Criticism From A Friend
By streiff Posted in User Blogs — Comments (22) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
By way of full disclosure I cheerfully admit to being something of an Anglophile, especially when it comes to their military but not extending to either their beer or their cuisine.
The British Army has an incredible history and a corporate culture that is little short of magnificent. While the great citizen army raised by the United States during World War II killed the professionalism and traditions of the Army that had grown up since Appomattox, the British Army managed their expansion, and more importantly their demobilization, without doing extreme violence to the institution.
So when a senior British officer offers a critique of the American Army in a US Army professional military journal it behooves us to give it a fair reading.
Update [2006-1-13 9:22:8 by streiff]: Two days ago I wrote this essay considering criticisms leveled at the US Army by a senior British officer assigned to a Coalition staff position in Iraq in the US Command and General Staff College publication Military Review. Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster was the deputy to then Major General David Petraeus. I prepared it as a diary based on my assumptions 1) that one else was remotely interested in the subject and 2) that it didn’t have the legs to gain any substantial coverage outside military oriented media.
While right on count 1) I was wrong on count 2). The original article has received coverage |here| |here| |here| |here| |here| |here| |here|
Read on.
For those who aren't familiar with Army professional publications, they run in three tiers. The service schools operate the equivalent of trade journals. As an infantryman I was a subscriber to Infantry Magazine published under the auspices of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Armor Magazine was published by the Armor School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, etc. etc. (these magazines, prior to 9-11, were available online to the general public, now, for some reason, Infantry Magazine is behind a firewall while Armor Magazine is not. I'd like to think that is because the articles in Infantry are more vital to war time success...). These magazines are of hit and miss quality (I say this having been a fairly regular contributor to Infantry Magazine) and focus on subjects of interest to company grade officers and to non-commissioned officers.
The middle tier is Military Review, published by the US Army Command and General Staff College. The target audience here is field grade officers and the subject more devoted to operational art and Army policy.
The top tier is Parameters Quarterly published by the US Army War College. The audience is senior field grade officers, general officers, and senior Army civilians. It focuses on national strategy and is roughly equivalent to a refereed journal.
Contrary to what many on the outside think, the latter two magazines are by no means lapdogs of the institutions - though the service school journals could be fairly characterized as tending heavily towards orthodoxy - and are frequently the forum for vigorous debate.
So in one context the essay by Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, deputy commander of the Office of Security Transition, the office responsible for training and organizing Iraq's armed forces, critical of the US Army was not groundbreaking. In another sense it was because as Brigadier Aylwin-Foster states:
My motivation to study this has arisen from my experience serving with the U.S. Forces in Iraq throughout 2004. There can be few acts more galling than a soldier from one country publicly assessing the performance of those from another. However, this is not an arrogant exercise in national comparisons: there is no other Army in the world that could even have attempted such a venture. It is, rather, an attempt to understand and rationalise the apparently paradoxical currents of strength and weakness witnessed at close hand over the course of a year. Ultimately, the intent is to be helpful to an institution I greatly respect.
His critique is not as the brutal critique described by the Washington Post's insipid Thomas Ricks (there is no way to sugarcoat it, folks, Ricks is probably the weakest reporter to cover the defense beat for a major newspaper) describes it:
A senior British officer has written a scathing critique of the U.S. Army and its performance in Iraq, accusing it of cultural ignorance, moralistic self-righteousness, unproductive micromanagement and unwarranted optimism there.
His publisher: the U.S. Army.
In an article published this week in the Army magazine Military Review, British Brig. Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was deputy commander of a program to train the Iraqi military, said American officers in Iraq displayed such "cultural insensitivity" that it "arguably amounted to institutional racism" and may have spurred the growth of the insurgency. The Army has been slow to adapt its tactics, he argues, and its approach during the early stages of the occupation "exacerbated the task it now faces by alienating significant sections of the population."
Aylwin-Foster's observations are, from my experience even given the passage of time, entirely plausible. He touches on the key point of how the nexus of the Army's corporate culture and the American psyche may make the Army, and by extension the US Armed Forces, a suboptimal tool for counterinsurgency. Unfortunately, I think there is more than a little British chauvinism in the analysis.
