quiet while the pros get their work done?

I for one hope you continue to bring your perspective - there is something about the "bottom line" language that we need. Since COIN is about people influencing people for various reasons, a profession that seeks to appeal and sell has a vaild place here as any I can think of.
Best Regards, Rob

Rob Thornton
09-05-2007, 09:41 PM
It also doesn't state what smart commanders really do, or at least, it gets some things wrong if the situation allows, the better followed rule is -- "Feed the troops a hot meal, hit 'em in the flank using one up and two back..."

Which is a suggestion to lay the ground work, do not make a frontal attack -- and have a really strong reserve to exploit a penetration.

I'll keep that one in the brain housing group:D

Rank amateur
09-05-2007, 09:57 PM
there is something about the "bottom line" language that we need.

I have been learning acronyms as fast as my little brain will hold them: COIN, TTPs, NCOs, AOOs


RA,



I for one hope you continue to bring your perspective . Since COIN is about people influencing people for various reasons, a profession that seeks to appeal and sell has a vaild place here as any I can think of.
Best Regards, Rob

Thanks. I really believe that the reason American companies are so successful globally is because they are willing to adapt products to local markets. Government polices are more rigid. As a result, you guys often end up being forced to work much harder than let's say a Coca Cola salesperson. You get paid a lot less too. But the toys are much cooler.

wm
09-06-2007, 12:14 PM
In your massive array of cognitive - and other - knowledge do you have any theories/techniques on how soldiers involved in COIN can better perceive the needs of the local population. (As a marketing guy, it seems to me that we're selling what we have have - democracy, political reconciliation, security - when what the Iraqi's want is local autonomy, to settle old scores, homogeneous neighborhoods etc.) More Arab speakers, cultural advisors etc. isn't going to change that. A business that makes that mistake quickly starts producing more desirable products or goes bankrupt. Here the theory seems to be that if the proper tactics are applied long enough the people will change what they want. Of course, it's possible that the majority is right. Marc, do you have theories that indicate basic marketing principles don't apply in a COIN environment and that marketing guys like me should just keep quiet while the pros get their work done?;)

I for one would submit that in a COIN operation (I was originally going to say "fight" but thought better of it, due to the connotations associated with "fight."), marketing guys are at least as, if not more, precious than operations guys (that is "operations" in the business sense).

You made a point that I thought should have been intuitively obvious since the days of the Edsel. If you do not give the people what they want, they will stay away in droves from your offerings. Of course, the real good marketing work is to get the potential customer base to want your products before you ever put them out on the street. Hollywood does a great job at this with its promo trailers. The corollary here is that getting people to change their preferences after your product is out on the shelves often is a very tough row to hoe. (Remember the new Coke/classic Coke debacle?)


Seems to me that we didn't do either one of these things--find out what the people really want (intel) or get them to want what we planned to offer (Psyops/IO)-- before we opted back in 2003 to start an operation that we believed would make Iraq better for the Iraqis, and the world a better place for all of us. Any one remember how long it took Ford to recover? (I think it wasn't until the Mustang came along.)

marct
09-06-2007, 02:33 PM
Hi TT,


I confess that I have never thought even in passing to regress the analysis back to the physical working of our brains, and I find your argument intriguing.

I realized a long time ago that every social theory had an implied theory of consciousness underlying it or, if not a theory, then an assumed stance. This really made me wonder why we didn't build our social theories on the latest available material on consciousness. Why toss it in a black box when we can actually track changes in it? Then again, a lot of my work was aimed at understanding rituals, so the linkages and effects were always "top of mind" with me.


It does suggest that when introducing change that efforts should be made not only to figure where the new ‘concept’, or whatever the change is, may clash with organizational cultural traits, but that it would be wise to identify ways that the ‘change’ many challenge or affect individual sense of risk.

Yupper. That certainly becomes clear in the management literature on restructuring, corporate culture change and the mergers and acquisitions stuff. In a lot of ways, I have come to view "culture" as a field phenomenon, i.e. a "field" generated out of individual schemas taken together. So changing the organizational culture then becomes a process of changing the individual schemas. I suspect that this is one of the reasons why having a change Champion and massive dense communications are so important in organizational change ventures. Certainly without these two, the failure rate on corporate change initiatives is 90+%.


.... Thinking about your explanation of ‘subconscious risk calculation’, it makes me wonder to what degree this particular view may have reflected a deeper sense of risk to self that ‘calculated’ that acceptance of the new warfighting concept might in effect make them ‘obsolete’ – or to generalize, that it would put at risk their individual value and contribution to the collective whole (and who knows, possibly their sense of self worth and/or experience?).

Probably a fair bit. I suspect that the emotional protections surrounding the neural networks is an evolutionary response that had a positive selection effect on the whole. Of course, we've also had the "technology" for reprogramming these neural networks for at least 50,000 years (rituals), and I was just fascinated how closely some of the corporate "rituals" I've seen parallel those in hundreds of other cultures. I have a feeling, and that's all it is, that around 85% of people can shift schemas or build new ones in the right setting (that's based on my Ph.D. fieldwork, but the number is de facto anecdotal).

The key is in developing successful rituals (and I'm using that term in a rather technical sense of a "social" setting aimed at producing an environment conducive to internal symbolic change). You not only have to logically show why the new schema is better, you have to tie it in emotionally and reinforce that over that 90 day period - that's probably one of the reasons why initiation rituals last so long.


