LTC John Nagl: collection

[Jedburgh]

planning for retirement: absolutely if you get the opportunity

Get the opportunity? With a minimum of 20 years active service required to meet eligibility for retirement, the only thing stopping opportunity is the individual himself. "I didn't have a chance to plan" translates to personal fiscal irresponsibility. Especially these days, since the military now throws so many plans in the troops' faces on a continual basis. I came from nowhere and started with nothing, and have worked full-time since I was 14 just to survive - I don't have much sympathy for people who claim lack of opportunity.

No in that retirement packages that reflect age 40 or so are not "greed driven" but reflect the wear and tear of military service. Using language that infers such plays into the hands of folks like Mr. Chu, who likes to dismiss disabilities as normal aging.

Tom, I did not state that retirement packages were "greed driven". What I was trying to say was that I viewed a demand for the government to pay a 40-something (non-disabled) military retiree enough to permit him to sit on his ass all day long in front of the TV or in a fishing boat without a need to work for the next 40+ years of his life was greedy and parasitic. I think the basic retirement package is a pretty good deal, that just needs better tweaking to adjust for cost-of-living and inflation.

And normal retirement and retiring with a disability are two very different things. Sure, I've lost some hearing, and have a bit of pain once in a while from an incident in service, but essentially I am much more healthy and fit than my civilian peers in the same age group. This despite, or because of, having spent much of my career in units that forced us to fall out of aircraft and hump loads over truly lovely terrain. Ultimately, having had a couple of my close friends and many people I've worked with over the years end up truly disabled, I would feel like an ugrateful parasite if I uttered a word about asking for additional "disability" for any minor complaint. Perhaps it is unfair of me to state my personal perception in a comprehensive manner that way.

....No in that when you cite Darwin's law for military retirees, just pause a minute and look at other agency retirement packages, especially those packages given to political appointees who make a limited time gate and draw benefiits.....

Tom, the largesse drawn by certain types of political appointees is something that is a point of contention with a lot of people. Definitely unjustified - almost without exception. In a slightly smaller scale it equates to the almost obscene departure packages received by some execs from struggling companies - even when they are let go for incompetent leadership. In those cases corporate shareholders tend to make more noise than does the American public for those similar political packages that you are referring to. But when you compare (non-disability/medical) military retirement, and the age of that retirement with damn near any plan in the private sector, we are very lucky indeed. This isn't to say that we don't earn it, but I'm just not one to feel entitled to anything.

Anyway, in the end, I don't see where I said anything that should be construed as "offering a target" for cuts in benefits. I believe that I did state that military retirement is not something you can survive on with no other source of income. But I hold to the other half of that view in that I strongly believe that anyone with half a brain should be well enough set-up after 20 or more years in the military to do well in civilian life. The vast majority do. We damn sure should not have our benefits cut, and, as Stan implied, there should be a better system for keeping them in line with real inflation. But as a taxpayer I don't think I should fund someone to sit at home for the entire latter of half of their life in what would be essentially welfare. This would only increase the prevalence of those who squeeze through 20 years or more of personal fiscal irresponsibility by having the military look after him (like the CSM living above his means whose BC covers for bouncing checks), and then retire with a feeling of entitlement to everything the state will give him to continue a life of parasitic bliss.

[Uboat509]

My wife worked for Tricare for a couple of years and saw a lot of retirees. Her experience was that a lot of guys retired not realizing that SFC/MSG/SGM really doesn't mean a whole lot to employers in industries not dominated by the military. She saw a lot of guys who retired with some rank who found themselves doing menial jobs for a lot less money because they had no degree and a job that did not translate well to the civilian world. We do get some preparation for the civilian world but I still don't think a lot of guys realize how different it is.

SFC W

[selil]

I had a retired airforce G1 and two retired 0-6's working for little ol' me at one time. We had fun. Both of my bosses were retired Army 0-6's. No issues and would hire or work for them in a second. My secretary was a retired Airforce E-9 and other than his proclivity to chase skirts (he had a child born from different women in every decade since the 60's) he was the best back up an executive in the telecom industry could have. I guess some military members have a hard time moving to the civillian world (my team was 8 military 135 civillians) but I haven't seen it. Now in the military contracting world... Let me tell you those retired officers can't figure out they are RETIRED...

[120mm]

I have a retired Army O-6 "working" with me right now, that I'd like to shoot in the head.

He still thinks he's an Army O-6 and does nothing but bitch, despite pulling down a decent paycheck, provided he does absolutely nothing.

[MattC86]

I finally got around to reading "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife," (took me attending a foreign university to get a library that carried it) and after reading it, I wondered a lot about organizational culture and the inherent proclivity an institution may have for specific tasks, as opposed to institutional difficulties with others.

First, a quick aside - I know a lot of changing for the better is going on in the services, but when the guys who clearly articulate the changes (some radical, some not so much) that need to occur, like Hammes and Nagl, have joined the Cranes and Krepineviches of recent years in adding "(ret.)" to their surnames, it makes you wonder just how much effective change is going on. Anyway, back to my point.

The first post I made on SWC concerned the Army's reverting to the big war focus after Vietnam in all phases, from procurement (Abrams, Apache, Blackhawk, Bradley, MLRS) to doctrine (AirLand Battle) and scoffed at the idea that the services would do it again when commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan reduced - whenever that is. I was alarmed when Tom and others said they're worried by some of what they've seen and heard. I didn't really understand how this could be. After all, the Soviet threat doesn't exist, and a land war with the Chinese is unthinkable in the near future.

In "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife," Lt. Col. Nagl effectively described why the Army was not a proper learning institution and how it failed to conceptualize and execute an effective COIN strategy. Hammes in The Sling and the Stone recommended several ways in which the services need to change to be better suited to the pressures of adaptability and innovativeness that COIN and IW entail. Both touched on the point that the services, the Army in particular (given the Marine Corps' 19th and pre-WWII 20th century history) have an organizational self-image as the citizen army that fights wars of survival. Such wars, then, have typically been monstrous clashes of attrition won by "liberal use of firepower, even more liberally applied." Obviously we all understand that and how it applies to military thinking in the Civil War, the World Wars, Korea, etc.

