Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 140

Wanna see what the fuss about my book is about? Check out C-Span tomorrow AM

Here
is your
big chance: Skip the Saturday morning cartoons and
instead watch a
discussion of the book on Dec. 15 at 8 am. Or, if you can't
wait, they very nicely give you the option to watch it on your computer right
now.

Armed Forces Journal also ran a
thoughtful review by Joseph Collins. The heart of the matter:

Ricks' book is an
important study on command and accountability in wartime. It is also a précis
of much of American military history over the past 70 years. It will make many
officers uncomfortable and some generals squirm. Its arguments can
be disputed; they cannot be ignored.

Accountability
is critical; we must do better. . . . As senior officers go to school to study
military history and modern generalship, they would be well advised to read
this important book. Ricks will make them uncomfortable. They will curse his
excellent pen, his often irreverent tone and his biting commentary. But Ricks
has something to teach the next generation of general officers, if they will
let him.

Tom
again: The New Yorker also had an article
by Dexter
Filkins that was kind of an obituary for the military
career of General Petreaus and also got into discussing my book a bit.

Still
can't get enough? OK. Here's the transcript of my recent discussion
with Neal Conan on Talk of the Nation.

Meanwhile, let me know if
the comments system is still messing you around. I will forward to the powers
that be. Apparently it is in their contracts to screw up the comments system
every few months.

Wanna be a CNAS intern?

Then apply here. They seem to like it.

Tales from the field: The female soldier making whoopee with the male 'terp

Maj. Mark Glaspell
recounts this from his time commanding a
company of the 101st Airborne in 2010-2011 near Gardez, Afghanistan:

MG: .
. . The Soldier was a female and the interpreter was a male. Of course, the
interpreter was immediately fired; kicked off the post and he's gone.

Q:
How do you confirm those types of allegations, especially when it's a lot of
"he said/she said?"

MG:
What she ended up getting in trouble for was that she was caught in the
interpreter's room. She got caught red-handed by her supervisor.

AH:
Okay, so that was the confirmation.

MG: Yeah. We knew what was going on but we couldn't charge her
with that because there was no direct witness, but we knew what was going on.
He was out and the colonel basically threw the book at her as much as he could
for being in that room. She was married. It was just bad all the way around. He
actually sent her home because with her job she immediately lost her security
clearance and she couldn't do her job without her clearance so they sent her
back home.

Syria: When the Russians start bailing on you, it's probably time to start packing

The deputy foreign minister for Russia may be reading Best Defense: "We must look squarely at the facts and the trend now suggests that the
regime and the government in Syria are losing more and more control and more
and more territory."

Speaking of crummy things, several of you have written to me
protesting the latest changes in this blog's commenting system. I agree: This
morning the system wouldn't even allow me to read the comments. It seems like
every time the LiveFyre system settles down, some genius comes up with a new
fillip to screw things up again. I have complained to the authorities.

PME: Too few civilian academics? Or too many? Here's how to get to 'just right'

By Joan Johnson-Freese

Best Defense office of saving PME

My
recent book on Professional Military Education (PME), Educating America's Military, advocates including
experienced career academics in administrative positions at the nation's war colleges,
which, currently, rarely occurs. But the October 2012 Navy Inspector General
(IG) report that resulted in the firing of the president and provost
at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) largely faulted civilian academic
administrators for the myriad issues they found there. Though these
recommendations may seem to contradict each other, I would contend otherwise.
Rather, I contend they point out unaddressed difficulties PME institutions face
while attempting to commingle two very different cultures as they aim for
ambiguous goals, thus setting up circumstances that consistently lead towards
extremes, rather than getting it "just right."

There
are important differences between war colleges and the NPS. Admiral James
Stavridis stated his view on war college goals in his 2011 convocation speech
at the National War College. "I knew what I was good at...but also sensed what I
did not know or understand well: global politics and grand strategy; the
importance of the ‘logistics nation'; how the interagency community worked;
what the levers of power and practice were in the world -- in essence how
everything fits together." The goal of the war colleges should be to educate
students in the areas beyond their comfort zones, to broaden their horizons
from largely technical and operational backgrounds. The NPS, on the other hand,
offers graduate technical degrees in areas such as engineering and
oceanography. According to the IG report, more than 42 percent of entering
students have a background in liberal arts. Faculty composition is an important
ramification of this difference. Whereas war college faculties can be and are
significantly populated by individuals, including active duty and retired
military officers, with little or no academic background in areas they teach,
it is more difficult to bluff your way through teaching an engineering course
than it is a history or economics course. To accomplish their mission, the NPS
inherently needs and is therefore dominated by, a higher percentage of civilian
academics.

But
what are their missions?