His critique of the Army in Iraq runs in the following themes:
- The Army is too prone to view the solution to problems as the application of firepower.
- The US Army rules of engagement are too lenient and that encourages the use of firepower.
- US troops tend to be culturally insensitive and US senior commanders don't believe that cultural sensitivity is a skill that they have the time to impart upon their units.
- US force protection strategies prevent interactions with Iraqis and thereby limit HUMINT and limit the positive impression the locals have of the Army.
- The command structure is too centralized and this reduces the adaptability of the institution.
- US troops and commanders are too positive about their ability to carry out their mission and this optimism often misleads headquarters as to the real situation on the ground.
- The Army is prone to rely on technology rather than humans to solve problems and this, in turn, feeds into the excessive application of firepower.
- That the Army's culture is attuned to warfighting and counterinsurgency operations are given short shrift in training and doctrine.
In summary, he says:
No army can be analysed comprehensively in 5,000 words, least of all the U.S. This section will, therefore, concentrate on those aspects of the U.S. Army's conceptual and moral components judged to hold the key to explaining the features and impacts identified in the OIF snapshot in Section 1. These are a combination of enduring, longer term factors, compounded by shorter term, transient factors, which have collectively conspired to render the U.S. Army conceptually and culturally ill-disposed to OIF Phase 4, and similarly ill-disposed to adapt to the extent required, and thus ironically ill-suited to the path determined for it de facto by U.S. Foreign Policy at the beginning of the 21st Century.
Many of these assertions are probably true. Some of them might be changeable. Many are not. For instance consider the subject of rules of engagement and the application of firepower.
Anyone concerned with force protection knows the story of October 23, 1983 when 241 Marines and sailors assigned to 1st Battalion, 8th Marines were killed by a suicide bomber at the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. If you think the Marines have forgotten why this happened, think again. The Marines on guard were not allowed under the rules of engagement to have a magazine in their weapon.
Similarly, the bombing of the USS Cole was directly related to rules of engagement that kept close defense weapons unloaded and severely restricted what could be considered hostile actions.
There is no political way an administration is going to suffer the kinds of losses restrictive rules of engagement would entail. Similarly, expecting field commanders to hazard their troops by overly restraining their ability to defend themselves or to initiate combat is just ridiculous.
So while Aylwin-Foster might be right in some cases it is also irrelevant.
The most disturbing part of the essay, if true, concerns the "deprofessionalization" of the Army officer corps which Aylwin-Foster quotes several sources as the exodus of captains from the Army:
These factors are linked: one of the principal reasons for job dissatisfaction was the sense of a zero-defects culture in the Army, which arose indirectly from unit leadership ambition--mistakes in the unit do not, at least on the face of it, show the commander in a good light, with consequent perceived impact on his career. This sense of junior officer dissatisfaction with the leadership became so profound that in one study, commissioned by the then Army COS Gen¬eral Eric Shinseki in the year 2000, it was reported that `many officers believe there needs to be a clean sweep of senior leadership'
He accurately describes the chicken-and-egg effect of how inexperienced subordinates and a zero-defect - and seemingly careerist - culture conspire to strip initiative from the smaller units as the commander strives to prevent career damaging mistakes by concentrating all decisions with himself. Having seen this phenomenon close up, I can tell you that it produces units that can barely distinguish their collective butt from a hot rock.
Not surprisingly:
Another reason why the Army has struggled to adapt is simply that it has not been at its professional best in recent years.
Snider contends that the Army `de-professional¬ised' during the 1990s.41 He asserts that the culmina¬tion of the Army's post Vietnam re-professionalisa¬tion came in the `91 Gulf War, when the Army was probably `the most integrated and professional yet produced by the USA'. However, over the next 6-8 years it became more bureaucratised, centralised and correspondingly less professional. It was just start¬ing to recover from this when 9/11 happened and it became unavoidably committed to such extensive and challenging operations.
Hmmm. Starting to recover in 2001 from a phenomenon that was 6 to 8 years old. The LegacyWatch™ continues.
