Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort

[Tom Odom]

Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency adviser, wrote recently on the Web site Small Wars Journal, "All that the new strategy can do is give us a fighting chance of success, and it certainly does give us that."

Seems appropriate to quote that last line of the WP article.

And I will say that historically, the services in general and the Army in particular because I was Army have a long-standing love and distrust/disregard (not hate) relationship with those who are viewed as "too intellectual." We go in cycles and we are hopefully now re-entering a cycle where history is not viewed as a "background setting" for events. I actually had a self-declared historian use those very terms in telling me a history page was of less value than a web page on urban operations.

There is another article in this vein worth reading on Ike Skelton and history on the EBird and US News and World Report called "Armed With History."

Best

Tom

[slapout9]

Hi George Singleton, Roll Tide!!! College degrees....uhhhh...lets see, I am a 3rd degree Redneck

[Steve Blair]

What I'm hoping is that this doesn't mark a return to or reaffirmation of the business school mentality that the military saw in the 1960s and beyond. Just substituting the requirement for an Anthropology or International Studies advanced degree instead of business management isn't going to change anything. It may, in fact, just promote intellectual stereotypes and box-checking instead of business ones. Graduate schools can be just as hidebound, if not more so, than service schools and academies.

What we also need to watch for is the "system" setting up those internal dissidents for failure. I'm hoping this is a true conversion for some of the powers-that-be and not a stalling tactic designed to "stay the course" until the next elections and then blame failure on those who happen to have been in charge last (Petraeus and the like).

[Tom Odom]

What I'm hoping is that this doesn't mark a return to or reaffirmation of the business school mentality that the military saw in the 1960s and beyond. Just substituting the requirement for an Anthropology or International Studies advanced degree instead of business management isn't going to change anything. It may, in fact, just promote intellectual stereotypes and box-checking instead of business ones. Graduate schools can be just as hidebound, if not more so, than service schools and academies.

What we also need to watch for is the "system" setting up those internal dissidents for failure. I'm hoping this is a true conversion for some of the powers-that-be and not a stalling tactic designed to "stay the course" until the next elections and then blame failure on those who happen to have been in charge last (Petraeus and the like).

Agree completely, Steve

[Merv Benson]

I think this is also a reflection of how difficult and competitive it is to reach the highest ranks in the US military. Because mistakes can be critical, it is a system that can be very unforgiving. Sometimes bad luck plops responsibility for the mistakes of others on an officer's blindside ruining a career. But, being perfect is no guarantee of promotion and thus you have people who will seek more education and study to help.

Unlike many PhD's these guys have to test what they have learned in a very unforgiving arena. The real question is whether the Congress will give them the time to make their case.

[marct]

Hi Merv,

Unlike many PhD's these guys have to test what they have learned in a very unforgiving arena. The real question is whether the Congress will give them the time to make their case.

I think you're right about that. One of the big problems with getting your PhD, at least in the social sciences, is that, often, you aren't allowed to test it . This means that a lot of PhD's tend to be very "theoretical" with little or no testing in the real world. It's a major frustration, and it also is one of the things that leads to the disconnect between academia and the "real world".

Marc

[Stan]

Marc,

Tom and I already gave you a shot at the real test. Put the boots on, we get a grand (minus taxes ) and you graduate with new skills in ??? Ahhh, what does it matter.

I think, that if you had been with Tom and I a decade ago (yes, that would be a sierra hole), we would have had a blast and learned a lot more !

Regards, Stan

[marct]

Hi Steve,

What I'm hoping is that this doesn't mark a return to or reaffirmation of the business school mentality that the military saw in the 1960s and beyond. Just substituting the requirement for an Anthropology or International Studies advanced degree instead of business management isn't going to change anything. It may, in fact, just promote intellectual stereotypes and box-checking instead of business ones. Graduate schools can be just as hidebound, if not more so, than service schools and academies.

That is a truly scary thought, especially when it comes to Anthropology . I do feel that the press article does seem to be constructing a Ph.D. as a magic bullet, and that is a BIG mistake. I know too many people with Ph.D.'s who can't think their way out of a wet paper bag, let along think outside of any box .

There's another problem that hasn't seemed to have come up yet, and that is what, exactly, a Ph.D. stands for. There is, really, very little uniformity in it.