Here
is where similarities between problems found by the IG and problems I cover in
my book converge. The number one recommendation in the IG report is: "That
SECNAV determine the mission, function and task of NPS." Likewise, on page two
of my book, I question if: "War College goals are clear, and whether
articulated goals are then supported by practices and processes at those
institutions." The military wants a highly technical-educated officer corps;
Congress, through the Goldwater-Nichols Act, requires that officers be educated
for "intellectual agility." All schools must constantly demonstrate "relevance"
or risk being seen as low-hanging fruit in budget battles -- which means they
are constantly expanding their missions and programs -- and all education
programs are to be executed at breakneck speeds to get valuable officers back
into operational billets, with no failures. The IG report references education
as being seen as "a pump and not a filter" part of the NPS's mission.
Throughput drives all PME institutions, as the graduation rates at the war
colleges are near 100 percent, and the Santa
Cruz Sentinel reported a similar rate of 98 percent at the NPS.

A
shift in the NPS 2008 Strategic Plan, toward research, and an apparent coup of
civilian academics over pushed-aside military officers was determined to be at
the heart of the NPS's issues. The IG report documents flagrant violations of
regulations in the use of government funds, and states the NPS prioritized
research over teaching. But who are these "civilians"? The president was a
retired Navy vice admiral. Civilians come in many different varieties,
including retired military, practitioners with no academic experience, and
academics with administrative experience and those without administrative
experience. A civilian academic is not simply someone not in uniform, or with a
doctorate, and broad-brush blame seems to serve little constructive purpose.

While
career academics are notoriously bad administrative managers -- preferring to
focus on their disciplines -- their expertise is critical in providing students
a valuable educational program. I argue that just as pilots are certainly
included in designing and executing pilot training programs, and doctors in
military medical programs, experienced, career academics similarly ought to be
included in PME academic administration, including curriculum design and
delivery, as well as hiring and promotions. But academics are product oriented,
frustrating the military which is process oriented. Nevertheless, the two
cultures must work together. If they don't, it can result in -- as suggested in
both my book and the IG report, quoted here -- an organization operating
"neither as a Navy command nor the universities it strives to model itself
after."

Apparently
the NPS president was isolated from those who could advise him on process
violations by layers of administrative bureaucracy, created by the ham-fisted
civilians to push aside the hapless military officers. (That the military
officers would allow that to occur seems curious and raises other questions.)
While I have no basis for comment on the intent of the administrators running
interference between the president and his staff (the IG, the JAG), I have no
doubt about its existence. Administrative bloat is an issue that needs
attention at all PME institutions. Too often, these positions are created as
rewards for those considered "team players" by PME power holders, of whatever
variety.

The
IG report succinctly points out the tensions that exist between military and
academic cultures, and it's about time. A war college civilian colleague
recently conveyed an exemplary story. He had used the word "tension" to
describe relations between civilian and military (retired, in this case)
faculty in a meeting and was pulled aside afterward, and censured for such. It
doesn't exist, according to "team players." Tension, however, can be useful if
managed correctly. In fact, this military-civilian tension is the innate
advantage any war college possesses to fulfill the likes of legacies such as
Luce, Mahan, Spruance, and Turner.

Faculty
at PME institutions must live by DOD and service rules. Most individuals I know
fully understand that, but problems arise when policies are ambiguous, with
rules arbitrarily imposed depending on leadership desires and the legal officer
in place at any given time. I was once told by a legal officer that legal
officers take one of two positions: that it is their job to find legal ways for
individuals to accomplish their mission, or that it is their job to say "no" to
any question or request as a default position, to protect the organization. The
person telling me that readily (and proudly) admitted she took the latter
approach. Having worked at three PME institutions I have experienced the same
rules interpreted different ways within and between institutions -- with one
legal officer telling me that something for which I had written approval to do
in a different PME institution he considered illegal, and threatened legal
action.

The
irony of the IG report is that it assumes a cut-back in research emphasis will
result in more attention to teaching. But the need to graduate officers quickly
and easily -- the "pump, not filter" issue -- is not entirely or even primarily
a function of research being prioritized over teaching. In PME, the issue is
largely one of students being "too big to fail."

Also
noted in the IG report is that many NPS faculty are tenured, with the
implication that job security gave them the ability to ride roughshod over the
military. It is certainly true that faculty without tenure at other PME
institutions would be unlikely to challenge policies. In fact, faculty, typically
on three- or four-year contracts, become too cowered to challenge anything,
including the pressure to be a pump, not a filter. Tenure policies can vary
dramatically between and even within PME institutions. The Air War College had
tenure, dropped it, reinstated it, and then dropped it again, giving those on
tenure-track contracts the draconian choice of foregoing tenure or receiving a
one-year contract. Rules can change quickly, often, and opaquely.