On the other hand, I think there is a degree of hubris in this criticism. The British forces in Iraq seem to have confused the absence of conflict with the presence of peace. While there is an active vetting of police officials in the US controlled sector of Iraq, in the British sector the police are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mahdi Army which fled Najaf and Karbala for Basra after their abortive rising. While we have been guilty of a lack of finesse in the way we have addressed some problems in Iraq, the Brits, in my view, have been equally guilty of kicking the can down the road and leaving a mess the Iraqi government will have to solve at some point in the future.
On the whole, Brigadier Aylwin-Foster makes some very valid observations on how the culture of the Army may be working at cross purposes to its mission. Some of the criticisms should be taken with a grain of salt. Some should be acknowledged but changing them is far beyond the ability of mortals (like the American romance with technology). And others require ruthless command emphasis to eradicate a dry rot of the Army's soul and prevent the post-Iraq Army from looking like the post-Vietnam Army.
I wasn't offended was that I felt we was scrupulously fair. In regards to your observation he says:
Nagl notes that `The American Army's role from its very origins was the eradication of threats to national survival', in contrast to the British Army's history as `an instrument of limited war, designed to achieve limited goals at limited cost'. And, `As a consequence, its historical focus was almost unfailingly
and exclusively to be a conventional war-fighting organisation'.26 He contends that this focus was so dominant in the American military psyche that the Army of the Vietnam era saw its core task unshakeably as `the absolute defeat of an enemy on the field of battle'.27 This attitude was sufficiently well ingrained throughout the Vietnam era that the enemy's destruction on military terms prevailed as the dominant operational intent, despite the many indicators that might have driven the Army towards the necessary realisation that the military objectives must be subordinate to wider political goals.
Seems that most of his critique, minus the cultural sensitivity component, has been an ongoing refrain, going back at least as far as Stilwell.
IIRC, a great deal of the animus directed towards the British military in India, for example, that came out in the inquiries made after the 1857 mutiny, was that some of the native regiments that participated in the rebellion felt that the more recent crop of English officers were not as sensitive to their culture as their predecessors. I mention this one example, there are many others, because 1) there seems to be a bit of projection involved here, however well intentioned, and 2) it seems not to gibe with a lot of reports that I`ve read coming out of Iraq, in which, at least in some areas, the CAPS program that Walt introduced in Vietnam has been put in place, however modified. I`m not contesting either his first hand experience and superior knowledge, just observing that he is casting a very wide net in some of these statements.
The question of professionalism I leave to you, but it does seem odd to think of the 1919-1941 army, as preofessional as it no doubt was, as any less careerist or centralized than today. Besides, am I to understand that the last 32 years have been in vain, or has the effort to develop our own army of mercenaries - as an admirer of British military history myself , I mean that in the best of all possible sense - has simply failed? I`m troubled by your closing sentence Streiff, and would ask you to elaborate , if you would.
my stuff. The reason I diaried this is because I wasn't sure if it was of interest to anyone but me.
To your points:
The question of professionalism I leave to you, but it does seem odd to think of the 1919-1941 army, as preofessional as it no doubt was, as any less careerist or centralized than today.
The comparison I was trying to make was not in regards to careerism (From Here to Eternity, the book not the movie, is Exhibit #1) but to the fact that the regimental identities and traditions, identities and traditions which sustain men in combat, were eradicated post-World War II in favor of a bland corporatism.
I don't agree that the pre-WW II Army was centralized to any great degree. A lot of posts, camps, and stations were garrisoned by a single infantry company or cavalry troop far removed from any meaningful oversight.
Besides, am I to understand that the last 32 years have been in vain, or has the effort to develop our own army of mercenaries - as an admirer of British military history myself , I mean that in the best of all possible sense - has simply failed?
I think we have a tremendous Army with an incredible training and education program for officers and non-coms. I think that it's weakness is that the flesh peddlers don't see units they see people and spaces. They strive to fill spaces with people. In fact, units are the building blocks of an Army. I've resolved myself to the realization we are going to keep this mechanistic view of people as widgets to be sent willy-nilly to take their place among complete strangers before being sent into combat.
I`m troubled by your closing sentence Streiff, and would ask you to elaborate , if you would.
