Warrior Intellectuals

I finally read John Nagl's counterinsurgency book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. I'd heard the book was good, but I had no idea HOW good. It's fantastic. The beauty of the book is that it's not merely about counterinsurgency; it's about building adaptive learning organizations that know how to defeat insurgencies. That's something I'm passionate about, so I devoured the book over my Christmas break, when I should have been busy opening presents and eating pumpkin pie.

So, learning organizations.

It's been a bumpy but exciting ride, watching the Army become a "learning organization" over the past two years. By mid-2006, as a C-17 pilot and International Relations student who was living and breathing the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, I was in total despair. I'd lost faith in most of the leaders and institutions I was serving. With Iraq embroiled in sectarian violence and teetering over the abyss of civil war, Air Force commanders continued to give me pep talks about how "they slept better at night" knowing that we were making the world safe from terrorists. In 2007 I watched a "motivational" briefing in a rapidly deteriorating Afghanistan by a high-ranking AFCENT general. He wowed us with slides tallying bombs dropped, sorties flown, targets destroyed--all the wrong metrics for fighting a counterinsurgency. That summer, when I attended Squadron Officer School, we learned all about how to plan a strategic air campaign like we fought in Desert Storm--and never discussed counterinsurgency. My deployed squadron played a supporting role in Israel's disastrous 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. I was living history, and despite the cheerleading from some of my colleagues, I knew this was a dark chapter of history that Israel, the US, and Lebanon would all deeply regret. As my knowledge of international affairs deepened, my trust in my leadership eroded.

Then something happened. New names started to appear in the news. David Petraeus. John Nagl. David Kilcullen. H.R. McMaster. Paul Yingling. A new counterinsurgency manual was released, and the process of its creation was as revolutionary as the manual itself; the military invited participation from NGOs, lawyers, academics, and anyone else they could find. Secretary Gates entered the scene, talking loudly about the need to build up soft power and demilitarize American foreign policy. New media like Small Wars Journal sprang up, giving all these young revolutionary officers a place to put their heads together--and they were saying things that made sense. They got it. I read about a counterinsurgency school in Afghanistan, run by a Captain--a Captain!--who'd studied terrorism at Oxford. To make things even better, all these big new names were beginning to get promoted.

The Army has done a remarkable job transforming itself into a learning organization. I'm encouraged that Nagl's book found such a widespread audience in the Army, and that his lessons about building learning organizations were codified in FM 3-24. I don't believe the Army is "there" on its COIN doctrine--big debates still rage on, and there are probably other debates we SHOULD be having--but that's not really the point. The point is that the Army is institutionalizing processes that allow good ideas to rise to the top. I believe my own service, the Air Force, has a ways to go, but I'm confident it will get there.

One of the most important features of the Army's transformation is the rise of "warrior intellectuals" who have both impeccable combat and academic credentials. In a recent article Small Wars Journal, Hamid Hussain captures how rare and extraordinary this is:

"Traditionally there are two types of mid level officers. One is 'commander' type excelling in combat at company and battalion level but not having necessary intellectual capacity to see the bigger picture. Other group is 'intellectual' type having the capacity to think in various dimensions but are poor managers of men therefore they are usually not successful in combat. The group under discussion is unique in that they have not only excelled in combat but almost all of them hold a PhD. These colonels have a rare combination of combat experience along with impeccable academic credentials."

The system conspires against the rise of these officers. As an Olmsted scholar who hopes to serve and lead in our country's foreign policy apparatus, I can appreciate how difficult it is to achieve strong credentials in both combat and academia. The military offers few opportunities for its officers to attend top-notch schools. Many career fields frown on non-operational assignments. Spend too much time out of the operational world, and your career is over. In both the Army and the Air Force, becoming a Foreign Area Officer/International Affairs Specialist is frequently a kiss of professional death.

I hope that the military can institutionalize an organizational culture and processes whereby more officers can become "warrior intellectuals." God knows we need more of them. History won't end with Iraq. New crises await that will demand new ways of thinking; we want to ensure we have a steady supply of bold, visionary officers who will rise to the challenge.