Moreover, your analysis also indicates that there are multiple layers - the ladder of risk assessments that you identify - that we likely consciously calculate risk about, even if only in passing, and each one of these may need to be addressed. My above ‘musings’ assume that the subconscious calculation would be about risk to self – but would I be correct in presuming that this need not be the case? So a question would be whether we have developed a subconscious risk analysis for each of rungs of the ladder you use, and further, if this is suggestion is possible, that this subconscious calculus might be different from what we consciously think (Ken’s example sparked this musing)?

I think hat does happen. There's a very interesting phenomenon that shows up when we look at how people think. Often we seem to "know" the answer before doing any conscious analysis on it - I think that that is tagging into the sub-conscious calculations of a neural net. I would assume that that includes a risk calculation as well.

Would it be different from our conscious thinking? I fully expect that it would be. From the stuff I have been reading recently, it looks like schemas operate using a "fuzzy set" approach to membership rather than the "crisp set" theory that a lot of logical thinking uses.

Marc

marct
09-06-2007, 02:42 PM
Hi Rob,


How about the idea of translating rationale for change (based on trends and projections) into a catalyst for change? Or how do we say "this rationale is important enough to the future vitality of the organization to meets its role, that change must occur?" Where is the "tipping point" where an organization commits? What role does external forces play?

This is, in some ways, the $64,000 question. My gut guess, and that's all it is, is that such a translation could be built in as a schema itself given sufficient desire and resources (okay, and skill in actually designing it!). I would suggest that they way to do it is to build a schema for "trend - reaction" plotting where the response of the schema is to adopt the change.

Creating such a schema, especially at the institutional level, would be very tricky but, I think, it could be done. I think we can see the basis of such a schema already operating in the USMC for example, but crafting one for the US Army wold be hard. I would require that everyone over, say, O2 and E4 have a certain sill level in trending and projecting. It would also require the creation of some extremely dense communications networks within the Army.

Marc

marct
09-06-2007, 03:03 PM
Hi A,


90 days is the "magic number" in rehab too. Does the fact that Iraq isn't "a very calm environment" mean that Iraqis, and our soldiers serving there, are more resistant to change?

That would be my guess. There is some indication that stress acts to reinforce existing neural networks by inhibiting the development of new ones. Again, let me point out I'm certainly not an expert in this area - I ust use other people's research in cognitive neuroscience :wry:.


In your massive array of cognitive - and other - knowledge do you have any theories/techniques on how soldiers involved in COIN can better perceive the needs of the local population.

Sure, live with them :D. Seriously, though, this is the best, in the sense of tradeoffs between knowledge, resources and time, and we are certainly seeing its effect in current operations.


Marc, do you have theories that indicate basic marketing principles don't apply in a COIN environment and that marketing guys like me should just keep quiet while the pros get their work done?;)

Not theories per se, RA, but a couple of observations. BTW, I suppose that I should also mention that part of my consulting work is in marketing (Market Research, mainly in tourism, to be specific);). Okay, some observations...

There are a couple of old marketing saws that you tie intothat are, IMO, quite applicable:

find a need and fill it;
create a need and fill it.I think this would operate best in a pre-kinetic situation; say Iraq before the war. The "need" was pretty evident, but there were a lot of problems with creating other needs. I suspect that fully half of the "battle" could have been "won" before kinetic operations began.

When we get into an active COIN environment, say current Iraq or Afghanistan, we are in a somewhat different situation. I think that marketing and market research skills are very applicable, but not at the level most people seem to want to apply them - i.e. the "national" level. I think they could be far better employed at the local level.

Are you familiar with the Human Terrain Teams? One of the things I found fascinating about them is the skills training they were given before deployment: interviews, focus groups and surveys. These are exactly the same methodologies used in market research.

Marc

TT
09-06-2007, 03:30 PM
Marc,

Many thanks for elaborating. There is considerable food for thought in what you say, with respect to how best to approach introducing change that is intended, at bottom, to alter the organizational culture, or at least would impact on the organizational culture. I think it is fairly straightforward that a holistic approach that encompasses a well thought out programme of initiatives would certainly enhance the prospects of success, but this adds at least another layer (or more) to what actually constitutes a ‘holistic’ approach.

This points to the question of marketing, though in a different context than is being discussed. Marketing skills would be very useful when introducing change. I am reflecting on a military organization engaged in ‘transformation, which will remain anonymous, where a better grasp of how to market their product(s) would go (or maybe it the tense is now ‘would have gone’) a long way to solving some of the key obstacles they face. I was invited to attend several of this orgs conference (aka marketing events) and, as I told them afterwards, sitting in the audience and participating in the caffeine and nicotine refuelling breaks, it was clear that far too many of their ‘customers’ did not understand why they were developing many ‘products’ (aka new concepts), what some of the products were, or simply did not get it as they could see any hardware anywhere. This apparent disconnect between the producers and the product, and the consumers perception was quite remarkable (and admittedly even entertaining at times). So, in sense, a holistic approach should include a well thought out marketing campaign (or a well thought out ‘information campaign’).