But the more subtle result of that self-image is that the services expect the full weight of the nation behind them. Economic, political, social commitment. And while we talk about how political COIN is, or the need to use the oft-repeated "all aspects of national power," repeatedly clamoring for more commitment from the home front on numerous levels I believe to be an excellent indicator of why, as an institution, the services remain in ways ill-suited to COIN.

Nagl emphasized that a large part of the British success in Malaya was because the British Army and political apparatus recognized both the political nature of the struggle (and thus the associated requirements of limited and discriminate force, employment of troops in policing roles, etc.) which I think we have understood properly, at least now, in Iraq; and also the tradition of imperial soldiering and policing - that the troops on the ground would have to make do with limited resources and support from the home country. This "forced privation," I think it could be argued, help spur creative solutions and innovation that enabled success.

I understand that comparing Malaya to Iraq (or making the oft-repeated analogy to Vietnam) is fraught with discrepancies - controlling a country the size of California with its infrastructure and government destroyed is different from the work required in Malaya - but the point is this: How much time to we spend observing the failures of the American citizenry to be committed to the effort, or even know a thing about it? I am completely and totally guilty in this respect, often bemoaning my generation's failures to contribute to, or even be aware of, the conflicts today. Captain Hsia's articles on the SWJ blog are only the most recent examples of this attitude.

But I wonder, do we (again including myself as a hopeful future stakeholder) need to get this malady of "why isn't the rest of the country involved in this?" behind us to truly be institutionally prepared for what successful COIN entails? Does anyone else see how this cherished self-image of being the nation's savior during the darkest times, of American foreign policy being so messianic, can hurt our COIN abilities?

Or am I just way off base? Thoughts?

Regards,

Matt

[William F. Owen]

Nagl emphasized that a large part of the British success in Malaya was because the British Army and political apparatus recognized both the political nature of the struggle (and thus the associated requirements of limited and discriminate force, employment of troops in policing roles, etc.) which I think we have understood properly, at least now, in Iraq; and also the tradition of imperial soldiering and policing - that the troops on the ground would have to make do with limited resources and support from the home country. This "forced privation," I think it could be argued, help spur creative solutions and innovation that enabled success.

This is why Nagl is pretty much ignored in the UK. The campaign in Malaya was founded on torture, assassination and mass punishment techniques, that were not acceptable at the time and would not be now. The whole "hearts and minds" gimmick was the cover story. Same in Kenya. We won using well disguised brutality.

When used in isolation, all the techniques applied in Malaya failed miserably in Vietnam, and all thanks to a self styled expert, called Robert Thompson.

[TT]

Matt

Took me a while to come to grips with what you were really asking. Your title of Org Culture and National power threw me a bit, as I kept re-reading your post to figure out how you got from Org culture to National Power, and indeed where National Power had got to. So, as an aside, re at least military power (close to national power) see Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton Uni Press, 2004; and Risa A Brooks and Elizabeth A. Stanley, eds. Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness, Staford University Press, 2007. These will not directly answer your actual question but will provide you with some food for fruitful thought.

MattC86 posted:

But the more subtle result of that self-image is that the services expect the full weight of the nation behind them. Economic, political, social commitment.

You may be right that this is a ‘subtle’ result of the self image of the Army’s view of itself as fighting the nations wars. But its stems, I would argue, most immediately from Vietnam, as certainly having the support of the American populace was a something the Army (and the other services) believed was required as a lesson of Vietnam - to the point that there was an strong effort to institutionalize into the American political discourse about the use of force, by way to the Weinberger/Powell doctrine, the idea of such ‘ public support’ as being a core pre-requirement of fighting a war (any war) overseas (on this see: C.E. Dauber, ‘Implications Of the Weinberger Doctrine For American Military Intervention in a Post-Desert Storm Age’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 22, No. 3, Dec 2001, pp. 66-90; and Craig S. Cameron, ‘Two Front War: 1963-1988’, in Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, eds, The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology, Lynn Rienner, 2002, pp. 119-138).

MattC86 posted:

And while we talk about how political COIN is, or the need to use the oft-repeated "all aspects of national power," repeatedly clamoring for more commitment from the home front on numerous levels I believe to be an excellent indicator of why, as an institution, the services remain in ways ill-suited to COIN.

I am not convinced that it may be an ‘excellent’ indicator of why the ‘services remain in ways ill-suited to COIN’. Certainly the Army (and USMC) have learned and are applying what they have learned in the field in Afghanistan and Iraq (I leave aside here any and all debate on whether they have learned all the right lessons and/or about are succeeding through the application of the lessons learned). And this in spite of the putative lack of public support (or so opinion polls indicate – though I have not seen the sort of antipathy manifest within the American public to the degree that was prevalent in the Vietnam era).

Remember, service personnel returning from Vietnam were not only not hailed but actively shunned and worse, whereas after WWII (the ‘Good War’) and Gulf War I in 1991 returning personnel were hailed as heroes. So one way to view the lack of public support is that this means that the American public do not believe that Iraq (and Afghanistan?) is a ‘Good War’ (ie a war that the American people, whom the services serve, do not think is a war worth fighting for whatever reasons), and this can only raise questions about the value of the sacrifices being made in the name of the American people (to me, Cpt Hsia is pointing to a somewhat different, though related, issue). And if the American people do not think the sacrifices being made are worth the effort, then in the long term of COIN campaigns the services are likely to be forced to withdraw without achieving the desired ends, even though undefeated on the battlefield. I think what I am suggesting is that it may be an indicator of ‘why’ the services are reticent about COIN campaigns, rather than an indicator of why they are ‘ill-suited’ for COIN campaigns.

