It is well known that America has the best military in the world. We can reach out and touch our enemies anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice. Just the other week, B2 bomber pilots left Missouri before breakfast, struck Iran’s nuclear program, and returned home in time to put their kids on the bus the next day. For 20 years in Afghanistan, our boots on the ground could return from a patrol and expect a mobile Burger King to greet them at the gate with a Whopper. Such displays of military prowess should be indicative of victory, and yet, the American military since WWII has a pyrrhic track record at best. How can this be? Simply put, our senior leadership has been unable to tie our awesome military capabilities to strategic results in the field. Short term tactical and operational brilliance marred by long term strategic blundering has become our legacy.
There are two main reasons for this decline in generalship and American military strategy over the past 40 years. First, we do not hold our general officers accountable for their strategic results. Second, we do not train junior officers to be strategic thinkers and incentivize risk averse, cautious decision making. When taken together, these two factors perpetuate a cycle of generating talent that is both unprepared to meet the strategic challenges we face and immune from their failures to meet those challenges. This is and has been a recipe for catastrophe.
A Lack of Accountability
The story of the present-day breakdown in American generalship begins with the staffing innovations of Army Chief of Staff George Marshall during WWII. Marshall was most known for his implementation of a culture of “hire fast, fire fast” for general officers during the war. Highlighting just how ruthless General Marshall was in his personnel decisions, Thomas Ricks explains “During World War II, senior American commanders generally were given a few months in which to succeed, be killed or wounded, or be replaced.” (Ricks, 2012, p.7). While this sounds cutthroat on its face, one key element of this approach was that officers relieved of command were often given second chances to command. This policy and the culture it established enabled officers to take risks and innovate without the fear of one mistake derailing their career. Ricks notes that “… at least five Army generals of World War II—Orlando Ward, Terry Allen, Leroy Watson, Albert Brown, and, in the South Pacific, Frederick Irving—were removed from combat command and later given another division to lead in combat.” (Ricks, 2012, p.19) Even George Patton, perhaps the most famous American general of the war, was relieved of command for strategic mistakes despite his operational successes. This culture permeated the ranks, rewarding those officers that could adapt, take risks, and win wars instead of battles.
This culture has eroded. In the years and conflicts since then, the Army slowly established a precedent that it did not fire its senior leaders for failures in the field. This was largely driven by perverse incentives to protect the domestic political position of the military as it became increasingly exposed in the decades following WWII. During the Korean War, the leadership in charge during the North Korean invasion could not be “fired” for fear of embarrassing the military and damaging the political support for the war. The solution was to remove them on the pretense that they were needed elsewhere and rotate them out for new leadership. In fact, the only high-profile relief was of MacArthur himself for challenging Harry Truman’s authority as Commander in Chief. The model of rotation in and out of theater – and relief only for cases of extreme political faux pas – established in Korea became the new standard for generals. Vietnam, a conflict defined by its strategic failures, saw only one general relieved for cause. A similar culture was in effect during the First and Second Gulf Wars as well as the Global War on Terror; all conflicts marked by tactical successes but strategic flops. The highest profile firings, Generals Petraeus and McChrystal, were not for strategic failures but an affair and public criticism of the Commander in Chief. Politics has prevailed.
It’s also worth noting that of all the Generals that commanded in Iraq and Afghanistan, Petraeus and McChrystal were the most successful at moving the needle. Their termination on political grounds has had its own enduring consequences. It sent a clear message to all flag officers that it is better to keep your head down than trying to make a difference. That their real failures in the war were not the basis for termination also trickled down to the troops, creating an air of distrust and skepticism. The blatant lack of accountability for Army senior leadership leads many troops to the conclusion that their senior leadership is more concerned with their own personal evaluation than the success of the mission and the lives of their subordinates. This has colored the judgment of a whole generation of general officers that currently lead the Army.
Cultivating the Wrong Talent
Following the Vietnam War the US Army implemented a series of reforms to prevent such a failure from happening again. Two of these reforms, one revamped junior and mid-level officer Professional Military Education (PME), the other instituted the “up-or-out” career progression, are the root of today’s failures in generalship.
First, newly reformed PME hyper focused junior leaders on how the Army wanted to fight and win against the Soviet Union. An obvious over-correction from Vietnam, these schools drilled excellence at the tactical and operational level into company and field grade officers. One of the most notable schools created in this era, the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), was ostensibly designed to produce strategic, intellectual thinkers. In practice, these graduates were misused as incredibly skilled operational planners; further reinforcing the Army’s philosophy that if you win enough battles the war will work itself out. Ricks notes that “General Schwarzkopf employed 82 of them… using all of them for the attack and none of what followed” (Ricks, 2012, p.187). The reformed PME producing outstanding operational level leaders also stopped short of reforming or providing significant education for general officers. Our general officers should be driving new innovative ways to fight and win our nation’s wars and aligning defense assets with diplomatic and political goals. To that end, the current education requirements for general officers are woefully inadequate. The last true PME they receive is at the War Colleges as colonels.
