"Tarnished Brass" (new article by Dick Kohn)

[John T. Fishel]

Apolitical military in the mythical past: GEN winfield Scott, while on active duty, ran for POTUS as a Whig in 1852. MG George B. McClellan was actively opposing his commander-in-chief, A. Lincoln while in command of the Army of the Potomac and ran for Pres in 1864 (after he'd been fired).
Do we give up our rights as US citizens because we put on the uniform? some yes but mainly no. there is also a difference between the active and reserve components. Sen Lindsay Graham is a USAFR Colonel. there are still a few states that elect their Adjutant Generals and a significant number where the position is a purely political appointment. Note that a RC officer writing for publication does not have to get a security review of what he writes before it is published if he is (1) not on active duty and (2) not required to do so because of his civilian DOD (or OGA) job.
Strategy: I know one of the AWC faculty members quoted by Kohn here. But his complaint was based not on the issue of national strategy but rather on the strategies that officers produce by law and policy. Remember that the Goldwater-Nichols Act charged the CJCS to produce the National Military Strategy. Every unified command is required to produce its strategy by policy. Unless officers at the war colleges are required to learn to do strategy, how can they meet their legal obligations. (BTW I ran the SOUTHCOM Policy & Strategy shop in 1988 and 89 and was resposible for GEN Woerner's last strategy as well as GEN Thurman's.) In addition, the process of developing the National Security Strategy (NSS) - called for in the GNA - and the Defense Strategy (instituted by SECDEF Rumsfeld) requires military input.

Cheers

JohnT

[Surferbeetle]

Professor Kohn’s essay is an interesting piece, and captures a valid sentiment: America needs a cost effective strategy in order to meet the demands of our Nations range of desires and responsibilities. I’ll state the obvious assumption: the Department of Defense was created in order to conduct a large part of our Nations strategy and it is allocated a large part of our Nations resources in order to do so. Professor Kohn is of the opinion, however, that DOD is not providing an adequate return on the Nations investment.

Fair enough, he is a fellow taxpayer, and I applaud him for taking the time and effort to try and identify areas where we can improve.

My education, training, and experience have helped me to understand that in order to identify, define, and solve a problem one must understand the context of the problem and solution as well as have the appropriate skills to respond. Professor Kohn correctly identifies the importance of education, training, and experience for DOD personnel, however like Goesh I keyed in on the glaringly apparent failure to internalize the power of teamwork:

This may require further de-emphasis of mathematics, science, and engineering at the academies, on the grounds that war is first and foremost a human phenomenon, not a technical or engineering problem.

My drill sergeant taught me a valuable lesson very early in my career. A team is stronger than an individual…after 48 hours an individual needs sleep, an individual cannot watch all avenues of approach at once, etc. etc. Professor Kohn appears to subscribe to the mistaken idea that mathematics, science, engineering, and humanities can’t successfully team up to solve national strategy issues.

Contrary to Professor Kohn’s assertions the history of our nuclear forces to include Strategic Air Command and the Navy’s Submarine force, among others, are an example of the successes of this multidisciplinary approach. Proof positive are all of the free standing American and Russian populations.

Iraq 2003-06 (pre-surge) is a recent example of a failure to successfully create and employ an integrated mathematics, science, engineering, and humanities approach to warfare. Proof positive is our failure to consistently recognize the importance of the Iraqi population with the resultant exacerbation of the conflict. Afghanistan appears to follow this same pattern.

With respect to assertions of a political officer-corps, any one who would like to make these mostly baseless assertions needs to simply join and serve. My observation is that politically active officers are outliers in the general population and are dealt with appropriately. The assertion of a political officer corps is a red herring, which does not serve to identify, define, and solve our national strategy problems.

Fortunately the pace and requirements of the conflicts we have chosen to engage in are purging the force of dead weight and forcing the re-examination of faulty assumptions concerning American strategy, operations, and tactics. Professor Kohn would benefit from some more time spent in the field with USMC and US Army forces and we would benefit from his observations after this experience.

