Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 232

Republicans eyeing defense budget cuts, and a look at military retirement

Newsweek has a good piece about how Republicans
no longer automatically support defense spending: "The willingness
of many in the Tea Party to take the budget knife to defense to stave off tax
increases has pitted the vibrant new wing against the GOP's longtime military
hawks."
The New York Times, apparently back from summer vacation, catches up
with July's
move to trim
military retirement pay.  

Befehl-staktik (IV): Here is why you should always keep a FRAGO and a captain between you and the problem

I have a lot of
respect for Col. Paul Yingling, who I know from Iraq, and whose thinking about
today's military has had a lot of influence on me. He actually is the first
person quoted in the book I am writing right now, as the manuscript currently
stands. So I was pleased to get this from him.

There is lots of
memorable stuff in this short essay. I was especially struck by his third
sentence: "Mission command takes intelligent and courageous senior officers
accountable for battlefield results." I also liked this one: "Great leaders
do not rely on favorable conditions; they create them." And this one: "When a small unit gets in trouble, senior
commanders find cover in SOPs thick enough to stop an OER bullet." And his bottom line: "Far from prohibiting
mission command, the conditions of modern combat demand it."

So it is a real
pleasure to recommend this to you. I think it is one of the best columns this
blog has ever had:

By Paul Yingling

Best Defense chief correspondent of lost causes

MAJ Niel Smith is a
good friend and a superb officer, but he's
wrong about mission command. Auftragstaktik doesn't require highly
trained junior officers, reforms in personnel management or professional
military education, or time to integrate the latest technology. Mission command
takes intelligent and courageous senior officers accountable for battlefield results.
If we identify and promote such officers, the rest will fall into place. If we
don't, the best trained captains in the Army's history won't save us from
failure.

There is plenty of
historical evidence to contradict MAJ Smith's claim that "mission command
requires stable, highly trained staffs and company/troop commanders, proficient
in their specialty and job." Scipio's centurions didn't have 3.5 years of
brigade staff time to learn their trade before fighting Hannibal. Sherman's
cavalry troops were not made audacious by rigorous PME. Guderian's race to the
English Channel was not preceded by a year of stability in ARFORGEN. Patton's
tank companies were not the product of enlightened personnel policies. These
officers succeed because they had the intelligence to see the battlefield
clearly, and the courage to act on their convictions. In any war worthy of the
name, the delicate conditions MAJ Smith requires to implement mission command
have never existed. Great leaders do not rely on favorable conditions; they
create them.

Claims that today's wars are somehow more complex than previous conflicts
will draw belly laughs from historians. Is sectarian conflict in Iraq somehow
more politically complex than Rome's civil wars? Does the rate of technological
change in the last ten years in Afghanistan exceed that of the last two years
of World War I? Even if we accept the dubious proposition that today's wars are
unparalleled in complexity, successful brigade commanders have demonstrated
that mission command works. Colonel Sean McFarland helped turn the tide in
Anbar Province thanks in large part to the autonomy he granted to Captain
Travis Patriquin. Colonel H.R. McMaster's success in Tall Afar was attributable
to a command climate in which thinking was required and PowerPoint was not. Have
new and unparalleled complexities transformed warfare since 2006?

MAJ Smith's defense of detailed planning doesn't stand up to empirical
scrutiny. Thick orders and elaborate SOPs haven't eliminated costly, stupid mistakes. Consider
two of the most heavily regulated activities on the modern battlefield  -- air strikes and detainee operations. Air
strikes have killed civilians and ground troops have abused detainees, even
when the SOPs regulating these activities ran to several hundred pages. Each
crime and blunder adds another chapter to the tome, but none of it seems to
matter. Leaders prone to crimes and blunders are not dissuaded by elaborate
checklists or sternly worded prose.

Yet the production of highly prescriptive
orders and SOPs, what Germans call Befehlstaktik, continues unabated;
why?  The primary purpose of detailed
orders is not battlefield success, but rather the protection of field-grade and
flag officer careers. In ten years of war, no Army general has relieved a
fellow flag officer for battlefield failure. Why so many failures and so little
accountability? When a small unit gets in trouble, senior commanders find cover
in SOPs thick enough to stop an OER bullet. (I told the troops not to beat
detainees; it's right here on page 11.) Rather than preventing battlefield
failure, detailed planning often enables it. Senior officers can survive almost
any debacle so long as there's a FRAGO and a captain between them and the
problem.

Detailed planning
can be useful in understanding problems, anticipating opportunities and risks
and synchronizing activities. Prescriptive orders and SOPs have their place in
performing routine mechanical tasks. However, these techniques are often
counterproductive in the fog and friction of combat. Modern combat requires
junior leaders capable of exercising judgment and initiative, and senior
officers capable of fostering these qualities. It requires junior leaders
capable of acting on commander's intent, and senior officers capable of clearly
expressing their intent. It requires junior leaders capable of taking prudent
risks, and senior officers willing to underwrite and reward risk-taking. Far
from prohibiting mission command, the conditions of modern combat demand it.