You also note that the Army’s ‘organizational self-image as ‘the citizen army that fights wars of survival.’, but the hard question is whether the Army is truly a ‘citizen’ army now that that is an all volunteer force?

I would also note that learning lessons through operational experience is not the same as institutionalizing the lessons. The Brits may be very good (or maybe it should be ‘may have been’) at learning from operational experience (ie Malaysia), that they are good at adapting, but to over generalize a bit, they had to constantly relearn those lessons from one campaign to the next as they did not institutionalize the lessons (so they made mistakes in the early phases of each subsequent campaign). Learinng lessons, or adpting, is very important in the context of ongoing operations, but the longer range issue is whether these lessons are subsequently institutionalized or, for a variety of reasons, including org culture reasons, just jettisoned as the service in question reverts to what it prefers or is most comfortable with. This, I think, is why many on this board (‘Tom and others’, as you say, and I would include myself in that group) question whether the Army, et al, will institutionalize the lessons learned or simply do a ‘system reboot’ once out of Iraq.

MattC86 posted:

I wonder, do we (again including myself as a hopeful future stakeholder) need to get this malady of "why isn't the rest of the country involved in this?" behind us to truly be institutionally prepared for what successful COIN entails?

Maybe, but as even you only suggest that this is a ‘subtle’ implication, the changes really required are with respect to the core, fundamental characteristics of the Army’s (or AF, USMC, Navy) organizational culture, or self identity. With such major, hard to make changes, the subtle implications, which are likely third, fourth or farther out ramifications, may well shift to bring them in line with the major cultural changes successfully undertaken. So if the Army were to accept and internalize that fighting the nations wars included COIN as a core mission (and not as lesser included cases), then the rest likely would follow.

And yes, a possible implication of this is that it 'may' be the case, in some cases at least, that insistence on needing the support of the American public may well simply be an argument used to justify not having to fight a form of war that it does not want to engage in for other reasons.

[Rob Thornton]

Hey Terry (Good to see your thoughts!)

You also note that the Army’s ‘organizational self-image as ‘the citizen army that fights wars of survival.’, but the hard question is whether the Army is truly a ‘citizen’ army now that that is an all volunteer force?

(bold added by me)

I'll have to chew on that one today - it has allot of potential implications. It might be worth developing what a change in self image could actually mean. "Historically", I don't guess we're that far removed from our former self (being "not" and all volunteer Army). We still have people with great influence (both positive & negative) whose experiences incorporate both. Some are mentors, some are educators, some are politicians, some are civilian leaders working in the departments. I point that out because it gets to the nature of change over time, the bureaucratic process (the super-tanker analogy), and the golden mean.

We're comparably comfortable about talking about where we want to be with regards to capabilities (maybe what we project outwards?), but I don't know that we've had a serious internal discussion about rationale for inward change of the type or scale you posit - or more importantly, what are the potential implications for charting that course. There is risk for inaction, and risk for action - identifying specific risks at a level of depth that uncovers risk in areas we were not intending to jeopardize is tough work, and I think takes time (I don't know how much time).

Maybe, but as even you only suggest that this is a ‘subtle’ implication, the changes really required are with respect to the core, fundamental characteristics of the Army’s (or AF, USMC, Navy) organizational culture, or self identity. With such major, hard to make changes, the subtle implications, which are likely third, fourth or farther out ramifications, may well shift to bring them in line with the major cultural changes successfully undertaken. So if the Army were to accept and internalize that fighting the nations wars included COIN as a core mission (and not as lesser included cases), then the rest likely would follow.

(bold and underlined added by me)

We should not see this in a vacuum from civilian policy, and how that policy enables risk in terms of pursuing change. We should also not be afraid to push back some, and identify for civilian leaders the risks - consider the road to "smaller, lighter, more efficient" land forces as an example of what happens when we focus on the way we'd like the operational environment to be without accounting for the way the operational environment is, and how its interactive nature produces friction and chance.

Some pieces of our "inner" self image are things like - "be relevant and ready", ""expeditionary capabilities with campaign qualities", "dominate land power", "agile, adaptive, and innovative leaders". This is a tall order of characteristics to live up to, but reflects the range of conditions in which the Army may be employed, and illustrates the challenges with meeting both mass based and technical based (I mean the broad meaning of technical such as skill sets and education) requirements.

I'm not sure that until (or if) the United States Government brings existing, (or new) capabilities up to a level that they can in practice fill those roles the military has been asked to, or has by default taken on as a policy instrument, that we can (or should?) shed the necessary dichotomy of having somewhat dual personalities. It may be that the nature of "warfare" (the means available and the ways in which they are used) has changed to such a degree it is now a condition, and as such, those forces generated, trained, equipped and maintained must reflect those conditions in order to achieve the political objective. For the immediate future, we must be full spectrum in body, spirit and mind. A tall order for sure.
Best, Rob

[Eden]

The relationship of organizational culture to the effectiveness of the military is a fascinating subject, and one that people who care about our military love to fret about.

The common complaint is that the Army (my own background, so I'll stick to that) is not structured as a 'learning organization' and it has strong bureaucratic checks on change. These are both true, but not necessarily bad.

I think we can safely say that the Army is structured as a 'training' (vice learning) organization. In other words, it is built to impart a certain set of skills to its members. Unlike a 'learning' organization, however, the chosen set of skills is selected in a top-down, bureaucratic manner. The danger is that a certain amount of inertia is built into this process and innovation from below is stifled. The benefit, however, is that if our leaders get it right, they can more easily wrench the organization onto the correct path. This is what happened after Vietnam, when an enlightened set of generals and a new set of institutions - the combat training centers and their unfriendly evaluation regime - shook us out of the doldrums and focused the Army on major conventional combat operations. Which was the right thing to do!
The threat from 1972 to 1991 - a generation - was existential and arose in the form of Soviet conventional armies and their clones. Thank God we forgot about unconventional warfare.

