Posted on 10/12/2014 4:21:23 AM PDT by iowamark
France's military history is littered with cautionary tales and glorious triumphs. And the secret differentiator between the two may be age.
The average age of Napoleon's generals was 41, and many of the brightest were even younger. Jean Lannes was named a general at 27, and a field marshal at 35. Andre Masséna was named a general at 35. Louis-Nicolas Davoust was named a general at 23 (really), and a field marshal at 34. Joachim Murat, Napoleon's legendary cavalry commander, was named a general at 29.
By contrast, in 1939, when France started what would be the most serious debacle in its history, the supreme commander of its armed forces was Maxime Gamelin, age 67. Before the end of the Battle of France, he was replaced by Maxime Weygand, 73. France's only World War II victories were won by a young general, who had previously written a prophetic book on blitzkrieg tactics, by the name of Charles de Gaulle.
This is a pattern so often repeated in military history that you can't help but ask, "When will they ever learn?" A military force wins a series of victories. After doing so, it becomes cocky, set in its ways, sure that its tactics will work forever. A hungrier force comes up with new and unexpected tactics. The older force cannot adapt. It is defeated. The phenomenon is so well known that "generals fighting the last war" has become a common expression.
We should always be wary of over-generalizations. Obviously, some of the world's most daring and innovative people are senior citizens, and some of its dullest and most conservative are in their 20s. But broadly speaking, these are exceptions that prove the rule. It seems hard to deny that there is indeed an inverse correlation between age and willingness to try new ideas, and between age and aggression, which are among the most critical features for military commanders.
And that brings us to America. Today, the U.S. military seems both as strong as ever and as weak as ever. As strong as ever because it has no great power rivals that can even hope to match its conventional strength; and because it has the most aircraft carriers, the best technology, and unattainable command of the skies. And yet, no one but a fool would claim that the U.S. military's recent war-making record is sterling. As Thomas E. Ricks has argued, a great many of the U.S.'s military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are directly attributable to poor generalship.
The U.S. military is the most powerful fighting force in history. And warfare is changing faster than ever. The entire world depends on the U.S. military for security. Whatever the "next war" ends up being, we will all be sorry if U.S. generals are fighting the last war while it happens.
I don't know what the "next war" will be, so I can't make tactical recommendations. Instead, I can make a recommendation that will bias the U.S. military toward more inventiveness, more risk taking, more daring. Is it sure to work? Of course not. Will it make a true difference? Is it necessary? I believe so.
That recommendation is simple: The U.S. military should have a firm retirement age of 50 for officers.
This would be a sea change. It would mean the chairman of the joint chiefs would be in his mid-40s, instead of 62, as he is today. The career path would be compressed to an astonishing extent. It is not just generals who will be (much) younger; it will also be every type of superior officer.
There are, of course, laws in America that ban age discrimination. There are very good reasons for these statutes, and I don't propose changing them anywhere — except in the military's officer ranks.
Now, you might be concerned that my plan will promote people past their level of competence. Don't worry about that. Bureaucracies promote people to their level of incompetence; startups and adventurous militaries promote people past their level into competence, into jobs that they must grow into as they do them. A very common feature of military campaigns, especially successful ones, is officers being promoted very early due to high rank turnover, whether due to dismissals or death in action.
Plus, the U.S. military needs more accountability for senior officers. Some senior officers will not be ready for significant command by their mid-30s. Replace them!
Aren't there a lot of very valuable old commanders? Of course. As I said earlier, there are exceptions to every rule, and there are or should be a lot of exceptions to the current, never-justified, unwritten rule that says senior commanders should be in their 50s or 60s. The point of setting a general rule of this type is not to catch every single eventuality in its net. It is to find a way to shape incentives and culture and probabilities to improve the organization.
One effect of this new rule is that, given the shorter career span, and, therefore, a much more brutal "up or out" promotion system, younger ambitious officers who want to make general very fast will be more incentivized to try to stand out, to try new things and methods.
I realize, of course, how audacious my proposal is. Almost as audacious as Napoleon.
Yeah - incentivized to get as political as possible as early as possible.
We are retiring thousands of our military,voluntarily and involuntarily,and we are replacing them with Mexican illegal aliens.
There fixed that problem
Every organization has a sclerotic bureaucracy. The military in no exception.
Sounds like a good idea to me
The big issue is the WH controls every aspect and the Brass are still fighting the last war they fought. Fighting Terrorism is a new ball game.
