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.
Very impressive, unless you understand the term 'Brevet'. Then, not so.
I fully understand the term. The fact is that Custer was a very effective and notoriously unflinching leader and commander.
Notorious....undoubtedly.
Unflinching...unfortunately.
Effective....Sitting Bull didn't think so.
” ‘Patton was 60’
And Custer was 36.”
George Armstrong Custer pinned on his first star at the age of 23.
He graduated from USMA at West Point in the “Second” Class of 1861, last in order of merit. He’d already completed the standard four-year program, which had been expanded to five years as he arrived because political leaders had been panicked into believing US officers were not absorbing enough European military wisdom [sic].
Custer and a couple classmates were rushed into high rank because the US Federal Government had endured a number of reversals early in the American Civil War. For all that, he was sharp enough to survive, and a suffciently quick study, to attain a second star on merit by the end of the war. Therefore, any claims that he was hurried into a commission, thus casting aspersions on his competence, are uninformed.
Unlike many, Custer remained in uniform after the war ended, reverting to his permanent rank of Captain (O-3), becoming the most successful American Indian fighter in the Army, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (O-5). According to the protocols and courtesies of the day, offficers in the post-ACW Army were addressed by the highest temporary rank they’d attained in that century’s particular “big one”, so he was called “General” (Major General) by subordinates and colleagues.
He met his end along with some 260 other US troops on 25 June 1876 during yet another expedition against American Indians, at the age of 36 as correctly pointed out by the poster.
Bad days befall even the best.
After all female Congresswomen are retired from politics by menopause (55).
It’s so cute when a young idiot thinks 50 is “old”.
They don’t think that when they turn 50.
“...and General George Washington won the Revolutionary War at 52.”
He did not.
The American War of Independence contained exactly one American strategic victory (the Battles of Saratoga), and George Washington played no part in it, as he was hundreds of miles away at the time.
His great successes lay in (a) not getting flattened by the British, and (b) preventing the spontaneous disintegration of American forces.
All of which bought time until American diplomats (like Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, John Adams) brought in the French. Spain allied itself with France; presented with this three-way worldwide conflict, the British judged the strategic problem insoluble and cut their losses, letting their American colonies go.
Thus it is more accurate to say George Washington did not lose the AWI. Still a great accomplishment.
Yeah, he lost a battle against an overwhelming force. During the Civil War his was a brilliant tactician noted for his detailed planning and absolute fearlessness and was regarded as a bona fide hero. He understood his mission and loved to kill. He was also the father of the original wolverines.
“Balancing the Pros and Cons I think the Cons outweigh the Pros.”
Headcount requirements will be going up. Combat units are understaffed right now. And, as I mentioned, when I become POTUS I am going to militarize the southern border which will require at least a division. Besides, the draft is about principal, no deferments, no exemptions. When ones number comes up, one goes, whether there’s a large need or small need. That’s not the point.
Almost all of the winning U.S. Military Officers of W.W. II were over 50. Patton was 60 when the war was over.
MacArthur was 65 or so.
So I am not sure that theory totally holds up.
Two year enlistments have been used off and on for many decades, which recently have actually meant 15 months of active after schooling.
Navy Two Year Enlistment Program
“Known as the National Call to Service (NCS), the program provides the Navy and the other military services a new way to reach a group of young Americans who otherwise might not serve in the military because of the length of traditional enlistment options.
Editor’s note: As part of the FY 2003 Military Authorization Act, Congress mandated that all of the military services implement the National Call to Service Program.
The program works like this: A recruit enlists under NCS and incurs a 15-month active-duty service obligation following completion of initial-entry training. The 15-month obligation begins after a Sailor has completed his or her respective Navy School. Navy Schools can run from three-months to 18-months depending on rating.”
Not to mention George Marshall.
I can’t agree with your assessment of MacArthur.
I would suggest you read William Manchester’s book on the subject, “American Caesar”, he dishes out the good and bad and you can ten make your own decision.
Don’t forget that with age there comes experience and wisdom - that the young don’t always have.
Those Marines would be wrong. The Army did most of the fighting in the Pacific, and almost all of it in the rest of the world.
Not only did they conduct about 80% of the amphibious landings, they also lost about the same number of men in the Pacific theater as the Navy and Marines combined, lost in the entire war, world wide.
That’s fine. He’s a bit of a polarizing figure and I have a definite family bias. I can’t say definitively that he was a bad guy and I would probably rather serve under him than some of our current commanders, but that’s a whole nother ball o’ wax.
Anyway, IMHO, older commanders are not a bad idea as long as they are still competent. Their saving grace from my perspective is that older commanders are not driven by promotions, and can afford to be apolitical, if they have the balls.
“A Frenchman giving advice to the US Army.”
