From General to Strategic Corporal: Complexity, Adaptation and Influence
by Major General Andrew Mackay and Commander Steve Tatham
Republished with permission of the authors.
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This paper represents nearly two years of work and active consideration -- both in the academic domain and in the field of conflict -- of the problems confronting the British military in contemporary and future conflict. At its heart is the belief that future campaigns will need to focus on altering the behaviours of others, either in advance -- and therefore deterring conflict -- or as a coupled component in the process of combat and post combat operations. It takes the deployment of 52 Brigade to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as its principal case study and examines the thought processes -- falling outside more conventional military wisdom and training -- that lay behind the Commander's decisions to mount an influence-led deployment, one that specifically sought to reduce hard kinetic engagement and place the consent of the population at the centre of the operational design. Indeed the paper argues that success in battle will demand as much understanding of social psychology, culture and economics as it does military art and science. It examines the corporate structures available within the MoD to support that decision and, finding them lacking, suggests not only how a new strategic communication structure might evolve to meet future demands but also how the provision of education, learning, unlearning and relearning at every level, from Commander to strategic Corporal, is likely to be the pre-eminent factor in success in future conflict.
Download the full article: Complexity, Adaptation and Influence
In a 29-year career, Major General Andrew Mackay has seen operational service in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan. In 2008 he was awarded the CBE for his command of 52 Brigade in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Promoted Major General in 2009 his last appointment in the British Army was as General Officer Commanding Scotland and Northern England.
Steve Tatham is a Commander in the Royal Navy and has experience from operations in Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. He holds an M Phil from Cambridge University, and is the author of 'Losing Arab Hearts & Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion' and 'Strategic Communication: A Primer'. He is just completing his PhD in Strategic Communication in Future Conflict.
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Comments
Sir,
I am not advocating that influence be doctrinally defined. That was my attempt to show that the art of influence is not universally understood whereas the science of operations is. I agree; everything a military unit does in an area of operations has an influence. My experience tells me that assuming each commander is rationally (i.e. correctly) influencing his AO is a poor one. I read the McKay/Tatham paper as encouraging a better understanding of what influence is and a discussion of the tools that can be applied to successfully achieve it. Was it revolutionary? Maybe not - but it is a far cry from the chest thumping bravado that generally permiates our views on the application of military power.
I completely agree that cold war 'templating' has partially retarded a generation of staff officers and leaders. I am not so sure I agree with your conclusions on prior emphasis/understanding of the 'population' in conflict areas. I would argue that the emphasis was overwhelmingly placed on the opposing enemy force and the effort applied to the population was generic at best. Yes, there are a few exceptions - (e.g. Banana Wars/Small Wars manual) but in general we got it wrong in Korea, Beirut, Iran, Vietnam, South America, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
My service also prescribes to MCDP1...Semper Fi & Happy New Year.
"The formal piece is important, but we would benefit a lot more by supporting an organizational culture that rewards continuous study and intellectual engagement--in order to better get at the flexibility necessary to adapt to whatever the next war may be... "
Sir, an excellent point.
I'd offer up one example where I think this has occurred, and that is in the Army's Functional Area 59 (Army Strategists http://www.fa-59.army.pentagon.mil/Education.htm ). As with any functional area, its a bit of sub culture, but still I think it supports your point.
The BSAP (Basic Strategic Arts Program) is a 14 week course held up at the Army's War College in Carlisle Barracks, PA. Since they cannot put everything into a 14 week course, they plant the understanding that to succeed and thrive the 59 must make a commitment to life long learning. The course introduces the students to a wide variety of works on operational and strategic thought but cannot afford to explore each completely. This combined with a couple of other events such as an "inter-agency" staff ride to various departments and agencies in D.C., a wide variety of guest lectures, and the advantage of being able to attend the larger lectures for the 06 students in the AWC provides a sound basis for continued education.
I'd say its a self selecting community of FGs who for different reasons are attracted to the program, so I'm not sure how that works as a model for the rest of the force, much as any other community might be self selecting. The structure of the course itself however may provide some insights into how to use 14 weeks to foster a desire and an understanding not only of why continued learning is paramount, but also how to learn.
I say that knowing this there are some great programs in all the services, and that there are allot of self starters out there, but I know from experience how the BSAP program works, and believe it worth looking into as one possible approach.
Best, Rob
Rob,
I agree with almost all of what you state. I think the point of EDUCATION (as opposed to training) should be about the nature of conflict, the "chameleon" as it has been famously referred to. I would quibble with one point. I think that the militarys ability to provide formal resident Professional Military Education is finite. However, the concept of military education should not be considered so limited. Most readers of this website understand that true education is a life-long affair and we cannot rely solely on interludes at school to provide educated military personnel. The formal piece is important, but we would benefit a lot more by supporting an organizational culture that rewards continuous study and intellectual engagement--in order to better get at the flexibility necessary to adapt to whatever the next war may be...
JT:
"I would counter your point by asking what the operational term and graphic for 'influence' is? My 101-5-1 does not have a definition or a symbol to represent this action. "
What is the conduct of warfare itself if not an effort to influence? I hope that there is no discrete definition or symbol. The idea of influencing the enemy, or the population, should not be such a cognitive leap for us to make. There are arguably different means and environments, but what I read in my own services capstone pub, MCDP 1 "Warfighting," is that we can either bend the enemy to our will by physically removing his capability to resist or by operations that convince him to stop resisting. Either option can be used and each has implications. What "population-centric" COIN seems to assert is that you cannot physically destroy the insurgent (as a violent opponent) as long as he has support within the population, or as long as the population has the means and motivation to express their dissatisfaction by organized violence--the insurgency will keep regenerating (this is the theory at least). The basic assumption of this theory is that the population can be influenced. Im not sure if weve come to grips with the idea that some populations, or portions thereof, cannot always be influenced to agree with us or a certain government.
