The Perfect Officer

7/27/2019 The Perfect Officer

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The Perfect Officer

byHenrik Bering

Military brass throughout history

MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS CHERISH heroes that confirm their self-image, and as the

embodiment of British cool, Sir John Moore has few rivals: Described by his

biographer Carola Oman as an Achilles without the heel, Moore was one of Britains

most accomplished commanders during the Napoleonic wars, and he has a timeless

quality about him. Having risen in the army ranks due to ability rather than wealth,

he served in the hotspots of the war against the French: in the West Indies, in Egypt,

in Sicily, and on the Iberian Peninsula.

With his direct and unaffected manner, he was the very opposite of a show-off like

the navys Sir Sydney Smith, who had blocked Napoleons advance at Acre and who

was busy promoting himself as a second Nelson. Reporting home on the battle of

Alexandria, Smith turned up at the Admiralty decked out in a Turkish outfit, complete

with turban, shawl, and two pistols in his girdle. Smith was long on daring, but short

on judgment. Moore had both. Needless to say, the two of them did not get along.

In the British effort to drive the French out of Egypt, where Napoleon had left his

army to fend for itself after Nelson had destroyed the French fleet in Abukir Bay,General Moore was sent to coordinate with the Ottoman army in Jaffa; his

equanimity was deemed to have a calming effect on the volatile Orientals.

Not only could Moore fight. He also had a reputation as atrainer of men, established as commander on the Kentishcoast.

In the ensuing battle of Alexandria, the reserve under Moore bore the brunt of the

French onslaught and stood firm despite running out of ammunition, confirmingMoores image as a man impossible to alarm. The surrender of the garrisons of

Cairo and Alexandria marked the definitive end of the French adventure in Egypt.

Not only could Moore fight. His reputation as a trainer of men was established as

commander of the Light Brigade at Shorncliffe Camp on the Kentish coast, whence

he directed defense preparations against the force Napoleon had assembled across


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the Channel during the 1803-1805 invasion scare. Moore did not share the

enthusiasm for Prussian tactics shown by Sir David Dundas, the armys adjutant-

general, whose drill manual boiled the Prussian method down to eighteen

maneuvers, to which Moore referred dismissively as those damned eighteen

maneuvers: Prussian precision maneuvers might look fine on the parade ground,but on the battlefield, they were outdated.

What Moore sought, he noted, was not a new drill, but a new discipline, a new spirit

that should make of the whole a living organism to replace a mechanical

instrument. Thus the much looser light infantry tactics that became known as Sir

John Moores system required not so much men of stature as it requires them to

be intelligent, hardy and active. The point was to encourage to the utmost the

initiative of the individual, treating soldiers as men and not as machines. A well-read

and humane man, he was sparing in his use of the lash. Of the 52nd, there is not abetter regiment and there is none where there is less punishment, he proudly noted.

What was to be his final assignment was with the British expeditionary force on the

Iberian Peninsula, an ill-planned and ill-led venture. Moore had to take over after its

commander was recalled. The efforts of the Spanish allies had collapsed, but in a

daring move, designed to lure Napoleon north, Moore attacked his line of

communication, forcing the French emperor to move against him personally, but

managing to give him the slip. In disgust Napoleon left it to Marshal Soult to take

over the chase.

A retreat is considered the most depressing maneuver a commander can undertake.

After untold sufferings in the Spanish winter and casualties of 3,000 dead

and 500 wounded that had to be left behind, Moore managed to get his force into

position to be extracted by the navy. But first they had to make a stand to beat off

their French pursuers, which they successfully did in the battle of Corunna. Moore,

however, was among the casualties. A French cannonball smashed his shoulder,

and he was buried in his cloak in one of the bastions.

Moores death was mourned in Britain like Wolfes before Quebec. His diversion had

upset Napoleons schemes in Spain and a planned thrust against Portugal.

Wellington paid tribute to Moore after Waterloo for having saved the British army,

allowing it to fight another day, much like Dunkirk in our own time. Throughout the

conflict, he had kept promoting Moores protgs.


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As a result of Moores system, which stressed the effectiveness of aimed fire, the

French suffered great losses, particularly among officers: The English were the only

troops who were perfectly practiced in the use of small arms whence their firing was

much more accurate than that of any other infantry, a Frenchman wrote. Another

grumbled about the killing power of the rifle: It was an unsuitable weapon for theFrench soldier, and would only have suited phlegmatic, patient assassins.

AN OFFICERS WORK

OF ALL THEjobs in the world, then as now, the wartime officers is the most

dangerous and demanding, physically and emotionally. It is his job to order men to

do something they would rather not, i.e., expose themselves to mortal danger. He

must care about his subordinates, yet he cannot afford to identify too closely with

them individually, as the mission always comes first. In return, the men need toknow that he will not expend their lives frivolously. Needless to say, and as John

Moores example starkly demonstrates, he must be willing to lay down his own life.

