General Petraeus: collection

[Gian P Gentile]

...Gen Petraeus has a real opportunity to change things by promoting great COIN practicians...CB

Is this what we really want? Is this good for the Army?

A Coin Cabal? There certainly are some indicators that that is what our Army has become. Consider the elevation of relatively lower ranking officers who are members of this Cabal to rock-star status.

We think with these latest moves that Yingling's recommendations are being adopted. However, I see these moves as reinforcing what Yingling railed against in his important piece: a crony dominated system of officer promotions. That may be an extreme view but we should at least look at these latest developments with trepadation and caution before we start falling all over ourselves with high-fives and self-congratulations.

gentile

[SteveMetz]

Is this what we really want? Is this good for the Army?

A Coin Cabal? There certainly are some indicators that that is what our Army has become. Consider the elevation of relatively lower ranking officers who are members of this Cabal to rock-star status.

What alternative would you propose? A renewed emphasis on conventional maneuver warfare?

And, I'm just asking--this is not a leading question. I'm not an advocate of "all COIN, all the time." I think we're preparing to fight the last war. I'm not sure what the appropriate future course is.

[Shek]

What alternative would you propose? A renewed emphasis on conventional maneuver warfare?

And, I'm just asking--this is not a leading question. I'm not an advocate of "all COIN, all the time." I think we're preparing to fight the last war. I'm not sure what the appropriate future course is.

The officers selected for O-7 from this board will have grown up and been promoted to O-6 by the "conventional" Army based on their proven competence at conventional operations, with some Bosnia and/or Kosovo rotations spriknled in there. Their performance at the O-6 level will by and large be judged by their performance in OIF/OEF, operations that for most part will have a strong COIN component in there.

If the officers that are selected were the best commanders in the COIN environment, does this make them part of a "COIN cabal" or the most adaptable officers who are able to perform well in new operating environments?

On the flip side, if an officer was the best NTC/JRTC/CMTC warfighter but couldn't adapt to a different environment and therefore was only marginal at COIN, should they be promoted to O-7?

I'm afraid that in the conversation over where the future of the Army needs to go, we'll find ourselves trying to put people into one of two boxes, labeled COIN or conventional, instead of looking at those who show the mentile agility to be able to have one foot in both boxes and have the proven potential to adapt to the future challenges that may not be in either box.

[CB]

Well, it wasn't really my point but yes, I believe creating career paths for successful COIN experts is a good thing for the Army. That doesn't mean promoting only COIN experts, of course, but creating a diversified officer corps able to handle both stabilization & COIN ops and waging conventional war. Just look at the kind of conflicts in which the US Army has been involved in the past; couldn't such a change in officer promotion policy have helped the US Army to be better prepared to the kind of missions it would have to face, either in Lebanon, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. ?

[Steve Blair]

Is this what we really want? Is this good for the Army?

A Coin Cabal? There certainly are some indicators that that is what our Army has become. Consider the elevation of relatively lower ranking officers who are members of this Cabal to rock-star status.

We think with these latest moves that Yingling's recommendations are being adopted. However, I see these moves as reinforcing what Yingling railed against in his important piece: a crony dominated system of officer promotions. That may be an extreme view but we should at least look at these latest developments with trepadation and caution before we start falling all over ourselves with high-fives and self-congratulations.

gentile

And this is different from the airborne mafia, armor community, etc., in what real way? It's always cronyism when it's a group that someone happens to disagree with, but forward thinking if it's a group that happens to meet someone's agenda objectives. Just an observation that we've seen this before and seem stunningly incapable of learning from previous bureaucratic mistakes.

And, I'm just asking--this is not a leading question. I'm not an advocate of "all COIN, all the time." I think we're preparing to fight the last war. I'm not sure what the appropriate future course is.

Steve, I agree that the Army's looking to fight the last war again, but it seems that they're always either doing that or fixating on the war that they WANT to fight (here I refer to doctrinal development after the Civil War and, to a degree, the post-Vietnam period). I'm honestly not sure that the institution is capable of preparing for a variety of threats or even meaningfully thinking about those multiple threats. It's all "either/or."

[TROUFION]

You can be more than one thing. You can be an expert in conventional and unconventional war. Officers and senior enlisted of high caliber and flexible mindset are what is needed. In the Marine Corps we have legendary leaders who started out in irregular conflicts and rose to great success in conventional wars. Smedley Butler, Chesty Puller, Dan Daily, to name but a few. Warfighting can be complicated but it is not so difficult that it cannot be understood on its many levels. My opinion on the choice of Petraus is that he is intelligent, talented and he has an eye for spotting talent. He is the flexible officer capable of adapting to his environment. If the Iranians stormed across the Iraqi border in waves of armor and infantry I expect he would deal well with that just as he is dealing well with COIN. Placing a top notch GO in charge of a board is the right thing to do.

