Posted on 01/12/2003 3:04:35 PM PST by Valin
The American Way of War
An e-mail exchange with Robert Coram, the author of Boyd, and Donald Vandergriff, the author of The Path to Victory
.....
From: James Fallows To: Robert Coram and Donald Vandergriff Subject: What's wrong with the military?
Dear Donald Vandergriff and Robert Coram:
Thanks very much for joining this exchange. I have two goals in mind for the conversation we're about to begin.
First, I hope to introduce as many readers as possible to the arguments and implications of your recent books. For reasons we're all aware of, military policy is the part of public life where generally informed people tend to be most ignorant. Part of the explanation is cultural. Three decades of a volunteer army, following a decade of skewed draft policy in the Vietnam years, have steadily reduced the overlap between the policy-making class and the people who know about, serve in, and think about the military.
There's also a political factor. For most of the last twenty years, neither Republicans nor Democrats have found it worth concentrating on the operating realities of military policy. For Republicans, it's generally been enough to be "pro-defense," which in turn has meant supporting more spending. Democrats live in constant fear of being called "weak" or "anti-defense," all the more so in the anti-terrorist era. So they try to split the difference—opposing a specific program or weapon, for instance the missile-defense system, but not offering a coherent, alternative concept of defense spending or military policy. When it comes, say, to medical coverage or tax-and-spending policy, most Democratic politicians feel comfortable enough with the subject to know what an alternative to Republican policy would look like. (Whether they feel daring enough to present it is a different matter, as we saw last fall.) But on military policy most Democrats feel themselves on shaky ground. The result is that politicians from both parties revert to discussing defense issues as simple budget totals. The Republicans want to spend more and more, the Democrats want to spend not quite as much.
The situation is enough to make me look back fondly on the mid-1980s, when Republican politicians like Charles Grassley, William Cohen, and the young Dick Cheney could join Democrats like Gary Hart in discussing specific ways to improve weapons, strategy, training, leadership, and so on. Anyone who reads your books will be in a much better position to discuss defense policy on grounds other than budget totals or gee-whiz observations about the latest precision-guided bombs.
My other goal is more immediate: to draw on your expertise in providing context for the war which, as I write, seems to be days or weeks away. Neither of these books is directly about Iraq, but you're very well positioned to give perspective on the equipment, strategy, tactics, and stakes of what may soon occur.
Robert Coram (snip)
For your readers to understand this, a major shift in what they think they know about the Pentagon is the first step. It is a belief almost universally held that the Pentagon is a Hall of Warriors, a near-mythological place where high-minded generals are dedicated to the idea of preserving and protecting America's freedoms. Many people have an almost blind faith in generals. We revere, and that is not too strong a word, men with stars on their shoulders. We believe their pronouncements about the omnipotent efficacy of every weapon.
The gut-bucket reality is far different. The Pentagon is a corporate headquarters, like Enron. It is a place where too many officers are dedicated to two things: getting more money out of Congress than do generals in other branches of the service, and buying ever more expensive weapons whose efficacy on the battlefield is untested or questionable. Further, their promotion often is based largely on how well they can push a new weapons system through Congress. They come into the Pentagon as perhaps a young major, talking enthusiastically of, for example, how the F-22 is too big, too expensive, too prone to maintenance problems, and knowing it can never perform as advertised. But their idealism is forgotten in their careerism, and fifteen years or so later one of them has become a general in charge of the propulsion system for the F-22 and genuinely believes it is a great airplane. The system makes and shapes officers that way and they become, in one of John Boyd's most telling phrases, "Men who would willingly risk their lives for their country, but not their jobs."
Let me pause here to issue a caveat. While what I say applies to the culture of the Pentagon, it does not apply to every serving officer in the Pentagon. I have an old-fashioned belief in the inherent goodness of mankind, and I believe that some of the most idealistic and principled people in America go into the officer corps of America's armed forces. Many of them pray daily that they will never be assigned to the Pentagon. But many are, and despite their lofty ideals, they are suborned by the Pentagon culture. Either that or they get out. And then we have "The Tragedy of the Commons" in which the genetically inferior prevail.
