Culture battle: Selective use of history should not be used to justify the status quo

[jonSlack]

Culture battle: Selective use of history should not be used to justify the status quo by COL. Henry J. Foresman JR. in Armed Forces Journal.

Video teleconferences, meetings and PowerPoint presentations are how decisions are made in the Pentagon. No decision is made without countless hours spent making slides by "action officers" and countless revisions by those above them. No decision is made until all the general officers are on board. No decision is made without total agreement. Staffing actions are routinely sent back to the drawing board because some general has a better idea, further slowing a process that already moves at a snail's pace. The system is not designed for quick decisions, as all decisions must work their way through a vast bureaucracy before the ultimate decision can be made. Decisions are made in a system designed for an Army at peace, not an Army at war.

As I have mentioned, transformation is more than organizational change — it is a change to how we think of war. The greatest threats to transformation are those who would turn back the hands of time to an earlier day when the Army would concentrate on fighting major combat operations or grand wars and ignore the rest.

Wars of the 21st century will not be state-on-state but rather will involve states taking on organizations and groups that share a common ideology, culture and outlook and to whom the state, and state boundaries, mean nothing. They will wage their wars, holy or otherwise, wherever they must so that they can achieve their goal, whether it be greater Islam or otherwise. They do not wear the uniforms of a state, nor do they fight in the same manner as conventional armies. The wars of the 21st century will not be fought on the open plains of Europe or in vast sands of Middle East. They will be fought in the urban sprawl of our increasingly urban planet. They will be battles for the hearts and minds of a local populace where the U.S. and the Army will be seen as the invader and occupier and not as the liberator.

[Tom Odom]

I recently reviewed a briefing prepared by the Center of Military History, which set forth a case for preserving the status quo of current Army organizations. What struck me was the selective use of history to argue the case for preserving the current organizational hierarchy in the Army — that is, divisions, corps and armies. The claim behind the argument is these are the traditional organizations of the Army. To a point, they are correct; these are the organizations that the current Army is comfortable with, but they are organizations that evolved during a much different time: World War I. These organizations represent the high-water mark of the Army and its operations in World War II — in the European theater. Divisions, corps and armies are organizations for fighting grand wars on the scale of World War II. Preserving these organizations reflects the myopic nature of how the Army views its history.

From the same excellent article. Note of course that transformation --originally billed as eliminating much of the divisional and corps structure in favor of modular brigades--has morphed into a preserve the division and corps structures through creeping additions. How much of that has to do with culture and how much is proponent rice bowl thinking coupled to keeping GO slots is hard to say. Of course, that too is a cultural issue.

Thanks, Jon!

Tom

[Ski]

I was involved in this process with the ARNG, and from what I was told by some of the floks at CMH, the AC had massive greybeard pressure to keep the lineage as static as possible.

I'd add that funding lines played a large role in how this developed. If OPTEMPO funds were sent to the BCT Commander directly instead of flowing through the MACOM-CORPS-DIV levels, it would have nutured some of the CG's power and control of the BCT's.

From the same excellent article. Note of course that transformation --originally billed as eliminating much of the divisional and corps structure in favor of modular brigades--has morphed into a preserve the division and corps structures through creeping additions. How much of that has to do with culture and how much is proponent rice bowl thinking coupled to keeping GO slots is hard to say. Of course, that too is a cultural issue.

Thanks, Jon!

Tom

[marct]

I hink there are some very insightful comments in this piece.

The 21st-century battlefield may look more like the American frontier and have more in common with the tribal wars of the Middle Ages, but fought with the most lethal and modern weapons at the disposal of our adversaries. The war will come to our homeland again.

I agree more with the second than the first analogy. The warfare along the American frontier was always controlled, to some degree, by a belief in manifest destiny and, at its root, an expanding population and land grab. While the technological differences and style of warfare may be similar, I don't see, for example, the US colonizing Somalia. This renders many of the geopolitical strategies used on the American frontier null and void - e.g. creation of forts or mining / agricultural settlements as the basis for future towns and the destruction of the environment that supported First nations economies and livelihood (i.e. slaughtering the buffalo herds, etc.).