On the plus side, as Moores career also illustrates, the job can also be one of the

most challenging intellectually. Clausewitz, distilling the lessons of the Napoleonic

wars in On War, pointed out that In war, everything is simple, but the most simple

thing is difficult to perform, since the other side gets a say, too. Thus Clausewitz

wished to expose the error in believing that a mere bravo without intellect can make

himself distinguished in war. The German armys manual

from 1936, Truppenfuhrung, goes further: War is an art, a free creative activity

resting on scientific foundations. It makes the highest demands on a mans entire

personality.

Among the characteristics required in a successful commander are imagination,

intuition, and an ability to improvise, all qualities associated with a free and

independent mind. The commanders we revere are invariably the ones who have

broken the rules. Thus, Nelson spoke of the need for an officer to use his head when

given an order that runs counter to the overall mission: To serve my king, and to

destroy the French, I consider the great order of all, from which the little ones spring;

and if one of these little orders militate against it (for who can tell exactly at a

distance?) I go back and obey the great order and object. Of course, this is not

without risk, as a penchant for ignoring orders is generally not encouraged in the

armed forces.


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What further characterizes a great commander is the ability to keep calm under

stressful circumstances, the ability to tune out irrelevant information and to keep

functioning when things go wrong. It was famously remarked about Napoleons

Marshal Massena that his mental faculties redoubled amid the roar of the cannon.

Superior generalship explains why Napoleons armies for so long could terrify the

rest of Europe, and why the resource-poor South in the American Civil War held out

against the industrial North for four years before finally surrendering. The same goes

for the Wehrmachts performance in World War II; it took the Allies five-and-a-half

years to smash the German Juggernaut. Fortunately, as the war progressed, Hitlers

constant interventions and overrulings of his generals ended up being an Allied

asset.

Counterinsurgency wars pose even greater demands in terms of creativity andadaptability. As Mark Moyar, a lecturer at the U.S. Marine Corps University,

demonstrates inA Question of Command, good conventional commanders do not

necessarily make good counterinsurgency commanders. In the Peninsular War,

Napoleons marshals, Soult, Ney, and Massena, the finest conventional

commanders of their day, had to fight both British and Spanish regular forces and

merciless guerillas, and proved incapable of the task, showing for the first time that

Napoleon was not invincible.

Similarly, notes Moyar, generals Grant and Sheridan had triumphed in their Civil

War battles, but in the immediate post-Civil War years they proved themselves to be

less than skillful in handling the South. Sheridans frustration comes through in his

statement that if he owned Hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.

Because of their mailed-fist approach to force and their lack of empathy for

legitimate Reconstruction grievances, Moyar says, resentment kept seething among

the Southern elites.

All of which highlights the crucial importance of officer selection, which according to

Moyar should be a top priority. The perfect officer as William Pitt once referred

to John Moore is clearly the elusive ideal every military organization strives for

and wishes to produce: How have various armies set about the task, what are the

obstacles, and how come there arent more of him around?

WHEN THEY FALTER


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BACK IN THE mid-1970s, the British psychologist Norman Dixon caused a stir with his

book On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by suggesting that generals be

judged by the same criteria normally reserved for pilots and platoon commanders.

He caused further heartburn by suggesting that those characteristics which are

required in a war leader, i.e., an open mind and an ability to cope with uncertainty,tended to be the exact opposite of what he found among men tempted by an army

career: These were often immature and insecure individuals drawn to the armys

offer of a well-ordered and controlled existence.

Thus, he viewed military organizations as conformist, anti-intellectual, and

reactionary institutions, institutions that attract and then reinforce the very

characteristics that will prove antithetical to competent military performance. He

found it ironic that one of the most conservative of professions should be called on

to engage in activities that require the very obverse of conservative mental traits.

In the Second Boer War, Generals Methuen and Bullerfoolishly ordered frontal attacks over open ground.

Dixon denied having any subversive intent. His purpose was not to mock the

profession, but to study failure and its originators because the price of their mistakes

can be so terrifyingly high. For devotees of the military to take exception to the

study of military incompetence is as unjustified as it would be for admirers of teeth to

complain about a book on dental caries, he wrote.

Whereupon he proceeded to reel off a massive list of hopeless commanders:

General Braddock in the War of Independence ordering his troops not to hide

behinds tress when ambushed by French-led Indians because seeking cover was an

unprofessional and cowardly thing to do. Lord Elphinstone, who after the Kabul

uprising naively accepted Afghan promises of free passage for his army out of the

country and saw his entire force wiped out as a result. Or Lord Raglan, who with

moon faced complacency let his troops rot in the Crimean winter for want of

firewood, blankets, and greatcoats. In his whole life, Raglan had read only onebook, The Count of Monte Cristo, which was of little use in the Crimea.

The American Civil War had already demonstrated that frontal attacks over open

ground are a bad idea, but in the Second Boer War, we find Generals Methuen and

Buller ordering them against Boer marksmen hiding in narrow trenches, with

disastrous consequences. At Colenso, Buller had forbidden his own troops to dig


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trenches and foxholes on aesthetic grounds, as this would disturb the pleasant

terrain and soil their uniforms. Lord Roberts, who replaced Buller as commander in

chief, castigated his fellow officers for obsessing with order and regularity while

neglecting to encourage individuality and imagination.