The potential for a creeping careerism that ignores the soldierly or warrior ethos in favor of self-aggrandizement was one of the herpes-like gifts of Vietnam. I hope we avoid it here.
as reading goes, I appreciate you writing it, since military affairs/history are of great interest to me. I see your point about post-WWII corporatism, but suspect that had a lot do with the sheer size of the Army in those days, as well as the prevailing `50`s organizational culture that permeated everything. Perhaps the ongoing down-sizing is one indirect method for restoring regimental traditions. In fact, it has been reassuring to read battalion/regiment identifiers attached to soldiers`names instead of, say, 1st RCT.
To the extent that any Army is a reflection of its times, your comment that the flesh peddlers don`t see units they see people and spaces is particularly dead-on. Certainly the younger guys seem to be expressing a need and sense for unit attachment and corresponding pride that I have not seen for awhile. You made me get a bit wobbly there for a minute, man. Thanks for the feedback.
Excellent post.
Allow me to add that I have heard for years (and continue to receive) similar evaluations of our Army by British officers.
Like you, I confess to having once been a bit of an Anglophile - serving with 'Brits', attending certain of their military schools, and frequently reviewing their capabilities.
Having said that, I see no really significant difference in this Brigadier's opinion than those I constantly heard from his level and above for nearly twenty years.I agree that hubris is an element in this opinion, and most others I heard - some of which where neither objective nor civil.
But, I think, that is to be expected.
My take on a Brit's general professional view of our military embraces another opinion on this string - the one mentioning an imperial army. For, that is mainly how the British Army has functioned for most of the past several generations: Serving a monarchistic empire (however dwindling).
However, It has been my experience that British Army officers' carers and views are crafted so much by their Army's Regimental organization and the Regiment's role and relationship to their national Army, that their view of our Army often derives from a limited understanding of a monolithic military entity.
Brits, as you know, can still remain in the same regiment for life - regardless of where they may be assigned (and at whatever rank) in the national Army. I believe their focus is more upon the regiment than upon the national Army. We have no such orientation.
I believe that over the length of a career that singular difference between our two Armies will produce in the Brits views similar to those of your Brigadier; and vice versa.
An American officer only needs once to attend a British Officers' Mess night (and survive with any dignity and honor) to understand why one of their senior officers may form views such as those you present.
I believe this is a very good posting, think that many RedStaters would benefit from keeping it open for a while.
during WW I. Since then British officers have made a career out of faulting the US Army. If Field Marshal Montegomery had his way we'd probably still be drinking tea in Sicily, as British armored columns stopped to do on their way to rescue the 1st Airborne Division during Market Garden. Some of the criticism is valid, some not so, and some older than the people who post on this site. During WW II it was common for British, French, and German officers to criticise our use of available technology and firepower, better a bayonet charge I would think. Junior officer leadership has been at the least acceptable when not outstanding and it might be recalled that the designation for combat lieutenants was changed from platoon commanders to platoon leaders, not done for eye wash purposes. To the extent less initiative is shown to that extent you may locate the foul odor of politcs and sensitivity, hardly the fault of Army leadership. I would agree that since WW II and up to today the Army has been top heavy in brass but that doesn't necessarily mean the Army doesn't learn and adjust[ unlike say the Immigration & Nat. Service]. Granada showed a lethargy and clumsiness that was regrettable, a few years later in Panama the coordination in complicated multiple strikes and the use of combined arms was close to perfection, I said close to. Several weeks ago I came across a lament that the British Navy now has more admirals then it does warships. Moral, what military couldn't use a little advice but some of it could be better aimed and begun at home first.
I appreciate the critique from this British officer. Unfortunately, the army is far from a place where someone can speak their mind in an official capacity (e.g. in "General Ike" and Eisenhower's career was nearly ended because he advocated a role for the tank outside of pure infantry support.) so we have to rely on outsiders.
Anyway, these are easy criticisms that are largely based on a balanced judgement call. Relying on firepower too much...that's a question of style. As for accusing the Americans for cultural ignorance, that is safe simply because Americans are by nature relatively more ignorant of countries and cultures. We're Americans, what more do we need? I suspect he's dead-on on the topic of lack of familiarity with the locals. In Bosnia, the American Army spent as much time as possible lagered up behind concertina wire, in k-pots and flak vests so Clinton wouldn't raise the ire of the Great American Public while all the other foreign soldiers are walking among the people drinking Turkish coffee and buying nudie gum. Of course the Americans had the toughest sector, but the impression left with all the other nations was less than favorable.