I'm really not sure what he means by "tribal wars of the Middle Ages" either. Which ones? If we are looking at Europe as the model, then most of them operated within the same overarching weltanshauung - i.e. dominated by the Roman Catholic church. The few that weren't were examples of the Church supporting crusades of one form or another (e.g. the Thuringian crusade of the 10th century, the Albigensian Crusade, the civil war in Denmark which converted it to a Christian kingdom).

If we leave these particular overtly religious examples aside, then most of the rest were dynastic wars with an implicit religious assumption (i.e. who is the true God appointed ruler) and, again, we have the imperative to grab chunks of land and population. The only other form that we really have running around is the constant fueding / warfare that never really resolves itself (think about the Scots border raids or Ireland ca 9th-16th centuries).

As an Army, we must be expeditionary and capable of quickly responding to the changing needs of our nation. To fight the wars of the 21st century, we require the support of the people of our nation. Since the end of World War II, American political leaders have determined that they do not need declarations of war before sending our armed forces into harm's way. There was a time when I believed a declaration of war was a nicety that had more in common with the 18th century, when our Constitution was written, than the 21st century. As I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate the wisdom of our founding leaders who insisted that the Congress would have the power to declare war. The act of the president asking Congress to declare war, and then Congress declaring war, serves to bind the people of the nation behind the actions being undertaken by the armed forces. Without a declaration of war, without the support of the people, without involving the whole fabric of society in the undertaking of war, prolonged military operations in support of our national interest are bound to fail.

I think the key fault in this statement, at least from my perspective, is that phrase "national interest". For the past 100+ years, most warfare has been based on conflict between coalitions not individual nation states. This may be in the form of overt conflict such as WW I and WW II,or covert conflict (i.e. which coalition supports which side in a civil war or a single state vs. state conflict).

How these coalitions are constructed, i.e. their organizational form, has become increasingly important. For example, the old Soviet "alliance" was a pretty straight forward dominance model - Russia speaks and the Warsaw pact does. In this case, there was a clear dominance of one "national interest". This is not the model that operates in the current Western alliances, either the implicit Anglo Culture alliance (the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) or of NATO. In these alliances, the justifications for war are based on either ideology or group security (yes, I know that economics plays a major role - it just doesn't "sell" at the symbolic level). While there are hegemons ("superpowers" if you prefer the less overtly Marxist term ) who dominate these alliances (first Britain then the US), these hegemons have rarely had a complete dominance of the other nations in the alliance and, as such, individual "national interests, while important, have not dominated the alliance. BTW,think back to Macciavelli and the differences between a "first amongst equals" power structure and a "god king" power structure.

The US may well have decided to move towards assumption of unilateral declarations of war in the "national interest", but where does that leave the other nations in their alliances? Furthermore, I would point out that such a move also inherently breaks the implied social contract of the alliance structure (a key point for Canadians in the debate over the war in Iraq - it's why we, as a country, aren't there despite what many of us as individuals may wish).

All of this is why I say that the phrase "national interest" is problematic. Now for some more details....

First, what is the US national interest? This is not clearly spelled out in operational, as opposed to rhetorical, terms. Many nations, including Canada, are, IMO, quite correct in being leery of such rhetorical terms since we have been on the receiving end of too many bad deals (for a current example, think about the soft wood lumber fiasco / trade war that has been dragging on for over a decade).

Second, what actions by the US do we (i.e. everyone else in the world) see as proof that the US actually has an ideological position other than economic opportunism? For example, the claim of possession of WMDs was used as a causus belli for invading Iraq, but the demonstrated proof of the possession of WMDs in the case of North Korea is seen by many as the US backing off and trying to buy them off. Where is the consistency of logic in this and, perhaps more importantly, what does it say about the reputation of the US for being true to its word? If Canada were invaded, would the US only come to our aid if the invader was a non-nuclear power?

My point behind raising this is not to insult anyone but, rather, to point out a glaring flaw that I see in the article that the author notes at one level of organization but not at the higher level of international relations (actually of alliances).