Most importantly of
all, Auftragstaktik demands accountability for results rather than
adherence to procedures. Some will succeed and advance, while others will fail
and find employment elsewhere. These outcomes have little to do with time in grade,
PME or the complexities of the modern battlefield. Senior officers who wish to
exercise mission command shouldn't wait for favorable conditions; they should
create them.

Paul L. Yingling is a colonel in the U.S. Army and a
professor of security studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for
Security Studies. The
views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the
official policy or position of the George C. Marshall European Center for
Security Studies, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Government or St. Jude.

A civilian reader asks: Should I go to staff college or wait for war college?

A fellow BD reader, a career
Foreign Service Officer who paid some dues in Iraq, needs some career advice
from all of youse:

I'm in
the middle of searching for my next assignment, and one of my choices is a
year at a staff college. My initial preference would be Marine Corps CSC,
but there's also Army CGSC and that Joint Forces one and the AF one. Past BD
entries, as well as my impression of the Air Force, have turned me off to
the AF colleges.

If I
take a staff college offer, then I will be excluded from future
consideration for the war colleges; one of the rules of my outfit. So
my main interest is getting info on the curriculum, field trips, and
relative merits of these schools. If I pass on the staff college, I would be
able to compete for a war college spot a few years from now.

A beer with a Marine

I just liked this photograph. President Obama yesterday bestowed
the Medal of Honor on Dakota Meyer, the Marine on the right. Just when I think
Obama is tone deaf on the military, he does something like this that makes me
think he really knows what he is doing. Apparently Meyer had mentioned to White
House staffers that he would like to have
a beer with the president.

Quote of the day: TNC on the Civil War's role in the birth of black America

I'd never thought of black
America this
way, the way Ta-Nehisi Coates describes it in the quotation below. It makes
sense to me, in terms of politics. But I worry that it sets aside the
contribution of African-Americans to the country and the culture before the
war.

I am
a child of war. The Civil War birthed modern African-American political
identity. Our political leadership can be traced back to many of the soldiers
who served in that War. The notions of freedom and the franchise, and
specifically the notion that these are things worth dying for, come
from War. Our century-long journey into the American polity can be traced back
to Port Hudson and Milliken's Bend, to Harriet Tubman leading Union raiders
into Confederate territory. This is not abstract -- the first proposals for the
franchise were for black Union veterans.

I
also liked this
unrelated comment of his:

At
some point you just have to say that, conservatively, a portion of Rupert
Murdoch's empire was a criminal enterprise.

Indeed, so far 13 people
have been arrested in connection with alleged hacking crimes by Murdoch
newspapers. No, make
that 16. Does that mean News Corp. might eventually face RICO-like
charges?

Sgt. Major of the Army Chandler: My wife told me to get help for my PTSD

I
think it is important for leaders to speak out about getting help with mental
health, so I was impressed to see Sgt. Maj.
of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III tell sergeants at Fort Bragg that,
"I had some experiences in Iraq that I didn't really deal with very well --
kind of suppressed my feelings ... It took awhile for me to come to terms with
that. About three years after I got back is when my wife said, 'You need to get
some help.' "

It also was the
first time Chandler, a career armored soldier, had ever visited Fort Bragg -- after
30 years in the Army. I am always kind of surprised at how separate the
different branches of the Army can be.

Should hawks support Obama on taxes? A rightist raptor responds

Here is a response from AEI's Tom
Donnelly to my calling
him out yesterday:

By Tom Donnelly

Best Defense guest defendant

I won't presume to respond for AEI as a whole, but I don't
see why providing for the common defense correlates to tax rates on the rich or to the percentage of GDP owned by the top 1 percent of earners. We have to weaken our
military until the rich pay their "fair share," whatever that is? What about corporations who pay little or no tax? Do we have to cut defense spending until General Electric pays its fair share? What about lower-income Americans who pay no income taxes at all? What about the subsidies and distortions in the tax code? If defense spending is the hammer for every political occasion, why don't we make cuts commensurate with the tax revenues lost, for example, subsidizing second-home-in-Maine mortgages?

Personally, I would be happy to see some rise in federal tax
revenues in trade for a long-term solution to the problem of runaway entitlement costs -- costs that are already triple the core defense budget but rising, thanks to Baby Boomer retirements, rapidly and inexorably. That would at least link the government's income to its largest expenditure.

But even if we can't resolve the political impasse over how
to get our fiscal house in order and have to keep borrowing, I'd prefer to be investing in an adequate defense, the ultimate common good. Even people at AEI would
rather be safe than rich.

