Auftrag-static (VI): Dudes, don't study how the Germans got it right in WWII, focus on how the British got it wrong

This guest column by my old friend
Tom Donnelly (yeah, we disagreed on invading Iraq, but he tends to be right
about good food, rock music and the Civil War) makes me think we should compile
a list of the "Top 10 books about the British getting it badly wrong in various
wars." In addition to the Singapore book he cites, I'd suggest Andrew Gordon's
The
Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command. Not sure which
World War I book to pick-there are so many-but maybe The
Middle Parts of Fortune, which should be better known. If I'd read it,
I probably also would suggest Cecil Woodham-Smith's The
Reason Why. It's been sitting on my shelf for several years.

By coincidence, I was re-reading General
Wavell's lectures on generalship last night over a robustly hopped IPA, and
was struck at his emphasis on endurance as a key quality. I suspect that's a
result of the blood and mud of the trench warfare of the Great War, and
resulted in the view that stolidity trumps adaptability.  

Meanwhile, old Starbucks
provides his own overview of Auftragstaktik-fest.

Anyway, take it away, Tom D.

By Tom Donnelly

Best Defense guest right-wing
columnist

I have been following the discussion of auftragstaktik
with interest not only for the debate about the nature of mission command but
because it represents, if only indirectly, a larger conversation that needs to
be had about the institutions of the Army and the U.S. military.

That discussion -- which was constantly open and lively
during the years from Vietnam to Desert Storm -- has largely been set aside in
the post-9/11 era. While the force has adapted rather well to new tactical and
operational realities (and must wait for others, mostly civilians, to engage in
a much-needed reconsideration of American strategy), its institutions haven't
been as able to adapt. The primary cause may simply be that the combination of
a small force, a couple of long wars fought in one-year increments by too many
small-minded leaders (but civilian and uniformed), but that doesn't make the
result any different. Stephan
Schilling's recent guest column is a reminder that a system of mission command is something that not only enables gifted
leaders to shine but improves the standard of "average" leadership. A system is
the product of an enlightened institution, not just the emanation of an
individual genius.

Some of the elements for recreating the Army as an
institution are present in abundance - the cadre of young officers and NCOs who
have figured out how to adapt to the conditions they've found themselves in for
the past ten years is a priceless asset. On the other hand, if they never
supplement the on-the-job education they've had with something more reflective,
or, when that's done, never have the assets, opportunity or ability to
translate that into a re-fashioned leadership development system, that asset
will either be wasted or become a pinhole perspective. And, particularly in the
current budget environment, carving out the time, dollars and other resources
needed to reform, refit, and remake the Army as an institution is a monumental
task.

Nor is the pace of day-to-day operations likely to ease, at
least relative to the size of the service. No one knows what size the garrisons
in Iraq and Afghanistan will be in a few years' time, or where the next fight
will be. "No more land wars in Asia" is not a plan. The active Army is already
on a downward slope to 520,000 and it's near-certain that the path will get
steeper. The troop-to-task ratio is headed down, not up. The minimum price for
instituting any durable system of mission command would be a revived TRADOC,
one the Army's golden child but lately a neglected if not abused bastard. [[BREAK]]

Rather than figuring out how Guderian got it right, it may
be more instructive for American officers to study how the British got it
wrong. The British army, despite the many innovations developed in World War I,
could never escape the constant grind of constabulary deployments along the
imperial frontier; by 1942 they had been out-thought and out-fought by both the
Germans in Europe and the Japanese in Southeast Asia. And the intellectual rot
and become a moral rot: leaders quarreled with one another and did not trust
their subordinates. The British army lost, in part, because it expected to
lose. Brian Farrell's The
Defense and Fall of Singapore is an acidly honest appraisal of the
consequences of a failed military system: "The system produced the plans, men
and means," he writes. "It, not they, invited disaster....From 1921 to 1942 the
British Empire's military system insist[ed that] the situation must fit the
plan at all levels."

Indeed, the discussions in this space show general agreement
in regard to the nature of mission command. Paul
Yingling is surely right that the conditions of modern combat, particularly
for those who serve in the American military, call for a mission-command
approach; would any thoughtful veteran of the post-9/11 wars disagree? And a
dynamic leader needn't wait for perfect conditions to improve practices in his
unit.

But the challenge is rather in how to systematize, as best
as can be done, the Clausewitzian virtues, the coup d'oeil, the courage d'esprit.
What we call "mission command" the Prussian described as the product of a
cultivated temperament. The student of Napoleonic brilliance could still argue
that "it is the average result" - the
italics are in the original (or Peter Paret's version of it) - "that indicates
the existence of military genius."

Thomas Donnelly, Haupt-uber-director
of the Center for Defense Studies at the American Enterprise Institute,
graduated from the Sidwell Friends School in 1971, at the height of the Vietnam
War, despite regularly skipping Quaker Meeting to let his freak flag fly.