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Discussion Page/Blog
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Do you have a topical question? I would like to use this page/blog to promote a useful debate about how soldiers
are made.
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Tuesday, June 5, 2007
What management strategies work best to ensure that women and minorities achieve their full potential as motivated soldiers?
(Suzanne Soule, Institute for Civic Education)
The book's most important assertion is that soldiers are made, not born. Put like this, it sounds pretty uncontentious;
however, in practice most observers and many policies assume the opposite. Consequently, militaries often discriminate against
sub-populations, most particularly women and sexual and ethnic minorities.
These sub-populations have been discriminated primarily because of their alleged threat to cohesion, motivations, and
athletic performance.
Let us take cohesion first. Many people assume that cohesive groups are homogenous groups---containing members of similar
demographic profiles. Homogeneity does promote social cohesion but interferes with task cohesion. Social cohesion helps
members get along socially but can interfere with group tasks. Task cohesion is a product more of training and other
shared experiences (particularly stressful experiences) and helps groups perform tasks.
Historically, most militaries have discriminated against minorities on the grounds that they supply under-motivated soldiers.
History, however, is replete with converse examples when minorities receive the same treatment as others.
Some minorities, particularly women, have been discriminated as athletically incapable of combat. While it is true that
the average woman lacks the average man's body mass and strength, the diferences are often overstated. When women have been
allowed into the military, they are often subject to lower athletic standards. These standards lower athletic performance
and generate resentment across the military as a whole.
Managers should create groups around trainees who continue to share professional experiences and whose leaders
frame their task orientation. Managers should stop groups forming spontaneously around members with similar demographic
profiles. These groups end up excluding minorities and reduce their chances of success. Intrinsic ethnic or sexual tensions
must be proscribed by training ethical conduct and by instilling the self-discipline to ensure compliance.
Standards should not be set by gender or any other demographic indicator: all soldiers should compete for the same positions
to the same standards; and standards should vary with the position. For instance, pilots do not need the same pedestrian
endurance as do ground combat soldiers. This would result in a concentration of women in the least physically-demanding
positions but this would reflect their performance not their gender.
The Abu Ghraib prisoner mistreatment by American soldiers and subsequent cover-up probably encouraged a surge of violence
against Iraqi civilians. I wonder if there has been a decrease in such incidents since the replacement of Rumsfeld? (Vera
Juhasz, Los Angeles, California)
The book is most relevant to this question in its assertion that poor soldiers perfom illegal activities (such as mistreatment
of prisoners).
Poor solders include not just soldiers who cannot defeat enemy combatants but also soldiers who direct their violence
against noncombatants. In fact, soldiers who tend to perform poorly in legal combat often perform illegal activities. For
instance, ill-disciplined soldiers are unlikely to stick to the challenging task of fighting a competent enemy and are unlikely
to resist the urge to take advantage of noncombatants, particularly as over-compensation for their poor performance in combat.
The book is not about counter-insurgency but it does suggest that good soldiers defeat their genuine enemies and win
over their enemies' supporters.
The US military has not achieved either of these things in Iraq yet. There are many reasons: here I am concerned with
only the personnel-level explanations. The most macro observation is that the US military has long focused on major warfighting
to the detriment of other military tasks. Consequently, the US military must take some of the blame for not preparing
its soldiers for the post-invasion stabilization of Iraq and cannot simply blame the Administration.
In 2001, the George W. Bush Administration temporarily cut funding to the Army's Peacekeeping Institute and supported
the traditional bias towards warfighting. This was a mistake, at least symbolically. But politicians are not only to blame.
Senior US military decision-makers have long failed to actualize their rhetoric about the "full-spectrum" soldier. Rumsfeld
certainly characterized and led those decision-makers during the major part of the Iraq war. (Donald H. Rumsfeld was US Secretary
of Defense from 20 January 2001 to 18 December 2006.)
Militaries take time to reorient and the US military has done little since the Abu Ghraib scandal to revolutionalize,
except to retrain its soldiers in the laws of war. It is up to the successors of the Rumsfeld era to give as much attention
to the transfomation of human resources as was once devoted to the transformation of technology.
Are there lessons from management to guide the successful reentry of soldiers to civilian life? (Suzanne Soule, Institute
of Civic Education)
Unfortunately, most soldiers separate from the military without post-separation support. This is most problematic for
combat veterans, who face higher risks. The problem is not limited to combat veterans: overseas deployments, long deployments,
or simple contagion effects from combat veterans are stressors experienced by all soldiers, not just combat soldiers.
