A Call to Arms
BOOT, MAX
A Call to Arms Reforming the American military. BY MAX BOOT Last month the United States Army brought approximately 3,000 troops of the Tenth Mountain Division back from Kosovo and 3,000 troops...
...Vandergriff's prescriptions complement those of Colonel Douglas Mac-Gregor, another Army maverick, whose 1997 book Breaking the Phalanx advocated reforming a divisional structure that has survived essentially unchanged since Napoleon's time...
...As John Paul Vann joked, "The United States has not been in Vietnam for nine years, but for one year nine times...
...The worst part of this system, Van-dergriff argues, was the "individual replacement" structure: Soldiers were separated after basic training and sent off to fill vacancies in existing units...
...Often the veterans did not want to know the names of the 'newbies' because they might not be around for long...
...employs (an officer must be promoted or resign), he will be a civilian before long...
...It's less encouraging to see how they generally get ignored by the decision-makers in the Pentagon...
...Would you become really, really good at it in just six months...
...Too many officers today, Vandergriff insists, are "courtiers" not "warfight-ers...
...it is rotating entire units...
...Yet the Army personnel system—fully institutionalized after World War II by George C. Marshall— created units of strangers...
...To its credit, the Army has tried to learn the lessons of Vietnam...
...Donald Vandergriff is disgusted with this bureaucratic practice, which he knows from years of firsthand experience...
...An average officer with twenty-five years of service will serve a year and one-half at each duty station, including schools," writes Vandergriff...
...If you were in the Army in a combat zone, that's precisely when you'd be withdrawn and sent to do something else...
...And he insists that the "up or out" mantra must be eliminated, thereby allowing competent specialists to remain in their jobs even if they have no hope of ever becoming a general...
...Whereas it may be true that any trained soldier can come in and drive a tank or fire a rifle, no stateside replacement can possibly be as good at interacting with local warlords or dealing with local customs...
...The zero-defects mentality discourages risk-taking and spawns officers who will never rock the boat...
...No leader, no matter how effective, can hope to stay with his troops for long— he has to keep "punching his ticket" in desk jobs if he wants to win coveted promotions...
...BY MAX BOOT Last month the United States Army brought approximately 3,000 troops of the Tenth Mountain Division back from Kosovo and 3,000 troops of the 101st Airborne Division back from Afghanistan...
...An active-duty major who gives every indication of passionately loving the Army, he has sacrificed his career by daring to criticize its faults...
...When asked why they are willing to risk death, soldiers invariably cite neither patriotism nor promotion, but rather the simple desire not to let their buddies down...
...At the root of the Army's problems, Vandergriff believes, is an impersonal system that goes back many decades...
...He suggests a "regimental" structure in which a group of soldiers from one region of the country will stay together for an extended time...
...The Army's shortcomings finally caught up with it in Vietnam...
...The military establishment will argue against the alternative system— leaving some units "in country" for extended periods of time—on the grounds that the risks (and rewards) of combat should be shared equally...
...He wants a reduction in the size of the bloated officer corps...
...combat was reserved for those who didn't test as well, on the mistaken assumption that it didn't take much brains to lug a rifle or fire a machine gun...
...Both units had been deployed for about six months, and their rotation home was billed as strictly "routine...
...In the most interesting sections of this book, he traces the development of the Army's personnel policies to the theories of Frederick Taylor, who believed that workers were interchangeable cogs in the industrial machine...
...By the end of that time, you might just be starting to feel comfortable...
...Indeed there has been an exodus of promising young officers in recent years...
...It's encouraging to see a few bold officers advocating such heretical notions...
...This egalitarian philosophy underpins the entire personnel system, with perverse consequences...
...As his parting shot, he has written The Path to Victory, a provocative book that is not always easy reading but that richly rewards study by anyone interested in our armed forces...
...So it was, but does this routine make any sense...
...This nonstop transferring exacts a heavy toll on families...
...To give an indication of the Army's backward priorities, those with the highest scores were assigned "safe and comfortable jobs in rear areas...
...Since Vietnam, the military has managed to avoid paying a high price for its mistakes, but Vandergriff warns that the unpredictable and changing face of battle—what he calls "Fourth-Generation Warfare"—will require a nimbler, more cohesive force...
...It is also costly, both financially and in lost combat effectiveness...
...Toward that end, he recommends a host of reforms...
...These kinds of skills can be gained only through experience that is almost impossible to acquire in today's armed forces...
...Replacements either learned quickly how to operate with the unit in combat or they became casualties...
...So much for esprit de corps...
...He is currently assigned as deputy director of the Army ROTC detachment at Georgetown University—not exactly a surefire route to the top—and under the "up or out" system the Army Max Boot, editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal, is the author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power...
...Think about your own job...
...Applying these theories in both world wars, the Army administered a battery of tests to each new soldier to give him an "occupational specialty...
...This approach flies in the face of all studies of combat effectiveness, which suggest that units made of men who know each other—men who have stayed together from basic training to the battlefield—are far more effective...
...Jungle fighting and counterinsurgency are specialized skills, but by the time any soldier or officer learned the craft, his tour of duty was over...
...New soldiers joined units made up of experienced men who had learned how to survive and work together...
...It seems unlikely that some great generals of years past— eccentrics like Vinegar Joe Stilwell or George S. Patton—could have survived for long within today's bureaucracy...
...Today it is not rotating individuals out of Afghanistan or Kosovo...
...If you were in a non-combat assignment you might get two whole years—if you're lucky—to master your job...
...Ralph Peters, a retired Army lieutenant-colonel, likewise assails his old service's complacency with considerable gusto and verve in his brilliantly written new book Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World...
...This may be an improvement but it still has major drawbacks: All the local knowledge acquired over the past six months is instantly lost...
Vol. 7 • July 2002 • No. 43