Unfortunately, the latest generation of leaders weren't wise enough to refocus us on what would turn out to be our future threats. They neither recognized the nature of our new set of wars, nor staked their professional reputations on recasting the training bureaucracy. Therefore we stumbled badly in Afghanistan and Iraq once they passed from their firepower intensive phases to their insurgent phases. But...the penalty here was relatively minor; certainly it doesn't compare with the penalty we will pay if we are not ready for the next contest against a peer or near-peer.

And, it illustrates a strength of our otherwise dysfunctional personnel systyem: the ability of our forces, by osmosis, to adapt and 'learn'. Years ahead of our training institutions, small units were learning how to fight small wars again. I think this is partly because we 'trickle-post' people, moving them individually between units. Over the course of a couple of years, these individuals spread the word and pass on lessons learned. This process can now be seen seeping into the senior ranks, and the institution is also beginning to respond. FM 3-24 is flawed, but that's almost beside the point. Graybeards may remember that the first cut at Air-Land Battle was crap, but it sparked and focused the debate - it officially signalled that the great oil tanker of the Army had finally settled onto a new course.

Finally, I agree that the Army is losing its moorings as an all-volunteer force. This is a bad thing in the long run - but in the short run it allows the US people to regard warfare as a reality show: engaging, sometimes tragic, but judged more for its entertainment value than for its effects on the lives of the participants. It allows people to be patriotic without the bother of actual sacrifice. This gives the institution greater freedom of maneuver so long as they can show results. American people don't mind casualties - they add spice to the news - but they can't stand stasis.

So, my point is that while the armed forces have structural flaws, the uniquely American nature of those institutions do have certain strengths that we abandon at our peril.

[MattC86]

Thanks to all for clarifying the processes of my muddled mind . . .

Anyway, I think that while the Army of course is now an all-volunteer, "professional" force, it still operates with a bit of the citizen-army mentality. That's where things like Capt. Hsia's pieces (not an uncommon feeling from what I've heard in the services) come into play; by constantly asking where is the support from home - either in engagement of the citizenry, recruits, or commitment of non-military resources to the fight (what I meant by the national power remark) we are reinforcing an institutional bias, I think, towards the war of survival, and not the limited, "imperial policing" type of conflict.

Clearly my question was ill-phrased, and upon looking back, a bias against COIN in favor of the "big war" wasn't quite what I meant. More just a handicap in COIN, rather than anything to do with conventional conflict. Let me try again with a shorter, simpler version\:

Essentially, Nagl says (WFO's comments notwithstanding for the time being) that the British Army was successful because it proved to be an adaptable, innovative, and learning institution reinforced in part by a tradition of limited conflict where personnel in theater knew they were not the highest resource priority and would have to "make do."

This imperial policing tradition really does not exist in the US armed services, and as a result, do you think commanders and personnel are uncomfortable being in situations where they have very modest resources of manpower and materiel; limited domestic support for the mission, and equally modest goals for the operation - More like peacekeeping/stability ops than full fledged COIN e.g. Iraq, to link to Rob's excellent thread - and thus naturally less effective in these roles, even with the proper preparation and training?

The idea, I guess, is that if we're in the "long war" and will have a lot of limited commitments (far smaller than Iraq) in many different locations, the US will be doing a lot of imperial policing (I don't like the empire term, but that kind of sums up the operations) with limited resources. I think the services' background and self-image as the guarantor of the nation in wars of survival (even if we have accepted that COIN is a more likely operation at this point than conventional war) is an impediment to effectively operating with the aforementioned limited resources, support, etc, in that commanders will be more likely to require more and more resources rather than adjust their objectives and do what they can with what they have.

I really hope that doesn't sound like "stop whining for more support, suck it up," but I fear it does . . .

Regards,

Matt

[Steve Blair]

Anyway, I think that while the Army of course is now an all-volunteer, "professional" force, it still operates with a bit of the citizen-army mentality. That's where things like Capt. Hsia's pieces (not an uncommon feeling from what I've heard in the services) come into play; by constantly asking where is the support from home - either in engagement of the citizenry, recruits, or commitment of non-military resources to the fight (what I meant by the national power remark) we are reinforcing an institutional bias, I think, towards the war of survival, and not the limited, "imperial policing" type of conflict.

This isn't as new as some people think. The Army's period as a "non-volunteer" force was actually pretty short (30 years or so as opposed to the 100 years or so before the draft and the time that's come after it ended), and the disconnect between the "home front" and the troops in the field isn't that new, either. Take a look at some stuff from the Indian Wars both before and after the Civil War and you'll see the same lack of support, similar hostility from some quarters, and so on.

The differences? The Army can vote now...it couldn't then. It's also larger by several orders of magnitude, so its complaints and comments are louder than they were then (amplified by modern methods of communication...although if you look at old issues of the Army and Navy Journal you'll see some heat regarding the home front support). It's also far more professional than it ever has been.

In many ways the American Army before World War I was professional in name only. That's not a knock on their skill or ability...but more an acknowledgment of its nature before World War I. It was seen by many as a training cadre for state Volunteer units that would be raised in time of crisis and disbanded as soon as the emergency was over. Coffman's work on the Old Army up to World War I provides some nice insights here, but it's always worth remembering that the Army's real roots are as a volunteer force that was often ignored and disrespected by the civilians it served (the phenomena of the Army being seen as a good career choice is, again, a modern thing going back to World War II or so).

[William F. Owen]

Essentially, Nagl says (WFO's comments notwithstanding for the time being) that the British Army was successful because it proved to be an adaptable, innovative, and learning institution reinforced in part by a tradition of limited conflict where personnel in theater knew they were not the highest resource priority and would have to "make do."

...so what Nagl is in fact saying is that the British Army learned from its mistakes, and had made all the same mistakes before, else where, so knew what mistakes looked like. They also knew that London was very intolerant of mistakes and did not like people whining, so they'd better do something about it.

Point to bear in mind. If the US Army sorts Iraq out in the next 2 years, it will probably be the greatest so called COIN success ever. I am intrigued to see who stands up and takes the credit.

