Gentlemen, one and all,

Again, thank you for furnishing more intellectual calories of the brain (will too many brain calories make me a fathead? )

Ken

My guess would be the military solution would be better accepted and reinforced. If a civilian solution is imposed, it if unloved will not be reinforced by the armed forces; deviously perhaps -- but there it is. Conversely, if the military solution is sensible and achievable, it will be supported by the civilians to include the Nation at large (as or more important than Congressional acceptance) and will be reinforced by the system that designed it.

In my view, it would be great if we could elect a broad consensus on a future strategy for the use of force (an extremely difficult proposition, I know) and the course of our Foreign Affairs ove the next decade or two (even more difficult). While that's in the 'hard' box, I do not believe it's in the 'too hard' box.
I agree that a solely civilian solution imposed on the military would not work – the military might adopt some changes that it thought worthwhile, but I strongly expect that many if most changes would be fairly superficial (amazing how every piece of desired technology and piece of desired equipment suddenly became ‘transformational’). Ideal, as you say, would be for the civil leadership to articulate a consistent foreign policy strategy for the next decade or so that would provide the framework for the military to make the appropriate adjustments. Yet such a consistent and sustained foreign policy strategy would indeed be, as you correclty note, 'hard', if only because of the consequences of subsequent real world exigencies and contingencies (never mind the attention deficit of many civil leaders).

The other approach that you suggest is for the military to provide the solution that the civilian authorise accept. I would agre that this seems the most plausible way forward given that few among the elected civil authority have any military experience and have at best a limited understanding of the military and the challenges to be faced. But once the civil authorities accept it, they cannot just ignore it, they need to continually articulate/demonstrate their support for the effort.

Rob
is that the institution is only willing to go so far in deviating from what it considers acceptable.
wm
I propose that we work on a "tweaking" of the paradigm, one that places greater emphasis on the unconventional, small war but does so in the context of the conventional, large war.
First, as a bit of an aside: I did not mean to imply in my discussion of ‘paradigm shifts’ that the US military should become little more that an irregular warfare military (or a SysAdmin force - yuck). For I do not believe it should – rather the US and indeed all of our militaries need to accept that COIN/IW is part of what they do, as well as being able to do ‘conventional, large war.’ (allied militaries that are small – which are almost all of them - will have some very hard choices to make, however). I do, however, believe that accomplishing this will take more than a ‘tweaking’ – altering the military mindset or culture usually takes a lot of sustained effort.

That noted, your observations are very astute. The important point both of you two (and Ken, re his Manhatten vs New Jersy analogy) are making is, I think, that the desired changes needs to be introduced in a manner that is as consistent as possible with the current mindset/culture of the military to minimize resultant organizational culture turmoil and backlash. This is a very important point – any changes that fundamentally challenge or clash with organizational cultural traits will certainly run into serious obstacles. So, even before any changes are implemented the military leadership (or whoever is driving the change) needs to think through the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order implications of initiatives to identify potential bureaucratic and cultural clashes (ie obstacles) and work through the means to manage and overcome those obstacles, up to and including ‘tweaking’ the initiatives so that they do not clash with cultural traits. Not easy, I agree, but essential, IMO, for the sort of substantial change in culture that is on the table.


Ken
Raise them right and teach them well and they will do well. We have to start with the Basic Courses -- Officer and NCO, you cannot change one without changing the other -- and they will change the system and processes as they grow.
I wholeheartedly agree – start at the very beginning of their entry and sustain it through out their careers. And definitely include NCOs. This, combined with the current generation of junior to field command officers, is essential to long run success. The process and the people, however, will face resistance from a great many quarters and for a great variety reasons, not least the top echelons of the hierarchy (the McMaster case?). For this reason I think that there is a real need for some senior military leaders with authority who are willing and able to fight the good fight if only to create space and time for the process to unfold.

Guys like that are born, not made. Any recasting of the system needs to select those guys and the "anyone can do it" approach needs to go. We already do that for many jobs, we need to do it for combatant commanders and leaders at all levels.
You are right that not everyone ‘can do it’ (my current HoD is a disastrous example of this – why so many academics think that a PhD in politics means they have leadership skills utterly baffles me ). The education and training systems can identify these individuals, and enhance their skills, but it is the promotion system that needs to be fixed for them to succeed.

Rob
You know you hear historical figures sometime referred to as "ahead of their time" or as "visionary", but do you ever stop and wonder why? I think the answer might be as simple as the label itself - the conditions their their thinking addressed were not seen as solutions until after all the dust had cleared and the facts were known.
I would very much agree with this (and Selil’s follow-up on this). This is a very critical problem when considering effecting far reaching change to enhance or create capabilities for some uncertain and ultimately unknowable future. This is in effect the ‘benefits’ issue – if no immediate benefit is seen, then many members of organization will not buy into, or will opt out of, the attempted change.

This issue was the main problem that undermined Gen. Charles Krulak;s efforts as Commandant (95-99) to prepare the Marine Corps for future, 21st C battlefields. Most Marines seemingly could not make the ‘jump into the future’ that he was asking, even though there was a broad agreement on the general character of these battlefields, as most could not see any real benefit for what there were doing ‘today’ or tomorrow and the day after tomorrow that Krulak was aiming for was a step too far.
Interesting is that today the Marine Corps is picking up a lot of what he was back then arguing was required and picking up many of the initiatives through which he sought to create Marines who were prepared for the battlefields of the 21st C. (and kudos to the Corps for doing so – even though it makes wrong my ‘published’ conclusion that Krulak was only partially successful, for now I have to say that the jury is out on the success of what Gen Kulak was attempting to achieve ).


wm
MarcT suggested that we need to ritualize the changeover.
I do not speak for Marc but to me developing appropriate rituals is part of embedding the process rather than part of fostering the change. Marc’s explanation was very helpful, for what he talked about was creating space for rituals to develop naturally, instead of trying to create rituals that are perceived as artificial and therefore very likely rejected.

Marc
In effect, the system is designed to destroy loyalty to a segment while reinforcing loyalty to the overarching organization.
I concur with this but your observatoin does raise a couple of questions for me. You do speak of creating space for rituals to emerge from informal networks, which is an interesting idea if for no other reason that this is a way to mitigate ‘service’ and ‘tribal’ boundaries (blockages). But I was wondering how this fits with the question of ‘loyalty’? I guess I am thinking here mainly of the hierarchical structure of military organizations, as I cannot see militaries becoming networked organizations (Info Age) as 'opposed' to hierarchical organizations (Industrial age). in addition, there is the question of how the hierarchy might react to such networks, particularly if they grow concerned that 'loyalty' might be shifting towards such networks? I ask this recognizing that every individual does hold multiple loyalties, but hierarchies do tend to be jealous.

So, a second order question is whether somewhere in your thinking about this you are contemplating some form of hybrid organization? To speculate, say a hierarchical command structure through which are interwoven formal (and informal?) crosscutting networks? The steady progress to jointness might possibly be seen as a form of developing crosscutting networks (and I suppose jointness could be used to foster such crosscutting networks).

Best

TT