LTG H. R. McMaster
Recently, we asked LTG H. R. McMaster, USA, to host a Q&A with Fox News commentator MG Bob Scales, USA (Ret.), author of Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at Risk. Part I of their exchange follows.
McMaster: Your call for a historical-behavioral approach to military strategy and defense policy is consistent with Graham Allison’s and Niall Ferguson’s recent essay in the Atlantic in which they call for a board of historical advisors to advise the president to improve the wisdom of foreign policy. What is the value to contemporary affairs and why do you think it is underappreciated?
Scales: Not only do I think Presidents need historians to provide advice I believe the military does as well. War is the only profession that’s episodic. Soldiers don’t practice war (thankfully) as much as they study it. Thus the intellectual backbone of our profession should be the study of past wars. Sadly, it is not. Reluctance to study war among our senior leaders is, in a way, understandable. A newly appointed general has spent half his or her life (or more) actively engaged in fighting or preparing to fight a war. It’s reasonable for a serving officer to question the merits of study when he’s fully engaged in practicing the profession. As we witnessed with the British Army in the late nineteenth century these habits are hard to break. Imperial officers published under a pseudonym for fear of being labeled an intellectual. Conversation in the officer’s mess was about sport, not tactics. And the British paid a painful price when they were unable to adapt intellectually once they shifted from a native to an industrial age European enemy. The lesson is clear. We must artificially induce our young officers to shift from the visceral to the vicarious, an unnatural act for a contemporary Army on active service.
McMaster: The military seems to be increasingly disconnected from those in whose name they fight and serve. A very small percentage of Americans serve and few seem to understand the requirements for military readiness, especially what it takes to fight and win in ground combat, what you call the “crucible of courage.” You make a strong case for maintaining the all-volunteer force, but do you agree that this is a problem? And how might the bonds between the American people and its military be strengthened and how might Americans become more familiar with the requirements for national defense?
Scales: No I don’t agree this is a problem. The military, and the Army in particular, is a fighting force, not a civilizing agent. Strengthening bonds between the fighting force and the people might make soldiers feel better about what they do but social bonding will not make them better fighters. We are the only Western democracy that has never been ruled by its Army. We should strive to maintain that separation such that we are never temped. Part of the passion on this issue is due to internally imposed self pity. I witnessed the phenomenon after Vietnam when many senior leaders blamed their failures on a media driven “stab in the back.” Watching this low level Dr. Strangelove period in our history was emotionally destructive to a young officer like me. We serve so that Americans don’t have to think of us…or fear being us. It’s enough for me to have someone say: “thank you for your service,” even though I know they probably mean “thank you for doing this so that my son can go to graduate school.” No, this new emerging mantra of self-pity mainly comes from retired officers who decry the dangers of civil-military separation. You hear words like, “99 percent of America never served” or “two thirds of American youth can’t pass the military physical, etc…” Many of these same generals call in the wilderness for universal service. The military has more important things to concern them. Let’s get on with learning and practicing our profession and leave the [discussion] about the civil military divide to academics.
McMaster: And, as you point out in Scales On War, Americans have a tendency to want to simplify the problem of future armed conflict and solve complex land-based problems from stand-off range. While stand-off capabilities will remain important to national defense, the war against ISIS, a terrorist proto-state that does not even have an air force or a navy, seems to validate your point that fighting and winning in war requires land forces that possess the will, capability, and capacity to defeat an enemy, secure territory, protect populations, and consolidate military gains politically. Why do you think there is a tendency to undervalue the need for ready land forces and how might you and others administer a corrective to flawed thinking in that connection?