Cheers

TT

Rob Thornton
09-11-2007, 01:26 PM
I came across this description of a River Crossing by Union Forces under Grant during the Vicksburg Campaign. At his point Union Forces had recently defeated a Confederate force on Champion's Hill, and had pursued them to the Big Black River and was trying to get across toward Vicksburg. The Confederates had abandoned their defensive works on the banks of the Big Black River, but not before destroying the bridges. Grant's Army is left to get across the river as quickly as possible in order to maintain pressure on the Confederates and prevent them from consolidating forces and strengthening their works at Vicksburg.

From Grant's Memoirs - The Investment of Vicksburg - pg. 208


"As the bridge was destroyed and the river was high, new bridges had to be built. It was but little after nine O'clock A.M. (ed. - on the 17th) when the capture took place. As soon as work could be commenced, orders were given for the construction of three bridges. One was taken charge of by Lieutenant Haines, of the Engineer Corps, one by General McPherson himself and one by General Ransom, a most gallant an intelligent volunteer officer. My recollection is that Haines built a raft bridge; McPherson a pontoon, using cotton bales in large numbers, for pontoons; and that Ransom felled trees on opposite banks of the river, cutting only one side of the tree, so that they would fall interlacing (ed. - an abatis) in the river, without the trees being entirely severed from their stumps. A bridge was then made with these trees to support the roadway. ...... By eight O'clock in the morning of the 18th all three bridges were complete and the troops were crossing"

I am constantly finding these types of examples in History where armies when well led, will find a way to make it happen. Leadership fosters Innovation and Adaptiveness - without it its likely that Grant's Army would have just halted. Today its just as relevant as then, without leaders who provide the environment for risk, adaptation and innovation will find small purchase.

Best Regards, Rob

Rank amateur
09-11-2007, 04:43 PM
That would be my guess. There is some indication that stress acts to reinforce existing neural networks by inhibiting the development of new ones.

That's not encouraging, but it is consistent with experience in rehab/relapse.





There are a couple of old marketing saws that you tie intothat are, IMO, quite applicable:

find a need and fill it;
create a need and fill it.


When we get into an active COIN environment, say current Iraq or Afghanistan, we are in a somewhat different situation. I think that marketing and market research skills are very applicable, but not at the level most people seem to want to apply them - i.e. the "national" level. I think they could be far better employed at the local level.

I agree entirely. (Nice to see there's some academic basis for my argument.;)) To use some of my buzzwords, they are many different "target markets." Each one needs to be understood. Each one has different needs. Each one will buy a different solution. On the plus side, that means that an individual can be much more successful in their sector than the overall mission.

On the negative side, what's the overall objective of working with all the different "target markets." In business, it's to make money, so you don't care what they buy. If in Iraq, it's to "reduce violence" than we're not really building a nation, and arguably doing nothing than delaying what's probably inevitable.

The other marketing/psychological thing that we haven't discussed to date, that I believe is is relevant, is self-identity. Self-identity is extremely powerful. It's almost impossible to change, but it can be an extremely effective lever. (You don't sell computers to people who think they're cool by trying to make them think that they're geeks. You convince them that cool people use computers to do cool things and hire geeks to do the maintenance.)

How do we get Sunnis and Shia to identify as Iraqi? How do we get soldiers to identify themselves as salesmen? I'd suggest that you can't.

You can get people who believe they are good soldiers to believe that good soldiers are COIN experts/practitioners, but if you look at how much time and effort it takes to change the mindset of a relatively cohesive group, I'm not optimistic that we can leverage the beliefs of the different Iraqis into any cohesive political framework.

The only success we've had is convincing people who consider themselves loyal tribe members that loyal tribe members need to fight AQI. Arguably we didn't even do that: the shieks did. And I heard one of them say on CNN that they'd never cooperate with the Shia and they still hoped for an end to the "Occupation."

Many Iraqis believe that co-operation with us is defeat. They don't see themselves as losers. We can't convince them that they are losers. How do we convince them that cooperation isn't defeat? It's pretty hard when we define cooperation as victory.

marct
09-12-2007, 04:48 PM
Hi RA,


I agree entirely. (Nice to see there's some academic basis for my argument.;)) To use some of my buzzwords, they are many different "target markets." Each one needs to be understood. Each one has different needs. Each one will buy a different solution. On the plus side, that means that an individual can be much more successful in their sector than the overall mission.

That is essentially what current COIN doctrine argues - in fact, I'm sending copies of Kilcullen's 28 articles to my associates to review <evil grin>.


On the negative side, what's the overall objective of working with all the different "target markets." In business, it's to make money, so you don't care what they buy. If in Iraq, it's to "reduce violence" than we're not really building a nation, and arguably doing nothing than delaying what's probably inevitable.

Actually, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. I think that way too many people in the West have this idea, actually it seems to be an axiomatic assumption, that States can be built top down. Honestly, I think that's a load of hooey and I would point to all of the successes that that idea has produced: Iraq, South Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, the Congo, etc. ad nauseum.

I think what we are seeing in Iraq is a real example of state building - bottom up construction that drags the "national leaders" kicking and screaming (or whining and b*%&@ing) into building a real state. Will it succeed? No idea, but the odds go down a long way if the emergentist propeties of state construction are ignored.


The other marketing/psychological thing that we haven't discussed to date, that I believe is is relevant, is self-identity. Self-identity is extremely powerful. It's almost impossible to change, but it can be an extremely effective lever.....

How do we get Sunnis and Shia to identify as Iraqi? How do we get soldiers to identify themselves as salesmen? I'd suggest that you can't.