That the Brits had learned nothing from their experience against the Boers became

obvious in World War I, where attacks across open country were still the order of the

day. The set procedure adhered to by Field Marshal Haig, and never varied,

consisted of a massive bombardment, followed by a brief pause, followed by the

infantry attack. This allowed the German machine gunners just enough time to

emerge from their dugouts and greet the oncoming infantry.

Despite a bad start, to Dixon, World War II represented a major advance in military

competence and in the determination not to spend mens lives frivolously: Still, thewar afforded plenty of examples of cock-ups, such as the Norwegian campaign, the

failure to acquire intelligence before the Ardennes offensive, or the ill-considered

parachute drop at Arnhem. In the Far East, you had General Percival in Singapore

refusing to order defensive measures against the coming Japanese onslaught,

deeming them bad for the morale of troops and civilians.

If all this were just a question of lack of intelligence, if all those screwing up were

idiots, the problem would be easier to address. Regrettably, they were not. A case

like Percival is particularly interesting, notes Dixon, as Percival disproves the

traditional bloody fools theory: The general was a sophisticated man and was

considered a brilliant staff officer; yet he made a disastrous decision.

TO BUILD A BETTER OFFICER

DIXON IS CERTAINLY right in stressing the need to subject the selection of

commanders to close scrutiny. In what has become known as Von Mansteins

Matrix, German Marshall Erich von Manstein, in Lost Victories, breezily distinguishes

between four kinds of military personality: There are only four types of officer. First,

there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm . . . Second,

there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers,

ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working

stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create

irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are

suited for the highest office, i.e., suited for the top job since they are likely to choose


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the simplest solutions and hence the easiest to translate into action on the

battlefield and they are good at delegating.

Of von Mansteins four categories, the lethal combination is obviously the third, the

stupid and hardworking officer. Not only will he create irrelevant work for others, buthe is also likely to squander the lives of others to further his own ambition.

Dixon was also right in pointing out that military establishments have a track record

of resistance to innovation and new ideas, and the people who represent them. As

the Boer war correspondent A.G. Hales complained, The English cling to old

traditions like sand crabs cling to seaweed in storm time.

Stellar examples cited include General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the British armys most

brilliant minds in the interwar years and a leading proponent of tank warfare whose

career was ended in 1933 by a military establishment still emotionally attached to

the horse. Captain Liddell Hart, whose essay Mechanization of the Armylost out in a

military competition to an entry entitled Limitations of the Tank, suffered a similar

fate. According to Liddell Hart, who became military correspondent for the Times of

London, a good idea can only succeed if the man proposing it is willing to sacrifice

himself.

What finally brought the brass around was the fact that the Germans had so

enthusiastically embraced the tank and proved its worth in Poland and France.

According to Dixon, it was 1941 before the British began to implement the lessons

of 1916. The same resistance is found in the navy, where innovations often have

been introduced only because they had been successfully adopted by rival navies.

Mishandled potty training is of course a riveting subject, but asexplanation of military failure it is so sweeping as to beuseless.

In the past, the book notes, it has often taken great upheavals such as the French

and the Russian Revolutions to open armies up to the innovative and ambitious.

Napoleon was an obscure captain from Corsica, and many of his commanders came

from modest backgrounds. The bustling, classless America that developed in

the 19th century likewise encouraged talent. Generally, Dixon says, the most

successful military organizations are those not encrusted in rituals and stuck in set

ways of doing business, like the Boers of the old days, or the Israelis today.


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So far, so good. But Dixon goes over the top when, after a tremendous buildup of

trenchant analysis and amusing detail, he triumphantly concludes that since not all

incompetent generals can be dismissed as stupid, instead what unites them is an

authoritarian and obsessive personality, brought on by unhappy childhoods and

dominant mothers; anal obsessiveness thus becomes the great unlocking secret tomilitary failure.

Mishandled potty training is of course a riveting subject, but as a portent and

explanation of military failure it is so sweeping as to be useless. What, for instance,

is one to make of boy-man like T.E. Lawrence, who was as weird and immature as

they come, requiring the occasional spanking to keep him happy, yet proved to be a

highly successful commander in the desert? (Curiously, Dixon presents Lawrence as

an example of an officer with an undamagedego.) Or, as Eliot Cohen and John

Gooch wonder in Military Misfortunes, where does this leave Douglas MacArthur,who demonstrated his brilliance in insisting on the Inchon landing over the

objections of pretty much everyone else, but then totally misjudged the Chinese

response when advancing up to the Yalu river: Was he struck by a sudden attack of

anal retentiveness between June and October 1950? the authors ask acidly.

