Comments
People are reading what they want to read instead of what Gates actually said. This was a speech about personnel policy. See the bullet points in the transcript. See how much of it was devoted to personnel policy. See what he says are his biggest concerns. This wasn't a speech about force structure or COIN.
Just re-reading it, while I understand the forum was USMA and the physical audience was cadets I think if the SECDEF wants to get at institutional change, then he also needs to address the roles and responsibilities of the DACs and civilian appointees and how they affect the governance of the Army.
While creative tension can be beneficial when both sides understand the need for change, if one of those sides is providing resistance that originates from self preservation, personal advancement, retention of the staus quo or even fear and ignorance than instituting change is next to impossible.
This is more true in the Generating Force and DA staff directorates than in the Operating Force where there are not as many civilians and there is a dominant uniformed lead in making operational and tactical decisions. This lack of understanding both Armies is a real issue - most uniformed leaders only pass through the GF side while the DACs and appointees are rooted into the GF side by nature of their role and career development.
Its great that the SECDEF addresses the need for changes in policies, but without examning the processes and structures that govern them and put people in posiitons of authorities I think we can only get part of the way there.
Roger, sir- I had my tongue in my cheek for most of that. I guess I thought it interesting that the JAWS (Joint Advanced Warfighting Studies) course presented the solution to complexity as being just one of limiting your objectives and then, voila- little to no complexity and success more than likely.
My response to that was- usually the military doesn't have the call on what the objectives are or loses the argument- then what? We can't simply learn to limit our objectives and think that will be all we face in the future.
And I thought it was interesting that the institution seemed to be teaching that Desert Storm and other contingency operations were not complex (or less complex) simply because we limited our objectives. Although I think there is merit in limiting our objectives, I don't think that's what we should prepare for or use as the only successful examples.
"How can the Army can break-up the institutional concrete, its bureaucratic rigidity in its assignments and promotion processes, in order to retain, challenge, and inspire its best, brightest, and most-battled tested young officers to lead the service in the future?"
I'm not sure it can without leadership and vision from both the uniformed and civilian top that challenges accepted mental models and shakes up the organizational culture. While the troops - meaning pretty much everyone under the SEC Army and CSA can, and do rearrange the deck chairs, any paradigm shifts have to be driven from the top down.
I think a good start begins with a commitment to the truth, and an examination of requirements and supporting processes. This I think might get us to the how and why of our decisions. However, if the analogy is concrete (chosen I guess for its nature) then I'd suggest its really thick and thicker in some places than in others. A better might be something with deep roots that is resistant to most forms of change, has to be dug out by hand or burnt, repopulates in all soils and climates and is willing to lay dormant for years (or until the change agent moves on) in order to avoid detection.
It has to be a partnership between the uniformed and civilian top leadership, and it has to be inside DA (not just driven by DoD) or its probably meaningless in the long run.
Many problems may well merit some application of military force. Most are not wars, and fewer still require that we go "all in."
As to Desert Shield/Storm, that was more complex than a Swiss watch. Fortunately we had grossly underestimated our own capabilities, and shocked the world as well as ourselves in how that played out. Equally fortunate was that we possessed the wisdom of not taking out the fulcrum in balance between Shia Iran and the Sunni AP.
OIF benefitted in many ways from the full-dress rehearsal of DS; but I suspect DS also served to embolden us to "finish what we had started" and throw out the Zinni plan that left Iraqi security forces intact for the "kill them all" plan we replaced it with. The rest, as they say, is history.
Sir-
I'll answer that one. From the JAWS course at Leavenworth: the "perfect" example of a Joint Operational Campaign Plan and executed interdiction was the 2003 U.S. intervention into Liberia. The conclusion, although only stated subtly, was that if you severly restrict your objectives to just a few (preferably just one), make them as clear and limited as possible, and put a very short-term time horizon on your actions- you can bring the complexity down to minimal and manageable levels.
I understand you could make the argument that that wasn't "war" and that it was artificially made less complex- but I thought that was the point. We control how complex things are by our attempted reach. If you give a mission statement like "create peace" to a company commander and don't tell him when he's leaving, that's a little different than: "conduct a demonstration in x town for 30 days then leave."
Desert Storm was also presented as paradoxically both less complex due to our limited objectives/time (and thus successful) and eventually problematic due to the "unfinished business" we left because of those limited objectives/time. Do you think DoD is "re-learning" the Powell Doctrine that supposedly came out of Vietnam: if you're gonna do something- get the support of the people and go all in- while being wary of "people's wars"?