Why assume that they don't identify themselves as Iraqis? One of the problems I've seen with identity construction/politics is how so many people assume that it has to be monolithic - that certainly doesn't match anything in the psychology literature! I think we are better, in marketing terms, to concentrate of situational identities rather than self-identities. This also works better in market research as well (BTW, I'm just finishing several MR reports that use that type of analysis).

Not only does it produce better actionable intelligence in marketing terms, it actually gives more leverage in grass roots political terms. If you know the situational identities of a target market, you are more easily able to figure out how to exapt semantic components from one situational identity to another.


Many Iraqis believe that co-operation with us is defeat. They don't see themselves as losers. We can't convince them that they are losers. How do we convince them that cooperation isn't defeat? It's pretty hard when we define cooperation as victory.

The simplest way to do so is to change your message: non-co-operation is defeat - that's the message hammered home by the Al Anbar sheiks and backed up by AQIs stupidities. In marketing terms, you aren't so much selling the virtues of your product so much as pointing out the defects in your opponents product.

Marc

tequila
09-12-2007, 05:03 PM
Actually, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. I think that way too many people in the West have this idea, actually it seems to be an axiomatic assumption, that States can be built top down. Honestly, I think that's a load of hooey and I would point to all of the successes that that idea has produced: Iraq, South Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, the Congo, etc. ad nauseum.

I think what we are seeing in Iraq is a real example of state building - bottom up construction that drags the "national leaders" kicking and screaming (or whining and b*%&@ing) into building a real state. Will it succeed? No idea, but the odds go down a long way if the emergentist propeties of state construction are ignored

Interesting idea. Is it really true? I think there are actually many examples of "top-down" states --- very few nation-states have emerged through local consensus, I think, and there is very little of the former in Iraq at the moment. Rather more states have been formed when a single actor conquers or unifies a territory and legitimates itself through a national founding myth. Even the United States only congealed as a true nation-state when the Union crushed the Confederacy.

marct
09-12-2007, 05:27 PM
Hi Tequila,


Interesting idea. Is it really true? I think there are actually many examples of "top-down" states --- very few nation-states have emerged through local consensus, I think, and there is very little of the former in Iraq at the moment. Rather more states have been formed when a single actor conquers or unifies a territory and legitimates itself through a national founding myth. Even the United States only congealed as a true nation-state when the Union crushed the Confederacy.

That's certainly a good point, but I'm not sure if calling western nation states top-down is appropriate, at least in terms of their formation of a national identity. The nation founding myth is a very important point, and one worth following up. In the case of Iraq, we certainly don't have an ethno-culturally homogeneous group, so we may be better off looking at founding myths from multi-cultural states that have succeeded.

I think Switzerland may be a moderately decent analogy in some ways, especially since the foundation myth for any emerging Iraq will be a war story. It will also need to minimize coalition involvement and maximize local (and national) Iraqi involvement.

While I certainly agree that most states have been established and/or maintained by some type of warfare, I disagree with any simplistic conquest model (actually, I don't think you are proposing that, but I need a strawman ;)). If conquest and myth building where all that was required, then we would still see the existence of dynastic, multi-ethnic states, which we don't really (except for India and China).

Marc

Tom Odom
09-12-2007, 05:32 PM
when the Union crushed the Confederacy.

We were not crushed. We merely called for an extended time out :D

wm
09-12-2007, 06:36 PM
I think that way too many people in the West have this idea, actually it seems to be an axiomatic assumption, that States can be built top down. Honestly, I think that's a load of hooey and I would point to all of the successes that that idea has produced: Iraq, South Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, the Congo, etc. ad nauseum.

I think what we are seeing in Iraq is a real example of state building - bottom up construction that drags the "national leaders" kicking and screaming (or whining and b*%&@ing) into building a real state. Will it succeed? No idea, but the odds go down a long way if the emergentist propeties of state construction are ignored.
I agree completely with MarcT here. To add to his great sucess list, let's consider Yugoslavia and the USSR among others.
If you look at the early history of the 13 Colonies and the emergent US (up to about 1898 or so), I think you get a better idea of what a grass roots democratic process is. And we haven't finished yet; America still has issues with states' rights versus federalism. Canada has similar historical roots I think and provincial versus national rights issues (I am particularly aware of them with regard to the energy industry).


Why assume that they don't identify themselves as Iraqis? One of the problems I've seen with identity construction/politics is how so many people assume that it has to be monolithic - that certainly doesn't match anything in the psychology literature! I think we are better, in marketing terms, to concentrate of situational identities rather than self-identities. This also works better in market research as well (BTW, I'm just finishing several MR reports that use that type of analysis).
Another big agreement from me. Americans are also not monolithic. We present a very different face on the inside to what we present on the outside. We band together to present a united front when faced with external, non-American opppostion. But, we engage in pretty destructive internacine squabbles among our various geographic regions, immigrant origins, political parties and other social/reliogious/economic segements of the American "market." Sometimes you segment the market, sometimes you don't--the real trick is knowing when to do each. This is what I take MarcT to be saying here:

Not only does it produce better actionable intelligence in marketing terms, it actually gives more leverage in grass roots political terms. If you know the situational identities of a target market, you are more easily able to figure out how to exapt semantic components from one situational identity to another.

tequila
09-12-2007, 06:50 PM
Well, let's define terms first. I'll take "top-down" state as any state with a powerful central government that sets the majority of domestic and foreign policies for a nation, that maintains a monopoly of force over its constituent parts via either a powerful military or internal security force, and whose citizens view themselves overwhelmingly as citizens/subjects of the defined national state first. To my mind, the United States is a top-down state, and the Civil War made it so --- the state was created in the most top-down method imaginable, through the military destruction of an attempted revolt.