In analyzing failure, instead of operating with abstractions like the military mind,

and automatically heaping all the blame on a single individual, Cohen and Gooch

recommend also paying close attention to the organizational weaknesses of the

armies that generals command. In addition, they introduce the notion of complexfailure, involving more than one kind of error, and they demonstrate in their case

studies how various factors interact to produce catastrophe. This model is especially

useful in analyzing modern war, where responsibility no longer rests on one person,

but is spread out over a great many people.

While in World War I, for instance, it is certainly true that Haig, French, and the rest

had plenty of flaws, John Baynes in his book Moraleargues that the best answer to

complaints about British generals is given by pointing out the inability of the ultra

professional German high command and general staff to produce any better ideas.Rather than the result of faulty potty training on the part of the commanders, the

problem was that at that point in time, conditions favored the defense even more

than usual. Command and control functions had not followed suit with weapons

development, leaving the commander back in his chateau unable to exploit

developments on the battlefield. The airplane was still in its infancy, and the tank


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came late in the game and was used incorrectly, piecemeal rather than in mass, and

unaccompanied by infantry.

By succumbing to routine psychobabble, Dixon himself becomes a caricature,

namely the caricature of the anally obsessed psychoanalyst, to whom the worldconsists entirely of permanently impaired potty performers.

THE GERMANS

DIXONS ARGUMENT MAY have ended in caricature, but the classic problem, as he

framed it, persists: How do you combine the need for obedience and discipline with

the need for imaginative and independent thought? How does one overcome the

boredom, inertia, and inevitable leveling down effect of large organizations, which

tend to encouragethe mediocre, but cramp the gifted?

As Dixon himself admits, military life does require rules, drill, and discipline: Without

it armies would cease to function. War fighting is a team effort. If every officer were

just to follow his own inclination, chaos would ensue. Moreover, deadly weaponry

requires strict supervision, and make-work activities can be needed to keep soldiers

occupied in dull periods. Drill is equally important for producing reflex responses in

times of intense stress, where freezing up would be a natural reaction. At the start of

World War I, for instance, the Germans were convinced the Brits had more machine

guns than they actually had because of the speed with which the Tommys handled

their bolt-action rifles. That kind of speed is only achieved by endless repetition.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, among those who have best understood how

to fuse these opposites was the German Wehrmacht in World War II. As British

Field-Marshal Lord Carver has argued, contrary to whatever preconceptions one

might have about the Prussians as rigid automatons, German commanders

generally left their subordinates a greater freedom of action than did most British

commanders. Or most American ones, one might add.

Thus Field Marshal von Manstein flatly states in Lost Victories, the blind obedienceof the Prussian is a myth. Mansteins leadership philosophy, as set out in his

memoir, was that a commander define the goals clearly and unambiguously and

deploy his forces accordingly, and then let his subordinates get on with it. Too-tight

control means that initiative is lost and opportunity left unexploited. The commander


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should of course carefully monitor their performances and intervene if things develop

in an unwanted direction.

The key element of fighting power is leadership. In screening

for officers, the Germans looked at all-around personality.

The Israeli military analyst Martin van Creveld attributes the Wehrmachts

frighteningly effective performance during World War II to its fighting power,

orKampfkraft, which he defines as the sum total of mental qualities that makes

armies fight. As he notes in his book,Fighting Power, while weaponry and tactics

undergo changes due to the advance of technology, the nature of fighting power

remains constant. Thus, according to his equation, within the limits of its size, the

military worth of an army equals the quantity and quality of its equipment multiplied

by its fighting power.

Because of Germanys limited resources and the risk of a two-front war, van Creveld

writes that victory needed to be quick. Partly out of necessity, but partly deliberately,

the Germans starved the armys rear of talent and staked everything on the

aggressiveness of its frontline officers, the production of which its whole system of

rewards and promotions was geared toward. It went for quality and quality was

what it got. In this, without a doubt, lay the secret of its fighting power.

The key element of fighting power is leadership. In screening for officer material, the

German emphasis was on all-around personality, rather than on intelligence and

education alone. Intelligence is important, but even more important is character. A

man can be clever and a coward. Or he can be indecisive. What the Germans were

looking for was determination, the individuals willingness to assume responsibility,

and his ability to handle adversity. Here van Creveld uses the German word: the

officer had to be Krisenfest, crisisproof, i.e., steady in emergencies.

Those with the final say were the regimental commanders. They had a vested

interest in making the right choice because, after having completed their training, the

newly commissioned officers reported for duty in their original regiment. On a more

advanced level, candidates for the general staff received part of their training at the

front, since in the German view war is the best teacher of war. Unavoidably, this

meant casualties, but the benefits of direct experience were thought to outweigh the

downsides.


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All efforts centered on fostering group cohesion. Here van Creveld cites the

French 19th-century military theorist Ardant du Picq, according to whom four brave

men who do not know each other are less likely to take on a lion than four less brave

men who know each other well. Thus German regiments recruited locally, and close

ties were maintained between training units and parent divisions, with officers beingrotated between frontline duty and training units.