The
IG report raises important issues. Some can be fixed by organizational process
changes. I fear, however, that rather than comprehensively addressing the
institutional problems, a knee-jerk reaction will follow to demonstrate
activity in addressing the multitude of recommendations made, likely to include
some activity with counterproductive results. Already, I'm told, consideration
has been given to requiring each and every faculty presentation or potential
publication to go through a substantive review process -- one that goes beyond
checking for security violations, which is within regulatory purview but
irregularly required -- though there is no office at the NPS capable of doing
so in a timely manner. That will present a very real chill on the faculty's
ability to act as a faculty.

Overreaction
has already set in. Ostensibly in reaction to some small number of groups/organizations
holding or paying for conferences at what the Navy considered exorbitant rates,
Naval War College faculty wishing to attend any conference or workshop must now
get approval external to the institution. Inattentiveness or lack of personnel
to process these requests for approval has already resulted in faculty,
including myself, having professional trips cancelled. In my case it was a trip
to attend a meeting of the Space Studies Board of the National Academy of
Sciences, funded by that organization. I took vacation time to attend. Another
chill on a faculty regularly acclaimed as "world class." This seems
inconsistent with General Dempsey's white paper on education to "attract and
maintain civilian and military faculty members who are among the very best and
brightest of their contemporaries." Creating pre-publication review processes
and erecting hurdles to academic conference participation guarantees to
undermine the chairman's goal.

The
tensions inherent in trying to kluge together two very different cultures can
be managed, but requires acknowledgement of legitimate perspectives on both
sides and a clearly stated mission. Denial and quick fixes help no one, not the
students who attend these institutions, nor the nation that pays for their
extended scholarships.

Joan Johnson-Freese is
a professor and former department chair at the Naval War College. She is the
author of Educating America's
Military (Rutledge, 2013). The
views expressed here are strictly her own.

Comment of the day: Gold Star Father on how his views changed over 12 years

This ran as a comment a few days ago.
I think it is a powerful meditation on personal sacrifice
in public service. If you missed it then, read it now. If you read it then,
please do so again.

This subject goes to the heart of all I (now)
believe. I'm wrong to spit anger your way.

Brotherhood and respect for the Fallen are two
very romantic notions that I believe in fully, but I still question them. I'm
afraid these days that I question just about everything. My notions when I was
a young Midshipman are far from where I am now. Hell, I even voted for Ronald
Reagan twice. In my twenties, I quite enjoyed one year when I received 4 pay
raises: annual COLA, promotion to Captain, going over 4 years, and a Reagan
COLA kicker. I look at politics and economics differently now.

The profession that you are about to enter is an
honorable and, dare I say, very enjoyable one. But as you progress, you will
view things differently. Maybe you won't question things -- you state that you
will subjugate yourself to the government. But to subordinate yourself totally
and blindly to the actions of said government is to denigrate yourself. Hogwash
to think that everything your government does is the correct thing. If you so
believe that, you have lost all your undergrad education to wasted time.

I do not advocate government overthrow, but I do
plead for citizen and soldier participation in formulation of legal, moral and
honorable actions of the government. I won't preach to you about the sins of
the last decade. Whether the USA was correct or not in wars upon Iraq and
Afghanistan is yours for personal analysis.

I saw wrong when I stood at the upstream end of
TSA one day with tears in my eyes watching my son walk away never to be
seen alive by his mother and me again. Some in this forum say I wear my heart
on my sleeve, because of my personal loss, in my comments. No, my son's
signature is tattooed on my right bicep for all the symbology that is probably
obvious with that. My heart on my sleeve is for my country and our lost way
since 9/11/01.

I understand the essence of brotherhood -- I
served 7 years on active duty as a USMC officer. I hated the Iraq War, but
allowed pride of service to guide me as I watched my Marine son walk toward
combat. I understood that he had to follow orders; I would expect nothing less
of him. I didn't protest the war until he died, out of respect for him and
his platoonmates, many of whom I had already met and today treat like sons.
Afterwards, I took to the streets (literally) and joined the failed attempt to
stop the Iraq war. As it was, the war drifted off to some "honorable"
withdrawal, nearly 3,300 American KIA's after my son later. For what was it all
for I will continue to search and reflect until I die.

It was not foreseen in 1997, the year my son
enlisted, that the USA would be committing itself to multiple ground wars in
Islamic countries. I have in-laws who still spout shit: "He signed the
papers himself didn't he? He knew what he was getting into didn't he? He wasn't
drafted was he?" Superficially, these inane comments are true. But, in my
opinion, none of us signed up for Executive Branch stupidity. Blindly following
immorality is not service or courage, it is stupidity.

