This Profession of Arms: A Military Officer Breaking the Silence After War by Dale, The Bridge
On April 17, 2014, William S. Lind wrote that “the most curious thing about our four defeats in Fourth Generation War—Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is the utter silence in the American officer corps.” I suppose Mr Lind’s point was that the US military was being too complacent in its critique of itself as well as Washington’s management of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, I am not writing to debate the “defeat” of the US in 4GW but rather to break the silence that he says is prevalent in the US military. This is my humble contribution.
Recently I read an interview in which David Maxwell, a former USA Special Forces officer now at Georgetown University, offered his thoughts about writing and learning for junior officers in this profession of arms. Personally, I received this as a challenge as well as an exhortation to contribute. There are plenty of other military professionals that write and publish. I am now far enough removed from my deployments in the Long War that I felt that it is now my time to offer my thoughts to the discussion about the nature of war and its future…
Comments
Sparapet,
Your comments about junior and mid rank officers speculating on strategy instead of tactics and lessons observed were thought provoking. This may be a historic norm, but it doesn’t seem to be based on an admittedly faulty memory. I get the sense that some junior officers believe their General and Flag officers don’t get it, a perception further enforced by former Secretary Gate’s book, “Duty.” The problem is bigger than that and I think our junior and mid-grade officers are reflecting the concerns most of America and many of our allies and partners have with the seemingly aimless pursuit of the war on terror where strategy seems to be little more than a compilation pie in the sky policy desires and intellectually bankrupt buzz phrases like it takes a network to defeat a network, build partner capacity, good governance, and so forth. Build capacity to do what exactly? On one hand we say the military is the wrong tool, so our answer is to build a partner’s military so they can employ the wrong tool? This doesn’t apply across the board, but when if you hear someone trumpeting we must build capacity, ask them to explain how that will achieve our ends before they get off their soapbox. It is another one size fits all approach and that isn’t smart strategy.
Why do junior officers care about strategy even? If junior front line officers were faced with North Koreans attacking into South Korea they would have to focus strictly on tactical maneuver; however, once that mission transitioned into some form of stability operation understanding the strategic context would be crucial to inform tactical decision making in a complex situation where decisions are often made in a decentralized structure using mission command. For example, very few of us understood the strategic context in Iraq after the Saddam regime fell in 2003, so we improvised and hoped what we were doing supported the bigger scheme versus derailing it. The fact that this context was missing is why I think so many junior and mid-grade officers write about strategy.
I disagree that there is an absence of shared understanding between junior and senior officers. I think our senior officers were also grasping for strategic context when policy objectives seemed to be unattainable via military means. I see parallels today with junior to mid-grade officers after the Vietnam War who were highly frustrated by their experiences, but very much committed to rebuilding the Army. GEN Shinseki was one of them, and the results of their transformation of the force over the decades since were demonstrated during the Desert Storm, but the glass was only half way full because it seemed the lesson the officers took from Vietnam was to discard what we now call irregular warfare, so after the conventional fight in Afghanistan and Iraq we had to relearn (not reinvent) irregular warfare as a joint force. Over time the pendulum swung in the other direction and especially young officers thought COIN was the way of the future, what else could there be? Senior officers who probably read more history and definitely experienced more history realized that was a very dangerous assumption and now we’re beginning to shift back to learning how to fight higher end wars. Will we ever find a balance between the two?
We have been in a state of strategic confusion since the Cold War ended. I don’t think the world is more complex now, but it feels increasingly complex when you don’t have realistic strategic policy aims to develop a supporting strategy for. Realizing this GEN Shinseki as the Chief of Staff for the Army pushed the Army after Next concept where he accepted a high level of strategic uncertainty and focused on making the Army more flexible, agile, and lethal. If you couldn’t get to the fight you couldn’t fight, so he pushed for modular Brigades and a lighter combat vehicle (Stryker) when it became apparent we couldn’t get armor divisions anywhere quickly. The War on Terror resulted in another of other adaptions that may be detrimental in another scenario, but time will tell. What interests me is the strategy for the next decade or two and how it will shape the transformation of our military. We currently face emerging or re-emerging state actors of concern, a wide range of technologically empowered non-state actors, and non-traditional security concerns related to terrorism, natural disasters, security for food, water, energy, etc. We still need a military that can still do high end war fighting which is expensive, and it still should be able to conduct non-traditional missions. All that while we downsize and reduce spending on training. My fear is we’ll be forced, or by choice, to wish away the irregular threats and only focus on high end war fighting where we have (or had) a competitive advantage. My other concern is what lessons did we learn over the past decade of conflict? If we think our COIN doctrine is the only approach to future challenges we’ll face with irregulars then we will subconsciously block out considering other approaches for achieving our objectives that could be more effective, sustainable, and not distract from our responsibility to protect our interests from higher end conventional and unconventional threats that merge terrorism, armed groups, criminal networks, and advanced technologies. I can understand why we don’t have a clear strategy for the way forward based on the wide range of potential threats to our interests and no clear policy guidance on what is essential that we defend. I think GEN Shinseki’s approach about accepting uncertainty is still fundamental meaning we must re-engineer the force in a way that allows for maximum flexibility and agility to respond to wide range of threats with a diverse toolbox of capabilities. Hardly a strategy to pursue an end, but perhaps realistic based on the current and projected global environment.