Scales: Much of our attitude about defense is baked into our social DNA. We still view ourselves as an Island nation that can choose to advance or retreat, join or leave a conflict at will. Since there is no occupying force on our land we can fight in faraway places not worrying about our loved ones being threatened. So it should come as no surprise that killing bloodlessly at a distance should from the nexus of our policy. This would all be fine if our enemies didn’t have a brain. But they do. And because of our fixation on distant killing they have an equally baked-in strategy for defeating our style of war: meet Americans in distant an unpleasant places, defend their hegemonies by making defeat too painful and then broadcast our pain to the American people such that they will tire of the exercise and demand that the troops come home. It works every time. The most vulnerable and assailable of American forces are Soldiers and Marines. So ground forces are the enemy’s point of attack and our most vulnerable center of gravity. Trying to convince our policymakers that the nation should expend more resources on those most likely to die is a hard sell to those who fear that if we buy ground forces we are only more likely to use (and lose) them. Thus, buying air and sea forces is an easy sell. Buying ground forces is hard…
McMaster: The subtitle of your book is “The future of America’s military at risk.” The active Army is more committed than ever and is undergoing a reduction in size from 570,000 to 450,000 while the modernization budget has fallen by 74% since 2008, creating a bow wave in deferred Army modernization. You observe that your grandchildren will fight with Reagan-era weapons. As arecent Center for Strategic and International Studies report concluded, the recent Army modernization drawdown is a triple whammy for the Army because these cuts in force structure and modernization are larger in percentage than previous cuts and the two previous drawdowns came after the Army had already modernized much of the force. And you warn against a “silent creeping atrophy that sends the Army into another tragic dark age.” What might be done prevent that and reduce risk to the nation?
Scales: Social and political activism, pure and simple. The default position for defense policy makers is to buy more high tech air and sea platforms. In peacetime there is no down side to this policy: high paying jobs in the U.S. are created; the research and development community is enriched; the public sees powerful bright shiny objects floating or flying by that give them a warm sense of security; most of the big stuff is kept at home, relatively safe; images of bright young technicians and digital warriors relieves the people from thinking about the true nature of war; black and white digital images of explosions from drone strikes make Americans believe that we are taking the fight to the enemy without looking more closely at images of what the explosions leave behind. The counter narrative is tough: soldiers and marines lying dead after an IED strike; a ground level image of dead and wounded innocents lying amid the rubble. So those of us who advocate for the soldier and marine have to go the extra mile to explain and educate our fellow citizens about the consequences of neglect. History is our most effective media weapon. Those who advocate for no more “boots on the ground” lose the argument when folks like us tell and re-tell the stories of soldiers and marines who died due to the neglect of their fellow citizens. But to be effective the message must be delivered with unrelenting force and drama such that Joe citizen can’t turn away. Problem is that ground service leaders, particularly Army leaders, simply aren’t very good at telling this story. If we want our Army to avoid breaking next time then it’s the responsibility of today’s ground service leaders to craft the narrative and project it to everyone in Washington who writes the checks. Our greatest allies are not the solons on the Hill; it’s the American people. Get to them directly. Convince them that their blue-collar sons and daughters will be at risk if life and death decisions are left inside the Beltway. Let’s build on what I have written in this book to write a greater narrative crafted by our most senior Army leaders. Speak to mister and missus America. Explain the consequences to their children of institutional neglect and ask them to demand that the Army gets its share of our national resources so that their children will not die in another debacle like Task Force Smith in Korea.
MG Bob Scales, USA (Ret.)
McMaster: The American public is largely disconnected from ongoing wars. How many Americans, for example, could name the three main Taliban groups that their soldiers have been fighting for fifteen years? You stress the interactive nature of war, but so little of the coverage of today’s conflicts cover that interaction. Reports focus mainly on discreet strikes or raids, friendly casualties, or announcements about the numbers of troops deployed. Do you think there is a problem with the media coverage of the wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan-Pakistan? If so, how would you change the way wars are covered?