[Steve Blair]

You can be more than one thing. You can be an expert in conventional and unconventional war. Officers and senior enlisted of high caliber and flexible mindset are what is needed. In the Marine Corps we have legendary leaders who started out in irregular conflicts and rose to great success in conventional wars. Smedley Butler, Chesty Puller, Dan Daily, to name but a few. Warfighting can be complicated but it is not so difficult that it cannot be understood on its many levels.

Yes, and one of the interesting thing about the Marines is that they have been able to strike that balance. I'm not sure what it is about the Army as an institution that has made them unable (or unwilling) to do so with any great regularity. It's not so much a question of size (as this is something I've seen going back to when the Army's main business was more or less constabulary in nature) as it may be the culture and learned behaviors within the organization.

This isn't a dig at the Army as much as it is me musing out loud (or at the keyboard) about something that has come to interest and puzzle me more and more of late. I'll stop now before I ramble out of control...

[selil]

Yes, and one of the interesting thing about the Marines is that they have been able to strike that balance. I'm not sure what it is about the Army as an institution that has made them unable (or unwilling) to do so with any great regularity. It's not so much a question of size (as this is something I've seen going back to when the Army's main business was more or less constabulary in nature) as it may be the culture and learned behaviors within the organization.

This isn't a dig at the Army as much as it is me musing out loud (or at the keyboard) about something that has come to interest and puzzle me more and more of late. I'll stop now before I ramble out of control...

Steve you have something there

The discussions of COIN or NO-COIN aren't an issue in the Marines nor is the concept of doctrinal documents. I think the difference in this case between the Marines and the Army is that in the Marines they think/train (any Marine, any mission, any location), whereas the Army specializes in silos of missions or skills. I know that there are contrary examples but I think it is part of the Army culture.

Look at how people identify themselves here on SWC. They are Armor, they are Intel, they are logistics, and they may have been other things but their current skill set is denoted by their occupation.

It is a fundamental part of the Marine psyche that every Marine is a rifleman, and every other job after that is dessert. The only place I've ever seen strife bent around mission was with an Air Wing (El Toro to be exact), and my Battalion Commander reminded a pilot flying CAS that when he lands he's a rifleman too (it was really a joke more than a censure).

Perhaps that is why Gian P. Gentile sees the conflict with COIN encumbering his Army rather than expanding his role (no disrespect meant Col. Gentile). I'd defer to people much more aware of the roles and culture, but institutionalized silos of concern would create the inter disciplinary strife we see exhibited. MarcT could discuss the organizational issues much better than I.

[Steve Blair]

Steve you have something there

The discussions of COIN or NO-COIN aren't an issue in the Marines nor is the concept of doctrinal documents. I think the difference in this case between the Marines and the Army is that in the Marines they think/train (any Marine, any mission, any location), whereas the Army specializes in silos of missions or skills. I know that there are contrary examples but I think it is part of the Army culture.

Look at how people identify themselves here on SWC. They are Armor, they are Intel, they are logistics, and they may have been other things but their current occupation is denoted by their skill set.

It is a fundamental part of the Marine psyche that every Marine is a rifleman, and every other job after that is dessert. The only place I've ever seen strife bent around mission was with an Air Wing (El Toro to be exact), and my Battalion Commander reminded a pilot flying CAS that when he lands he's a rifleman too (it was really a joke more than a censure).

Perhaps that is why Gian Gentile sees the conflict with COIN encumbering his Army rather than expanding his role (no disrespect meant Col. Gentile). I'd defer to people much more aware of the roles and culture, but institutionalized silos of concern would create the inter disciplinary strife we see exhibited. MarcT could discuss the organizational issues much better than I.

One reason I find it so interesting, Sam, is that it's been such a constant in the Army as an institution. Even going back to the period before the Civil War we find the Army training (when it could...considering that almost 3/4ths of the authorized strength was scattered at small posts throughout the expanding Frontier) for line-against-line Napoleonic conflict. The majority of the skills the troops needed for Indian warfare were learned in the field, while training still focused on European-style warfare. There was no formal effort to retain lessons learned (the majority of what we might now consider doctrinal information came out either in journal articles or privately-published books), and even some moaning about how the constant small-scale warfare detracted from the real business of training men to be soldiers.

