By Andrew Person

Best Defense department of personnel-as-policy affairs

After over a decade spent fighting in Afghanistan, American officers are still having their first cups of tea with key Afghan leaders in government, tribes, and villages. As I argue in a piece I wrote for the Small Wars Journal titled "Getting Past the First Cup of Tea" (available on page 10 at this link), the Lazy Susan style rotation of American leadership in Afghanistan makes our mission impossible.

What would an alternative model look like? If the U.S. had established a permanent cadre of military leaders on the ground in Afghanistan from the outset, with the understanding that they would serve there for the duration of the war, these leaders could have built the personal relationships and knowledge required to effectively wage a counterinsurgency campaign. Viewing the past ten years of the war with 20/20 hindsight, it seems clear that such an approach would have dramatically improved our chances of success.

A permanent cadre of American leaders would enjoy a number of advantages over officers serving on year-long rotations through Afghanistan. Those who have waged counterinsurgency in Afghanistan know that every village and valley has its own cast of characters whom it would take years to truly understand. The cadre could come to understand this complex and foreign human terrain. To hand over security responsibility to the Afghan government, you have to know who can be trusted to use their power wisely and effectively. And if you're building up a security force or constructing a road without the intimate understanding of how such actions are impacting the human terrain, you can't really know whether such actions are advancing or undermining your mission. This knowledge takes years to develop, and thus most American leaders rotating on a yearly basis have not achieved a sufficient familiarity with the human terrain to effectively execute their mission.

It takes trust for an Afghan to risk Taliban retribution by working with U.S. forces -- a trust that is nearly impossible to establish over the course of a year-long tour. Over the years, Afghan leaders could come to know and trust the permanent cadre. A deeper relationship of trust would open up communication between Americans and Afghans, improving intelligence sharing and helping Americans protect Afghan villages from Taliban reprisals. Further, Afghans would know that cheating or lying to permanent cadre could risk poisoning a valuable relationship over the long term. As it is now, some duplicitous Afghans have a fresh crop of Americans to tee-off on every year.

The men and women who volunteer to serve in such a permanent cadre would by definition be an exceptional and unusual breed. They would have few commitments back home and could immerse themselves completely in the mission. The cadre would develop strong language skills and not be dependent on contracted translators. They would not worry about getting back to base to Skype with their loved ones and wouldn't be marking time until their year-long rotation is over. Unlike the current system, there would be no incentive to kick problems down the road.

Now, on to the mechanics of how the permanent leadership cadre would function. The cadre would have a loose internal hierarchical structure with the highest echelon reporting directly to the top military commander in Afghanistan. It would have absolute command over military operations in Afghanistan, down to the battalion level. No U.S. entity -- special operations and CIA included -- could operate in the cadre's area of responsibility without its complete knowledge and approval. 

Battalions would fall in under the cadre's command for year-long rotations. A non-cadre garrison commander would train and equip battalions to ready them for battle and a change of command would be carried out upon approved inspection in Afghanistan. The cadre would have authority to hire and fire company, platoon, and squad leadership and could send an entire battalion back to garrison if not up to standard. Platoon and company leadership would compete to take the limited number of cadre positions that opened up.

While on patrol, the cadre would enjoy easy access to a variety of key combat enablers which would demonstrate their authority to the Afghans with whom they work. An AC-130 gunship would escort every night patrol. A-10s would escort day patrols. The cadre would have helicopter gunships available on any moment's notice. It would have lift at all times. If there were not enough lift to satisfy the cadre's demand, then the U.S. commander in Afghanistan would immediately proceed to Congress to testify that more damn helicopters are needed in Afghanistan. These enablers are expensive but they're worth the price. When Afghans see them, they would know that cadre members can come and go as they please on a moment's notice, and that they can call massive fire support to come raining in from the sky. The cadre would be the personification of American power.

Could America really find men and women interested in such a brutally long assignment? By offering certain incentives we could attract a number of military leaders for such duty. Members of the cadre would have the peace of mind knowing they never have to command in a garrison environment and never have to do a battalion fun run or worry about where their PT reflector belt is. Cadre leadership could be shielded from paperwork and random one-star generals "circulating the battlefield." The cadre could be offered generous compensation based on this general rule of thumb: Double the pay of any general in garrison who can't pass a PT test. A special IG for overpaid and overweight Pentagon Generals could monitor and enforce the rule. Of course, the cadre would be offered periodic vacations from theater to rest and recover.

The draw of prestige and power would also attract volunteers for the cadre. It's remarkable what young men go through to earn a ranger tab or join the Navy SEALs. A cadre post could conceivably grow to become much more coveted by ambitious and dedicated young leaders.