As important, each field division had its own replacement battalion, and

replacements joined their units in marching battalions, often commanded by officers

newly recovered from wounds and now returning to active duty; they never travelled

alone. The Germans rotated whole units in and out of the front, not individuals.

These were complicated ways of operating, van Creveld says, but they produced

results.

Creating a self-contained world, the system produced soldiers of great resilience,

who fought on long after any hope of victory had evaporated. Van Creveld cites

Colonel TrevorDupuys findings: On a man to man basis the German ground

soldier inflicted casualties at about 50 percent higher rate than they incurred from

the opposing British and American troops under all circumstances, whether

attacking or defending.

But it also made soldiers of the German Army indifferent to the outside and capable

of committing atrocities that forever tainted its image. So strong was the grip in

which the organization held its personnel that the latter simply did not care where

they fought, against whom or why. Thus the point of his study of the German

system, van Creveld notes, is not to advocate a return to outdated forms of

organization or to boost the secret or not so secret admiration for the

Wehrmacht found in some quarters. His dispassionate analysis aims solely at

highlighting those universal and emulable aspects of the system which address the

social and psychological needs of the frontline soldier.

THE AMERICANS

BY COMPARISON, THE U.S. officer selection process was much more impersonal and

centralized, and had more of an assembly line feel to it. Focusing less on fighting

power, the U.S. trusted its huge industrial might to get the job done: Superior

firepower would decide the outcome. Bringing this to bear, van Creveld says, was


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above all a triumph of logistics, and he cites the characterization of General Marshall

as the organizer of Victory.

Thus, though U.S. regulations echoed the language of the German ones, speaking

of initiative and imagination, the American emphasis, says van Creveld, was onscientific management. And while in determining officer potential, the Germans

emphasized character and went to great lengths to consider the whole personality,

the Americans relied on standardized tests and were chiefly concerned with

intelligence. Once his training was over, the school commanders would never again

see the officer, who was assigned wherever a vacancy existed.

There were good reasons for this way of going about things. The U.S. had not

planned to go to war, which meant that its forces had to undergo a dramatic

expansion. According to the books figures, U.S. Army ranks swelled from a smallforce of 243,000 officers and men to one of more than eight million; for its officer

corps, this meant a 40-fold expansion. Thus the U.S. Army was basically an army of

civilians in uniform with officers and men hurriedly thrown together from all parts of

the country.

While from the administrative point of view the American approach was a perfectly

logical way of proceeding, from the more intangible vantage of creating cohesion

and producing quality it was less advantageous. A less experienced officer corps

also meant that less could be left to the discretion of the individual officer, who

required greater supervision and control from above. In its regulations, the U.S. was

forced to use a much more prescriptive approach, spelling out in detail how to

handle a wide variety of situations.

The American approach to its officers was perfectly logical but did not always create

cohesion and produce quality.

Thus, rather than following Pattons recipe for deep and daring thrusts, Eisenhower,

mainly for alliance reasons, but also out of caution, chose the more workmanlike

solution of advancing against Germany over a broad front, which required less skill

on the part of the officers. This was a case of the limitations of the organization of

which the commander found himself in charge deciding his approach.

Still, while much is explicable, van Creveld refuses to find any excuse for an

inhuman and harmful system in which new replacements had to make their way


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alone to their units and were thrown into the battle lines without knowing a soul, an

error that was repeated in Vietnam. And one in which rear echelon officers often

would gain faster promotion than front line ones.

After the war, the U.S. Army asked the former German Chief of the General StaffFranz Halder to critique the U.S. effort and offer his suggestions for improvement.

Compared to the German concept of war, the American regulations display a

repeated tendency to try and foresee situations and lay down modes of behavior in

great detail, he wrote. The problem in providing set procedures is that the officers

responses become more predictable and thus vulnerable to countermeasures.

Halderfurther advised that this sentence be included in U.S. Army instruction: In

war, the qualities of the character are more important than those of the intellect.

Fortunately, for whatever faults one may find with the U.S. approach, it was goodenough forthe American soldier to win the war. And not only did he win the war. He

did so without assaulting, raping, and otherwise molesting too many people, writes

van Creveld. Wherever he came, even within Germany itself, he was received with

relief, or at any rate without fear. To him, no greater praise than this is conceivable.

After World War II, as David Hackworth notes inAbout Face, his classic, primal-

scream critique of American war leadership in Vietnam, the American Army took

over a great many things from the Wehrmacht, from weapons systems all the way

down to the uniform. Somebody up there was definitely fascinated by the German

war machine, he writes. It seemed that we copied virtually everything the Germans

had to offer except their leadership and discipline techniques.

Colonel Hackworth wrote, Under Eisenhower, it was allmanagement. Officers became managers.

Colonel Hackworth was the embodiment of the American warrior spirit, a highly

decorated officer who became disillusioned with conditions in the U.S. Army and

retired amidst much controversy. But his analysis of what ailed the U.S. Army of his

day remains among the most trenchant. In Korea, where he first saw fighting,

Americas industrial and technological supremacy was, after the initial shock,

enough to bring about a stalemate. And up through the1950s, the trends towards

what Hackworth describes as impersonal, almost corporate army were

strengthened, designed for the big war in Europe. Under Eisenhower, it was all

management. Officers became managers.