[Tom Odom]

MattC, here is what I posted in May last year after reading John's book. I stand by these comments:

Studying a Wrist Watch: the U.S. Military and COIN

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although some may say that reviewing an already widely acclaimed book is a waste of time, I decided to do just that. Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl's book Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam is a work of inspiration and despair. The inspiration is easiest to accept and digest because it seeps through this work at many levels. Nagl as a serving officer and a scholar is inspiring because this book pulls no punches. His examination of the British experience in Malaya inspires simply because he shows a military can indeed learn and adapt to meet and defeat an equally adaptive threat if its leaders allow it to do so.

So why do I offer despair as a companion to Nagl's inspiration? Well to begin with I lived the Army that came out Vietnam; my leaders in rebuilding that Army all were Vietnam veterans. I remember well General DePuy's role as commander of Training and Doctrine Command; a comrade of mine, Paul Herbert, wrote a great monograph on that subject . I also vividly recall a parody of a debate between Colonel (ret) Harry Summers and Major Andrew Krepinevich over what happened in Vietnam, what could have happened in Vietnam, and what should have happened in Vietnam. As a stage hog, Harry Summers won by overwhelming Andy Krepinevich's scholarly delivery with bluster and bravado. Neither Summers nor Summers' admirers did cared a whit about the message Krepinevich offered; they cared about preserving the Army's capacity to wage Jomini's battle of annihilation. They were seemingly validated in 1991 and again in March 2003. The big battalion Army marched on.

It did so with blinders worn proudly. But some in the Army of the 80s and the 90s lived in another world. I was one of those as a Foreign Area Officer for the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. I served in Turkey, Sudan, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Zaire, and Rwanda. Those experiences put me on the ground in two wars and a genocide. But as a staff college classmate in 1988 remarked to me, I as a FAO "was not in the real Army." The same classmate also stated that he could not imagine the U.S. ever getting involved in another counter insurgency war like Vietnam. When I asked him what he thought we were doing at that very moment in central America, he looked at me like the proverbial pig studying a wrist watch. Seven years later, I greeted him in Goma, Zaire with the rebuttal of "welcome to my world," meaning the mega-Death of the Rwandan Civil War. He was still mesmerized by the wristwatch.

And there is where John Nagl prompts despair. Reading his chapters on Vietnam provides a stark backdrop to Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling's recent article on generalship. Nagl is especially brilliant in allowing the key leaders of the Vietnam era to demonstrate their own incapacity to see anything but what they wanted to see. Our efforts to date in OIF and OEF suggest we still have the same problem. Yingling seemingly confirms it.

My hope in writing this somewhat redundant review of John Nagl's book is to inspire, prod, and push those of you who have not read it to do so. If you have read FM 3-24 Counter Insurgency but have not read Nagl's book, you have not truly read FM 3-24.

Best

Tom

[Eden]

Thanks to all for clarifying the processes of my muddled mind . . .

This imperial policing tradition really does not exist in the US armed services, and as a result, do you think commanders and personnel are uncomfortable being in situations where they have very modest resources of manpower and materiel; limited domestic support for the mission, and equally modest goals for the operation - More like peacekeeping/stability ops than full fledged COIN e.g. Iraq, to link to Rob's excellent thread - and thus naturally less effective in these roles, even with the proper preparation and training?

I think the answer is a qualified yes. Two examples from my time in Afghanistan were US operations along the Pakistani border and recent operations in the Korengal valley, which extended past my time there.

1. Several US units were employed in training Afghan border police and in an attempt to interdict the flow of reinforcements and supplies across the Afghan-Pak border. The training of the ABP was mildly effective, but the border remained open. At best, we mildly inconvenienced those who sought to bring men and supplies into southern Afghanistan. The staff's own analysis declared that there were insufficient forces to effectively screen - let alone interdict - the border. The commander agreed with this analysis, and yet the effort was not abandoned.

2. The extension of US influence into the Korengal valley was in many ways a model operation. Reconstruction teams enabled road-building and other improvements to the infrastructure, while combat units deployed in small outposts to maintain local control. They were backed up by larger elements and air power as necessary. Much progress has been made in disrupting insurgent base areas and in securing support among the populace. However, the effort sucked up at least one-third of the available combat power, maybe more depending on how you count it, in an area that is of dubious operational or strategic value. It is certainly one of the poorest areas in Afghanistan, and that is saying a lot. This all took place at a time when Kandahar was going to hell in a handbasket and NATO was pleading for additional US support.

In both these cases operations of marginal value to the overall mission were continued despite low payoffs and high opportunity costs. What does this say about our ability to adapt our goals to insufficient resources? I'm not sure.

It could be that senior leaders are focused at the wrong level of operations, unable to see the forest for the trees, but this does a disservice, I think, to a set of very intelligent, professional men. It could be that they lack the moral courage to accept that they cannot accomplish everything they have been directed to do. It could be that they are slavishly following their own concept of COIN - i.e., you must secure the borders, cut off the enemy from his sanctuary, and disrupt his base areas - and are hoping that a series of small victories will add up to a larger one down the road. Or, it could be that they are following the habits of a professional lifetime - accept your mission, prove through strenuous effort that it can't be done without additional resources, ask for those resources, and receive them from what has been, in the past, a bottomless well of men and treasure. In any case, I do think that the cultural and institutional biases of the 'old Army' interfere with optimal employment of our resources.

[TT]

As Rob noted, but even more so given the number of comments, there is fair bit here to chew on. But as I am badly jet lagged and facing a number of imminent, tightly spaced serial deadlines (procrastination strikes again ), just a few passing comments that may or may not be coherent and/or comprehensible.

Rob posted:

I'll have to chew on that one today - it has allot of potential implications. It might be worth developing what a change in self image could actually mean.

It does get at the core issue of self identity – that is, what is the Army/who am I as an individual in the Army – and by way of this to ‘what is it that we do’.

