Air University Review, May-June 1968
Few would deny that the single overriding responsibility of an officer is the exercise of leadership. But how many would agree that “any officer’s work week should comprise about 50 percent execution and the other half study, if he is to make the best use of his force”? Then, to raise the ante a little, not many of us would deny that some familiarity with the history of strategic thought is important for an officer. But would we all agree that “if any two theories of strategy are not compatible, then neither of them is a valid general theory”? And finally, most of us would surely agree that crew members who might be called upon in a war situation to deliver nuclear weapons should know their weapon system inside out. But would we all agree that if airmen “continue to think and act in the patterns on which air war has developed into nuclear war, they will have fallen away from their true function as protectors of the civil population, and will have delivered them over to mass slaughter”?
Just what is, after all, the full range of an officer’s responsibility? Is it limited to himself, his family, his outfit, and his men? Or does it extend in some measure beyond his immediate circle and assigned tasks? These are just a few of the questions raised in three recent books, all by military men, each addressing on a different level the basic question of what it means to be a military officer in this age.
The first of the three (in order of appearance) and probably the least controversial is General “Slam” Marshall’s essay on leadership.* This book has a long history and is probably known to many readers by its earlier title, The Armed Forces Officer. The original version appeared in November 1950 as an official Department of Defense publication. It was revised and republished under the same title in December 1960, bearing the following official designations: DOD Pam 1-20, DA Pam 600-2, NAVPERS 15923A, AF Pam 190-1-12, and NAVMC 2563. These early versions, prepared under contract to DOD for use as a leadership manual, did not bear the name of the author. In 1966 General Marshall again revised and expanded the book, this time for commercial publication. He gives three reasons for doing so: first, Vietnam has added to our experience; second, “writing for official purposes usually compels restraint [and] it seemed worthwhile to review, write, and publish under auspices that would relieve an doubt”; and third, “it is my feeling that in a work of this kind the reader has the right to know who is speaking.”1
Let me state at the outset that the most recent version is the best. While the same basic chapters remain largely intact, their order has been rearranged2 and their titles are more down-to-earth.3 And while it is true that post-1960 material has been added here and there, one suspects that many of the other “changes” are in fact elements of the original draft that were blue-penciled for one reason or another during the clearing process at the Pentagon.4 In all, there are 26 short chapters, averaging about ten pages each and covering everything from the meaning of one’s commission to the things one should keep foremost in mind when leading Americans in combat. The book’s main purpose “is to stimulate thought and to encourage the average young officer to seek truth for and in himself.” This is a worthy aim, and those who know General Marshall are aware that he has never lost sight of it
Any book like this must face up to the basic question of whether leadership can be taught. The author’s assumption is that it can, if the spirit is willing and the student is not the village idiot. Basic to this assumption is a conception of leadership that emphasizes diligence, thoroughness, knowledge, and work. The officer who strives always to carry out assigned tasks completely and on the basis of accurate command of his data has within him the essential attributes of leadership. All the rest—manner, voice, bearing, imagination, initiative, magnetism—all these he classifies as more superficial traits, capable now and then of lifting a man into a position of leadership but not of keeping him there under severe stress. Seen in this light, the officer who would most successfully win the loyalty of his men is the one who would never forget two favorite maxims of the wise teacher: “Example is not the best way to teach, it is the only way” and “You can’t fool the kids.”
To diligence, thoroughness, and command of the data, one must add the willingness to accept risk: “The readiness to accept risk and the capacity for completing assigned or chosen work, around these two fundamentals may be developed the aura, the manner of leadership, its technique, its system. If they are missing, there is no hope and the article must in time be exposed as counterfeit.” And in all of this, “there is nothing else that serves as well as the natural manner, with some polishing of the surface here and there and a general tightening at the corners.” Paraphrased, the argument might run like this: Don’t tell them how, show them; do it every day in matters large and small; then, in the test of combat, the moral authority already accrued will draw them to your purposes, and you need pray only that your courage will meet the test.
This is the bedrock on which the book is built. Individual chapters fill in the details—knowing your men, the nature of discipline, speaking and writing, counseling, instructing, dealing with people. No absolute rules are offered. In each area some general postulates are discussed and examples are given. Selective anecdotes reveal the author’s skill as a raconteur. Trenchant observations challenge the reader on page after page:
· The fault in the average lieutenant colonel is that he has long forgotten how greatly words of encouragement and advice from that level weighed with him when he was wearing gold bars. (p. 10)
· There are no dull lecture topics; there are only dull lecturers. A little eager research will enliven any subject under the sun. (p. 88)
· . . . . authority is contingent upon respect far more truly than respect is founded upon authority. (p. 151)
· The sorriest vice that may afflict the leader at any level is the compulsion that makes him want to have a finger in every pie, the deciding voice in every problem, the inability to leave anything alone. (p. 158)
· The sign of superiority in any officer at whatever level is his confidence that he can make another good man to fill any vacancy. (p. 195)
These excerpts should make it obvious that this is much more than a “how-to-do-it” book for beginning lieutenants (and, to be sure, if conscientiously read and reread it will help them much more than the typical military guidebook ever will). Indeed, any officer of whatever grade who thinks he can still learn something about leadership and who will try this book simply as a guide to introspection should not be disappointed. And he certainly will not be bored.
