Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort

[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 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.

LOLOL Yeah, that's true. Still and all, you, loose with a G in Estonia... Man, I don't now if I want that on my conscience!

Actually, I did get to apply a lot of my Ph.D. research right after I graduated (one of the few in my cohort who did). As to "putting the boots on", well, if Rob gets those CSTs going I'd be happy to be involved in that. Letting me loose in Iraq or Afghanistan with a weapon in hand might, I suspect, be a bad idea, even if my brothe-in-law would laugh himself silly .

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 !

Probably . And I probably wouldn't be an out of shape academic, either!!

Marc

[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!

[Jimbo]

Mike,

It is freezing cold hear in D.C., but it beats the automated planning tools class. I am having too much fun on this inter-agency thing. Your CGSC and fellow 6 month hold classmate.

Jim McD

[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

[Bill Moore]

Marc,

Exactly, and I'll borrow a concept I saw on a discussion thread on the Global Guerrilla site, where the commentor made reference to the "Red Queen" hypothesis, which is in short is, "for an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with". Since the author was obviously better educated than I was, I couldn't follow it all, but he appeared to be making parallels to organizations as biosystems. The thoughts that I developed off that was that networked organizations (if they are organizations) adapt on an open feedback system. To me that means they adapt to changes "outside" of their organization. Bureaucratic organizations adapt based on input from within their organization, thus they actually be living in a parallel reality that isn't reality at all. I think you touch upon this point when you address the State Department, it is organized to deal with other nations, not non-state actors, and I have seen little change (as an outsider, beyond words and concepts) that are they adapting to this new player in the global arena. I think the State Department is much more bureaucratic than the military. They have several highly educated employees who are company men, but very few intellectuals capable of accepting and adapting input from outside their closed feedback loop. Their leadership, for the most part, wants to protect the status quo. Read the "Ugly American" and you'll see things haven't changed that much. Unlike the State Department, the CIA, Commerce, and assorted other agencies, the military must achieve results, and is far and away the nation's leader (outside of niche industries) for change. We have wars and conflicts to win, we can't wait on the rest of the government to catch up. We need educated, experienced, and men and women with the courage to be objective enough to understand the true cause and effect nature of the conflict, and not blindly rely on doctrine. PhD is a misnomer, but we should encourage our officers and select NCOs to pursue this type of liberal education (not liberal politics, don't confuse the two). More courses should be made available for free on-line, etc. When I was trying to stand up a local government in a region in Iraq I sure as heck which I had that knowledge at my finger tips.

I'll drag part of this conversation/thread into the interagency section eventually, because I want to pursue organization structure and roles in more depth. However, I don't think we strayed too far off course from the underlying issue of this thread, which is PhD's in the military. I think I am building a case on why we need them.

[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.