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21st Century Challenges of Command: A View from the Field
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In Command Culture, Jörg Muth examines the different paths the United States Army and the German Armed Forces traveled to select, educate, and promote their officers in the crucial time before World War II. Muth demonstrates that the military education system in Germany represented an organized effort where each school and examination provided the stepping stone for the next. But in the United States, there existed no communication about teaching contents or didactical matters among the various schools and academies, and they existed in a self chosen insular environment. American officers who finally made their way through an erratic selection process and past West Point to the important Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, found themselves usually deeply disappointed, because they were faced again with a rather below average faculty who forced them after every exercise to accept the approved “school solution.”
Command Culture explores the paradox that in Germany officers came from a closed authoritarian society but received an extremely open minded military education, whereas their counterparts in the United States came from one of the most democratic societies but received an outdated military education that harnessed their minds and limited their initiative. On the other hand, German officer candidates learned that in war everything is possible and a war of extermination acceptable. For American officers, raised in a democracy, certain boundaries could never be crossed.
This work for the first time clearly explains the lack of audacity of many high ranking American officers during World War II, as well as the reason why so many German officers became perpetrators or accomplices of war crimes and atrocities or remained bystanders without speaking up. Those American officers who became outstanding leaders in World War II did so not so much because of their military education, but despite it.
How To Get Best Military Leaders: CNAS Says Split Warriors From Managers
- Sydney J Freedberg
Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., "How To Get Best Military Leaders:
CNAS Says Split Warriors From Managers," Breaking Defense,
October 25, 2013, available from breakingdefense.com/2013/10/howto-get-best-military-leaders-cnas-says-split-warriors-from-managers/.
Center for a New American Security For instance, the Office of Net Assessment (ONA)-sponsored " Military Officer of 2030
- David Barno
- Nora Bensahel
- Katherine Kidder
- Kelley Sayler
David Barno, Nora Bensahel, Katherine Kidder, and Kelley Sayler, " Building Better Generals, " CNAS Report, Washington,
DC: Center for a New American Security, October 2013.
5. For instance, the Office of Net Assessment (ONA)-sponsored " Military Officer of 2030 " Summer Study—held in 2003 (in
Newport, RI)—urged much the same thing.
Senior Officer Talent Management: Fostering Institutional Adaptability
- J Michael
- David S Colarusso
- Lyle
Michael J. Colarusso and David S. Lyle, Senior Officer Talent
Management: Fostering Institutional Adaptability, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, February 2014.
Bleeding Talent: How the U.S. Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It's Time for a Revolution
- Tim Kane
Tim Kane, Bleeding Talent: How the U.S. Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It's Time for a Revolution, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Mission Command Army
- Martin Dempsey
Martin Dempsey, " Mission Command, " Army, January
2011, p. 43.
9. Ibid., p. 44.
Maybe a teaching hospital during an epidemic comes closer, but even during infections and epidemics, hospitals deal with patients individual by individual-there is no broader objective
- David Barno
- Nora Bensahel
- Katherine Kidder
- Kelley Sayler
Maybe a teaching hospital during an epidemic comes closer, but even during infections and epidemics, hospitals deal with
patients individual by individual-there is no broader objective.
4. David Barno, Nora Bensahel, Katherine Kidder, and Kelley Sayler, "Building Better Generals," CNAS Report, Washington,
DC: Center for a New American Security, October 2013.
5. For instance, the Office of Net Assessment (ONA)-sponsored "Military Officer of 2030" Summer Study-held in 2003 (in
Newport, RI)-urged much the same thing.
Another effect was, of course, massive corruption. 42. McChrystal, p. 117. 43. At least anecdotally, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and Task Force operators appear to have seen Afghans in a starker light than did many of their SOF brethren
- Eitan Shamir
- Transforming Command
Eitan Shamir, Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the U.S., British, and Israeli Armies, Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2011, p. 156:
41. Another effect was, of course, massive corruption.
42. McChrystal, p. 117.
43. At least anecdotally, Joint Special Operations Command
(JSOC) and Task Force operators appear to have seen Afghans in
a starker light than did many of their SOF brethren.
44. Colonel (COL) Bernd Horn, "A Reflection on Leadership:
A Comparative Analysis of Military and Civilian Approaches,"
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2014, p. 232.
45. Ibid., pp. 233-234. Or as "Schumpeter: Leading light," The
Economist, August 9, 2014, p. 57, notes in a column about Warren Bennis: "Managers are people who like to do things right....
Edward Kosner: Obama the Management Failure
- Edward Kosner
Edward Kosner, "Edward Kosner: Obama the Management Failure," The Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2014.
50. Shamir, p. 23.
51. "Schumpeter: Measuring management," The Economist,
January 18, 2014, p. 69.