Marc

[George L. Singleton]

Hi Steve,



That is a truly scary thought, especially when it comes to Anthropology . I do feel that the press article does seem to be constructing a Ph.D. as a magic bullet, and that is a BIG mistake. I know too many people with Ph.D.'s who can't think their way out of a wet paper bag, let along think outside of any box .

There's another problem that hasn't seemed to have come up yet, and that is what, exactly, a Ph.D. stands for. There is, really, very little uniformity in it.

Marc

Let us not belittle those who have surpassed our education levels and earned their PhDs. True, the school of hard knocks is a great teacher but that school in the main works poorly on job resumes!

Below letter to ed by me may be of parochial interet to you and some of the other PhD comments site readers just now. I have to get moving, worked all weekend, today is my day to work on federal and state income taxes.

George Singleton

PESHAWAR FRONTIER POST (a daily)

Today is:
February 01 , 2007 Thursday 12 Muharramul Haram, 1428 A.H.

George L. Singleton
USA
GSingle556@aol.com

Mr. Noorullah Khan Khattak of Karak wrote in part in his January 30, 2007, letter to the editor of the Peshawar FRONTIER POST: "As Iran has learnt during its painful journey, the South must carve out its own defense, political and cultural world. Keeping the rude and risqué comments of the boastful western elites, how long our enlightened intelligentsia would kid itself that it can integrate into west-controlled international system? This is the time to reconsider our belonging and regional commonality."

Iran today is the worst example of all theocratic nation states. After 80% of the former Iranian Parliament were disqualified from seeking reelection, being found by the ruling mullahs to be "too moderate", just last week over 150 newly elected members of the new Iranian Parliament demonstrated against the new, irrational and hate mongering President of Iran, Mr. Mahmood Ahmadinejad.

At issue is not a simple difference of religion and culture, as Mr. Khattak supposes. At issue is the never will be resolved struggle between warring factions of Islam which began after the death of Muhammad (pbuh), and the subsequent throughout recorded history convoluted disregard for the connectivity of the Judaic and Christian traditions and faiths without which there would not be any form of Islam today.

No, there is no such thing as a violence "gene." But their is taugt and learned institutional religious intolerance and violent bloodshed both among and between various Muslim sects and then against all non-Muslim religions. I for one am a devout Christian who is willing to agree to disagree for us to coexist. A similar tolerant local and world religious view has to exist in Iran, Pakistan, and elsewhere where you have a Muslim majority, no matter what the variance of sects, and in my view can only exist with better, free, non-religious public education throughout all of Iran, Pakistan and the so-called Muslim world.

Turkey is a sectarian nation with a tolerant governmental structure. Turkey's future membership in the European Union is inevitable and will in my view as a former New York City international banker happen.

I, for one, am otherwise fed up with people looking to take offense at any non-Muslims views and comments, while we non-Muslims are abused daily, officially and unofficially by such letter writing hate mongers.

[marct]

Hi George,

Let us not belittle those who have surpassed our education levels and earned their PhDs. True, the school of hard knocks is a great teacher but that school in the main works poorly on job resumes!

BA Sociology and Comparative Religion,
MA Canadian Studies (Cultural Studies concentration)
Ph.D. Sociology (Social Anthropology)

Just an FYI

Marc

[sullygoarmy]

Hey All,
New guy to the forum. Former AST member back in 2004 and currently working for JCISFA where we look at security force assistance issues daily. Stationed at Fort Leavenworth and a recent CGSC grad while it was under LTG Petraeus.

The thing I like about Ricks' article is that we're bringing in what many consider the best of the best on COIN and SFA. Most guys know that Kilcullen's work is widely floated around military schoolhouses as a framework for good COIN principles from Leavenworth to Knox. I think using him as an asset, adds a valuable tool to the General's kit bag.

Glad that I found the SWJ website and probably wouldn't have done so had Ricks not mentioned it in his article. Looking forward to the discussion!

[George L. Singleton]

Hi George,



BA Sociology and Comparative Religion,
MA Canadian Studies (Cultural Studies concentration)
Ph.D. Sociology (Social Anthropology)

Just an FYI

Marc

One of our still in graduate school daughters has double undergraduate majors in Spanish and Sociology (statistics side of same). Your degrees and academic focus sound good and logical to me.