Second, the rigid officer and enlisted career timelines that also developed out of this were intended to separate the best from the rest, and to that end, they were successful. Soldiers were given an opportunity to excel in their current role and expected to compete against their peers and be promoted or sidelined. Coupled with the reformed PME for company and field grade officers, the message was clear. If you cannot follow these rules, know our doctrine, and execute it to perfection, there will not be a place for you. These policies produced excellent tactical and operational officers, but these officers were also acutely aware that any failures or departure from the status quo would result in a permanent blemish on their record. In contrast to the Marshall system, innovation and risk taking were now potentially career ending decisions. It is much safer to keep your head down in such an environment with a “don’t screw this up” mindset if trying to make a difference means potentially missing the next promotion and finding a new job.
The result is a system that produces highly skilled tactical and operational officers that are risk averse and afraid to engage with the political aspects of war at the strategic level. Without a process to identify personnel and cultivate strategic thinking at the beginning of their careers, the Army will continue to promote Schwarzkopf’s, Franks’, and Kurilla’s. Operational Wizards of Oz, hiding their strategic inadequacies behind a curtain of battlefield prowess.
Closing the Strategy Gap
Climbing out of the hole we have dug ourselves into is not impossible. Senior civilian leadership must reassert its dominance over the military and hold general officers accountable. Generals should be rapidly rotated around and fired if they fail to produce results. These individuals have made it to the top of their field and should be incentivized and trusted to take risks that get results or be relieved. Secretary Hegseth’s push to remove redundant flag officer billets is an excellent first step towards this culture shift and shaking out the deadwood languishing in our current system. Reducing the acquisition program executive offices and consolidating Army Futures Command back into Training and Doctrine Command is not enough, however. The Army should entirely rethink how it uses its general officers and remove them from PEO management positions across the Army. Army civilians at the Senior Executive Service level can provide the program management expertise to run those programs and free up senior military leaders to focus on strategy, doctrine, and leading military formations in the field. Slashing bloated headquarters staffing takes away the safety net the bureaucracy currently provides for deadweight officers and limits opportunities for these generals to line up contracts for their future consulting careers. Fewer headquarters also means less red tape. This will be a forcing function to push decision making and authority lower, empowering rising field grade officers and encouraging strategic thinking.
Secretary Hegseth also needs to provide clear strategic guidance to our top military leaders and prioritize a combatant command. Without this guidance our top military commanders are left guarding their own private kingdoms against one another and competing for resources. During the Cold War, all the Combatant Commands understood the strategic goal was isolating the Soviet Union and each worked in their own way against this threat. In the years since, they have devolved into ego-centric, zero-sum competition against one another as each 4 Star seeks to better his own legacy. These commanders need a broad strategic goal to get behind and ensure the bureaucracy is aligned in concert in support of one unifying strategy. Generals that don’t get on board with American grand strategy should be fired for cause without hesitation. General Kurilla is a clear example of this internal squabbling in action. If this administration is truly focused on combating China, pulling resources from INDO-PACOM to his command in CENTCOM makes no strategic sense. Executing tactical strikes against Iran, while impressive to watch, only make the strategic situation in the Pacific less tenable than it was two weeks ago. Hegseth has an opportunity to send a clear message to the force; ego and careerism have no place at the top of the American military bureaucracy. In addition to this, we should also place the Joint Chiefs back in the chain of command above the Combatant Commands to unify the theaters under a single entity. Restructuring the chain of command in this way will make it both easier for civilian leadership to push guidance down, and more difficult for a theater commander to bully his way into primacy.
To fix the stagnant state of PME for flag officers, adding academic rigor and wargames is a must. The Army Strategic Education Program currently consists of a single three week course for newly promoted one star generals and a single 5 day course for two star generals. Instead of a rigorous academic curriculum designed to challenge senior leaders to think critically and innovate for the next conflict, these classes focus on how to give TED talks on leadership and follow the unwritten behavioral norms befitting their rank. After 20 years of failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can no longer assume competence at this level. A robust education and training program must be created to ensure we are getting senior leaders that can adapt to the challenges of modern warfare. These schools should also regularly hold wargames where these generals will compete with one another to solve the complex problems our nation faces and promotions should be based on their performance. We regularly evaluate company and field grade officers at national training centers, these high-level wargames should be used to evaluate our generals and pit them and their ideas against each other. The strategic level needs reforms to disrupt the status quo and break apart the ossification that has taken place at the top level of the military.
A lack of training and accountability have been left to fester for decades in the Department of Defense. The end result is a system which effectively makes promoted general officers into tenured Ivy League professors that are impossible to remove regardless of their performance. We can ill afford another 20 year Global War on Terror where dozens of general officers oversee the same failure and waste precious resources. Every new general appointed merely resumed the same tired strategies hoping for different results.
Starting now, our generals must figure out how to turn tactical triumphs into strategic successes. The Army must change how it trains and promotes our leaders. Our civilian leaders must hold our senior military commanders to account for their performance. We must change what we are doing now if we expect a different result in the next war. Doing the same things would be insanity.
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Ricks, T. E. (2013). The Generals: American military command from World War II to today (Paperback ed.). Penguin Books.