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But that was not the kind of war the U.S. found itself facing in the 1960s. When

things heated up in Vietnam, the old reliance on firepower did not work: Vietnam

was a war that was fought on platoon, company, and battalion levels, but very little

time was devoted to individual and small unit training. The U.S. Army Infantry

School at Fort Benning would only pay lip service to counterinsurgency, he writes:Instead, they derived all the wrong lessons from the stalemate in Korea and made

them the standard for Vietnam. Hackworth describes the base camp mentality of

Vietnam as an outgrowth of the static days of the Korean war.

To win in Vietnam we need a Wingate, a Giap, Rommel or Jackson McNair type

soldier, he writes. But I doubt if our present system will produce such individuals.

They are abrasive, opinionated, undiplomatic, nonconformist and effective. The

Patton kind, he notes would be invaluable in time of war, but is a disturbing element

in time of peace.

Instead, the U.S. had developed a conformist zero defects mentality, where the

slightest admission of error was enough to derail an officers career. To satisfy the

bureaucratic obsession with meaningless statistics and phony measurements of

success such as the body count, number of bombs dropped, and sorties flown,

officers were forced to lie to obtain promotion. If, as the

German 1936 Truppenfuhrungmanual put it, a readiness to assume responsibility

is the most important of all qualities of leadership, this is not the best way to set

about it.

The ratings inflation of the period meant any attempt to evaluate even the best

young officer objectively and realistically was in essence cutting his throat. In this

environment, the ones getting ahead were the bureaucrats in uniform, the dancers

and prancers Alexander Haig being a pet peeve while the real fighters were

sidelined. Hackworth cites an officers efficiency report: Lieutenant Col. Gibson has

strong emotional feelings and frequently expressed his opinion that a soldiers duty

is to fight. This attitude limits his value to the service, his desire for self

improvement, and adversely affects his subordinates.

The rotation system was intended to give as many officers aspossible a taste of the command experience in a war zone.

Equally counterproductive was the rotation system, the purpose of which was to give

as many officers as possible a taste of the command experience in a war zone. But


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the Company COs tour was a mere three months, which meant that just when he

was getting the hang of it, he was yanked out, Hackworth writes. The practice of

the constantly rotating company, battalion, and brigade commanders through

Vietnam was not leading to an army with great depth in experienced battlefield

leadership . . . but instead to the loss of more blood and more lives.

At one point, Hackworths superior tells him to prepare for bigger things, to which

Hackworth responds: I am not over here to prepare myself for bigger things. We are

fighting a war. I want us to win. What bigger things are there? This sentiment is

echoed by a general quoted in Prodigal Soldiers, James Kitfields brilliant study of

how the generation of officers coming out of the Vietnam debacle set about

rebuilding Americas armed forces, It was almost as if the services were using

Vietnam to train officers for the next war, as opposed to fighting the one very much

at hand.

The rebirth of the U.S. Army as a professional army, as told by Kitfield and others, is

a stirring story. Inspired by the old GI Bill after World War II, to attract bright officer

material the army would pay for their education in exchange for a stint in uniform. A

new doctrine was introduced, the AirLand Battle, which involved deep strikes behind

enemy lines. New training facilities were created, offering ultra-realistic combat

training that forced officers to confront their weaknesses and admit mistakes. The

new slogan of the professional army was Be all you can be, presenting the army as

an attractive career choice, not a last resort.

By the time of the Gulf War, the U.S. had built a superb conventional army. Norman

Schwarzkopfs imaginative plan, striking deep in the enemys rear, was brilliantly

executed except for the end, which was bungled because of the political decision

to stop the war too early, which allowed the Republican Guards to escape.

In Round II, a decade later, the initial phase went beautifully, as Tommy Frankss

forces sliced through the Iraqi defense and resistance simply melted away. But

when the war turned into an insurgency, a different mindset and a wider set of skills

were needed, and army planners had to scramble to study the counterinsurgency

lessons of Vietnam, which had been suppressed in the mistaken belief that the U.S.

would never again become involved in this type of war. Here the urgent need was

once more for the unconventional officer, and the same applied in Afghanistan with

the resurgence of the Taliban.


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All too often in the past, U.S. promotion boards have beendominated by conventional officers who block innovativethinkers.

At the start of Afghanistan and Iraq, precious few American civilian or militaryleaders understood the leader centric nature of counterinsurgency, writes Mark

Moyar inA Question of Command. Under the baking Afghan sun we are

rediscovering, by way of pain, that the first determinants in war are human. In

unpleasant, faraway villages, the U.S. needed intuitive thinkers who understood the

local dynamics, the intricate tribal patterns and customs, and could transmit this

understanding to their men.