Grant Martin
MAJ, US Army
The above comments are the author's own and do not constitute the position of the US Army or DoD.
Always a pleasure to see you those sterling gentlemen Gian and Bob, fight their respective corners... ;)
As usual, <b>Dave Maxwell</b> gets it right -- as I think does <b>in the know</b>. Regrettably, for that last. What's needed and what's done are likely to differ.
Accepting the fact that the good Secretary is one of the better SecDefs -- and I can recall all twenty two and one half of them, served under all but the first one and two of the last three (caught Rumsfeld only on his first stint)-- I remind you that he also was for years ans Intel Analyst. That's a trade known for hedging its bets and seeking balance.
I'm also going to seek balance. I agree with all of you, <b>David Ucko</b> and Gates himself.
Given the foreseeable future, I'd agree that the Air Force and Navy will have more potential for commitment than the Army. That does not mean the Army doesn't have to be prepared for commitment to everything from disaster assistance through major conflict -- it does.
I agree that any President who wished to send<blockquote>"...a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should "have his head examined," as General MacArthur so delicately put it."</blockquote> Note he's quoting MacArthur on that point. It was a tenet of American policy for years that the US should avoid a land war on any of those continents; a policy reinforced by our experience in World War II.
The last fifty plus years have reaffirmed the wisdom of that policy. It was and is a sensible and should not be scrapped or evaded for so-called humanitarian concerns or for ideological reasons. Neither Gates nor I recommend isolationism; just using some sense about what we do and where we do it...
Large forces, a "big American land Army..." will constitute or precipitate a land war and that should be diligently avoided. That dictum obviously (I thought...) does not preclude commitment of smaller forces for operations in far way places.
He's not advocating moving away from a force that is premised on firepower, protection, and mobility. I did not read anything suggesting he did that.
Bob gets all ideological with the denouncing of the colonial intervention shibboleth and then, proceeds to encourage post colonial intervention. Doing the same thing with slight differences. :D
In that, he is in accordance with the SecDef who believes some interventions may be required and that the Army should be prepared for them. My sensing is that most of us are in agreement with that, merely at some variance on where the emphasis in future structure and strategies should be...
Variance is good. So is balance. The Secretary showed balance and that always upsets the partisans. It should not, the partisans rarely get it right. Which leads me to my point of disagreement with Bob on the idea that we should not intervene but that it's okay to intrude ans assert our will. That's not balance, that's a dichotomy.
That said, <b>Robert C. Jones</b> is IMO correct on this:<blockquote>"Leave the heavy lifting of policing the fringes to the Marines, selected and trained for such operations. Leave the art of FID to Special Forces, selected and trained for such operations. For the Army, there are bigger fish to fry, and currently those fish are beginning to smell from neglect."</blockquote>
<b>Gian P. Gentile</b> said he thought "<i>the Secretary missed the mark in this speech about the future of war and the future of the American Army.</i>"
I disagree.
Gates said:<blockquote>"We cant know with absolute certainty what the future of warfare will hold, but we do know it will be exceedingly complex, unpredictable, and - as they say in the staff colleges - "unstructured."</blockquote> That accurately portrays as much about the future of war as anything I've read or heard over a good many years. His wanderings into elements of warfare may illuminate certain aspects but that sentence is his summation -- and IMO, it's quite accurate.
On the future of the American Army, this should be everyone's take away:<blockquote>"How can the Army can break-up the institutional concrete, its bureaucratic rigidity in its assignments and promotion processes, in order to retain, challenge, and inspire its best, brightest, and most-battled tested young officers to lead the service in the future?"</blockquote>That is an uncomfortable but devastatingly accurate portrayal and a very valid question.
Although I agree with the SECDEF on what the Army needs now (breaking the bureaucracy and emphasizing adaptability), I think the telling point is not WHAT he said but WHEN.
Saying that we need to develop future leaders in unconventional ways and get away from bureaucracy on his way out and not articulating how he is perhaps trying to do that now makes it worthless to me. It reminds me of a lame duck president saying during his last public statement that we need to improve education in the country. Okay- agree- but how? And, more importantly- what have you been doing for the last 4 years?? I can only conclude that it is a great idea but probably too hard to do.
Or at least too hard to do internally. Maybe if Congress stepped in and forced the change. Maybe if we suffered a defeat that shook our nation's confidence in our military. But if anyone thinks an outgoing SECDEF's comments will stir the change needed that almost a decade of complex warfighting hasn't (complex mainly because we've made it so), then I've got some Afghan stock indexes to sell you.
