Many – if not all – Field Grade Officers (FGOs) can recall the enormous leap from being a highly proficient tactician to an accomplished strategist at a Joint Command. Up until that point in their career, they had forged reputations based on applying their technical expertise in complex scenarios that left little time for second guessing and debate. The first day serving at the operational or strategic level can be particularly nerve-racking. After offering an extensive overview of the mission to a new Major in our Division at Joint Command, he asked how he could best prepare for his new position. The response was simple; read as much as possible. Professional developmental reading will always have a place in each officer’s growth, but every officer can benefit from purposeful reading that facilitates a depth of knowledge capable of assessing dynamic complexities across a wide spectrum of problems.
The value of an officer’s depth of knowledge reveals itself daily in a Joint Command with little to no acknowledgment but is appreciated, nonetheless. As such, reading has the potential to transcend someone’s narrow understanding of problems that demand a more nuanced view and shape a more broadened perspective of the world around them. Officers with qualities such as these enter discussions with sharpened critical thinking skills and can deftly distinguish between correlated and causal information. For this reason, a strategist must be able to explain the “how” and “why”: How are these events related? Why are these variables required to cause this particular outcome? When developing sound strategy, FGOs will lean on the depth of knowledge that only reading can offer to synthesize outcomes from lessons learned from similar circumstances.
General James Mattis describes the difficulties of developing sound strategy where the intricacies of the geopolitical dynamics seem like shifting mirages, which complicates ascertaining clear tasks and objectives (237). Complexities such as these call for well-read officers – who bring a depth of knowledge to the discussion – which others cannot, because they lack the means to synthesize historical data with new information to determine the optimal courses of action. In fact, General Mattis goes as far to suggest “…you are functionally illiterate” if you are not well-read (238). Sound strategy requires scholarly professional warriors who can process the challenges of emerging threats and connect these complicated scenarios to previous encounters. To this end, FGOs should approach reading across three different disciplines: historical, nonfiction, and application of the national instruments of power.
History: “It’s Déjà vu All over Again”
For a better understanding, imagine how you consider counterinsurgency. History accounts for numerous insurgencies, but those who saw it firsthand most likely drew their understanding from authors like David Galula. Galula’s “Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice” carefully outlines the characteristics and nature of an insurgency with surgical detail. His book offers a laundry list of considerations, but the reader can quickly lose the connection with the human element of an insurgency. Strategists sometimes fall into an ethnocentric trap and mistakenly assume that an insurgency – like the one in Iraq – is so complicated because the enemy does not look like them. The problem lacks the kind of context required to connect and analyze the problem appropriately. An FGO with a robust knowledge base can lean on a depth of learning that presents opportunities to synthesize previous information.
It may surprise the reader to know that the Troubles in Northern Ireland mirrored the Iraq insurgency with uncanny similarities. In “Say Nothing,” Patrick Keefe, an investigative journalist who writes extensively on the Troubles, extracts the raw emotions from the British military (occupying force) and that from the locals experiencing the sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Just as American soldiers were initially welcomed in Iraq, Keefe’s “Say Nothing” reveals how the local Catholics served the British forces tea on their arrival. However, an occupying force is no different than a house guest; the longer one stays, the more they are not welcome. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) operated and survived, because of the support they received from the local populace. The local Catholics were the IRA’s center of gravity. Unfortunately, the British forces failed to recognize the “ethnic geography” of the area, which swiftly began the downward trend in the eyes of the local populace (31). The British forces now had an uphill battle of establishing trust with a skeptical community while still occupying and providing rule of law in their community. Keefe covers the events in an unbiased fashion, but the reader can quickly recognize common mistakes that threaten the success of a counter-insurgency. This may sound familiar to a recent American experience.
While the Troubles did not have an official start date, it is widely recognized as starting in 1968 and ending with the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998. Reading affords an opportunity to recall and react in an informed way, while avoiding nationalistic tendencies to assume you have an unsurmountable, novel problem on your hands. A well-read officer can also better contend with confirmation bias, which is rooted in human nature and assumes a predetermined way to perceive and solve a problem (38). Complex problems compel officers to orient themselves in such a way that facilitates adaptive solutions. In direct contrast to this idea, confirmation bias leads to rigid myopic solutions like a strategist viewing the problem through a straw for solutions. And yet, one can find confirmation bias constantly in our news and social media.