Before the war, many if not most citizens viewed themselves as citizens of their state first and foremost. Not so afterwards, and this was because the might of the central government was made apparent.

Founding myths/legitimation comes into play to a certain degree here. Americans do not view their central government the way that Chinese do, for instance. Squabbles over federalism occur here and there in the U.S. No one, however, doubts the supremacy of the Federal government or its right to maintain total military and legal domnation over its constituent parts.

wm
09-12-2007, 07:08 PM
Well, let's define terms first. I'll take "top-down" state as any state with a powerful central government that sets the majority of domestic and foreign policies for a nation, that maintains a monopoly of force over its constituent parts via either a powerful military or internal security force, and whose citizens view themselves overwhelmingly as citizens/subjects of the defined national state first. To my mind, the United States is a top-down state, and the Civil War made it so --- the state was created in the most top-down method imaginable, through the military destruction of an attempted revolt.

Before the war, many if not most citizens viewed themselves as citizens of their state first and foremost. Not so afterwards, and this was because the might of the central government was made apparent.

Founding myths/legitimation comes into play to a certain degree here. Americans do not view their central government the way that Chinese do, for instance. Squabbles over federalism occur here and there in the U.S. No one, however, doubts the supremacy of the Federal government or its right to maintain total military and legal domnation over its constituent parts.

I see some equivocation between this post and your earlier one. First you defined a top down state as one that was formed by a power elite of some type. Now you are identifying it as a state that has evolved into a state with a centrally enforced set of laws/policies. Nice try at having your cake and eating it too IMHO. :D

Regarding your last paragraph, I think a fairly large number of folk have issues with the supremacy of the Federal government. Why else are there so many cases submitted to the Suprem Court each year? Why do we have some of the "survivalist" groups and the Libertarian Party? Desegration was largely implemented as a commerce issue--eliminating unfair restraint of trade across state lines--not on a Federally mandated human rights position that was at odds with the beliefs of many states' citizens. A very large portion of what Americans do and do not do is left strictly to the individual states to regulate. If no one doubted "the supremacy of the Federal government or its right to maintain total military and legal domnation over its constituent parts," then why does each state have at least one militia--the various state National Guards. Matters of probate and marriage are regulated by states. Review the so-called "gay marriage" controversy if you want a current example of a lack of Federal supremacy and legal domination.

marct
09-12-2007, 07:10 PM
WM,

You're agreeing with me without 20 clarifying emails/posts?!?!?:eek:

Yes, I think you got the thrust of my observations.;) As for Canada, it's complicated by the way we conquered Quebec originally (or did we :confused:), and by the really odd, and divergent, ways we dealt with our First Nations.

Tequila has a good point about defining terms, and I really should have done so since it looks like we define top-down states differently.

Bottom-up states: states that emerge out of a grassroots process of negotiation (including warfare) but, as a result of that emergence process, develop a common "narrative range" of what the state is and should be.

Top-down states: states that are created, expanded or maintained by a centralized force which impose a narrative range of what the state is and should be.

Narrative range: a term referring to the spectrum of socially (not culturally) valid and legitimate forms and functions of the state and governance in general.

I would argue that Saddam's Iraq was a top-down state, while what I think we are seeing now is the emergence of a bottom up state.

Hope those definitions make my position a little clearer.

Marc

wm
09-12-2007, 08:55 PM
MarcT
WM,

You're agreeing with me without 20 clarifying emails/posts?!?!?
This is praxis, not theoria. Agreeing on the what is easy. Agreeing on the why takes in-depth discussion. :D

Yes, I think you got the thrust of my observations. As for Canada, it's complicated by the way we conquered Quebec originally (or did we :confused:), and by the really odd, and divergent, ways we dealt with our First Nations. The US had/has similar issues in absorbing our Native Americans as well as the previously-European-settled-territories (why does that remind of "the artist formerly known as Prince'?) acquired later via purchase or conquest--Florida, Louisiana, Texas, California all come to mind (:D and they all still seem to be somewhat "separate" in their own unique ways from the rest of the country :D).




I would argue that Saddam's Iraq was a top-down state, while what I think we are seeing now is the emergence of a bottom up state.
After the (I won't point any fingers) failure to try to emplace a "top down" state ???

Rank amateur
09-12-2007, 09:20 PM
The simplest way to do so is to change your message:
Marc

That's hard to do when the commander in chief insists that his objectives haven't and never will, change.

marct
09-12-2007, 10:01 PM
This is praxis, not theoria. Agreeing on the what is easy. Agreeing on the why takes in-depth discussion. :D{/quote]

LOLOL - true, but let's not forget the requirements for malt based intelligence enhancers either :D.

[quote=wm;25704]After the (I won't point any fingers) failure to try to emplace a "top down" state ???

Yup - there's a something running around in the back of my head somewhere that starts with "When in the course of human events..." ;).

