Steve,
I agree that the commander is an omitted variable, but one that I think would be hard to quantify and thus should be addressed qualitatively in the paper. The question is what bias this creates, and the section that I highlighted from your post is what I'd argue is what happens on average, and thus, the bias would be very low.
Commanders are selected based on their performance within the chosen doctrine of the force, and the current incentives reinforce this - grad school is poo poo'd as time spent away from the force while muddy boots assignments are the "tickets" to success. While there is lip service that grad school is good now (although the incentives haven't been changed to match this, e.g., telling boards that civilian graduate school is the equivalent as a second command in Ranger Regiment), I don't think that it is much more than that. Thus, a GEN Petraeus or LTG Chiarelli that can adapt on the first go around in a non-doctrinal scenario is the exception and not the rule. The necessities of the scenario will cause others to adapt and become more effective as time goes on, but I'd still argue that mechanization does have a causal impact (through the effects of doctrine and mindset) on the probability of winning a counterinsurgency.
Essentially, what we would consider a good full spectrum commander may not be the commander that is promoted because the doctrine/mindset doesn't have the same definition of good.
Absolutely. The interesting policy question that stems from this is still the same million dollar question - how do you (and can you) develop an Army that can truly be full spectrum and not one that pays lip service to full spectrum operations while treating small wars as the lesser included case?Originally Posted by Steve Blair
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