Cheers,
George Singleton

[Bullmoose Bailey]

Hi George,



BA Sociology and Comparative Religion,
MA Canadian Studies (Cultural Studies concentration)
Ph.D. Sociology (Social Anthropology)

Just an FYI

Marc

Very good exchanges here.

Friends, do not be drawn into the MSM trap of saying "ooh lookey those dumb soldiers got them some edjumacating ", this is really just demeaning to all military professionals.

Actually the US Army expects all its leaders NCOs & Officers to be college educated eventually, on paper, I know of no other institution that forces so much learning.

Holding a PhD is pretty much so normal in the Army that it only guarantees commissioning as a 1LT typically today.

Although my PhD is in Comparative World Religions it is beneficial to my present work in Iraq. So the group the title of this thread addresses is much larger than might be expected. PhDs are not just white jackets & staff advisers. Some of them are actively leading troops like me.

Most importantly, our Army puts a priority on lifelong learning. We should be proud.

[emjayinc]

Piled higher and deeper? Actually, a good point in modern times,when degree granting institutions can be accredited by any Tom, Dick or Harry who wants to do so. However, in the case of these Ph.D officers, I'm sure they all got theirs from top rank universities.

[Bill Moore]

Wm,

You are one of the few that implies that our interagency process is functional. They still teach us about the country team, and I have it seen it work well for missions in Liberia, Senegal, Philippines, etc.; however, there was no country team in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is a "huge" difference in scale from advising a government, to standing one up; advising a gov on economic models, to standing up a working model, etc.

The State Department (and this is only one agency) still can't mobilize enough resources to perform their functions in Iraq. The military is the only organization in the U.S. government that is robust enough to execute the DIME/MIDLIFE tasks in a situation like this. It would be worthwhile for me to see what the military's role was in post war Japan and Germany for reference.

If we are going to take those missions on, then I would argue we need a cadre of PhD (forget the PhD, we guys and gals educated on how to do this) advisors to enable us to perform these functions at an acceptable level.

Obviously State needs more funding, but just throwing money at the problem won't solve the problem, it will also require a significant culture change. Second, do we want to throw that much money at State for this type of venture? If we make that investment, it would imply we're signing up for a few more regime changes down the road. I don't think that is cost effective. The military will always provide the bulk of the doers in hostile situations.

By no means am I taking taking anything away from the country team, I seen it function well when the "right" personalties were in place.

We have all seen the result of what happens when the military waits for an alleged capability. I'm not faulting State, I understand some of the beltway politics that led to this. None the less, I think we need this capability in the military.

[marct]

Hi Bill,

The military is the only organization in the U.S. government that is robust enough to execute the DIME/MIDLIFE tasks in a situation like this. It would be worthwhile for me to see what the military's role was in post war Japan and Germany for reference.

I think that one of the underlying problems goes back to a perception that derive from the nation state model and the functional differentiation between "politics", "military", "economics", etc.

First off, most nation states have developed bureaucracies around these functional areas which tend to produce institutional mindsets that are rather narrowly focused. Increasingly, nation support / building activities and humanitarian protection actions (e.g. Darfur, etc.) in partial states require a totally integrated approach that is at odds with any of the functionally defined institutions.

Second, there appears to be a very poor definition, including debate, on what the actual missions are. Part of this stems from the functional splitting, but some of it also stems from the requirement to achieve some form of international consensus on the action. Another part appears to stem from a reluctance to state in unequivocal form a desired end state for the action in a flexible enough form that the mission can adapt to changing conditions. For example, the public "spinb" on the end state of OIF was that there would be a popular uprising into a democratic state - n debate, and not much flexibility either.

If we are going to take those missions on, then I would argue we need a cadre of PhD (forget the PhD, we guys and gals educated on how to do this) advisors to enable us to perform these functions at an acceptable level.

...None the less, I think we need this capability in the military.

While I don't think we should conflate PhD with experience (I think both would be useful), I do agree that it is important a) to have the capability in the military and b) to us that capability in the initial mission definition stages as well as in the operational planning stages.