There are countless details required to implement such a proposal that I have yet to consider, particularly how this structure would work with an international force. The risk of cadre leaders going off the rails Colonel Kurtz-style must be acknowledged and mitigated. But one fact is abundantly clear to anyone who has ever served in Afghanistan: The annual rotation of leaders in Afghanistan is fatal to our mission. If we ever try to do this again, we should give serious consideration to an alternative model.

J. Andrew Person served as a U.S. Army officer and paratrooper from 2001-2006, including year-long tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is now a fellow with the Truman National Security Project and works on Capitol Hill. This essay is intended as a thoughtful piece and has no connection to his day job.

Something, it looks like, but we are not going to be told about it, if a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling issued last Friday stands.

I wonder if Google and NSA will merge one day. 

On the other hand, something that discourages intelligence operatives in China from hacking into our e-mails is probably a good thing. Hmm -- maybe I am learning how to love Big Brother?

It does my heart good to see a story like this: When he was six years old, at sea with his mother in a wooden boat, Orlando Morel was rescued by the Coast Guard.

Now he is graduating from the Coast Guard academy, and scheduled to serve on a cutter in Florida. He is described by someone at the academy as "a phenomenal cadet."

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, the 82^nd Airborne's deputy commanding general for support, has been sent home from Afghanistan under a cloud. "This is a criminal investigation," a military spokesman ominously told the Fayetteville Observer.

What up with that?

It reminds me of a story a historian of the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth once told me. Eisenhower was busting a major general who had gotten drunk and talked about top secret stuff in a hotel bar in London. "Don't send me to Leavenworth, Ike," the major general supposedly said. "No general has ever done time at Leavenworth."

"No, they haven't -- colonel," responded Ike.

(This may be one of those tales too good to check out. I read tons of WWII history over the last three years, including lots of Ike's papers, and I never saw this exchange recounted. But it does resemble the story of Maj. Gen. Henry Jervis Friese Miller, a senior Air Force supply officer, who got drunk at a party at Claridge's hotel in London and announced that the D Day invasion of France would take place by mid-June. (See "Army and Navy: Silence is Golden," Time Magazine, June 191944.) After his indiscretion was reported, he wrote to Eisenhower, a West Point classmate of his, recognizing that he would be relieved, but asking that he be allowed to keep his rank. Eisenhower denied the request and reduced him to his permanent rank of colonel. Miller went home and left the army a few months later.)

"If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population," reports Margot Roosevelt of Reuters.

I have to say this surprised me. Reuters says veterans report being tired of our wars, are angry about the foolishness of invading Iraq, and worried by the situation with Iran. One says he likes how Obama handled Libya.

On the other hand, 37 percent of vets asked said they disapprove of the way Obama has handled the presidency, vs. just 27 who approve, and everyone else up in the air. So the poll numbers leave me a bit confused.

Mitt Romney is a Republican version of John Kerry, I think -- a rich politician from Massachusetts who doesn't really know who he is but (as James Carville has put it), was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

By Jörg Muth

Best Defense department of allied counsel

I have to agree with my historian colleague Robert Goldich that General Dempsey's remarks contain more bad news than good news. Between his lines lies excuses for further cuts in the budget and the emphasis on networking and good relations with the allies appears to be wishful thinking rather than an actual reliable cornerstone for a strategy or force structure.

Historically no component of any policy or strategy is as unreliable as an ally or former friend. In the 1930s the best partner of the U.S. Army were the German Armed Forces. There was an officer exchange program in place and until 1940 (!) all German military schools were open for U.S. officers to visit or attend. The Americans saw the new German medium tank paraded in front of them and the new top secret heavy howitzer. Finally, the U.S. assistant military attaché rode with the German tanks into Poland.

Your current partner might be your future enemy or just refuse to aid you in your next predicament. Military strategy and the structure of force cannot reliably be based on networking and allies. The U.S. Armed Forces need to plan to go alone if necessary and have adequate forces to do so. The current planning moves in the wrong direction. It is again based more on gadgets and technology and less on numbers and soldiers with rifles in their hands.

Recommended reading for all military planners would be Ralph Peters' book War in 2020 (especially intriguing because the year is mentioned in Dempsey's remarks). The novel describes a downsized U.S. Army which is super-professional, networked, and has an enormous technological advantage over its enemies. For a variety of reasons this small but gadget-heavy army sustains catastrophic casualties and thus becomes nearly nonoperational as a result. With terrible costs -- human, monetary, and ethical -- it is built up and set back on track to defeat its enemies on a conventional battlefield as well as a in a guerrilla war. Sound familiar? Look back in U.S. military history, just minus the gadgets. You don't want to do that again, do you?

Future wars and future enemies cannot be predicted. Too often in the past the U.S. army was focused on the wrong opponent and had doctrines laid out for the wrong kind of war. An army does not need an exact vision of a future war -- there are too many variables. Because of that an army needs to stay flexible -- first in mind, and second in force structure. And it needs the numbers and quality to maintain both in any conflict.