If an officer is sometimes puzzled by the issues raised in a discussion of leadership, he is often even more adrift on the subject of strategy. He need not feel alone, for, like “the Renaissance,” “strategy” is a term that must be defined each time it is used. That there is no general agreement as to its meaning or implications is one of the major points raised by Rear Admiral J. C. Wylie, Deputy CINC, U.S. Naval Forces in Europe.** “The literature of war and its strategies,” Admiral Wylie writes, “is poverty-stricken.” After admitting that we have indeed a surfeit of battle studies, military histories, and particularized “strategic analyses,” he insists—and rightly so—that warfare, taken in its widest sense, remains a woefully neglected intellectual discipline. It lacks not only a defined intellectual framework but an accepted vocabulary as well.5 As a direct result, he contends, soldiers, sailors, and airmen continue to look upon their particular approaches to warfare as having some general, or absolute, validity.
Admiral Wylie directs his criticism to both professional officers and the academic community; the common error he charges them with is a failure to recognize that the study of warfare “merits a place in the intellectual world as a matter worthy of more than technical study.” He does not propose to offer a definitive answer to the question he raises, but he does offer some ideas on how to begin.
He begins by defining analytically two operationally different kinds of
strategies: “sequential strategy,” a series of discrete steps or actions, each
growing naturally out of, and dependent upon, the one that preceded it (e.g.,
the Central Pacific drive across the Pacific in World War II); and “cumulative
strategy,” in which the entire pattern is made up of a collection of lesser
actions, not sequentially interdependent (e.g., tonnage warfare waged by
submarines). Citing World War II, he shows how sequential strategies
formed the initial basis for action but came to be supplemented by cumulative
strategies (e.g., bombing). Yet this occurred without conscious analytical
differentiation between the two approaches. Might we not improve our overall
prosecution of a war, he asks, if we see what we are doing well enough at least
to label it accurately? “If we could judge the progress and the effect of our
cumulative strategy, not only would we control an . . . element . . . that up
to now we have been forced to leave largely to chance, but we might more
effectively shape the conditions existing when the war is over.” True enough,
but is it possible? What about
Moving onto a larger stage, Admiral Wylie argues that there are today four “generally recognized major theories of war strategy.” These he labels the continental, maritime, air, and Mao theories. He then discusses each of these in turn, his principal purpose being to show that no one of them is necessarily a valid general theory. The continental theory presupposes that victory hangs on the defeat of one armed force by another in battle. The maritime theory assumes that sea communications are a necessary element of influence in the conflict. The air theory confuses destruction with control, tacitly assuming that the former can produce the latter. The Mao theory requires the existence of a rural peasantry amenable to political manipulation and military action. The point in all this, he suggests, is that none of these is a general theory of warfare. “They are specific theories, each valid under specific conditions and diminishing in validity as the limits of reality within which they function depart from the tacitly identified ideal on which they are predicated.” In short, what Admiral Wylie seems to be saying is this: We must stop trying, whether consciously or not, to make war situations fit into pre-established patterns; we must get horse back out in front of the cart and devise a general theory of strategy applicable to any war situation, whether the practitioner feels at home with it or not.
As a step in this direction he concludes by offering a series of basic
assumptions on which a valid general theory might be developed. His arguments
are closely reasoned, carefully qualified, and reflect hard thinking. 6
The goal he seeks is a worthy one but is, he admits, “a tall order.” His ideas,
offered in a genial and utterly undogmatic manner,
are meant—like S. L. A. Marshall’s on leadership—to spark creative thinking in
others. If we continue to impose predetermined strategies on new and
unanticipated war situations, he warns, we will not only be guilty of wasted
effort but run the risk of losing control over our effort. “Some method of
bringing intellectual order into strategy,” he concludes, “is long overdue.”7
Today’s airmen cannot long study modern strategy without coming up against
the grimly stark questions raised by the possibility of nuclear war. Should
nuclear weapons ever be used in warfare, there would be no question where an
officer’s duty lay. But what about right now, what about the “interim
period”—if that’s what it turns out to be? Is it any part of a serving
officer’s responsibility to assure that nuclear weapons are in fact not
introduced into a war situation? This is the essential question raised by
another senior officer, one who first met war face to face at the
Lieutenant General E. L. M. Burns, a Canadian who since 1962 has served his government as its adviser on disarmament, has written an impassioned, sobering, and provocative book whose title, Megamurder, sums up its theme in one word.*** To speak of waging war with nuclear weapons, he argues, is delusory doubletalk; for a nation to engage in such a war would be equivalent to waging war upon itself. “The military should realize that the greatest threat to the survival of democracy is no longer the Russians or the Chinese. . . but rather war itself. It is nuclear war against which the military must protect their fellow citizens. . . . Unless we can find a way to prevent such a war, we shall be delivering millions upon millions of our fellow-countrymen to death.” Were this to happen, the military would be guilty of forfeiting their raison d’être, which is the protection of the civilian population.