Somewhat more seriously, overthrowing Saddam and creating the current mess could, in the long run, be the best thing for Iraqi national identity. For the first time in a long while, the Iraqis are being forced to deal with a lot of issues that they have never been allowed to deal with before, and I think (well, actually, hope is more accurate) that they will be able to come up with a workable political structure. They need time and impetus; after all, it took the American rebels, what, 12-13 years to get the first semi-stable version of the US together?


That's hard to do when the commander in chief insists that his objectives haven't and never will, change.

Quite bluntly, as a lame duck president, he's pretty much out of the political equation right now. He can still damage the process and message, but the political actions of the new field of presidential hopefuls is, as far as the message is concerned, probably more important.

Rank amateur
09-12-2007, 10:21 PM
Why assume that they don't identify themselves as Iraqis? One of the problems I've seen with identity construction/politics is how so many people assume that it has to be monolithic

I'm not making assumptions. I consider observing ethnic cleansing and sectarian death squads as strong evidence that indicates Iraqi is not their strongest identity at the moment. I don't think "Foreigners came here and set us up" is an effective founding myth. Do you know of any founding myths where the people aren't the heroes? (God, being an exception.)

"We voted, the occupiers left," could've worked as a founding myth.

"We kicked the occupier's ass, then we realized we had a lot more in common with the occupiers than we'd originally thought," is part of America's founding myth.

"We had a civil war, and then reached an agreement" is part of America's founding myth. (though Tom still has trouble with it.)

We offered Vietnam, "America helped us avoid the mistake of being communist." They insisted on, "We kicked out the foreigners, then we decided for ourselves that communism didn't work very well."

South African whites decided that they were tired of being treated like lepers every time they traveled, but they decided for themselves that it was time to changes. The blacks fought long and hard to end apartheid, so they were able to work things out. Foreigners in their creation myth are just a foot note. (like the French in America's myth.)

What is the plan to make our presence a footnote?

Marlboro didn't create the cowboy myth. They co opted it for their own purpose. Even the language we use in Iraq is western: democracy, benchmarks, etc. While Nike uses terms like "hoops, hops, swish, pound the paint, hang time" to sell basketball shoes to American teenagers.

I have no idea what kinds of terms Iraqis use when they discuss society, government etc. But I'm pretty sure that the percentage of people who work at Nike who understand "taking it strong to the hole" far exceeds the percentage of people in the military who understand intricate aspects of Iraqi society.

More importantly, even if troops figure it out after 5 or 10 years of COIN, the powers that be won't care. They'll just say, "Can't we come up with a psy ops that makes them do what we want?"

Rank amateur
09-12-2007, 10:26 PM
Quite bluntly, as a lame duck president, he's pretty much out of the political equation right now. He can still damage the process and message, but the political actions of the new field of presidential hopefuls is, as far as the message is concerned, probably more important.

They're still using terms like "victory and defeat." If we win, someone has to lose. The loser could be AQI, but if we don't change our definition of insurgent to "AQI member," there are still going to be a lot of Iraqis out there who don't want to be losers.

RTK
09-12-2007, 11:02 PM
I'm not making assumptions. I consider observing ethnic cleansing and sectarian death squads as strong evidence that indicates Iraqi is not their strongest identity at the moment.


I have no idea what kinds of terms Iraqis use when they discuss society, government etc. But I'm pretty sure that the percentage of people who work at Nike who understand "taking it strong to the hole" far exceeds the percentage of people in the military who understand intricate aspects of Iraqi society.


More importantly, even if troops figure it out after 5 or 10 years of COIN, the powers that be won't care. They'll just say, "Can't we come up with a psy ops that makes them do what we want?"


You hit a nerve. It's not a good one.

I consider observing through the lens of MSM an obstructed view.

If you haven't had day to day interaction with an Iraqi in the last 4 years, don't speculate on what you think, have no idea, or are pretty sure about. Particularly when making generalizations on what Soldiers understand.

Rob Thornton
09-12-2007, 11:20 PM
RA,

I'm sure you meant no disrespect, but really wished to pose a question in the form of an observation or comment - don't worry, I saw a few law makers do the same thing this week However....
Quote:

I have no idea what kinds of terms Iraqis use when they discuss society, government etc. But I'm pretty sure that the percentage of people who work at Nike who understand "taking it strong to the hole" far exceeds the percentage of people in the military who understand intricate aspects of Iraqi society.

More importantly, even if troops figure it out after 5 or 10 years of COIN, the powers that be won't care. They'll just say, "Can't we come up with a psy ops that makes them do what we want?"

I think the members of our military who have deployed or are in a deployment have been fundamentally changed by their experience. We've now passed a point where this has entered into the "system" and shapes Institutional debates at the NCO/SNCO/Company Grade/and Field Grade Levels - recent #s at even the US Army War College show operational experience in numbers that recent operational experience is always the elephant in the room and everyone ties back and shares their recent history to provide context to content. We are now at a point where senior Active Duty and Active Reserve Component Leaders are moving into positions to shape not only COIN theory, but DOTLMPF (easier just to Google it ) for some time to come. Soon to be USMC GEN Mattis to the position of JFCOM CDR is a great example - this is the command which shapes the Joint Force. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Soldier or Marine - or increasingly an Airman or Sailor who has not at least considered the impact of culture on their mission.