There are entire alternate universes of irony, yet to be touched upon here.
Napoloeon Buonaparte (original spelling) wasn’t French. He hailed from Corsica. Vendettas on Corsica make the Sicilian Mafia look like mai tai sipping pensioners.
Napoleon lost. Eventually.
After spending 29 years in uniform, I did some counting on fingers, and came to the conclusion that about 1/3 of my active duty days were spent unscrambling the preconceived notions of senior officers, and junior troops. Folks high and low were often convinced that “common sense” granted them flawless access to a bunch of “home truths” that were in reality quite inadequate, not to say false.
The results of groupthink, and “overlearning” - learning one lesson, one true thing - could hallmark early success. But things change (they always do). After that, the learner was out of luck - he’d learned that one true thing so well, he’d convinced himself it was the answer to all questions past and future.
The worst offenders by far were newly-minted senior people, officers promoted below the zone who’d had some early successes, and had come to believe they knew everything. But they lacked mature judgment, having been propelled past their peers in a tearing hurry to fill some other need.
Much of our work had to be devoted to minimizing waste, reining in efforts by jejune enthusiasts, new to the outfit and convinced they could re-energize everything, slicing away “dead wood” and force-fitting “creativity” onto the tired old status quo. What they chiefly did was try to reinvent the wheel. And it was usually the “dead wood” - civilian DoD employees who were the only people able to hang around long enough to develop any sort of institutional memory - who knew what had been tried before, and when and where: what worked and what didn’t. It fell to them and a few of us nebbish staff officers, to let the fire-eaters down easy (ego is essential to command, but often touchy, thin-skinned and fuss-prone), to talk them out of their grand schemes, which rarely amounted to anything above moonshine.
Success was spotty.
A related issue was the worship of “innovation” and “creativity.” It often accompanied arrival of the new, young, BTZ commanders; at the unit level it became nothing more than endless attempts to graft civilian business practices and “expert advice” (from the likes of overly chatty media hacks like Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, who cannot know which end of the gun the bullet comes out of) onto an organization that isn’t a business and can never succeed by aping things entrepreneurial. Those of us who did know what the point was, and what was going on, tried to blunt the impact of all this well-intentioned “innovation” also, but success was just as spotty.
More often than not, the “innovation” was too radical, too disruptive to fit in with the whole superstructure, the existing organization, its equipment and training. Even if it cost no money (rarely true), the flashy “new idea” usually proved so incompatible with what the unit was already doing, that it had to be scrapped before it rendered everything inoperable. Posters who make snide remarks about “fighting the last war,” deeming themselves witty, usually forget that doing so is better than sacrificing the capability to fight any war at all.
“Creative innovators” make terrible leaders. So do young people. Their attention spans are too short, they cannot deal with the immature or substandard personnel that turn up in at least small numbers in any military outfit, stress and uncertainty (unavoidable in action )incapacitates them just like that, and they lack the experience that makes the occasionally-unavoidable snap judgments possible (when such judgments succeed at all, which isn’t often).
The US military has succeeded over the past century by embracing technological advances and (some) organizational innovations that transform battlefields from places where manpower-rich forces clash and choke on each other’s blood to paltry result, to one where resource-rich systems do more and more of the work. This costs money, and clashes with traditionalists (including many forum members) infatuated with citizen soldiers and boots on the ground. It is cheaper than sacrificing troops, though.
Footsoldiers are nothing more than targets. This became undeniable 100 years ago, but many backward-looking, self-righteous, self-satisfied traditionalists cannot bear to admit it.
And it takes longer and longer to train troops and commanders, to mesh into modern forces. An unavoidable truth, which negates the brainless optimism of the young-pup apologists for digitize-it-all. And more than ever, adults with mature, developed judgment are needed to command, coordinate, and mesh all of it.
All of which gives the lie to Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry’s proposals. He’s managed to get it exactly upside down, in believing that young folks are good for much of anything military, except suicidal courage, which can figure in charges to take that hill.
In time, 50% of those officers will be female.
Female generals and officers will shape budget choices and spending priorities in ways that will make the military of 20 or 30 years from, unrecognizable to us.
Having spent considerable time there, I believe that the trials those men faced would be unimaginable to us today. The weather, the lack of supplies and modern equipment--the way the entire Command was bootstrapped completely without authorization...
If you're a naval man, you'll love the anecdotes and misadventures of both the American and Japanese navies. Often viewed only as a lark, these campaigns had a huge effect on the overall War.
It constantly amazes me how when it comes right down to it, so many engagements hinge on things beyond our control and the most decisive victories are so often won because of very poor decisions by the losing force. The leader who can take initiative and win is an historic anomoly, and the world is probably better off that way--as most tended to be pretty dangerous (and,to relate it all the way back to the thread, very young).
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