Jörg Muth, PhD, is a historian and an expert on the U.S. Army, past and present. He is the author of Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War II. The book was placed by the Army Chief of Staff, General Raymond T. Odierno, on his professional reading list.

By Maj. Gen. Robert Scales (USA, Ret.)

Best Defense guest respondent

Tom Ricks' blog post about me has generated a great deal of interest in my panel discussion at FPRI two weeks ago. Naval War College professor Joan Johnson-Freese was the principal speaker at this event. One blogger in particular, Tom Nichols, wrote a lengthy piece about Johnson-Freese and my responses. I'd like to answer both in some detail. 

First, to answer some of Tom's points. In his blog he quoted me as saying:

-These days, "the Army War College is a great place for pre-retirement training." 

Response: By this I meant that the age of students has increased steadily since I was commandant. As I wrote in my piece "Too Busy to Learn," the age has gone up to 44 and many combat arms officer students are colonels. If war college graduates are to contribute to the national policy at the strategic level they should be younger. No reason we can't even bring exceptional LTCs in as student BEFORE they command. 

-"The Army War College fell of the cliff when it was subordinated to a trainer" (that is, to the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, which, he [Scales] indicated, doesn't understand education). 

Response: I don't mean that TRADOC doesn't understand education. I mean that TRADOC's sweet spot and center of excellence is at the operational, not strategic level of war. Remember AirLand Battle, Starry's crown jewel, was an operational doctrine and the manual that started it was 100-5, again, an operational level document. In fact in my recommended reforms for the college and army staffs I suggested transferring the excellence of Leavenworth up to the college; things such as the CTC as a framework for strategic gaming, CSI as a model for CMH to do relevant and timely history, and SAMS as a model for assigning graduates to the force at the strategic level of war. 

-The Army should bring together its history offices, its military research entities, and related offshoots, and put them all under the Army War College commandant, in part so that research and teaching can inform each other. Right now, he [Scales] said, research and education are "ripped apart." 

Response: This is a bit of inside baseball. But what I meant is that, unlike Leavenworth's hold on operational art, the responsibility for studying and research of strategy is all over the map in the Army. Root had it right in 1903. We have much to do to get strategic studies right in the Army and I suspect the other services as well. But whatever the solution strategy must be centered in the institution intended for this purpose: the War College. 

-For officers, "the object of the PME system is to be selected but don't go." 

Response: This is a longstanding problem in all service PME and has gotten worse during the war. Too many officers don't want to take time out of operational service to go to school but they realize that selection for the college is a boarded cut that must be made to make flag. Therefore making selection is what's important. I recommended that officers should in fact compete for attendance not selection and that graduation from the college should be the ultimate determinate of future success.

What follows are some excerpts from Nichols' blog and my responses:

-Nichols: PME schools need to be administered by fewer people, and those administrators should actually have backgrounds in academic teaching, research, and administration, instead of just being retired senior military officers. (As Joan put it, schools for pilots are run by pilots, aren't they?) Gen. Scales objected that the heads of the PME schools should all be top officers, but that wasn't Johnson-Freese's point; she was talking about the "herd," as she put it, of deans, assistant deans, associate deans, associate assistant deans, and on and on, not the actual presidents or commandants. 

Response: I agree that the senior administrative slots at all colleges should be trimmed. But the most senior leadership should be in uniform or recently retired (president, dean, etc.). The challenge is to find senior officers who are qualified to lead and administer a senior military college.  

Nichols: Perhaps most important, Johnson-Freese called for independent analysis of the PME system, perhaps by a panel appointed by Congress (but certainly not a paid contractor aiming to please the DoD, since we've tried that already and it was an expensive failure). No more "self-studies." As Joan put it: Who has an incentive to find problems with their own organization in a self-study?

Response: I've done this for Congress several times to the extent that I was put in the QDR to advocate for PME reform. Congress has held hearings about PME and I participated in all of them directly or indirectly. But since it doesn't involve programs or end strength Congress isn't interested. Worse, there is no real advocate for PME in congress now. 

-Nichols: Still, General Scales, as Ricks says, stole the show, at least for a bit, but in part that was because much of what he said was either puzzling or contradictory.

Some of his comments, of course, reflected attitudes civilian faculty always encounter: his loathing of the word "tenure," for example (which Joan pointed out that military officers, do, in fact, have), his suggestion that PME could be fixed by raising all the commandants and presidents to three stars (why?), having them all report to an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Education (more bureaucracy?) and replacing most of the professors with military officers -- teaching history? -- were all pretty striking, but they had little to do with the actual recommendations in the Orbis article. 