I am not sure that the Army is not a citizen army, I am just raising the question. To use my favourite example, Tom Ricks in Making Marines, points to a growing gap between the military, in this case the Marines, and the general American public, particularly with respect to the core values that are central to the self identity of the Marines (and by extension, I suspect this is true to a lesser or greater extent in the other services as well). I am not sure what would be the implication(s) of the Army eventually no longer seeing itself as a citizen army.

Rob posted:

We should not see this in a vacuum from civilian policy, and how that policy enables risk in terms of pursuing change. We should also not be afraid to push back some, and identify for civilian leaders the risks - consider the road to "smaller, lighter, more efficient" land forces as an example of what happens when we focus on the way we'd like the operational environment to be without accounting for the way the operational environment is, and how its interactive nature produces friction and chance.

Militaries are conservative with respect to undertaking change, and rightly so. To undertake radical change that results in being unprepared (or maybe dysfunctionally prepared) for the war it faces can have catastrophic consequences, possibly up to endangering or even fatally compromising national survival.

Studies show that sometimes militaries will only change due to civilian intervention (usually allied with one or more like-minded senior military officers), though these studies focus on cases where the civilian intervention was positive (ie pushing the RAF into developing aerial defence capability in the interwar period) rather than negative. But civilians are not always right (hence the point about one or more like minded) and so yes, the military must be willing to push back sometimes.

Equally, support of the civilian leadership for certain changes is certainly useful, even if the main drive for change is coming from a senior officers (and/or junior to middle rank officers). As an example, Gates speech to the Army in which he said that small wars were in its future is an example of a civilian leader who is supporting elements within the Army pushing for change. This is helpful.

The key is deciding what major changes are needed (ie being a big war and irregular war army – that is, one that prepares, trains, and learns for both – plus whatever you want to throw into the pot), and then figuring out whether the implementation of the changes will run into cultural obstacles (that is, beliefs about who you are and what you do that are inconsitent or do not conform with the desired change), so that you can manage these obstacles to minimize or obviate them ultimately derailing the desired changes. The hard reality is that a couple of senior officers (ie the Chief of Staff) or the political leaderships declaring change must and will happen does not mean that the change will eventually emerge – efforts to effect change can over time peter out for org culture reasons, bureaucratic reasons (ie who gets promoted and why), resource constraints, and so on and so forth.

As a possible example, the US Navy (along with the Coast Guard and Marine Corps) have in the new Cooperative Maritime Strategy set out a substantial change in what the Navy does and must train and prepare for, and resource (ie prevention of war, humanitarian assistance and maritime security). The direction about how the current Navy leadership wants to change has been authored and issued – but it be years before it is clear that the Navy will in fact undertake and implement this change. Again, at the moment, that Mullen has become CJCS and Gates has been saying similar things provide support for such a change, and Adm Roughead seems to be on board as well. But what happens when they go……in short, what happens done the road and why, will be telling with respect to whether the change in the new strategy ends up being rhetoric or real.

So Rob, you are spot on in talking about ‘time’.

Eden posted:

I think we can safely say that the Army is structured as a 'training' (vice learning) organization. In other words, it is built to impart a certain set of skills to its members.

Training is also a means (along with other elements) to change culture. That is, the way you train to what ends slowly but surely influences self identity. Your example of the use of training in the 1980s is, arguably, an example of this. Several senior officers I have spoken to from this time were of the opinion that it was through the training that they altered the Army's org culture. I do not know if the training did in fact alter Army culture, but I would argue that training is an important element in shifting org culture, or self identity, to make it consistent with the desired changes to be implemented. To two other important elements to go with this are are changing the org narrative - the stories org members tell themselves about who they are, what the Army is - and education).

And to come back to the issue of time, there is clear need for consistency of purpose amongst the senior officers through several commands (ie if the incoming CoS of the Army, as the example, does not agree with the change, it will die).

MattC86

it still operates with a bit of the citizen-army mentality.

I agree that, to my limited knowledge, the Army, in parts or in whole, sees it self as a ‘citizen’ army. But that does not mean that it in fact is. There are suggestions that increasingly the US military services are growing away from the general body politic, particularly in terms of its values (see my point in response to Rob).

MattC86

either in engagement of the citizenry, recruits, or commitment of non-military resources to the fight (what I meant by the national power remark) we are reinforcing an institutional bias, I think, towards the war of survival, and not the limited, "imperial policing" type of conflict.

It seems to me that the commitment of ‘non-military’ resources is much more a question of political leadership, rather than an ‘American public’ question. This is about employing the full spread of levers of power that a gov’t can bring to bear, many economic, diplomatic, social, etc. And the emphasis on this today has been the recognition that such components need to be employed, as the state cannot rely solely on military power, to achieve the desired outcomes. Or to put in a more pointed, and hence potentially controversial way, both the military and the political leadership have learned that ‘military victory’ does not necessarily translate into the achievement of the desired political ends, or strategic goals if you will. The pint Eden made while I was writing this, re

it could be that senior leaders are focused at the wrong level of operations,

may be close to the mark - a function of the post Vietnam reforms that focused on the 'operational level' meant that the strategic level faded (to wit, military victory equates with strategic success - er, not).

It seems to me that Capt. Hsia’s argument is based in a very real sense on the values that professional military personnel hold as being central to their professional – the values of service, duty, self sacrifice, honor, valor and so on and so forth (these are very central to self identity), and that what he does not see is very many young Americans, or Americans generally, adhering to and acting on these values (a telling bit of graffiti from Iraq, ‘Marines are at war, America is at the Mall’ is very telling with respect to ‘values’). Perhaps I have read him wrong in this, but it points to a growing gap between the military and the public.

I am fading badly, and need a nap so I can at least focus vaguely on what I need to write…..

So one last point:

Rob posted:

Some pieces of our "inner" self image are things like - "be relevant and ready", ""expeditionary capabilities with campaign qualities", "dominate land power", "agile, adaptive, and innovative leaders".