Many officers, especially airmen, will be irritated by General Bums’s book. He will be accused of prejudice, bias, and “slanting
the evidence” by some; of muddle-headedness by others. But before working up a
head of steam for attacking his arguments, one might well remember that it was
General H. H. Arnold who concluded his Third Report to the Secretary of War
with these words: “. . . the mission of the armed forces of the United States
should be not to prepare for war, but to prevent war—to insure that peace be
perpetuated.” Although he does not cite
The book as a whole is a contemplative history of aerial bombardment,
combined with a descriptive and historical analysis of postwar disarmament
negotiations. The author sees the two as closely related, with strategic air
theory wedded to nuclear weapons by well-meaning but confused men. A point he
raises that should concern airmen is his argument that whenever aerial
bombardment is adopted as a strategy it tends inevitably to escalate. Citing
Many since Clausewitz have recognized that, once battle is joined, warfare tends to take on a momentum of its own. What General Bums has done is apply this observation to the history of one particular form of warfare. And no matter how many errors may be found in his presentation, or in his judgment for that matter, it is perhaps well that he has done so. If we look at modern air doctrine in its entirety, we see that widespread agreement exists concerning most of its functions. No one argues against the need for air transport or reconnaissance, for control of the airspace over areas to be defended or attacked, for weapon systems capable of providing these necessary adjuncts to battle. But strategic bombing (including mid-range cumulative interdiction campaigns) remains an uncertain science. Surely to some extent it always will be, since any bombing decision involves a large-scale prediction of the future conduct of the enemy, a prediction that involves at a minimum evaluations of both the enemy’s means and his will.
What can be done to improve our real knowledge of bombing and its effects?
Many starts have been made in this direction since World War II, but none has
been very successful. Perhaps one new starting point might be a full-scale
As armaments continue to increase in number and
power, the negotiators at
Leadership, strategy, and reflection—three responsibilities among many. Each officer must decide for himself whether and to what degree such responsibilities accrue to his own person, his own conscience. Whatever attitudes or positions he assumes on the questions raised in these three books, there can be no argument with Lieutenant General Sir Winthrop Hackett’s observation that the solutions to today’s problems demand more and more good minds in the profession of arms.
*S. L. A. Marshall,
**J. C. Wylie, Rear Admiral, USN, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1967, $4.00), vii and 111 pp.
***E. L. M. Burns, Lieutenant General, Megamurder (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967, $6.95), xv and 297 pp.
Notes
1. He adds that the committee which empowered the project in the first place agreed on this point, but that “some Pentagon bureaucrat discovered that a Department rule required anonymity. While it is foolish to argue a priori with a system, that rule merely dilutes the force imparted by oneness of conception.”
2. In the newest version there is an obvious effort to get first things first. For example, “Knowing Your Job as a Leader” moves up from Chapter 13 to Chapter 4.
3. “The Problem of Career” replaces “Planning Your Career”; “Your Code as a Leader” replaces “Forming Military Ideals”; and, significantly, “Speaking and Writing” replaces “Writing and Speaking.”
4. This is a guess on my part, based on the fact that several of the “additions” fit so well into the overall flow of the narrative and are the sorts of things that get blue-penciled. Let the curious reader compare pp. 155, 173, 179, 201, 203-4, 220, 225 and 232 with the corresponding pages in DOD Pamphlet 1-20 (the 1960 edition). Also, some Army friends advise me that the three added maxims on p. 275 could never have been approved by the Marines, especially number XXVII concerning the overloading of packs.
5. Some members of the so-called “strategic community” are already at work on this problem. See, for example, Urs Schwarz and Laszlo Hadik, Strategic Terminology: A Trilingual Glossary (New York: Praeger, 1966). The introduction notes that “the language began to be confused and corrupted by outsiders who put it on in order to look like insiders, and by those lesser insiders who were unconsciously impelled to make it more difficult to understand, more obscure, in order to exclude the profane.” (!)
6. For this reason it would be unfair simply to list these assumptions in a simplified form. See his Chapters 7, 8, and 9.
7. Général d’Armée André Beanfre takes an approach similar to Admiral Wylie’s when he calls for the conscious formulation of a “total strategy” (Wylie’s “general theory of war strategy”) that includes political and economic forms of action. See his latest book, Strategy of Action (London: Faber & Faber, 1967).
8. The five-page postscript that concludes with this paragraph has been omitted from the American edition. In the Canadian edition it appears on pp. 264-68.
Captain David MacIsaac (A.M.,
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of
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