The media merely reflects the ebb and flow of the pathos of the audience. The audience strays from a logical evaluation of the facts and draws conclusions that fall within given identities and loyalties (3). This common trait is called tribalism, which aligns decisions with one’s prearranged characteristics. Politics aside, how does tribalism rear its head in a Joint Command? Does one’s loyalties lie with his/her service component or what about one’s Division or Directorate? Sound decisions rely on facts, logic, and reason – not emotions. Effective strategist value the military decision-making process and recognize how the components of the process optimize the solutions. Well-read officers can reflect on previous operations that possessed comparable elements in order to forecast potential outcomes in direct correlation with the allocated resources (I-5).
The advantages that come with reading inevitably appear in the planning process and naturally emerge within meetings at Joint Commands. Professional officers think “beyond the bounds of their particular paradigm” to objectively evaluate problem sets based on the “sum of its parts” in direct relation to the desired end state (Hughes and Jones 1). To think like this, a successful strategist requires a knowledge base that matches the demand of the assignment. General Mattis once responded in a letter to a young officer questioning the importance of reading and replied with a list of sixty must-read books (262). The list included contemporary authors and historical ones; the list contained books of nonfiction and fiction; and the list contained books on philosophy. A list like this can make one wonder where they should start and can also be intimidating considering the volume of the list. The answer of where to start is simple. You eat the elephant one bite at a time.
Reading in Action: Putting It All Together
When eating the elephant, one should choose the topic with a regional focus on the current duty assignment. With a regional perspective, you can dissect the area through three distinct approaches of reading genre: a historical perspective, a corresponding book of fiction (same time period), and an application of elements of nation power (Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic). The historical aspect of reading makes perfect sense given that a strategist requires an understanding of the regional actors’ motivations and the overall context of the security challenge’s development. However, remember how the British forces failed to recognize the ethnic geography of the battlespace. A historical book will address this aspect; but only a fictional account can truly capture the emotions of the region and provide the kind of context useful to a strategist.
For example, a strategist in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region could begin the reading process with a focus on Korea and how that problem set developed. Don Oberdorfer’s The Two Koreas details the history of the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic Korea (DPRK) to Kim Jung-un’s reign. The DPRK’s brutal history provides an understanding of the country’s bellicose behavior and hermit kingdom policies. A strategist should never enter a conversation without knowing “how we got here.” Interestingly, a relationship off the Korean Peninsula challenges the success of an enduring regional security architecture and that is Japan’s role in the region. Min Jin Lee’s fictional book “Pachinko” recounts the struggles of a Korean family over three generations that reveals the undercurrent of Korea’s animosity towards Japan. Emotions like this still run deep and Lee puts the matter in context for a strategist to grasp. This background begs the question of how the US should effectively engage its partners (South Korea and Japan) in such a way that produces mutual agreement. Henry Kissinger’s On Diplomacy rounds out the discussion nicely, but of course a reader should never start and end an analysis with just one of the elements of national power.
That new Major to the Division accepted the challenge of his position with grit and determination. He read and he asked thought provoking questions that inevitably led to changes on how the organization eventually approached the problem set. With this level of knowledge, we then moved the conversation to how these answers fit in the discussions of our different relationships throughout the command. We focused on like-minded, cerebral strategist who welcomed healthy debate and carried weight throughout the building, because relationships in the building are an investment. Marine Major General Joaquin Malavet compared the discussions in meetings to a knife fight. The uninformed Field Grade Officer enters the fight with a butter knife lacking the necessary depth of knowledge to support unfounded assertions. Not only is an officer’s credibility at stake, but also the success of the mission.
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Lt Col Joseph Michaels will be taking command of the 75th Operations Support Squadron at Hill AFB. He has served as a crisis action planner at the Air Force component level and a deliberate planner at a Joint Command with operational experience throughout the Middle East and Asia Pacific region. He holds a Master’s Degree Education Instruction and is a Foreign Policy Fellow with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region.
Reference
Galula, David. Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Westport, Connecticut:
Praeger Security International. 1964.
Hughes, Tucker and Josh Jones. “The Parts and the whole Linking Operational and Strategic
Wargaming”. Phalanx. Vol. 51, No. 2 (June 2018), pp. 50-57.
Joint Publication 5-0. Joint Planning. 2017.
Keefe, Patrick Radden. Say Nothing. New York: Doubleday, 2019.
Kissinger, Henry. On Diplomacy. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 1994.
Lee, Min Jin. Pachinko. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2017.
Lotis, Theodoros. “Tribalism and the Local Structures.” Dissertation. Ionian University. 2018.
Mattis, Jim and Bing West. Call Sign Chaos. New York: Random House, 2019.
Oberdorfer, Donald Robert Carlin. The Two Koreas. New York: Basic Books, 2014.
Yawson, Robert. “Avoiding Cognitive Biases in Managing Wicked Problems.” Dissertation.
Quinnipiac University, School of Business. 2018.