And the WH STUPID ROE’s are getting our men and women now KIA or maimed for life. With crappy gov’t health care.
Patton was 60.
Pretty well kills that guy’s argument.
A Frenchman apparently without any military experience at that.
Gory mistakenly believes that high-level decisions about limitations and ROEs are decided by uniformed officers. Not since the Korean War has that been so in America. Civilian political appointees make those decisions.
TC
Thanks. That was going to be my first question.
Aging - has always been a risk of an all volunteer army. While I do agree that today’s military is the best we have ever fielded, there’s a downside to it. The downside being that very few Americans have any skin in the game. This has led to an elitist mentality of a good part of our population who believes that the serving and fighting should be left for others. Personally, I’m for reactivating the draft, with so exemptions or deferments except for physical or mental problems. Yes, this means no national defense deferments for working for defense contractors, nor for being cops, teachers, peace corp, college, senate/congressional aides, etc. when ones number comes up one serves. We could use the additional bodies to militarize the border as one action. And, being this war on terror will be multigenerational, our military forces will require beefing up across the board. It’s all about skin - skin in the game, skin, skin, skin.........
First term (contract enlistments) retention levels are down below 30%...
My nephew who took the Marine Corp and everything it challenged him with and totally screwed that career up...He made corporal, not a slouch achievement, and is coming back from his last deployment to Afghanistan as we speak...
Ironically his new wife, just completed basic, and is trained as a combat medic in the Army...She is in the reserves and just told me her unit was just activated, and she is do to deploy for somewhere between Kuwait and Afghanistan soon...
Which leads me to believe, that I thought we were done over in that particular area...Something must have happened??? /SARC
You know, political lies do not fare very well with the guys and gals filling those boots on the ground you don’t want to insert into a situation that needs to support the gains you think you are achieving thru air power...
And the Zoomies are not all that excited about not having backup available for timely extraction if Jeb Clampett manages to get a lucky shot off on their ride...
So all in all, our administrations handling of international crisis has left an even bigger hole in world relations than actually doing something about it...
I’ll coin the phrase “Doofus Diplomacy”...I got dibs on that one!!! ;-)
Beat me to it.
The military has rules foisted upon it by civilians with no concept of how to win a war.
There are pluses and minuses to the system - they get cheap labor for simpler tasks and don't waste training resources on those who will not stay. They also have a bunch of untrained folks at any given time who could potentially drop the ball if called in for some serious support.
“A Frenchman giving advice to the US Army.”
Snicker, snicker.
I have no military experience but if I were president, I’d have a group of former military men as advisors to go with the usual Pentagon and state department people.
Douglas MacArthur was in his 60s during WWII and 70s during the Korean war. Chester W. Nimitz was 55 at the start of WWII. There were several Colonels and Generals in their 20s on both sides of the Northern War of Aggression.
Just sayin...
With them gutting up to 20K lower ranks, and putting in fast track citizenship for ILLEGALS, we won’t have a real Military.
I’m a Ret. SCPO’s wife. My dad fought under MacArthur for 6 yrs, my BIL fought under Merrill, I have cousins who went to Nam, cousins in this current war. Hubby’s bros both served 1 WW2 aboard the New Lady Lex. Middle bro was Korea. Hubby was on the Midway when the pulled the Amb. out of Nam, off the coast of Cuba during the Missile crisis.
We sure don’t need them for meals on wheels, or trying to stem Ebola and the other deadly viral out breaks in countries that practice NO Sanitation.
I am not in favor of starting up the draft again. It is involuntary service.
Almost all of the draftee’s will serve well, do they duty and get out when their time is up.
But a number will be dragged kicking and screaming into service and become every First Sergeant’s nightmare taking up far too much of the unit’s time and energy.
Also the service time will have to be short to remain politically palatable to the American population. It was two years the last time and I would assume it would be similar if reinstituted.
Special Forces training is two years long from street to graduation.
Is the training worth the amount of service you’ll get out of the trainee after AIT.
The Military does not need everyone to reenlist - but they do need to get some bang for the buck out of their troops who only do one tour and out.
And bringing back the draft is the left’s dream. Think of all those college protests being brough back.
In the case of WWII such a policy would have put Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower (ages 56, 61, and 51 respectively in late 1941) on their sofas in retirement. There are no doubt many examples of generals who were past their prime after fifty, if they ever had a prime at all, whose lack of energy and stodgy ways got men killed and battles lost. But making a certain age a blanket cutoff date for, well almost anything, is absurd.
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