Marc

[Steve Blair]

I took his reference to the American frontier from a more operational standpoint (in terms of small outposts of troops scattered here and there in attempts to intercept the enemy or raid out into their territory) than I did in geopolitical terms. Of course, the Frontier Army's one of my pet rocks, so that was just the jump my mind made.

I tend to (perhaps wrongly) tune out some of the "national interest" white noise in articles like this, because I tend to take their meaning to be (in short) "don't commit troops without public backing and clear goals." In other words, I don't think anyone really knows at the operational level what "national interest" is; it's become something of a political handball or cop-out over the years. A hazy mirage people can conjure up to justify something, or to complain that proper homage wasn't paid to the mirage when things go wrong.

Just my pre-coffee $.02. It was an interesting article, though. Personally, I'd like to see a return to a regimental system....

[marct]

Hi Steve,

I took his reference to the American frontier from a more operational standpoint (in terms of small outposts of troops scattered here and there in attempts to intercept the enemy or raid out into their territory) than I did in geopolitical terms.

I am about 99% sure he meant it that way as well . I do think, however, that the geo-politics becomes crucial when we have such different situations. At the level of immediate operations the analogy is good, but the long term resolution is, however, wildly different.

I tend to (perhaps wrongly) tune out some of the "national interest" white noise in articles like this, because I tend to take their meaning to be (in short) "don't commit troops without public backing and clear goals." In other words, I don't think anyone really knows at the operational level what "national interest" is; it's become something of a political handball or cop-out over the years. A hazy mirage people can conjure up to justify something, or to complain that proper homage wasn't paid to the mirage when things go wrong.

That's a good point, and I suspect that many Americans do the same sort of tuning out - actually, I suspect there is an unconscious substitution of individual ideals of the "national interest" in place of a stated national interest. When there is a clear statement, and OIF is a good example of one - the "democracy rhetoric", it catches with people as a worthy goal.

Just my pre-coffee $.02. It was an interesting article, though. Personally, I'd like to see a return to a regimental system....

I think that would be great - then again, we have one .

Marc

[John T. Fishel]

Hi Marc--

It was Lord Palmerston as PM or Foreign Secretary (I forget which - believe he served in both offices) to whom is attributed, "England has no permanent enemies or friends (or is it the reverse?), she only has permanent interests."

A perusal of the US National Security Strategies since 1987 (when they were mandated by Congress to be published) and even earlier in NSC 68 identifies a series of vital national interests of the US. As Palmerston said of the UK, these seem to be quite permanent and, however difficult it is to sort them out of the mush of spin and propaganda, important.

Cheers

JohnT

[wm]

Foresman's articles has much to recommend it. However, I suspect that its pleas will fall on many deaf ears for a number of reasons. The following quotation, for example, only gets to part of the story.

The Air-Land Battle in its day served another important purpose. It was a cathartic document that allowed the Army to rid itself of the demons of Vietnam, to rid the Army of all mention of counterinsurgency operations, to focus on major combat operations and to ignore the rest.

While I acknowledge the cathartic value of Air-Land Battle doctrine, we should not forget that it also allowed the Army to justify a lot of very big spending initiatives--things like the Abrams and the Bradley and a huge investment in attack aircraft for dep strikes against the enemy's follow-on echelons. Performing effective transformation includes the need to heed Eisenhower's admonition about the military-industrial complex.

If we truly want to succeed in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we must embrace a future that is a radical break with our past. Merely changing our organizational structure is not sufficient. We must be willing to break with our past as we execute in the present and prepare for the future.

This break will require that the military move away from the "metrics" based world that was forced upon it by folks like Robert MacNamara. Success in a low level conflict is defined much more qualitatively than quantitively. Our future success will also require that the country review its grand strategy for defense. I know that many members of this group have little use for Edward Luttwak. However, I think that a perusal of his Grand Stategy of the Roman Empire might be in order. Our current defense strategy to keep the barbarians at bay by fighting them well forward of the homeland smacks of the Roman limes defensive concept. This strategy didn't work over the long haul then. By the end of the 5th Century AD, Roman had been sacked several times. I do not believe it will work any better today. And my reasons for saying so are identified in the following quotation from Foresman.