Colonel Michael Starz, quoted in David Cloud and Greg JaffesThe Fourth Star, has

described the challenge posed by the alien universe of Iraq, where all normal morallaws have been suspended: Loyalty is constantly shifting here and there is no moral

component to it. It is so foreign to our way of thinking and it is hard to respect. But

you have to remember it is a different way of looking at the world.

Similarly, when engaged in urban fighting, the U.S. officer could not just use

Stalingrad rules and waste everybody inside, as the Russians did in Chechnya. He

had to work under complicated rules of engagement, constantly escalating and de-

escalating, often risking the lives of himself and his troops in the process. And with

the media on hand to second-guess his every move, he always had to consider thepolitical side of his actions.

Which brings us back to the promotion process: All too often in the past, U.S.

promotion boards have been dominated by conventional officers, blocking the

advancement of innovative thinkers. Unfortunately, some of this still goes on. In an

op-ed in the Boston Globe, Renny McPherson, a former Marine Corps intelligence

officer, found it significant that that when Stanley McChrystal was fired as

commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan for his injudicious comments, General

Petraeus had to take a step down to take over, suggesting a scarcity ofcommanders with the requisite qualifications at the top.

While joint fighting is the name of the game, McPherson noted, crossing service

lines is still not encouraged. McPherson based his piece on a longer article he co-

wrote forParameters, the U.S. Army War College journal, for which 37 high officers

were interviewed: All of them praised the value of broader experience for todays


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complex battlefield, such as attending joint schools, acquiring a Ph.D., working with

civilian agencies, or serving with NATOpartners, but noted that these were regarded

as career distractions. These officers, he wrote, succeeded despite the military

training priorities, not because of them. We dont educate to be generals, one

complained. Because of frustration with the system, too many officers are leaving.InA Question of Command, Mark Moyar found it equally telling that in December

2007 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had General Petraeus flown back home to

preside over the U.S. Armys promotion board to make sure some of the clever and

outspoken colonels from the war in Iraq got promoted to brigadier general.

The often-voiced objection that one cannot afford solely to concentrate on producing

counterinsurgency officers but must also be prepared to fight a more conventional

type of war Moyar meets head on: Todays officer must be able to handle both

conventional and asymmetrical warfare, he believes. And while good conventionalcommanders may not always prove themselves adept at handling

counterinsurgency, a good counterinsurgency leader will also be a good

conventional leader.

The trick then is to scatter such leaders in strategic positions throughout the

organization, which will invariably lift its performance. Smart officers tend to pick

smart disciples.

THE ISRAELIS

OF MODERN ARMIES, the Israelis have managed to strike an effective balance

between obeying orders and the need for independent thought. As David Ben-

Gurion wrote in The Way and the Vision, We need the spiritual advantage more

than any other army in the world, because we are few. Surrounded by neighbors

intent on throwing them into the sea, the Israelis are fighting for survival, a powerful

motivator: To limit casualties and international fallout, their wars must be won quickly

and decisively. They need constantly to anticipate, as even a single defeat could

spell catastrophe.

Formed in 1948, the core of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers came from the

Palmach, the Haganahs elite commando force during the British Mandate in

Palestine. The IDF fought the 1948 War of Independence, a war in which the officers

task included leading Jewish newcomers straight off the boats into battle after a

short weapons demonstration. Many had never touched a rifle before. The Israelis


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prevailed, but by the early 1950s, many officers had left the army, and Israel found

itself ill-equipped to respond to the constant Fedayeen cross-border terrorist attacks.

The IDF doctrine of taking the war to the enemy was established with

the 1954 creation of the 101 elite unit, headed by Major Ariel Sharon, which worldretaliate deep behind ceasefire lines against Egyptian positions in the Gaza strip and

Palestinian targets in Jordan, and which reported directly to the General Staff. The

aggressive spirit of the unit, which was merged with the paratroop brigade later that

year, offered a model for the rest of the army. The result was seen in the Six Day

War.

Culturally, the Israelis are programmed to argue, and this invariably translates into

the army. From the very start, the Palmach had downplayed the value of discipline

and hailed free spiritedness. Thus, Israeli soldiers do not salute their officers, andthey address them by first name. In officers training, the emphasis is on initiative

and self reliance; officers are encouraged to raise questions and suggest

alternatives; however, once the discussion is over, they obey. As Moshe Dayan

once put it, I would rather harness ten wild horses than prod lazy mules.

A fundamental difference between the U.S. and the Israelisystem is that the IDF is a conscript army which relies on itsreserves.

A fundamental difference between the U.S. and the Israeli system is that the IDF is a

conscript army which relies heavily on its reserves: Men serve for three years,

women for 21 months; for the men follows 20 years in the reserves, usually with the

same group they were conscripted with. While navy and air force applicants attend

officer school directly, the IDF chooses its officers among soldiers who are already in

the service and have already been tested. Thus everybody in the IDF starts out as a

private, and those who show promise are encouraged to apply for officer school.

When their training is finished, they return to their original units, which strengthens

cohesion. It also means that every general knows from his own experience what warlooks like from the privates perspective.