I will agree to a lesser degree that the average American Citizen does not understand the impact of culture, and would look for a short cut solution, or Jedi trick to achieve compliance. This has to do with the tidal wave of overwhelming influence our own culture and access to multiple mass media outlets that shout in the same language about the same things has on us.

I will also add that as someone in the marketing biz - you can add some very unique insights on how to approach "selling", but might not have considered the next level of the consequences of doing so - that is something we are trying to get our military members cognizant of as they interact with foreign cultures.

Best regards, Rob

tequila
09-12-2007, 11:29 PM
I see some equivocation between this post and your earlier one. First you defined a top down state as one that was formed by a power elite of some type. Now you are identifying it as a state that has evolved into a state with a centrally enforced set of laws/policies. Nice try at having your cake and eating it too IMHO. :D


Meh. I consider the Civil War as the beginning of America as a modern nation-state. A top-down state does not have to be formed by a "power elite" --- the Federal government counts as a power base. By conquering the South, it established the Federal government as supreme over the states and final arbiter of both law and military power.


Regarding your last paragraph, I think a fairly large number of folk have issues with the supremacy of the Federal government. Why else are there so many cases submitted to the Suprem Court each year? Why do we have some of the "survivalist" groups and the Libertarian Party? Desegration was largely implemented as a commerce issue--eliminating unfair restraint of trade across state lines--not on a Federally mandated human rights position that was at odds with the beliefs of many states' citizens. A very large portion of what Americans do and do not do is left strictly to the individual states to regulate. If no one doubted "the supremacy of the Federal government or its right to maintain total military and legal domnation over its constituent parts," then why does each state have at least one militia--the various state National Guards. Matters of probate and marriage are regulated by states. Review the so-called "gay marriage" controversy if you want a current example of a lack of Federal supremacy and legal domination.
Submitting cases to the Supreme Court is evidence of acquiescence with the power of the Federal government. The SC is a Federal institution. Survivalists and libertarians are fringe groups of no consequence. The key desegregation decision in the U.S. is Brown v. Board of Education which held that separate but equal facilities violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, not the commerce clause. Also this decision was enforced by Federal marshals and the 101st Airborne, amongst other Federal institutions, against the will of many state and local authorities. The National Guard is subordinate to the Federal government and is subject to be federalized at any time, as many Guardsmen have discovered in the past six years. It is also utterly dependent on Federal funds for its equipment and training, and most states have refused to assert their independence by attempting to fund the Guard. This indicates that states do not see the Guard as a viable protection against Federal authority. All legal matters, including probate and family law, as noted before, are subject to the authority of the Supreme Court.



I would argue that Saddam's Iraq was a top-down state, while what I think we are seeing now is the emergence of a bottom up state.

What is the evidence of "bottom up" development? Does ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and Diyala fit the bill? Is this "negotiation" by other means? Do localized truces or alliances between American forces and Sunni or tribal militias fit the bill? How does this assist in state formation? What about assassination and street warfare between Fadhila and the Mahdi Army in Basra, or shootouts in Karbala between Mahdi and Badr? Perhaps the KRG's ban on the Iraqi national flag is a just a negotiating point?

Would you view, say, the civil wars in Yugoslavia as "bottom-up" state formation?

This al-Jazeera English doc (http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C223AE63-CE85-4887-9275-D2278C2A844C.htm) makes the point pretty well (click Part 2, Part 1 is just Sheikh Hatem hating on Sheikh Sattar al-Rishawi as per usual). Shi'i refugees from Taji detail being ejected from their neighborhoods by Sunni Fallahat tribesmen who are now allied with the Americans, cementing Fallahat control of the area and thus hardening sectarian division. Hardly the best example of "bottom-up reconciliation".

RTK
09-13-2007, 01:30 AM
As an outsider looking in, I wonder if anyone would be able to point me to any papers, books, or other publications that analyze the concept of adaptation from a military perspective.

Bob,

To get back to the original question of the topic, I'd steer you towards this book:

Company Command: Unleashing the Power of the Army Profession by Nancy Dixon, Nate Allen, Tony Burgess, Pete Kilner, and Steve Schweitzer.

This is the story of how Companycommand.com and Platoonleader.com (not using those web addresses anymore since they fall under the AKO umbrella now) came into being. A pretty good summary of what these two forums do can be found here (http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=75f732ad-bacd-4bd1-88c4-e1df22317255&wa=wsignin1.0). CNN even covered it here (http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=75f732ad-bacd-4bd1-88c4-e1df22317255&wa=wsignin1.0).

Other examples? Your using one right now. You'd be surprised how many people in the Profession of Arms use this daily and dialog back and forth in the background. SWJ, Companycommand.com, platoonleader.com, and professionalsoldiers.com are all communities of practice that exemplify adaptation at work.

Tom OC
09-13-2007, 02:11 AM
The process of gaining generalized control over conditions in the environment or situation, typically involving the generation of new resources or the more efficient allocation of existing resources among both individual and collective entities in order to secure new capabilities for the system.
-Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. Free Press.

marct
09-13-2007, 03:13 PM
Hi Tequila,




I would argue that Saddam's Iraq was a top-down state, while what I think we are seeing now is the emergence of a bottom up state.