Donald Vandergriff (snip)
What we have demonstrated is that because we have a lot of money—resources and firepower—we can overcome an enemy that does not fight on a second-generation level as we do. But I believe that, should we face a resolute enemy in open combat, the results would be catastrophic (Bunker Hill, Bull Run, Kasserine Pass, Task Force Smith, Vietnam, Somalia). Our inability to wage fourth-generation warfare (non-conventional, non-linear) prevents decisive victories or creates stalemates, such as what occurred in Desert Storm, when 65 percent of the Republican Guard got away (to put down revolts weeks later). Or we get what occurred in Kosovo, when the Serbian Army defied the might of NATO. One simply has to look at the cultural conditions that NATO operated under—extreme centralization and incredible casualty aversion—to understand why. (Part of it was also that the Serbian Army was decentralized and very well trained.)
Jim, you are right, people don't understand that there is a problem; the politicians don't address anything but money and weapons. Why? Because it is hard to understand the intangibles of effective military cultures—leadership, trust, cohesion—and the ingredients required to create such cultures. It takes an understanding of military history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics, to name a few of the subjects necessary to grasp this military culture concept. This holds especially true when I talk about transitioning the U.S. Army from a second-generation force to a third-generation force so it can deal with fourth-generation threats. When it comes down to it, it is easier to just pour more money into the black hole without ever making anything better.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
In Mogadishu, a small group of trapped Americans with little support inflicted 100 to 1 casualties. If the leadership had chosen to do so, our casualties would have been even less and the enemy would have had tens of thousands of casualties (and he would have fallen to rival factions in the weeks afterwards).
The Republican Guard escaped due to a political decision on the part of the White House and the highest commanders. If they had given the order, they would have been exterminated. The US military is quite capable of doing what needs to be done -- as long as leaders let it.
This is precisely the point. Not only have the missions become ridiculously laden with restrictions and constraints, mostly due to political factors, but those carrying them out are used to it. The bar for success has been placed so far above simple victory that it is absurd.
'We can't have any of you getting killed, or this will become a political incident'. That line of reasoning is not for the benefit of the mission or the men, its for the expediency of those giving the orders.
Pilots hate flying at 30,000 feet, they'd rather go lower so they know they aren't shooting civilians and are hitting their targets. Green Berets hate watching bin Laden slip away, knowing the could go stop him before he can plan another attack, but the generals are terrified that they could get killed in the process.
What success we do have is entirely icing on the cake. Any of the examples he cites would have ended far differently had the generals and politicians took a step back and said 'let em have it, boys' .
The writer is correct that the military officer culture has become corporate, corrupted and has lost its edge. This was enforced from above, and needs to be remedied from above to fix it. I'm all for calling attention to this fact, and hope that in this age of increased awareness of military affairs, it is addressed soon. the whole system chafes under the yoke
Boyd: Foul-mouthed maverick changed the art of war
It is a great story!
The Path To Victory
A Symposium on the War (Fall 2002 Issue )
Nine days after the fiendish attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush declared that any nation sponsoring, aiding, or harboring terrorists would be considered an enemy of the United States. In October, American forces launched punishing airstrikes on Afghanistan, then the headquarters of al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Assaulted by the land, sea, and air forces of the U.S. and its allies, Afghanistan's Taliban regime soon collapsed. In November, the Claremont Review of Books published an essay by Angelo Codevilla titled "Victory: What it Will Take to Win." In it, and in two subsequent essays, Codevilla, professor of international relations at Boston University and a spirited analyst of (and participant in) U.S. foreign and defense policy, argued that the U.S. "war on terrorism" is misconceived, that the focus on al-Qaeda and bin Laden is shortsighted, and that the homeland security measures are futile. To win the war, he contended, the United States must topple the regimes that make terrorists like Osama bin Laden possible, specifically the despots and ruling parties of Iraq, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority. As the anniversary of September 11 approaches—and as the war enters its second year—we asked five distinguished commentators to reflect on Codevilla's assessment of the war. His reply follows.
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