Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort

[SWJED]

The Brain Trust - MilBlogs.

The WaPo headlines: "Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort"

The only appropriate response might be "Well, duh!"

But seriously folks... no offense to the fine folks profiled therein, but try finding a senior officer in the military without an advanced degree.

These guys might be exceptional, but they aren't the exception in that department. There's a bit of myth perpetuation here - the reality is the military invests time and money in developing the talents of the right folks for the right jobs - and sometimes they get it right.

And in spite of the article's "but the job is too big for these guys or anyone else" tone, I think the right people have indeed been chosen for this task - a conclusion not just based on the evidence of wisdom exhibited in the highlighted words of this paragraph:

Petraeus, who along with the group's members declined to be interviewed for this article, has chosen as his chief adviser on counterinsurgency operations an outspoken officer in the Australian Army. Lt. Col. David Kilcullen holds a PhD in anthropology, for which he studied Islamic extremism in Indonesia.

Kilcullen has served in Cyprus, Papua New Guinea and East Timor and most recently was chief strategist for the State Department's counterterrorism office, lent by the Australian government. His 2006 essay "Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency" was read by Petraeus, who sent it rocketing around the Army via e-mail. Among Kilcullen's dictums: "Rank is nothing: talent is everything" -- a subversive thought in an organization as hierarchical as the U.S. military.

And his Don't confuse the surge with the strategy entry at the Small Wars Journal blog was recently recommended by one of Mrs Greyhawk's favorite military thinkers.

You might also want to make time for A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy and Two Schools of Classical Counterinsurgency...

[CSC2005]

While Tom Ricks did play up on the liberal stereotype of the military being uneducated and needing Ivy League policy makers to make the big decisions, I still give Gen Petraeus credit for bringing in a hand-picked group of creative thinkers. I have been through too many OPTs where the focus was on process and not creative operational design. I would love to read a study on how these guys work out in a year or so from now.

My hunch is that Petraeus picked these officers because of their intellectual/operational ability, not just because they had PhDs. I am sure there are plenty of PhDs in the Army who were not picked. You have to admit that putting a foreign officer on your senior staff is a pretty bold move in wartime and annoyed many of the normal staff officer types.

I am surprised John Nagl did not make the list.

[Maximus]

Nagl's playing a lead role in ensuring Army MiTTs/MTTs/PiTTs are being trained properly before being sent over. I suspect he has a direct link to Gen Petraeus.

[Shek]

While Tom Ricks did play up on the liberal stereotype of the military being uneducated and needing Ivy League policy makers to make the big decisions, I still give Gen Petraeus credit for bringing in a hand-picked group of creative thinkers.

CSC,

I disagree that Ricks is trying to portray the military as being uneducated.

Instead, I see Ricks trying to 1) garner support for effort that Petraeus is trying to undertake and 2) convince the military that there is a tremendous value added in having officers with PhDs.

Looking at my first point, having both read Fiasco and then having had a chance to hear him speak about the book in person, Ricks wants to see the US succeed in Iraq and is very critical of past mistakes that have been made. Clearly, he sees Petraues as a success story, and highlighting some of the differences that he and his assembled team could potentially provide is a reason for someone to give the new strategy a chance (one that Ricks sees as having a chance of succeeding), that it's not just "more of the same."

For the second point, the fact that you have someone overtly reaching out to the "intellectual" community within the military is not the status quo (nor do most senior officers have PhDs - some form of civilian masters degrees, probably, although this number is quickly diminishing and becoming the exception due to our personnel policies implemented in the late 90s; these are the commanders that will make the decisions a decade from now about the worth of advanced civilian education, and it is easier for someone to discount the value of grad school when it didn't play a part in their career advancement). GEN Petraeus did the exact same thing as the 101 ABN DIV CDR. However, he had to pull mostly O-4s and O-5s as a mere division commander .

Given how just two short years ago the Army was pulling officers out of CGSC early to send them to Iraq and the SecDef was explicitly looking at how officer education could be shortened/abbreviated, now is the time to make the case how critical education is to the military mission, and articles like this can potentially move the public and military in the direction where advanced education shouldn't be the exception and pursued at the risk of derailing one's career. I believe Ricks wants to portray that this should be more than just a fad (also, being based out of DC, the military personnel that Ricks tends to deal in the policy world with are those with advanced education, and so he is clearly cognizant of the fact that many military members are well educated).

Lastly, here's a very apropos article from LTC Nagl (who's commanding a battalion right now) on the topic of education requirements across the spectrum of ranks.

Cheers,

Shek