Response: Here's what I said: Tenure is not good for a military college. In fact one of the few really effective personnel instruments for PME is Title 10 selection and hiring. This system gives the college leadership full authority to hire and fire. (I don't know what Joan means when she alleges that military officers have tenure. They do not). I said that commandants should be 3 stars but of course should report to their respective service chiefs. (Note that the AWC patch has 3 stars on it inferring that it was considered a full bureau of the Army general staff when founded by the Root reforms in 1903). And of course the NDU president should report to the CJCS rather than the J7, who does training not education. The OSD Chief Learning Officer idea has been around a long time. Ike agreed with it. It's in our QDR report. The issue is that today PME and manpower management are in conflict. The ASD P and R is in the business of filling the ranks not taking officers out of service to go to school. This natural tension is shared by corporations as well. Hence the idea of a secretariat position that advocates for learning. More bureaucracy? Not really. Take the slots for education in P&R and shift them to the CLO. I didn't say that all faculty should be military and they can't be by any means due to statute. I meant that colleges should have a balance of retired military (who are credentialed), civilians and active military. The art in getting this right is to find the right people and keep them... 

-Nichols: I was particularly surprised, as I think many people were, to hear Scales downplay the distorting role of student evaluations in the PME system, which has been noted by many PME faculty, including in a blistering memoir by former National War College professor Howard Wiarda. Scales, incredibly, claimed that student evaluations never mattered at all in faculty retention decisions at the Army War College while he was there -- and boy, that'll be a surprise to the faculty in Carlisle -- and that he doesn't even remember if the War College even bothered to do them while he was there. He added that in any case he didn't remember ever seeing any of them (a remarkable thing to say in itself, since they are required by both the Pentagon and academic accreditors). 

He twice asked one of the Army War College civilian faculty in the audience about whether these evals were really an issue back in Carlisle, and both times, the faculty member he singled out had to demur and say: well, actually, sir, yes indeed, the civilians pretty much *do* fear those evaluations. 

This led to Scales essentially disposing of the issue by saying that judgments about faculty quality were just "subjective" anyway -- a point with which Joan took severe issue (as did many of us) as something no one would ever say about evaluations in any other profession. 

Response: This one really steamed me. Truth be told I do not remember anyone giving me a faculty recommendation based on student popularity. I asked Craig Nation who was on my faculty and he couldn't remember either but he did infer that the college is using these student evaluations now. I did say faculty quality is subjective and I stand by that statement. Selecting future leaders in the Army is subjective as well. And as a brigade commander I wouldn't do an OER unless I watched the officer in action. Same for faculty hiring. That's why I visited every seminar, every semester every year. And I participated in discussions. Seems to me that good faculty liked it and poor faculty disliked it. It's about leadership not student forms. 

Nichols: I don't mean to make it all sound more conflictual than it was; I think Johnson-Freese and Scales agreed about 80 percent of everything else, and particularly about the need for more rigor in military education, and especially about the way the military uses the words "training" and "education" interchangeably, which nearly everyone agreed is a terrible mistake. 

But Ricks is right that Scales basically came in with his phaser set to "incinerate" and proceeded to fire at will. I might be biased from working with Joan on these issues over the years, but I thought she laid out a pretty methodical set of problems and solutions, and it didn't seem like Gen. Scales was much interested in engaging them. I think that in itself was, in microcosm, an illustration of the problems faced in the reform of military education. 

Response: No incineration intended. Everything I said in my remarks I've written before in AFJ and Proceedings. My big objection to Joan's remarks was her inference that war colleges should focus on making the civilian faculty happy by putting them in charge by offering tenure, academic freedom and the keys to hiring and firing. No, this is the ARMY War College and its mission is to prepare Army officers to perform at the strategic level of war. Of course there are many similarities to the Wilson and Kennedy Schools, but at the end of the day the mission of the college is to serve the services. I agree with Joan that reforms are needed but I disagree that the problem rests overwhelmingly with a failure to listen to civilian faculty. Truth is that during my tenure faculty excellence was shared in equal measure between retired military, civilians and retired military. Oh, by the way I've never seen a civilian faculty CV fail to list in bold letters that the professor had taught, lectured or attended a war college.

MG (Ret) Bob Scales is a former commandant of the Army War College. He spent 18 of his 35 years of service in military education. He earned his PhD in history from Duke University and was president of Walden University after retirement. He is presently CEO of Colgen LLC, a consulting firm that focuses on strategic leadership and land power reform.

More on rotations:

In a recent Leavenworth interview, Col. John Harding Jr. commented that, "The thing that we found in Iraq over the years was that we were fighting this war one year at a time."

In his last tour, in 2011, he noted, "at the general officer, colonel and even lieutenant colonel rank, you saw those that were just over there because they knew they had to be there and deployed, but they didn't have anything invested in Iraq."