Paradigm is an overused word in the military. It is one of those terms that are trotted out whenever one wishes to convince a skeptical audience that an idea is not just the repackaging of an old one. The Army truly needs a change in thinking. Wars of the future are going to be more like the campaigns on the 19th-century American frontier and less like World War II. The Army is going to have to adapt to a new world order in which our enemies will choose not to fight us conventionally but in a manner of their choosing. In the past, our doctrine stressed getting inside the decision cycle of the enemy. Now, the enemy knows it can get inside our decision cycle. It can strike when and where it pleases and knows that our response will be predictable. Although our actions may be justifiable, words will not compensate for the images speeding through the virtually connected world.

The 3rd Century barbarians showed enough agility and acumen to figure out the Roman strategy defensive and get around it. As Foresman notes, our current foes have the same, or better, abilities in this regard. (MarcT, I think the tribal wars Foresman refers to in a later restatement of the idea quoted below, are those of the early Middle Ages --e.g., Ostrogoth vs. Visigoth, Vandals vs. Gepids, etc, etc, etc.)

While this next quotation is true, I think there is another danger.

As I have mentioned, transformation is more than organizational change — it is a change to how we think of war. The greatest threats to transformation are those who would turn back the hands of time to an earlier day when the Army would concentrate on fighting major combat operations or grand wars and ignore the rest.

This other danger is that we do not look too far back in time. I suspect that the real lessons we need to learn are those of the world when there was, by and large, only one major power dominating the world stage. That would be the Roman Empire in the first few centuries AD and perhaps the British Empire in the latter half of the 19th Century.

[Culpeper]

Just my pre-coffee $.02. It was an interesting article, though. Personally, I'd like to see a return to a regimental system....

Could you or anyone else expand on a "regimental system"? Thanks.

[jcustis]

I'll jump on that and say what SB was probably referring to is the Brit tradition of families serving in the same Regiment through multiple generations, as well as the career progression where a guy might leave the Regiment for a tour elsewhere, but would always return home to the same Regiment.

I wish we could achieve something like that too.

[Steve Blair]

I'll jump on that and say what SB was probably referring to is the Brit tradition of families serving in the same Regiment through multiple generations, as well as the career progression where a guy might leave the Regiment for a tour elsewhere, but would always return home to the same Regiment.

I wish we could achieve something like that too.

I was also referring to the Old Army system where the regiment was the largest organized unit maintained in peacetime. Officers tended to stay within their own regiments for some years, and each developed its own personality and methods for preserving doctrine and tradition.

Like all systems, this did have some problems, but I feel that in most practical cases the good outweighed the bad. Battalions were ad hoc field organizations, as were squadrons, and not part of the regular organization.

I don't think we'll see something like this again, which is to my mind a real loss. Those old regiments had esprit de corps that you don't find today in many units.

[Ken White]

Dave posted this in his "More from the AFJ" entry on the SWJ Blog.

COL Foresman neatly nails several critical items, ending with:

"The Army is transforming. In doing so, it must be willing not only to look to the past to shape how it is organized, but also to be willing to break with the past and forge new paths. This requires not only an adaptive Army but also a military of flexible and intellectually adaptive leaders. Whether transformation succeeds or fails will not be determined by how the Army is organized but, rather, how the leaders employ their forces and whether they are successful. That is the unanswered question — whether the Army can make a break with its past and the legacies of World War II to fight the wars of the 21st century."

"Culture battle."

[Norfolk]

but as Colonel Foresman says, the entire culture of the Army must be transformed, especially at the General Officer level, and no-one seems to know how to do that in practice, not even Colonel Foresman himself. To be honest though, I doubt that the service culture was even fully adapted to fighting an opponent the likes of the Wehrmacht, although DePuy and Starry and their ilk did a good job (with Abrams' full force behind them until his premature death) of reinvigorating if not quite fully reforming, the Army to face the Soviets. The Army may not be as badly off as it was in the 1970's, but in the 1970's it had some top generals who were going close to all-out to change things, and we don't really have that right now, although if many of the field-grade officers and captains that the Army has right now make it to 3- and 4-star rank over the next 15-20 years, that might change, if they don't leave first.