Marc

[wm]

Wm,

You are one of the few that implies that our interagency process is functional. They still teach us about the country team, and I have it seen it work well for missions in Liberia, Senegal, Philippines, etc.; however, there was no country team in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is a "huge" difference in scale from advising a government, to standing one up; advising a gov on economic models, to standing up a working model, etc.

The State Department (and this is only one agency) still can't mobilize enough resources to perform their functions in Iraq. The military is the only organization in the U.S. government that is robust enough to execute the DIME/MIDLIFE tasks in a situation like this. It would be worthwhile for me to see what the military's role was in post war Japan and Germany for reference.

If we are going to take those missions on, then I would argue we need a cadre of PhD (forget the PhD, we guys and gals educated on how to do this) advisors to enable us to perform these functions at an acceptable level.

Obviously State needs more funding, but just throwing money at the problem won't solve the problem, it will also require a significant culture change. Second, do we want to throw that much money at State for this type of venture? If we make that investment, it would imply we're signing up for a few more regime changes down the road. I don't think that is cost effective. The military will always provide the bulk of the doers in hostile situations.

By no means am I taking taking anything away from the country team, I seen it function well when the "right" personalties were in place.

We have all seen the result of what happens when the military waits for an alleged capability. I'm not faulting State, I understand some of the beltway politics that led to this. None the less, I think we need this capability in the military.

Bill,
I do not believe I implied the country team was still functioning. I said that it seemed it was no longer in use and suggested that we ought to revitalize it. I also suggest that we need to do a much better job of planning post-hostilities activities before we ever get around to crossing the old line of departure.
As the only real "world" power left, America has only one real reason for engaging in war--to establish a better state of peace. To that end we need to make sure that our planning and execution are designed to facilitate that state. Anything less coming from the workld's leading civilized demnocracy is just unacceptable

[John T. Fishel]

The whole interagency process, both in Washington and in the field at the Country team level, is dependent on the quality of leadership being exercised. It also depends on the resources made available. Planning for post-war Germany and Japan actually began in 1942 concurrent with the fielding of Civil Affairs units. Although it was George Marshall's intention to transfer them lock, stock, and barrel to DOS, that never happened and the capability to stand up governments remained in the military, where it still resides. Unfortunately, the AC Civil Affairs is tiny while the RC is far smaller than we need. That said, planning for Phase IV, as stated by none other than Tommy Franks in his memoir, AMERICAN SOLDIER, was something that was left to USD Policy which thought that "hope [really was] a method."

Summary statement: although the military has more of the necessary assets than any other agency, it is both short handed and fails to use what it has as well as it should.

[selil]

Piled higher and deeper? Actually, a good point in modern times,when degree granting institutions can be accredited by any Tom, Dick or Harry who wants to do so. However, in the case of these Ph.D officers, I'm sure they all got theirs from top rank universities.

I'd like to know where you get that just anybody can accredit a degree granting institution. The national and regional accrediting authorities like North Central are far from just anybody. There are groups who give bogus degrees but those are ferreted out rather quickly.

[Stan]

Greetings WM !

Long ago and far away in the Land of Ahs (the marketing campaign used by the Kansas department of tourism when I lived there in the mid 80s), the Army taught me during CGSC about a thing called the "country team." I guess that hummer is passé now.
One would think that DoD and DoS should be joined at the hip throughout the planning and execution process whenever the US gets ready to involve itself in some OCONUS adventure. Likewise, one would think that a similar relationship would exist between DoD and DHS for a CONUS-focused operation.
It is not clear to me that we need a bunch of Ph.D's in uniform to solve the problem in Iraq.

Having served in 9 embassies in various capacities I can tell you that the CT is a good example why DoD and DoS will never be joined at the hip. There were indeed folks with PhDs and some who even thought they were PhD material.

That meant precious little during civil wars and upheavals. It would be that very same PhD (know to some as JJJ) who sent my boss on a hopeless mission only to later disregard factual reporting. JJJ would later show to have his passport stamped crossing the Rwandan border, and ask "Tom, what's that smell?" "That would be death Jon" Tom replied. JJJ never returned on our watch

DoD and DHS had difficulties, but far less than with State. Most surrounded personnel. The majority of the NCOs are "on loan" and now outside of their environment and PMOS. So if DHS was trying to retain and at times reward her personnel, I didn't see it.

Regards, Stan