David Ucko has provided probably one of the better assessments of the SECDEF's speech at West Point.
I think that the SECDEF's speech is going to be like reading Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, it will be able to be cherry picked of quotes to support any position one wants to take particularly on the future budgeting and programming challenges.
Agree with Bob's post.
Dennis M:
I think the problem with the Secretary's speech is that it was muddled, and one can find in it lots of different interpretations of present and future conflict and the role of the army. But I still believe that overall the speech very carefully embraced the American way of Coin warfare.
I do though Dennis disagree strongly with your last sentence that the Army "has never had a culture that fosters that type of thinking." History proves that assertion to be misguided. Look at the American Army in World War II, especially as it landed in Normandy and fairly quickly adapted to the style of fighting there; Patton and Cota are great examples. Too one can go further back to the American Army in the Philippine War in which it is clear that the Army became quite adept at learning and adapting and "outside of the box thinking." To be sure the Army became ossified in its thinking in the 80s and 90s, especially the latter decade, but that does not mean we have always had this problem.
Arguably, the Coin box that we are stuck in now represents the low points of the Army's ability to adapt, and the Secretary's speech seems to be part of the problem rather than a solution.
gian
While I do agree that the speech has been misinterpreted, I am not sure that Sec. Gates was saying that the army should not focus on skills necessary for fighting large scale state-on-state conflicts either. It seemed to me that he narrowly focused on the army personnel system, arguing that it should have the goal of producing leaders who are not hemmed in by rigid doctrinal requirements or a zero-defect culture. He warned against a system that only rewards those who essentially follow the party line.
All those seem like pretty reasonable goals to me.
In fact, he emphasized that the need for this requirement is that it is impossible to predict what shape future conflicts will take. He allowed for the likelihood that future conflicts will be complex and dangerous. And while he did argue that future large scale conflicts may be dominated by the navy and air force, it seems to me that he did that only to point out that for funding purposes, it will be increasingly important and difficult for the army to justify the cost of large mechanized formations. That is just the reality of the difficulty in budgeting priorities.
I think it is easy to read into this speech any number of messages regarding the shape of the army of the future. However, the only that is clear to me is that the army needs to focus on producing leaders who are willing to think outside of the box critical thinking and that the army needs to encourage such thinking and promote those who engage in it. After all, if you don't know what the next conflict will look like, you would be well served if you had leaders (and an organization) who could adapt.
In my experience, the Army has never had a culture that fosters that type of thinking.
I tend to agree in principle with Gian.
While it is my position that COIN was thrown into the dirty bath water of colonial interverntions and codified as such in FM 3-24; I hope we have the wisdom to indeed throw out that bathwater, but to retain COIN in the process.
But those who preach the end of major state on state warfare join those who have dones so over the ages following some major change of circumstances, only to always be proven wrong.
While I agree that there is no one state that can pose a serious threat to the US, there are plenty of places on the globe where the US could be sucked into major conflict between some mix of rising, competing states; or could be engaged by a coalition of such states as well.
Such conflicts, both the deterrence of and the fighting of, are squarely in the Army's wheelhouse.
Leave the heavy lifting of policing the fringes to the Marines, selected and trained for such operations. Leave the art of FID to Special Forces, selected and trained for such operations. For the Army, there are bigger fish to fry, and currently those fish are beginning to smell from neglect.
I respect Secretary Gates, but I suspect we still are not on the path we need to be on to produce a military that is best postured to serve the complexities of Americas's current role in this dynamic era of empowered populaces and jockying geo-politics.
The answer is not to COIN or not to COIN; that is not even the question.
Cheers,
Bob
I agree with David here,
in fact if one reads the entire text of the speech one comes away with a very different overall argument by the Secretary than has been reported in most major media outlets. In a careful way the speech can be read as very much Pro-Coin in that he cites the leading figures of Coin (Nagl, Yingling, etc) and uses in his speech many of the maxims, tropes, and principles of coin, plus he fully embraces the coin learning and adapting narrative along with the surge triumph story.
And like many pro-coin commentators the Secretary uses as a caricature of conventional war with terms like armies in "big" mechanized battles and then says those kinds of wars are unlikely. This is quite true, and no argument there, but it doesnt mean that the American Army should move away from a force that is premised on firepower, protection, and mobility. That kind of army can manage a range of operations from stability ops to high intensity combat in whatever form and place the latter takes.
Unfortunately, i think the Secretary missed the mark in this speech about the future of war and the future of the American Army.
gian