As regards discipline, one should not be deceived by the informality. As an example

of the Israeli notion of discipline Dixon mentions General Tals tightening up of the

rules when taking over as commander of the armored corps in1964, which he

ordered not out of concern for discipline for its own sake, but for the entirely


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functional reason that a tanker had been killed in a training exercise due to not

having followed the correct procedures in storing ammunition.

But as Dixon points out, even the best armies can become complacent and lose

their sharpness. This was the case in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the Israeliswere taken by surprise and faced near disaster before turning the situation around.

A birds-eye view of the war and of the breakdown is afforded by the memoir of

retired air-force Brigadier General Iftach Spector, Loud and Clear. Having first fought

in the Six Day War, Spector commanded a squadron of Phantom Orange Tails

during the Yom Kippur War. In this war, the Israeli high command was badly

surprised by new mobileSAM 6 batteries which rendered its plans of attack useless:

The Israelis lost 104 aircraft, almost all to anti-aircraft and Soviet missile defenses.

Finding the high command in disarray, issuing contradictory and incoherent orders,Spector was forced to use his own judgment, in some instance aborting hopeless

missions and finding other targets: We knew how to improvise, and when all the

rules were thrown in the trashcan and procedures torn up, the Orange Tails found

ways to survive in the heart of danger and do our job.

That the Israelis managed to turn things around was thus not due to the high

command, nor to Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who completely lost it, but to

officers like Spector in the air and his IDF colleagues on the ground, who knew how

to take charge when the system failed.

Afterwards, retired General Chaim Herzog provided an in-depth analysis of what

went wrong in The War of Atonement, including the acute intelligence failure. As for

the battlefield lessons, while in World War II it had taken some thirteen attempts for

a tank to wipe out its target at 1,500 meters, it now stood an even chance of

accomplishing the task with a single shot; at the same time, guided antitank missiles

had doubled the reach of an infantry man. Both developments had profound

implications, also for future American doctrine.

A similar lack of preparation was found in the IDFs unimpressive performance in the

Second Lebanon War, when, after a long period of police-type duty in Gaza and the

West Bank, dealing with rock-throwers and suicide bombers, the IDF was faced with

Hezbollah, a wholly different animal, an Iranian-backed organization halfway

between a militia and a more professional force, which had antitank weapons and

thousands of rockets and mortars, and knew how to use them. This led to another


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round of intense self-examination and the development of new tactics; many

weaknesses had been corrected in time for the 2008 Cast Lead operation against

the Hamas terrorist regime in the Gaza.

As is the case with his American and British colleagues, the Israeli officer facesenemies who, realizing they cannot prevail in a conventional conflict, launch their

attacks while hiding among the civilian population a war crime. To further

complicate matters, in Israeli civil society, one finds the same legalistic approach to

war, the same collaboration between the media and the legal system as in the U.S.

Unavoidably, this debate affects the Israeli armed forces. Thus, Iftach Spectors

judgment failed him on the question of targeted killings in Gaza, when in 2003, he

was the senior signatory of a statement by 28 veteran and active-duty pilots, who

refused to hit targets in Gaza and on the West Bank.

On numerous occasions, the Israeli Air Force and the IDF have refrained from hitting

terrorist targets to avoid civilian casualties. But in some instances, where the target

was deemed important enough, they have gone ahead. One such case was

the 2004 killing of Sheikh Yassim, a founder of the Hamas; nine bystanders were

killed. Another was that of Nizar Rayan, Yassims successor, who placed his whole

family on the roof in the mistaken belief that the Israelis would not hit him during

Cast Lead. In each instance, a careful assessment was made to determine whether

the international outcry was worth enduring.

Today, Israeli officers ask why the targeted killing of Sheikh Yassim, a man who had

ordered numerous suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, would produce

international outrage, while there was general approval when Osama Bin Laden was

killed. What exactly, they wonder, is the difference?

Objectively, both IDF and Israeli Air Force officers have shown themselves to be ultra

careful in avoiding civilian casualties, as testified to by professionals such as Colonel

Richard Kemp, a former commander in chief of the British forces in Afghanistan,

who noted that no army in human history had done more to reduce civilian suffering

than the Israelis during Cast Lead in Gaza. Since then, to further reduce civilian

distress in future wars, the Israelis now train a group of army officers to serve as

humanitarian officers, to be attached as an organic part of the battalion and the

brigade. This carries more weight than civilian outsiders.


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Unfortunately, however careful the Israelis are, this is unlikely to help them, as

proved by the UN-sponsored Goldstone Report, which alleged Israeli war crimes in

Gaza during Cast Lead while passing lightly over Hamas methods. By the time

Judge Richard Goldstones retractions came in theWashington Post, the damage

had been done. In the court of world opinion, while Israels enemies are free tocommit any atrocity, even the smallest accident is held against the Israelis. Under

such conditions, even the perfect officer would come up short.

Henrik Bering is a writer and a critic.

The Perfect Officer

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