[Van]

...If Kohn believes that there was some golden moment when the officer corps (as a whole) was:

1. Apolitical
2. Intellectual
3. Not prone to micromanagement
4. A moral exemplar
5. Capable of seamlessly integrating tactics, operations, and strategy

I wish he would point it out.

I think there are several pendulums in play.

The intellectual aspect is closely tied to the failure to integrate contemplative and active values as has been discussed in a couple of other threads. This can get challenging as academics will never accept that the military is intellectual enough. On the other hand, the demands of protracted small wars (2001 -present, over seven years and counting) have nudged this pendulum in the intellectual direction to what may be an unprecedented degree.

Micromanagement is a common vice in the types of folks who have the capacity and will to become military leaders, but in peacetime, micromanagement gets more commonplace as there are fewer opportunities to excel. Come wartime, the value of Auftragstaktik comes to the front again. And the military is not homogenous, commander's intent may be the byword of one organization while a unit supporting them is closely micromanaged.

The moral exemplar... I think this is tied to the respect or contempt paid the military by the population. This is also a chicken and egg issue. Contempt from the population leads to seedier people seeking the military as a career, leading to a more contemptible military. Respect from the population inspires the military to raise and enforce standards, and a positive spiral. Again, that pendulum swings.

Seamlessly integrating tactics, operations, and strategy; We're not perfect, but we may be approaching the limits of what can be done based on influences and limitations imposed from outside the military. As long as the military remains subordinate to civil leadership, the military is sharply limited in what influence it has over strategy. Strategy drives operational art, which the military is pretty good at, achieving the goals handed down from civil leadership. Tactics are based on timeless principles, but shaped by technology. There is certainly room for improvement in the integration of emerging technologies into tactics and doctrine. I believe that the military has acknowledged that the young warriors in all branches have the creativity to identify new tools and TTPs. The services have begun to leverage the technological savvy of the young folks to bring new tools into use and provided them, the smart young folks, with tools to share and disseminate their ideas.

Apolitical... I've been thinking long and hard on this one. The first thing that was left hanging in the article is "By whose scale?" The American officer corps is deep into the apolitical end of the spectrum when compared to all the militaries of the world. Within our own spectrum, from least politically oriented to most, the pendulum may be swinging towards the more politically oriented and active end of the scale. But this still has us way over to the apolitical end of the spectrum in the broader sense. This may be a reflection of the intense polarization of the American political spectrum right now, which in turn, is a consequence of the 24 hr news cycle and the business of entertainment masquerading as televised journalism. When the extreme of one end of the political spectrum is aggressive and vocal in their contempt of the military, it is only natural that members of the military migrate to the other end of the spectrum. It is equally natural that when the military is attacked unceasingly and viciously, that the military members want to defend themselves. Given some of the criticisms and attacks, the military members should be commended on their restraint.

[RANT]This arrogant and intellectually slovenly article should inspire SWC members in academia to take this moral coward to task. The single most important question for him is 'why focus on the military with these out-dated and ill-considered accusations?' The answer is obvious, but I suspect that Kohn would lack the integrity to admit that the military is an easy and popular target, and attacking the media, academia, and the civil government for their responsibilities in the issues he brings up wouldn't get him the attention he obviously craves.[/RANT]

[Ken White]

I think there are several pendulums in play.

[RANT]This arrogant and intellectually slovenly article should inspire SWC members in academia to take this moral coward to task. The single most important question for him is 'why focus on the military with these out-dated and ill-considered accusations?' The answer is obvious, but I suspect that Kohn would lack the integrity to admit that the military is an easy and popular target, and attacking the media, academia, and the civil government for their responsibilities in the issues he brings up wouldn't get him the attention he obviously craves.[/RANT]

He's got some errors of the past pegged but he's off on much else, including his fixes. At first, I dismissed it as another Air force ploy to depict the Army as unworthy and intellectually deficient -- then I recalled Hanlon's Razor...