One would hope that some generals would implement some improvements, or at least take some cues from the private sector to improve the army experience. To say the army is ignorant of any kind of "associate satisfaction" is an understatement. My first recommendation would be 360 degree evaluations, where peers and subordinates have a say in what goes in the all-important evaluation.
Zero-defect mentality is strongly correlated to the "up or out" nature of the army. Think about it: your career is a train that does not stop. Along the track are switches to good and bad outcomes. If you miss a good outcome, you can't stop and go back to the good outcome. That door is closed. If you don't get a command you're done.
The best boss I ever had had his career permanently taken of the fast-track simply because one of his peers was the grandson of Creighton Abrams. If only one out of three officers can get a good rating and you're up against "Son of Tank" you're screwed no matter how good a job you did.
I don't know how the Regimental System in the British Army could ameliorate these kinds of problems, but I'd be curious to hear pros and cons.
although I don't have much to add. Fersboo has made my main point: "cultural sensitivity" can easily trail into deference, and indeed the relative quiet in the British sector is probably in part due to a failure to confront the Shi'ite militias. There will be a reckoning for this, although it's unlikely that the British will get stuck with it.
Very similar issues apply to the question of "immersion" in the civilian population. If you want your troops spending a lot of time walking around on the street and drinking tea with people, what kind of deals will you have to cut with the local sheiks to keep that from being disastrous? For that matter, that sort of behavior is only positive if both sides are willing to be culturally sensitive in an effort to reach a modus vivendi. If they just can't stand having a female NCO walking around with a headscarf, isn't it a better idea to keep aloof?
That quote about "absolute defeat of the enemy" does make me think about something else, though. Yes, our army is heavily optimized for warfighting as opposed to peacekeeping, "nation building," and civil affairs. On the other hand, before the war, people who supported the invasion were bandying about numbers like 3,000 casualties for the capture of Baghdad, Robert Fisk was bleating about the impenetrable slit trenches, etc. of the Iraqi army, and so on. The actual capture of Iraq, as far as I can tell, was a tremendous military success. In the spirit of Bastiat, let us not forget that the "thing unseen," should we redirect our army towards peacekeeping and civil administration, is that it will be in some measure less able to win such victories.
as Streiff's Brigadier pointed out.
Your comments about 'Son of Tank' struck a nerve with me.
I was a Special Forces officer when 'Grandad Abrams' was COMUS MACV in Vietnam and openly tried to destroy SF. THAT, is a story unto itself.
Later when he was Chief of Staff we SF (and former SF) officers darted about within the Army much like the fox after hearing the Master of the Hunt's horn.
If I remember, back then the Special Forces wasn't a branch in the traditional army terms, right? It wasn't until the 1990's when the "crossed arrows" became the official branch insignia. (Talk about treated like a redheaded stepchild.)
Special Forces was Branch-Immaterial at the time, and (especially) Combat Arms officers with one tour with SF were generally tolerated by their career branches. Officers who went for repeated tours were - let's say - professionally vulnerable.
I was a company grade Infantry officer at the time and was much less vulnerable than Armor or Artillery officers. After Abrams became Chief of Staff the entire SF structure and all in it were at serious risk.
All Special Forces qualified officers then were identified by a 3 prefix to their MOS. For example an infantry officer's MOS was 1542; an Airborne qualified officer infantry officer was 81542 and an SF qualified infantryman was a 31542.
The 3 prefix more or less became an uncomfortable 'discriminator' after the war when the Army was looking for ANY reason to eject officers.