3 former national security officials sum up the changes of the last decade

By Rickisha Berrien

Best Defense
department of catastrophic change

Here's how three former officials -- one from the world of
intelligence, the second from the Pentagon, the third from the State Department
-- see how the world has changed since 9/11.

--Former Acting Director of the CIA John McLaughlin,
speaking at the commemorative event at Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced
International Studies (SAIS), said he believes that within the last decade the
intelligence community has faced the greatest period of change since the height
of the Cold War. The decade before 9/11 was characterized by an emphasis on
peace, and in the years before the attacks the ranks of the intelligence
community were cut by about 23 percent. After the attack, McLaughlin says that
it became evident very quickly that the war would be an intelligence war. This
new kind of war necessitated key changes within American intelligence. First,
within the last decade we have had unprecedented integration of intelligence
and the U.S. military, providing us with new and powerful capabilities that we
didn't possess 10 years ago. This new integration culminated in the takedown of
Osama bin Laden. Second, since about 50 percent of the intelligence community
today was hired after 9/11, we now have an intelligence workforce that has been
trained and socialized during a time of war. This has not been the case since
the time of the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA,
during World War II. We do not know the ramifications that such change will
have on the community in the years to come.

--Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman,
addressing the same event, called a decade free from a domestic terror attack
an "incredible achievement." The United States has succeeded in many areas in
our War on Terror: al Qaeda is on the run and state sponsorship of terror
organizations has greatly diminished. However, two major national security
challenges still lay ahead of us: the emergence of new nuclear-armed states and
the rise of China. Though we have had limited positive accomplishments in
curtailing the nuclear threat, there is still a long way to go. Both Iran and
North Korea are still rogue nuclear threats that the United States has yet to
deal with successfully. Furthermore, the expansion of the Chinese military
looms as an underappreciated threat to American influence in the Pacific.
Edelman noted that the bipartisan defense panel on the Quadrennial Defense
Review that he took part of last year came to the conclusion that "the ability
of the United States to operate in the Western Pacific in the face of some
anti-access and area-denial capabilities that China has developed has been
called into question". This undercuts the ability of the United States to
maintain the balance of power in Asia and Europe as it has since WWII.

--Former Counselor of the U.S. Department of State Eliot
Cohen discussed whether the war on terror was indeed a war, and if so, what
kind? He questioned the term itself, arguing that the U.S. government made a
mistake by "casting this very broadly as a war on terror, which would be a
little like the United States declaring war on dive bombers after Pearl Harbor.
Terror is the tactic, not the enemy."

Taxes and defense: Time for some intellectual rigor in what you call for

If you want a
strong defense, shouldn't you vocally support ending the Bush tax cuts for the
rich? Shouldn't you even be in the lead? I'm talking to you, AEI.

If you think the
federal deficit is a problem, shouldn't you think the same? I mean in either
event, spending cuts alone won't get you there.  

So yes, I think
President Obama is doing
the right thing.

Eisenstadt: Sure, Iran is aggressive -- but does that make them craaaazy?

By Joseph Sarkisian

Best Defense bureau of Iranian
affairs

The
Marine Corps University's recently published monograph titled, The
Strategic Culture of the Islamic Republic of Iran, brings to light an
unconventional viewpoint on Iranian grand strategy. Its author, Michael
Eisenstadt, dispels the myths surrounding Iranian policy while providing an
in-depth analysis of the creative calculus the regime uses when making its
decisions at home and abroad. It is this calculus that the United States must
solve in order to achieve more effective engagement.

Eisenstadt
makes the case that the Iranian regime operates in a very pragmatic, calculated
manner as opposed to the image of an "irrational, 'undeterrable'
state with a high pain threshold," that its leadership likes to portray. Being
able to see past the rhetoric of holocaust denial, destruction of Israel, and
fears of a nuclear apocalypse, which Iran intentionally uses to paint itself as
a fearsome enemy, will be key to making tangible diplomatic progress.

In his
view, the image of Iran as an irrational
actor is overblown -- but the idea that Iran seeks to become a regional power
capable of exerting influence over the entire region and becoming the guardian
of Islam is real. Iranian defense planning is formed around this goal, as well
as to deter potential adversaries and to achieve self-reliance from the outside
world.

The
argument that, "The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is an unconventional
adversary that requires unconventional approaches in planning, strategy and
policy" is underscored by the fact that the conventional method of sanctioning
to change behavior has done nothing to stop uranium enrichment.

The
unconventional approach suggested by Eisenstadt suggests a rewriting of the
policy manual on Iran. The United States must spend less time countering
Iranian hard power and more time countering its even stronger soft power, pay
more attention to the effectiveness of Iranian psychological warfare, and
brainstorm better ways to pierce the veil of Iranian ambiguity. Once more of
these unconventional tactics are implemented, the end of the 32-year diplomatic
stalemate may finally come within reach.