I am very uncomfortable with Colonel Foresman's apparent dismissal of large-scale conventional wars as something that the Army is likely to face in the foreseeable future; he may well be right, but if one occurrs anyway, an Army seeking to reorient itself towards Stability Support Operations may be caught in a difficult position. But he's still right, that the Army needs to prepare itself for SSO in particular and small wars in general. Probably the best compromise for this would be to have a heavy corps (III Corps) reserved (where possible) dedicated to large-scale, high-intensity land campaigns, and a couple of corps (I and XVIII) dedicated (along with thew Marines) to small wars and especially SSO. But that would only be possible after Iraq is stabilized and more or less able to fend for itself, and that's going to be a very long time.

It seems to me that Foresman's creative thinkers, the peole who can think and learn by themselves, are usually only tolerated and allowed to make big changes when the service culture has dug a hole so deep that even the people at the top can't see out of it anymore (Ridgeway in Korea, Abrams in Vietnam and just afterwards, DePuy in the '70s, Petraeus now). And when the people at the top are finally able to see enough daylight, they tend to replace those many of same creative thinkers with cookie-cutter careerists and afraid-to-rock the boat "can-do" followers. Foresman's right, but there's still no way to really make those changes he identifies as necessary and to make them stick.

[Rob Thornton]

“The Army, like all military organizations, is defined by its culture, and the culture is defined by the history. Its culture has been defined by its overwhelming success in World War II and shaped by a perceived history of fighting grand wars. Although the culture is consistent with the perceived history, the reality is the Army has been involved in stability and support operations, not grand wars, for almost 80 percent of its existence.”

I liked the introduction – it sets the tone for introspection and puts us on the path to ask “why” we are who we are. Interesting point about the 80/20 ratio – this in itself is a question – if the ratio tells us otherwise – why is the culture the way it is? What is it about that 20% that fixes the culture within it? There is something to perceived consequences being easier to articulate, existential threats and maybe even the time spent training which fills in the cracks surrounding the times we’ve gone to war. There are probably more reasons (some of them external for sure), but if we want to understand why our default position is the 20% we have to consider them all.

“å Our junior leaders must understand We are fighting an enemy who has the advantage of interior and exterior lines — “the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy.” the nation’s goals, the environment in which they operate and how they are linked.
å The conflict requires the application of diplomatic (political), military, economic and informational elements of power by leaders at all levels.
å Whether we have it right is not immediately apparent; it is determined over time.”

From his list of points I pulled three. The first was one I’d not heard expressed this way -with the linkage to the axiom. This does not only offer an understanding of how the enemy sees his lines of operation, but provides insight on how to deny the enemy that line of operation by establishing our own.

The second reminds me of what DR. Kilcullen said about linking the narrative with our actions – also brought up in the recent piece on Strategic communications. That is – if possible – think before you act, and when possible link the action with the narrative vs. trying to invent a narrative to explain the option.

The third has to with willingness to accept risk, but with the caveat of understanding what is at risk and being able to adjust course to fulfill the objective

-All three very useful points.

“Whether transformation succeeds or fails will not be determined by how the Army is organized but, rather, how the leaders employ their forces and whether they are successful. That is the unanswered question — whether the Army can make a break with its past and the legacies of World War II to fight the wars of the 21st century.”

I don’t know if I agree with breaking from the past in general (and he may not have meant it that way) – there is a great deal to learn from it. I will sign up for understanding the past so when its bias exerts influence on me that steers me off course – I can correct for it. What I want to see are leaders who can make the best possible transition from one type of war to another so that when the nation calls we can answer. I like what the CSA said recently about looking for balance – we’ll achieve that through leaders who can function well wherever they are at, and with the means at hand – we’ll succeed where our enemies fail if we can do that faster and better then they can – that I believe is what wars call for – and it may be even more critical in the future, but perhaps only because the past is more certain.

COL Foresman has again provided us with much to consider as we make difficult choices where often there are no clear winners – but his advice about investing in leadership is without a doubt one which enables us to make the most of our choices no matter if they are particularly right, or particularly wrong – leadership will provide a way forward.

Best regards, Rob