It's an interesting situation...and one that doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. That's why I see many more similarities between Vietnam and Iraq on the institutional response side than I do in the field.

[Eden]

It is interesting how the Army can only do one thing at a time. I joined when we were still training for Vietnam, though the war had been over for almost a decade. For the next fifteen years it was all conventional training. Institutionally, there are a couple of reasons for this, I think. First, doctrine is written by branches, and doctrine matters because it leads to money and manpower and material. Therefore, doctrine needs to be consistent and support the other institutional goals of the branch. Second, the schoolhouses have a limited amount of flexibility - this is generally a good thing, by the way - and a limited amount of time to teach. Again, this encourages a single approach to training our future warfighters. Thirdly, it takes twenty years to properly train a brigade commander. If we shift our emphasis on levels of warfare too often, they will be jacks of all trades and masters of none. I'm sure there are more reasons out there.

By the way, in touching on this thread's initial focus, I don't see how we can or why we should avoid promoting our best COIN operators to general. Success in war should be the first consideration for the promotion of generals (and shame on anybody who says otherwise), and counter-insurgency is the only contest in town right now. Does this mean some budding conventional Patton/Manstein/Slim out there will get passed over? Probably.

[Griz882]

Warfighting can be complicated but it is not so difficult that it cannot be understood on its many levels.

TROUFION is spot on here. I have heard others rightfully rail against the all-COIN-all-the-time mind set and I see logic in their arguments. I will readily admit that for a short while I was an adherent to the "unconventional warfare is the graduate level of combat" school of thought. I have come to recognize that it might be the graduate level of tactics but too often COIN zealots see the forest but not the trees. For example they see the undeniable value of both civil and military actions working in concert but rarely discuss the logistics required for such an effort. Maneuver, still a critical element in any tactical situation seems to be brushed aside by thoughtless cheers such as "boots on the ground," "hearts and minds," and "constant presence."

We need to remember that the junior officers of the so-called Indian Wars became the staff officers of the Spanish American War and eventually the G.O.'s of WWI - all very different conflicts but all feeding experience to the next.

My hope is that GEN Petraeus will select future generals based on their ability to lead, think, manage, and plan to win in a variety of conflicts. Everything after that is just shooting.

[Sargent]

Is this what we really want? Is this good for the Army?

A Coin Cabal? There certainly are some indicators that that is what our Army has become. Consider the elevation of relatively lower ranking officers who are members of this Cabal to rock-star status.

We think with these latest moves that Yingling's recommendations are being adopted. However, I see these moves as reinforcing what Yingling railed against in his important piece: a crony dominated system of officer promotions. That may be an extreme view but we should at least look at these latest developments with trepadation and caution before we start falling all over ourselves with high-fives and self-congratulations.

gentile

Here's the distinction I would draw...

I don't think there is any value in promoting any officer who believes that COIN is the Holy Grail -- same would apply to the unquestioning belief in any doctrine of warfare. However, I do think that there is something particularly challenging about the Iraqi and Afghani battlefields. For an armed force steeped in a firepower intensive model of conventional warfare, the ability of an officer to adapt to the more nuanced situation in which the question is not how to kill the guy, but instead whether to kill or befriend the guy, suggests qualities that might be useful for executive leadership. And these are the very officers who are going to have more than one trick in their repertoire, who can both fight and nurture as necessary, and who will best serve the institution in any form war will take while they're at the helm.

However, I don't think that you need Gen. Petraeus to participate in order to find those people.

Cheers,
Jill

[Ron Humphrey]

Here's the distinction I would draw...

I don't think there is any value in promoting any officer who believes that COIN is the Holy Grail -- same would apply to the unquestioning belief in any doctrine of warfare. However, I do think that there is something particularly challenging about the Iraqi and Afghani battlefields. For an armed force steeped in a firepower intensive model of conventional warfare, the ability of an officer to adapt to the more nuanced situation in which the question is not how to kill the guy, but instead whether to kill or befriend the guy, suggests qualities that might be useful for executive leadership. And these are the very officers who are going to have more than one trick in their repertoire, who can both fight and nurture as necessary, and who will best serve the institution in any form war will take while they're at the helm.

However, I don't think that you need Gen. Petraeus to participate in order to find those people.

Cheers,
Jill

I agree with you that it doesn't require any particular individual it just requires a certain type of process.

I simply meant in regard to this topic I don't see why he would be a bad choice.