I take the point you are trying to make, but are ""expeditionary capabilities with campaign qualities", and "agile, adaptive, and innovative leaders" currently core personality traits of the Army or are these the Army currently wants some of core traits to be? The later, at least, seems to me to have emerged in the past few or more years, rather than something that has been an enduring feature of the Army's self identity (or if it has been, then it one of those traits that is hollow).

Now to that nap....

[Ken White]

TT Said:

"You also note that the Army’s ‘organizational self-image as ‘the citizen army that fights wars of survival.’, but the hard question is whether the Army is truly a ‘citizen’ army now that that is an all volunteer force?"

I suggest that an Army that is recruited from a society, effectively lives and plays among that society, has numerous friends and relatives in that society and whose members return to that society will always be a citizen army -- just not in the 'national' army, Napoleonic sense (which IMO is a good thing). I'd also suggest that both the British and US Armies have been filled with volunteers for a far greater time than they haves used conscripts, that similar worries have been expressed for centuries and that such worries are misplaced. I'm more concerned with a society of citizens that denigrate things military because they do not understand them than I am about the Armed forces eschewing the values of the society from which they come.

Eden said:

"This is what happened after Vietnam, when an enlightened set of generals and a new set of institutions - the combat training centers and their unfriendly evaluation regime - shook us out of the doldrums and focused the Army on major conventional combat operations. Which was the right thing to do! The threat from 1972 to 1991 - a generation - was existential and arose in the form of Soviet conventional armies and their clones. Thank God we forgot about unconventional warfare."

I can agree up to the last line. We emphatically should not have forgotten about it. Place it well down the priority list, absolutely, however forgetting about it entirely was really dumb. As we found out when a generation of senior leaders with nil exposure to COIN were confronted with an incipient insurgency and proceeded through ignorance to cultivate that into a full blown, if minor, insurgency...

The larger problem is that even if one agrees that it should have been forgotten about until, say 1994 or 95, there is no excuse for forgetting about it after that time.

Eden also says:

"So, my point is that while the armed forces have structural flaws, the uniquely American nature of those institutions do have certain strengths that we abandon at our peril."

Truer words were rarely spake...

Steve Blair is right on the mark...

Tom Odom defends Nagl's book and that's fine -- but Wilf was correct in saying the British in Malaya did some really dicey things in Malaya and (even more so) in Kenya and Nagl is remiss in not pointing out all the advantages the Brits had there -- not least that they were the government. We did use Brit Malaya-like techniques in Viet Nam -- or tried to -- and they failed miserably, partly because we were not the government, partly because we did not want to do some of those dicey things and partly because we do not have the patience the British have. Malaya was NOT a good example for anyone to adopt in COIN.

I also have anecdotal evidence that Nagl's book is indeed discounted in the British Army.

Probably should repeat and amplify something;Malaya was NOT a good example for anyone to adopt in COIN. That is because the conditions were very unusual, will almost never pertain to other nations (particularly the US) and the most effective techniques cannot be used today on 'humanitarian' grounds.

Okay, I've picked on everyone except Matt who asked a very pertinent and important question (Good job, Matt!); and Rob who had cogent comments and has to grapple with the answers as part of his job now. Time for me to go to lunch.

[Tom Odom]

Tom Odom defends Nagl's book and that's fine -- but Wilf was correct in saying the British in Malaya did some really dicey things in Malaya and (even more so) in Kenya and Nagl is remiss in not pointing out all the advantages the Brits had there -- not least that they were the government. We did use Brit Malaya-like techniques in Viet Nam -- or tried to -- and they failed miserably, partly because we were not the government, partly because we did not want to do some of those dicey things and partly because we do not have the patience the British have. Malaya was NOT a good example for anyone to adopt in COIN.

Ken,

I don't need to defend Nagl's book. I do admire it. My post to MattC was to highlight our historical and continued difficulty in this realm of conflict. I think we agree that we have too often wished the problem away.

The central focus in Nagl's use of Malaya was not to explore the validity of the doctrine or TTPS used but to look at the changes the British Army made between the two periods examined in the book. Were some of the tactics used then unacceptable elsewhere? No doubt. He compares that inner flexibilty with the inflexibility of Westmoreland and others in VN. His book then is about one army's ability and anothers inability to change.

As an African FAO I am well aware of what happened in the Mau Mau insurgency and yes it was more brutal than most care to know. But Nagl does not use Kenya as a case study in his book.

As for chosing case studies and learning incorrect lessons, Fred Wagoner wrote a monograph on the 64 Congo Crisis and he made the case that planners in the Pentagon wrongly saw the Congo and the Simba Rebeliion as proof that COIN was simple. Fred may have taken that too far; in any case, his study prompted my own and I arrived at a similar but nonetheless different shade of meaning. I saw that the Nat Sec Structure of the time was so primed to see everything as a Communiist conspiracy that the USG wrongly painted the Simbas--essentially a tribal uprising against anything tied to the central government--as Communists.

My point in offering that aside is quite simple: two people may look at the same evidence and arrive at similar or different interpretations. When you write a book, you put those interpretations out there and different folks look at them and arrive at different opinions. When I read John Nagl's book I did not see it as an endorsement of British actions in Malaya or a condemnation of US failures in Vietnam. I see it as an endorsement of the idea that an army is a living breathing institution that has a brain and must use it.

Best

Tom

[TT]

Ken posted

I suggest that an Army that is recruited from a society, effectively lives and plays among that society, has numerous friends and relatives in that society and whose members return to that society will always be a citizen army -- just not in the 'national' army, Napoleonic sense (which IMO is a good thing).

Certainly I was thinking of ‘citizen army’, at least broadly, in the Napoleonic sense that you note when I posed my question. I can, however, accept your former def’n, even though it is a much looser def’n of what constitutes a citizen army. I do not want to put words in your mouth, so correct me if I am wrong, but in essence what you are saying is that as long as the military has a connection (and this may be a social connection) or bond with the public it serves it will remain a citizen army.

