That about sums it up, salient post of the thread!
Good job RTK. That one and your training critique mean you can have New Years Day off -- unless you've got the duty... ;)
My brain hurts even worse
I had to for my own sake dig out the trusty old Websters dictionary to see what it said a diplomat was.
Diplomat: one employed or skilled in diplomacy.
Could we be any broader? So then I went up one word to diplomacy.
Diplomacy: 1. the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations 2. TACT
Finally I looked up tact.
Tact: a keen sense of what to do or say to keep good relations with others
I didn't post these to insult anyone. The point I'm getting to is that in the sense diplomacy is tact then yes soldiers are diplomats. When soldiers start getting into negotiations then we are wrong, minus those who have this skill set. I think some of the problem is in the broadness of the terms soldier and diplomat/diplomacy. When one gets down in the weeds then we can start to see the relevance of both.
IMO soldiers at all levels need to be tactful, therefore diplomats, but hard lines need to be drawn when it comes to soldiers conducting negotiations and therefore being diplomats in this sense.
Simplier way would be to say all soldiers need to be tactful. Then figure out at what levels or who as soldiers need to be negotiators?
RTK can type and research faster than I, looks like I need some work on the basics.
I think all of us are talking past each other...
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Originally Posted by
Cavguy
No disagreement in the ideal - but - what do you do as a military member when negotiations with local leaders are required and there are no civil reps available?
That is the crux of the problem...Local leaders know who has the power, and deal with those who have real power.
Seems to me that everyone commenting on the thread has acknowledged that to one degree or another.
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The task for the forseeable future in the current conflicts falls to the military. Whether we should do it or are the ideal organization is irrelevant. Civil capacity (if ever developed/funded) is one or more decades away. So in the meantime, I argue we must prepare our soldiers to succeed in the environment they face. If this means "not my lane" tasks, then so be it.
I think the disconnect is here -- I see no one disagreeing with any of that paragraph but several have implied that such disagreement exists. The issue is, I think two fold:
(1) Who should set the parameters for the positions taken by members of the Armed forces in dealing with local entities of what ever kind. Wilf, Gian and I say it should be the civilian politicians to whom the Armed Forces in democratic nations are responsible but all acknowledge that actions on the ground may lead to occasional military precedence in setting such policy. Occasional is totally understandable and acceptable; constant OTOH is not a good idea...
(2) Our training is not as good as it should be; Most of us seeming disagreeable types including ODB and RTK agree that some training in the areas of human relations, culture (du jour) and US policy is not only desirable but necessary. What we want is better training on ALL the basics principally on the combat functions core requirements but certainly including those things. I, for one have said that we should never have stopped doing that (we did it pretty well from the early 60s to 75).
Thus, I don't think anyone disagrees with you on this:
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I just fundamentally disagree with those who say the military shouldn't train this because it shouldn't be their mission...
Or this:
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I will happily hand this over to DoS when we create more foreign service officers than the Army has Soldiers in its bands, or the political leadership takes the task away. The military serves the state and is expected to win. Therefore, we must do whatever it takes to win, even if it's a non-military task.
Steve Blair posted this while I was pecking:
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"Tact, diplomacy...call it what you will (and I'm also the first to admit that there is a difference between inter-government Diplomacy and the lower-level stuff that most officers and some NCOs will be faced with...but the local level will always be with us unless Sate gets MUCH bigger or we stop sending anyone outside of CONUS). The fact remains that in many places the military IS the face of the US government that many will see first (right or wrong) and we need to be prepared to deal with that.
I suggest that is a great encapsulation of what ALL of us on this thread have been saying. As the Bishop said to the Actress, "We aren't arguing over what you are; we're haggling about the price."
As the resident curmudgeonly cynic...
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Originally Posted by
Ron Humphrey
...Nagl and others have gotten the goat of many within the defense community but it may be more important to see what kind of effect their messages have had on those within the political structure and accept that maybe just maybe in the end it might not have been such a bad thing.
Sigh. History says you have a good idealistic view that will sadly go unrewarded...
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...people on the other hand just might, and that is something which I'm afraid we tend to forget way to often.
Sigh again. See my previous comment. :wry:
New Years Eve Consolidated Response.
Ron: No intent to temper idealism, after all that turtle wouldn't get anywhere unless he stuck out his neck a bit. Just a caution to remember that politicians have short attention spans and memories and are prone to try to reinvent wheels and that doing it right is not generally one of their priorities... ;)
Bill:
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"I think we're agreeing more than disagreeing."
Oh man. Me, too.
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"Once you have a broken society, political system (Iraq, Afghanistan) do you fix it from the top down or bottom up? "
Neither. You just hold the window open while they either fix it or don't and you better be prepared for either result.