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 appeared on the USNI Blog yesterday. Part II of their conversation follows.
McMaster: You begin chapter 11 with the observation that “good soldiers perform best under good leaders.” What attributes are most important in XXI century military leaders and how should the services develop those leaders?
Scales: First, I’d be clear about what type of leader we are talking about. In the military there are two: tactical leaders and strategic leaders. Thus XXI century leader development would follow two tracks: The tactical track would seek to find those with the technical and tactical right stuff, essentially those with the intuitive abilities, physical fitness and courage to lead men in close combat. They would be the doers, those who make the military engine run and who know how to maneuver and lead tactical units. The strategic track would consist of carefully selected men and women who have the right strategic stuff: the ability to think in time, conjure what might be rather than what is; and be willing to participate in a decades long program of study and practice that would prepare them to be leaders at the highest national strategic level. Preparation would consist of civilian graduate school, political and combatant command internships and time as an instructor at a service school or civilian university. Such a program would be highly competitive and very selective producing about 100 superbly qualified officers to be promoted to senior colonel and general officer. These would not be not progressive programs. Tacticians are tacticians and strategists are strategists.
McMaster: Popular culture tends to water down and coarsen what it means to be a warrior. Soldiers are often portrayed as fragile, traumatized human beings. Hollywood tells us little about the soldier’s calling or commitment to his or her fellow soldiers or what compels him or her to act courageously, endure hardships, take risks, or make sacrifices. You write about what it takes to steel soldiers and units to overcome fear and fight in environments of uncertainty and persistent danger. Will you share your thoughts on the human dimension of combat and why Americans should try to understand the social, psychological, and moral requirements to fight and win?
Scales: War is innately a human not a technological enterprise. The lower the level of the fight, the more human it becomes. I invented the term “Human Dimension” in 1992 when writing my book Certain Victory as a means of closing a hidden void in the conduct of the Gulf War that technology couldn’t alone explain. The idea came to me when listening to GEN Barry McCaffrey’s testimony before Congress when he opined that we still would have beaten Saddam even if we exchanged equipment with him. I found this observation both profound and true. It was the soldier not the equipment that provided the margin for certain victory. I also discovered that we knew too little about the soldier in combat. We knew we were better but how were we better? What was the evidence?
Army Color Guard of the First Cavalry Division dressed in 19th-century uniforms in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm, 1991. U.S. Naval Institute photo
My Desert Storm research team set to work to find specifically what makes us better. In fact, we asked why western armies were better than native armies in general at higher-level mechanized warfare. Much of the answer was cultural. Only western militaries produce noncommissioned officers; western armies know how to self-select leaders without regard to social distinctions; western soldiers tend to bond more easily with peers and they are practiced with all forms of technology. But we discovered that such explanations were not enough. As good as we were the social, behavioral and cognitive sciences could make us much, much better. Unfortunately, our initial efforts to better exploit the human dimension fell of the rails after 9/11. This is always the problem with terms that become too popular and are overused and exploited. In this case the term Human Dimension was intentionally and cynically diluted and misdirected by uninformed bureaucrats who didn’t understand the concept and how it could be exploited. We wanted to make better performing soldiers by exploiting the human sciences, seemingly a simple enough enterprise. But in time the “spirituality” team got involved trying to show that fighting prowess depended on being a Christian. Later the cultural awareness crowd hijacked the human dimension to push for putting sociologists in the field to inform tactical leaders about native cultures in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Finally, in about 2006 well-intended psychologists and physicians hijacked the human dimension effort and applied it to the Army’s “resiliency” effort. Suddenly the human dimension moniker was about treating damaged soldiers rather than making healthy soldiers more deadly in combat. I still believe that the greatest potential for increasing the fighting prowess of our close combat forces comes from exploiting the human sciences. I write about how this might be done in my book.
Click here to view MG Scales’ September 19th talk about Scales on War at the Heritage Foundation.