This fits with your concern, one I can only agree with, about the implications should the public denigrate things military (which I can see breaking the connection/bond). But I wonder whether we should not be concerned if the military increasing holds a set of values that are at variance to the values held by the general public? I honestly do not have an answer to this question, other than that the idea makes me uneasy, if only because one can conceive, as a worst case analysis, of an eventual backlash of some sort or other either from the public or the military in terms of weakening and/or severing the bond that does exist between them.

Rob posted:

that we can (or should?) shed the necessary dichotomy of having somewhat dual personalities.

I do not see having a ‘dual personality’ as being necessarily problematic, as long as both those personalities are functional and they do not disfunctionally clash. The character traits that comprise the self identity of a particular military or service often as not are not consistent, and need not be consistent, just as most individuals tend to express character traits that are not, or not always, consistent.

The Army today is wrestling with the question of whether and/or to what extent it should become an irregular warfare army (I caveat what I mean here by IW here, noting the other thread discussing what is IW and CW started by Rob). So the issue is whether the Army can, in time, be a ‘dual personality’ institution, one that is prepared, trained, maintained and resourced to conduct both (I will not go into the ‘multiple personality’ you subsequently suggest the Army may need to become ).

As you note, this is ‘a tall order’. As Tom’s example above of the ‘proverbial pig studying a wrist watch’ from his review of Nagl suggests, adding on a new personality, particularly when it does not conform to conceptions of ‘who we are’, is definitely not easy. So, as I suggested above, it not really a case of simply changing org culture, rather it is having identified what is the required change (whatever the reason for the change), how do you approach implementation of the change with the highest assurance possible that you will be successful in doing so (and success is never guaranteed)? Once you have determined what needs to be introduced (the change), then it seems to me that you have be self critical enough about ones self identity to figure where clashes between the change and identity may occur that will create resistance (or friction). I doubt you ever determine precisely the way an innovation will clash with a particular personality trait, as identifying accurately second, third, four order effects is a fraught business, but having a reasonably clear idea of why there is likely to be a clash allows for pre-planning to develop approaches that will minimize or mitigate the clash before it occurs. (A caveat is that self identity is not the only thing that can or can contribute to the implementation of change being unsuccessful ).

This, in a sense, brings me back round to Matt’s original question. I do not think the Army’s view of itself as being a citizen army is a critical obstacle to the Army becoming capable at IW as well as conventional warfare (Matt, yes, very possibly a hindrance but not sure how significant a hindrance). Much more problematic is the first order characteristic, that is that the Army sees itself as being an org that fights ‘big wars’, or wars of national survival (the ‘who are we’ component being ‘conventional war fighters’). This to me is very likely an important, if not a core, personality/identity trait. So if this identity trait is creating internal push back that undermines efforts to implement IW or COIN as a core mission of the Army (again, Tom’s example above captures the essence of this very well at the individual level), how do you amend, influence or whatever this identity trait so that it no longer creates opposition to the desired change? Change the self conception of who or what is the Army, and thus what is acceptable in terms of what it does, to encompass irregular warfare (or COIN, if you will) and my ‘guess’ is that the self identity of being a citizen army would cease even to be a hindrance. Of course doing the former, to re-quote Rob, is ‘a tall order’ as it does take a lot of effort and a fairly long period of time.

[Ken White]

Sorry, Tom. I wasn't very clear. I agree with all you say, merely wanted to make the very minor points that Wilf was, I believe, correct in saying the Brits dismissed the book (rightly or wrongly) and that I agree with his contention that Malaya is not the good example of how to do it that many presume. I didn't do that well.

I very strongly agree with you that, with respect to the book:

"...I see it as an endorsement of the idea that an army is a living breathing institution that has a brain and must use it."

he did that and did it well. That is also and obviously a very correct observation and we also and equally obviously have not in the past done that well.

[Ken White]

Generally I say what I mean and mean what I say but frequently get garbled in transmission...

That and my innate laziness lead to shorthand and even on occasion to Runes...

Agree that my 'definition' of citizen army is beyond loose and not in accordance with the norm. The US Army of WW II and to a lesser extent of WW I and of the Civil War was a real citizen army. The far more normal (in the greater historical sense) relatively small volunteer Army is not in that model and never has been.

My broad point was, of course, that the non-model is the norm (as the real citizen Army is ordinaily not) and that it is a representative of the society from which it springs. Due to that, I for one, recalling days of yore when it was smaller than it is now by a considerable margin, am not concerned that it will pull away from the society it represents to a deleterious extent.

"...This fits with your concern, one I can only agree with, about the implications should the public denigrate things military (which I can see breaking the connection/bond). But I wonder whether we should not be concerned if the military increasing holds a set of values that are at variance to the values held by the general public?"

I think that depends on what the concern is. In one sense it has always been and is now a problem in that most with more than four or five years service have always and do now see themselves as possessed of stronger and better values than the society to which they belong. My limited experience with other national forces lead me to believe that is not a US-peculiar phenomonena. Thus I suspect that the variance in values differences are more concerns of strength of attachment than to strength of value per se and I personally do not see much chance of a broader breach than does now or has historically existed. The 1930s were an interesting corollary...

The encouraging counterpoint is that about 30 to 60 % (time and circumstances dependent) leave the force each year with less then five years service to rejoin the society from which they came. They are replaced annually by a roughly equal number of new people and that turnover in Officers and Enlisted folks keeps the ties far stronger than is the case where longer service is the norm as is true in most Commonwealth forces.

"Much more problematic is the first order characteristic, that is that the Army sees itself as being an org that fights ‘big wars’, or wars of national survival (the ‘who are we’ component being ‘conventional war fighters’). This to me is very likely an important, if not a core, personality/identity trait.'

Given the "Death or Glory" factor, the unfortunate psychological hangup on WWII as a defining moment and the fact that IW / COIN / Nation building / Occupation are tedious, dirty, messy, time and resource consuming and tend to show little progress or benefit to many, that defining trait is going to be very difficult to change...