What is the evidence of "bottom up" development? Does ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and Diyala fit the bill? Is this "negotiation" by other means? Do localized truces or alliances between American forces and Sunni or tribal militias fit the bill? How does this assist in state formation? What about assassination and street warfare between Fadhila and the Mahdi Army in Basra, or shootouts in Karbala between Mahdi and Badr? Perhaps the KRG's ban on the Iraqi national flag is a just a negotiating point?

Would you view, say, the civil wars in Yugoslavia as "bottom-up" state formation?

Did I ever say it would be a California Crunchie love fest? If you want to know how ethnic, or any other type of "clensing" fits into early state formation, look at examples such as the US during and just after the revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Empire_Loyalists), or France during its bids for ethnic "unity" (i.e. the Cathar Crusades, the Huguenaut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot) massacres, etc.). Inever said anything about civil wars not acting as the basis for bottom up state formation. BTW, as the current successor states to Yugoslavia if that civil war served as a process of state formation.

Tequila, what I am getting at is a very old distinction between state types that Machiavelli touches on. Is the king a first amongst equals or totally dominant? In its modern form, we could substitute President or Federal Government for king.

Marc

tequila
09-13-2007, 04:13 PM
Marc,

France is a perfect example, I think of a "top-down" state that was formed exactly through the process of civil/sectarian war, especially in its ancien regime form. I would not call it a "bottom up" process, even if many of the King's wars and edicts were carried out by local actors.

What we see in Iraq is quite different from this process, where the French monarchy gathered all means of legitimate force and cultural/religious hegemony into itself. If anything, the means of force and cultural/religious legitimacy are spreading outwards and dissipating amongst many varied actors, but there is little attaching them to the center.

The civil war did serve as state formation for Bosnia and Croatia, but it didn't do much for the state of Yugoslavia, did it?

marct
09-13-2007, 04:35 PM
Hi Tequila,

I'd agree with you on France's ancien regime - it certainly was a top-down state. I think it is important, however, to look at how that happened, i.e. the Hundred Years War, the collapse of Burgundy, etc. I think that France gives a pretty good example of the emergence of a top down state out of conquest and cultural genocide.

As for Yugoslavia, well, what can I say? States come and go.

Marc

Rob Thornton
09-13-2007, 04:37 PM
RA,
After re-reading the post I responded to RA with I thought I might make a public apology if:

by equating your post with congressional questions I unintentionally equated you with our distinguished politicians - they are good men and women, but I don't mean to type cast.

or, if by saying you might not appreciate the "consequences of selling" I portrayed you or the marketing profession in a stereo-typical fashion.

I absolutely meant that you have a valuable perspective- one I think we should certainly consider is the pervasiveness of our own culture into foreign markets - its just what we do:D - and this has positive consequences as well as possible negative consequences in those cultures.

I also think we now understand that when we put people on the ground we must understand that they have a set of perceptions about us due to many seeing our influence on their traditional social values as being invasive - they might enjoy drinking a Coke, or smoking a Marlboro - but they don't want their cultural beliefs stood on end - its quite a dichotomy. Likewise as units and soldiers rotate through multiple times, they see how their presence can confirm or deny local perception and mitigate fears by building trust.


I promise I've not gone "squishy" on anybody - just wanted to right what I think may have been seen as a wrong.

Best regards, Rob

tequila
09-13-2007, 05:03 PM
As for Yugoslavia, well, what can I say? States come and go.

Marc

My main point on Iraq is that Iraq is much closer to Yugoslavia right now than either France or Switzerland or, to mention a more relevant example, Lebanon (IMO the only bottom-up state in the region, excepting perhaps the UAE).

wm
09-13-2007, 05:09 PM
My main point on Iraq is that Iraq is much closer to Yugoslavia right now than either France or Switzerland or, to mention a more relevant example, Lebanon (IMO the only bottom-up state in the region, excepting perhaps the UAE).

If by this you agree with MarcT's point that states come and states go, my only comment is " and this is bad, why?" It might well be the case that a world without an Iraq might be better than a world with an Iraq held together by force rather than by consensus.

marct
09-13-2007, 05:10 PM
Hi Tequila,


My main point on Iraq is that Iraq is much closer to Yugoslavia right now than either France or Switzerland or, to mention a more relevant example, Lebanon (IMO the only bottom-up state in the region, excepting perhaps the UAE).

I think it could go either way. Seven or eight months ago,I would have totally agreed with you, now I'm not so sure. In all honesty, I just don't have enough information to get a really good feel for the politics. I doubt it will go like France's ancien regime, although that's a possibility (i.e. another dictatorship). It might go like the early Swiss confederation - possible but I wouldn't want to hazard percentages on it (good model, though :D).

Tom Odom
09-13-2007, 05:36 PM
Marc,

22 years ago while researching the 1964 Congo Crisis, I came across a State INR assessment which said something like:

"The Congolese government is like Spanish moss. With its roots in the rarified air of Leopoldville, it has little contact with what is happening on the ground in the countryside."

That is my take on the Maliki government. The sectarian divisions are clearer now than they were 10 months ago. The de facto splits are largely in place; the questions on what role a national government will play seems to me to be the critical issues now.

Best

Tom

marct
09-14-2007, 04:47 PM
Hi Tom,

I think that's a pretty good assessment :wry:. I suspect that the grass roots organizations are more than somewhat disturbing to the Maliki government as well. I'll be interested in following up o the investigations into the recent Al Anbar assasination - I suspect how the government handles that will have a major impact on the next couple of years.