Contrary to your comment, I think there are some concrete notions for us to consider, well as concrete as military art gets anyway.
First off I would recommend reading the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO)
http://www.cfr.org/defense-strategy/capstone-concept-joint-operations-j…
Many of the proposals are significant changes to the current way we do business. There are risks for pursuing and not pursuing it, so this is one of the topics we should debate that would be value added to decision makers.
GEN Dempsey did a couple of interviews lately that shed light on his thoughts which I found to be understandably grasping which means there are opportunities for our collective thoughts to be heard which is why I’m hopeful Dave Maxwell’s plea to get junior officers to write is taken to heart.
http://warontherocks.com/2014/02/a-conversation-with-the-chairman-gener…
GEN Dempsey: And then the other interesting thing about strategy, to me, is whether it’s best to define an end state and then deliberately plot a series of actions to achieve that end state. That’s the traditional thinking, by the way. You identify the end state and then you back plan from that and you chart a course with milestones to decide whether you’ve got it right or not; or whether the world in which we live today actually is one where, kind of like the Heisenberg principle in physics, where you should touch it and see what happens.
http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2014/05/dempsey-wants-rebalance-away-us…
GEN Dempsey: Well, I’m going to get a little philosophic with you here, but when you look at what the military instrument of power can accomplish, it is actually more effective in dealing with strength-on-strength situations than it is in dealing with strength-on-weakness scenarios. And we’re finding that a weakening of structures and central authority is pervasive in today’s world. The Middle East is a poster child for that dynamic. But if you look at almost any sector of civilization – from international organizations, to big corporations to places of worship – their authority has diminished over the past decade. That has to do with the spread of technology that has made information so ubiquitous in today’s world. But the result has been a weakened international order. And frankly, it’s harder to articulate the proper use of military power in that environment as opposed to a world with stronger centers of authority.
It's worth noting that junior and mid rank officers are penning articles speculating on war and strategy. Not tactics, not systems, not lessons learned, but on the fundamental questions of why we do the things we do. I say it is worth noting because it speaks to either 1. a major departure from senior leadership (else we would just repeat what they say) or 2. the absence of a shared strategic understanding.
I prefer option 2. Writing policy in the Pentagon, being at the operational level, or reading the latest strategic musings, I am no closer to articulating the DOD perspective on the future of war. Sure I can play buzzword bingo and talk about the "net-centric warfare", "new normal", "human domain", "constrained environment", "do more with less", "whole of government" and umpteen other thingamabobers. But I couldn't tell you with any certainty what any of them mean. And I couldn't even point to a commonly accepted notion.
In this regard we are where we were in August 2001. We know how to do kinetic with absolute certainty...or at least we all agree that we do. On everything else the senior leadership is conspicuously absent. We don't even have a concrete notion to argue against. So the junior and recently junior officers are left to speculating or extrapolating from our experience, which by-and-large is limited to two theaters and only two campaigns.
This isn't akin to the interwar arguments over mechanized or aviation warfare. There, at least, there were concrete notions to be redefined and argued over. Even St. Thomas Aquinas had more to work with as he laid down his version of Christian Doctrine.
It would look really grim, if you had also included the 1st, 2nd & 3rd generations:
-failed 1812 invasion of Canada;
-Vietnam;
-small wars [to support US 'Business' interests] in approx 315 other countries; and
-the infamous War of Drugs [in America and 195 other countries]
Communism being, the really really big red herring.
All told, if you add everything up, the results are massive blowback, predatory capitalism [which is really not working out so good, 'cepping for the 1%] and an empire that is well on it's way to imploading, due to a complete inability to look in the mirror and ask the question, why do they hate [elephant in the room] American foreign policy ? If you never actually seriously ask the question, then you'll never really have to acknowledge the answer.
Well done troops. So much for manifest destiny.
Reminds of of Smedley Butler [US Marine] wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he described and criticized the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those he was a part of, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them
I would brag about being Canadian, however comma, Comrade Harper, is dragging us down the toilet as well.
Regards, Johnny Canuk.