"Who are the British to Talk", Time Magazine. The title suggestive, the article informative. I am predjudiced having made a similar but more general statement in my post. Cut away the usual and pro forma statements of the general's good will and it's an updated version, with the now required "sensitivity", of the Americans can't fight obsession that has bedeviled tje Britsh military for so long. Maybe the Brits should be reminded of another urban warfare of some fifty five years ago. Perhaps the names Irgun and the Stern Gang have faded behind memories of Roarkes Drift and Waterloo and the Plains of Abraham. In any case pick what you want from it and ignore the rest.
the US Special Forces have done a magnificent job of integrating within the civilian population. Approximately 75% of all field intelligence during Vietnam was agthered by Special Forces. We get a few fragments of information here and there, but most of what SF does is classified and/or covert and can't be publicized. In fact, there had been a rumor that has been floating around since the beginning of the Iraq war that SF was able to infiltrate and disable much of Sadaam's sophisticated weapons systems.
but there are, by its very nature, few soldiers with the ability and/or inclination to move into special forces units.
So while, yes, the average SF ODA is very good at working with indigenous populations there are very few of them.
on the "military affairs/history are of great interest to me."
I acquired my interest in military history from my Dad. His last assignment before retirement was teaching military history to senior ROTC students and he had a great love of the subject, especially that of WW II. He also harbored "very" strong feelings about Bernard Law Montgomery :-)
The performance of the British Army in both WW1 and WW2 leaves a lot to be desired.
For example, in WW1, the Germans achieved about a 5 to 1 casualty advantage and 2 to 1 kill advantage over the Brits every year of the war except the last.
In WW2, the Brits suffered devistating defeats by bth the Germans and the Japanese early on, and only prevailed in North Africa due to vastly superior resources.
While the Royal Navy and RAF did a fine job, the fact is that without massive air superiority, the British Army was not up to the task of facing the Germans.
Now, I tend to view American success as a result of our Anglo-Saxon culture (I don't know for sure that I have Anglo-Saxon ancestors, but I do know my culture), and I believe the Royal Navy was key to the modern world (free trade, independent Latin America, etc.), but I'm not all that impressed with the record of the British Army.
Brig. Aylwin-Foster comments about "damaging optimism" and "moral righteousness" are especially concerning, but not surprising. As I have previously discussed, these are criticisms that other convservatives share and have expressed at the cost of being painted a defeastist or a leftist.
I hope those of you who are reflexively dismiss criticism take the time to read AEI's "The Political Battles Ahead"
Absent the need to support a president of their party and the desire to maintain control of Congress, many Republicans would oppose the war as a misuse of American power, as they did the Clinton administration's interventions in the Balkans and elsewhere. Support for the war among the president's political base is, in fact, soft.
My unit used to do a lot of training with a British unit based in Hereford. One thing I will go along with (in some part) is the British officer's assesment of our strong (over?) reliance on tech.
Our Brit friends had less use for some of the wonderful "toys" that our unit utilized, but they were a clever and highly trained lot (well, of course we were too). While I wouldn't fully agree that our side of the pond relies too much on "toys", I had to admire the Brits for their seeming disdain of too much tech, and their love of perfection in training. I don't include other European units we trained with as none came close (imho) to the Brits.
I agree with other posts about the US Army's prejudices against special ops officers and spec. ops in general (which ties into the Brit officer's point about warfighting over counterinsurgency). CI is the future of much of warfare (Afghanistan and Iraq present; any other middle east, south american countries in the future). Other than China (convential air and naval for the most part) we need more respect for spec ops from DOD before we get into future scrapes. I'm told it's better than it was a few years ago.
One of the interesting things I noticed about the British Army were their recruiting commercials. Instead of harping on college money or "Army of One" they had commercials with situations that placed the viewer in the active role. Things like facing down a crazed warlord in a peace enforcement negotiation, and figuring out how to get a wounded man across a canyon. Very interesting and very different. Definitely not feel-good like our ads either.
While I have not seen any British recruiting adds that I recall, I have always felt that we place a lot of emphasis on "What do I get" and not on "What can I do".
I don't know what we should do though, or if we should do anything about it. I joined for the college money, but loved my country too. Our troops still seem to turn out ok, even if they aren't joining for the "purist" of reasons, and recruitment levels seem to be ok as well.
....probably contributes to this perception.
I do seem to recall, both in Germany and in the possible deployment to the Gulf ('91), the emphasis on not inflamming locals by being unawares of local sensebilities and customs. I understand the importance of working with the locals, but believe that an over-emphasis on not 'offending' the locals is a huge liability to those responsible for the security of the forces operating in the region.