Politics, professional soldiering and parenting
ARE all pushed together. We live in that world. I hope you can incorporate that
notion in your future studies. Love is hard. Strange to see those two words in
the same sentence but it is true. And there is nothing selfish about demanding
that the country shows the same duty and honor and service as does the
soldier.

Does what commanders choose to measure create perverse incentives in war?

That's the suggestion
made by Leon Blanken (of the Naval Postgraduate School) and Jason Lepore (of
Cal Poly) in a paper I read on the flight home from
Kansas City. As they put it, "the manner in which one measures progress
incentivizes the behavior of those who are conducting the war."

For example, they
say, the use of the "body count" in Vietnam "incentivized large-scale killing
and destruction, which worked against the goal of building a viable political
regime in the South."

But I am not sure I
agree with their assumption that the "principal" (the policymaker back in
Washington) "possesses more strategic information about the conflict" than does
the "agent" (the commander in the field). Looking at Iraq, I would say that
with the first three commanders in Iraq, neither side had more strategic
information. Then, when Petraeus took over, he actually knew more strategically
than his bosses (Gen. Peter Pace, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and President
Bush) did.

BTW, if you plan to read
this paper, it helps to like math.

What the Syrian internet outage tells us about the ultimate dual-use technology

By Irving Lachow

Best Defense cyberwar correspondent

Last week, a front page story
in the Washington Post began:
"Syria's civil war went offline Thursday as millions of people tracking the
conflict over YouTube, Facebook and other high-tech services found themselves
struggling against an unnerving national shutdown of the Internet." Despite
denials from the Syrian government, there is strong evidence that they were in
fact responsible for this attempt at isolating the country from the global
information commons. This was most likely accomplished by the state-run Syrian
Internet service provider called Telecommunications Establishment, which
appeared to have altered
its routing tables to prevent both incoming and outgoing
traffic from reaching its desired destinations. Although the timing of this
action may have been sudden, the fact that the Syrian government would attempt
to control rebel access to the Internet
is not surprising. Egypt and Libya took similar actions during recent conflicts
and Syria has been controlling access to the Internet on and off for many
months.

Much like traditional warfare, the kind of
cyberwarfare being promulgated by Syria is being driven by attempts to dominate
the information sphere. For example, one of the first actions taken by the
United States in its wars with Iraq was to dismantle their command and control
systems. This provided the United States with freedom of action and reduced the
ability of Iraqi forces to obtain accurate and timely situation awareness of
the battlefield. Syria is trying to accomplish similar objectives. Limiting the
rebels' access to the Internet and mobile communications is akin to blinding
their command and control systems. By forcing rebels to rely on local Internet
services provided by Syrian companies, the Syrian government can closely
monitor rebel communications to obtain intelligence and situation awareness. In
addition, the Syrian government can use the Internet to plant false information
and undermine trust within the ranks of rebel leadership -- a classic
psychological operations tactic for creating fear, uncertainty, and distrust
within enemy ranks.

In response to the Syrian government's actions,
the Syrian rebels have been using satellite phones -- equipment supplied to
them by supporters that include the United States -- to maintain their lines of
communication and connectivity to the Internet. The rebels may also be able to
tap into the wireless networks of neighboring countries when they operate close
to the border -- a fact which shows how difficult it is to implement a full
Internet blackout in a country, even one as small and centrally-controlled as
Syria. They are also continuing their efforts to influence outside parties by
using videos, pictures, and other social media tools to tell their side of the
story. As in many conflicts, the battle here is not just over territory but
over who controls the narrative.

Events in Syria, Libya, and Egypt have
demonstrated that the Internet has become a critical tool for combatants
engaged in civil wars and uprisings. It provides command and control,
surveillance and reconnaissance, and serves as a means of influencing supporters,
opponents, and neutral third parties alike. At the same time, the fact that the
Syrian government reestablished Internet connectivity just a few days after
implementing a nation-wide blackout makes it clear that national leaders cannot
simply shut off access to the Internet without repercussions. The Internet has
become a tool of influence and warfare, but it is also a driver of commerce and
social connectivity. Internet service providers can function as businesses that
enable economic and personal freedom and they can chose (or be forced to)
repress free speech, monitor "enemies of the state," and disconnect an entire
country from the global communications grid. The Internet may be the ultimate
dual-use technology. We will be dealing with that fact for decades to come.

Dr. Irving
Lachow
is a senior fellow and director of the Program on Technology and National
Security at the Center for a New American Security.

The Land of Topless Minarets and Headless Little Girls - By Amal Hanano

A requiem for Syria.

The Dark Side of Oscar Niemeyer - An FP Slideshow

Brazil's most celebrated architect leaves behind a decidedly mixed legacy.