By William Shields
Current operations
branch, Best Defense office of H.R. McMaster affairs
"The
military has adapted tremendously." So began Brigadier General H.R. McMaster's
American Enterprise Institute talk the other day, begging the question: "Since
when?" McMaster's point is familiar to many Best Defenders but serves as an
important reminder of how much the military has evolved in a short time.
McMaster
harkened back to the 1990s, when we "took a break from history." The Gulf War
encouraged a false sense of confidence among our armed forces, according to
McMaster. We defeated an enemy that we didn't acknowledge was both inept and
unmotivated. That false confidence was coupled with the application of the same
technology to land warfare that earned the U.S. maritime and aerospace
dominance. Only unlike, in the sea or the air, land warfare takes place amongst
people. While the Navy and Air Force contend with one target, practitioners of
land warfare face thousands.
McMaster
hammered away on this overreliance on technology, arguing that the replacement
of a coherent strategic worldview with technology led to a military doctrine
that operated in a vacuum apart from politics, the foundation of all wars. The
emphasis on "full spectrum dominance" sought to overwhelm our competitors in
spending and technology so that the few wars we did have to fight would be
cheap and efficient. But it turned out that those were the wars we wished to
fight rather than the wars we would fight.
It
was the era of "networks" and "seamlessness," words that McMaster joked took on
Orwellian overtones. He was referring to George Orwell's seminal 1946 essay
"Politics and the English Language," in which Orwell reasons that that our
language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but
the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish
thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible."
The
process did prove reversible. Two insurgencies reminded us that wars "will
remain firmly in the realm of the uncertain." Decentralization and initiative
became paramount. We will always plan imperfectly for future environments; the
key is to not be so far off the mark that you can't adapt.
Given
Tom's skepticism
of the service academies, readers of this blog may find interesting a question
posed to McMaster, whose answer illustrated the overall transformation of the
military. It came from a former Air Force Academy instructor, who wondered
whether the service academies' focus on engineering and technical training
ill-prepared students for the cultural interactions central to our current
conflicts. McMaster offered an unequivocal endorsement of the academies. He claimed
that today they provide a "superb education" far removed from his time as a
cadet, when engineering was "forced down his throat." At least at West Point,
students can now major in the humanities and have access to language training
and overseas programs, both with the aim of acclimating students to the
cross-cultural interaction required in population-centric military strategies.
It is an education that prepares cadets for conflicts, and a world, distant
from those taught to cadets twenty years ago.
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