Scales: I work for the media, in my case, Fox News. A senior media official told me a few months ago that when we both started at Fox in 2002 over 60% of the discretionary broadcast time was devoted to war. Now it’s less than 5%. But, that’s OK. We are essentially an Island nation that can voluntarily choose to join or leave foreign engagements. This is a privilege very few other nations can claim. Thus is should be no surprise that Americans can choose to watch whatever they want on TV depending on how world events affect them and they, thankfully, don’t have to worry that events affect them very much. I do lament that too often that the news gets things technically wrong or that the news fails to add context to events so that conflict is too often depicted as a stop action video game to our youth. But at the end of the day the media is a consumable product and the consumer decides how to buy it. If Joe or Jane America want to watch reality TV rather than war news that’s their privilege and we who sacrificed gave that privilege to them. And we did it (and do it) without expecting a great deal of thanks in return.
McMaster: There is a tendency in the United States to confuse the study of war and warfare with militarism. Thinking clearly about the problem of war and warfare, however, is both an unfortunate necessity and the best way to prevent it. As the English theologian, writer, and philosopher G.K. Chesterton observed, “War is not the best way of settling differences, but it is the only way of preventing them being settled for you.” What is your advice to the Academy? Is there a role for universities in improving not only our thinking about defense, but also the connection between our society and its soldiers?
Scales: I’m a product (and a victim) of the academy so I know a little about this. In the distant past the academy was a willing gold mine of imbedded wisdom that the military mined with profit. It’s hard to believe now but before the 60s social revolution professors provided useful advice and did meaningful research that added depth and new ideas to our defense intellectual communities. This was in many ways a partnership. Most of these academics were World War II veterans and, although most were politically liberal, they understood war and its consequences and they viewed America as a bulwark against international evil. Today it’s different. If the academy writes about the military it’s normally about social issues within the ranks or it’s generally condemnatory in nature. There is very little in the literature about the “acts” of war. Thus most young military intellects have to be homegrown, service sponsored, and come from Army funded graduate schools. This must change. I hope it will as the revolutionary age elders of the sixties leave the academy. But nothing will change until the atmospherics change. One way to force change is to create a true military academic partnership in universities known for war studies. Here’s how it might work:
The Army chooses a cluster of about 10-15 named universities that receive funds for educating ROTC cadets and officers attending graduate school as well as funds for defense research.
These schools should be geographically dispersed and of the highest quality. If possible they would already have a vibrant defense studies graduate program. Some of the best are Texas A and M; Notre Dame; Ohio State; Stanford; Princeton; Florida State; University of North Carolina; Duke; etc.
The Army pays for a program or a Community of Practice, essentially a subordinate unit of a department or school such as the Wilson Center or the Hudson Institute. The community would consist of ROTC students, military graduate students, civilian graduate students sponsored in part by the Army, War College Fellows, contracted civilian researchers, traditional faculty and senior military PhD students scheduled to be tenured faculty at West Point or the War College.
Together this internal community would work with and mentor each other to provide a powerful intellectual and fiscal power on the campus. Some link would be necessary with the staff and war colleges and think tanks specific to the Army such as the Arroyo Center. The Commandant of the army War College would run the program and report directly to the Chief of Staff.
The Army would schedule all of its signature seminar and senior meetings at one of these communities. I would also add an Army Press, affiliated with one of the better-known University Presses. The relationship might be similar to the Naval Institute Press at Annapolis or the Belknap Press at Harvard.
The product of these university defense intellectual communities would be a generation of soldiers and civilian scholars who have a balanced education and cultural experience. My hope is that, in time, these communities would spawn a new age of civil-military collaboration useful for both the military and the nation.
Part II of this Q&A session between LTG McMaster, USA and MG Scales, USA (Ret.) will appear on this Blog tomorrow.
Click here to view MG Scales’ September 19th talk about Scales on War at the Heritage Foundation.
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About LTG H. R. McMaster, USA and MG Bob Scales, USA (Ret.)
LTG H. R. McMaster, USA, is Director, Army Capabilities Integration Center and Deputy Commanding General, Futures, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. He is the author of Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam
MG Bob Scales, USA (Ret.), is one of America’s most respected authorities on land power. He commanded two units in Vietnam and is the recipient of the Silver Star for action during the Battle of Hamburger Hill. He commanded units in Korea and the United States and completed his service as commandant of the Army War College.
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