However, Im not an adept COIN theorist. My point is that in these discussions it appears that we have oversimplified what we have to do in more "conventional" operations to "mere" fire and maneuver. The history is that well-conducted operations have always taken into account a measure of "influencing" the "human terrain" involved. Yes, its been largely "kinetic" operations, but they have been dominated by the moral element on all sides. If that wasnt our understanding of conventional operations, then Ill have to admit to doubts of what our ability was, or is, against a competent military adversary.
In my opinion, one of the egregious products of the Cold War was the "doctrinal template" where we summed up the totality of supposed Warsaw Pact tactical operations into a set of standard expectations. After sitting through a Ft Benning battalion-in-the-defense practical application in 1994, one of the foreign students, a Pole (the first crop of former Warsaw Pact officers to attend), incredulously asked, "Did you think we were that stupid?"
If anything has hobbled our ability to adapt it would be a search for templates to train to, rather than educating ourselves as Rob has outlined. I agree with many of the points in the paper. My problem isnt with their recommendations, its that they are couching their recommendations as radical thinking where I think that there is (or should be) much more continuity with reasoned understanding of the basics of conflict and warfighting.
Phil Ridderhof USMC
Col Ridderhof,
I would counter your point by asking what the the operational term and graphic for 'influence' is? My 101-5-1 does not have a definition or a symbol to represent this action.
I believe the McKay/Tatham paper addresses something novel for our current and (likely) future conflicts. Making 'influence' the main effort and determining how to achieve influence to bring stability to an area is NOT something that we have been doing all along. For the most part, we have been doing what we know...and...in my opinion, what we know are 'operations' be it HVI raids or a large Regt/Div/Corps level operations that brief very well but tend to be ineffective in a COIN environment.
As a result of the recent success in Iraq, many are intuitively moving in the McKay/Tatham direction but I have not seen anything produced on the level of the above paper that wrestles with these difficult concepts. In fact, the response that this paper generated in another thread is practically stereo-typical to the response such a discussion would receive on almost any battle staff. In my opinion, this is an extremely difficult concept that is much more easily dismissed than debated on its merit.
The USMC intel community has developed leaps and bounds since 2003 with increased manning at the Bn and Regt, improved training and equip, as well as the development of the Company Level Intel Cell and the Econ/Political Intel Cell. However, this paper is not about intelligence per se more than it is about a paradigm shift on the part of leadership.
I agree with Phil R, the more I think about this the more I think its not a question of educating for the nature of a specific flavor of warfare, but more one of educating for the nature of war.
I'm starting to believe we have misdiagnosed our educational gap. Its not a COIN gap, or a Stability Ops gap, or an IW gap -its a gap about how wars are a peculiar human endeavor that are fought by people to achieve some political objective.
Certainly war may not cover HA type missions, but even these involve use of military forces to achieve (sustain) political objectives, and they also involve people.
In that vein maybe we should educate to provide leaders with the tools that support understanding not only how to support achieving specific military objectives, but the political objectives to which they are employed. With respect to what MG Mackay and CDR Tatham discuss, this implies the ability to understand the frictions and resistance to both the military and political objectives on multiple levels.
Educating for this may well involve the use of social theory in PME (be it service, joint or other), but at this point it should be in the context of war, not just an end unto itself.
Their well constructed article raises and interesting point however about what we want (in terms of capabilities) out of our leaders at various levels and in various positions. It also raises an issue of what type of people you recruit, how you assess them and perhaps how you further develop and retain them.
The ability of the military to educate is finite. It is subject to more constraints then just what it would like to educate on, or the education it would like its leaders to receive. As such it relies on the broader educational system to provide a basis of knowledge in each individual it can use to educate on specific matters. If that base understanding is inadequate then we may need to either look further back (commissioning source programs)and see how the baseline can be adjusted.
Again, I think we'd get more out of our PME (and other educational opportunities) by orienting it not only on how to achieve the military objective, but on what is required to achieve the political objective, and how to consider that political objective will shape the character of the war (or warfare)waged to achieve it. From this I suspect, the particulars of COIN, IW, etc. will fall out.
Best, Rob
This essay has produced great discussion elsewhere on SWJ, especially on its assumptions on the nature of present and future conflict. What I was struck by, however, is what this essay seems to say about our past approach to what are now called "conventional operations"--or the tactical aspects of fighting other more formally organized and uniformed military forces.
According to the authors, when fighting conventional operations, we did not seem to have to concern ourselves with the human element--fire and maneuver are simply means to destroy an enemy. I find this counter to everything Ive read in history about effective conventional fighting. If the fact that we need to understand the human element, whether in a population or a uniformed adversary, is coming as some new revelation, then our pre-OIF military would probably have been ineffective against a competent conventional adversary, much less having problems adapting to the counterinsurgency, or "irregular" problems it faced starting in late 2003.
I dont think we were that blind (I hope not), but it points to some of the challenges in the current debates. If we buy into the idea that a conventionally focused military somehow is a less-thoughtful, creative and adaptive military, then our problems run deeper than choosing appropriate armaments and training & education syllabi.
I agree with the authors that we need to be better at tactical in understanding what make all the relevant players in the environment tick--both the population and the enemy (and I think that the enemy can be a significant slice of the population itself). However, this is true for any environment or tactical problem. Most of our biggest blunders in conventional operations have been misreading the human element, not in the blocking and tackling of battledrills and small unit tactics.
Phil Ridderhof USMC