Some of the effects pose serious health and social consequences, not just for soldiers but for civilians. Combat
veterans and those around them face higher risks of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcoholism, drug abuse, violence,
and suicide. Although the worst of these outcomes are still rare, we know that an unusually high proportion of US veterans
have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan only to commit suicide or murder, the victims often being spouses. These outcomes
are persistent, so their effects are often realised only long after the war is over. For instance, more than half as many
Argentinean veterans of the Falklands War of 1982 have committed suicide since as were killed during the war.
Alarmingly, rates of combat-related PTSD and altered behavior are under-reported and -treated. Returning US soldiers
are unusually well-supported, compared to the soldiers of other countries. US veterans enjoy free support from the Veterans
Administration; no foreign soldiers can draw on equivalent support. The British public has been alarmed to discover that its
veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan lack routine military support. Seriously injured British soldiers, such as paraplegics, can
access specialist military hospitals but most must use the National Health Service, which is backlogged and lacks suitable
specialists.
Despite their comparatively high level of authorized support, the support of US veterans still falls short in many
cases. Decision-makers tend to react well after problems have become endemic but are not good at preventing problems, probably
because their focus is on warfighting more than post-war problems. For instance, at least 30% of US soldiers in Vietnam used
illegal drugs. Towards the end of the war there, the Richard M. Nixon Administration set up the first national drug rehabilitation
program, primarily to treat returning soldiers. Similarly, in 2007 the George W. Bush Administration ordered a review of how
returning veterans are treated after The Washington Post exposed inadequate medical treatment at the nation's military
hospitals.
Naturally, combat effects are preferably managed, not neglected until their effects are acute enough to warrant treatment.
This is a task for militaries during war. Militaries that fail this task are also likely to fail to take care of returning
soldiers. I make this connection between wartime and post-war behavior because the management mistakes and solutions are very
similar.
Focusing on returning soldiers in particular, one of the endemic problems is that soldiers usually separate as individuals,
removing them from the group within which they fought. As the book details, groups are vital to stress management, amongst
other things. Soldiers are preferably separated and then tracked in groups. Members can then continue to draw on group support.
Information technology and regular meetings can help connect group members who are geographically separated.
Additionally, returning soldiers should be treated like new recruits and prepared for their new roles. Returning soldiers
need to accumulate desirable attributes, such as personal stress-management skills, and shed undesirable attributes,
such as aggression. This sort of preparation does not need to interrupt the soldier's separation---it can occur iteratively
as the soldier takes up their civilian life.
These are burdensome responsibilities but they are responsibilities nonetheless. The military is an employer; it is responsible
for helping its former employees with the effects of their service.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Why Do Soldiers Commit War Crimes?
War crimes include any crime committed
during war that is proscribed by domestic or international law. Usually, we are talking about violence against non-combatants,
civilians and prisoners principally, often particular sub-populations, such as an ethnic group or women. My initial comments
focus on illegal behavior outside of combat. Sometimes this violence is so systematic as to be described as genocide. Illegal
behavior does not have to be violent: it includes unnecessary destruction of property; under certain military law, it includes
abuse, including verbal abuse.
A well organized and accountable
military defines crimes down to this level, trains its soldiers in those definitions, and enforces the law. Almost invariably,
when soldiers engage in illegal behavior, their military employer has failed to do some or all of these things.
It is true that some war criminals
are manifesting a pre-existing pathology but such individuals are actually very rare. While we are often told by
commanders or politicians that illegal behavior by their soldiers is the result of a few "bad apples," the perpetrators are
usually acting within lax organizational bounds or at the behest (at least implicit) of the organization. Even if bad
apples act without organizational encouragement, their employer is always accountable. Alarmingly, the truth is that the organization
usually plays a more active part in turning soldiers into bad apples.
An organization can deliberately
encourage illegal behavior. This encouragement can be explicit (many commanders have ordered "no prisoners") or implicit (many
commanders have announced that the usual laws of war no longer apply or that they are too preoccupied to investigate). Militaries
are very hierarchical organizations; they have their own laws; they are not subject to the same oversight as civilian organizations.
These privileges place a heavy emphasis on self-policing. Poor leadership is a common factor in illegal behavior.
A typical way in which militaries
can encourage illegal violence, even if they never meant to, is by emphasizing intrinsic motivations. For instance, militaries
often try to emphasize nationalism, social and political ideologies, aggression, and masculinity in their troops. Such intrinsic
motivations are counter-productive, encouraging insularity at best and illegal violence at worst. Such motivations need to
be constrained by discipline if they are to be manifested when appropriate, i.e., during a legal fight. Without sufficient
discipline, such motivations may encourage illegal violence against non-combatants, rather than combat motivation against
armed enemies. Historically, those militaries with a strong emphasis on masculine aggression have tended to be the same militaries
that have institutionalized atrocities against women. During the 1930s and until 1945, the Japanese military forced women
to work as prostitutes (“comfort women”) for soldiers on leave. The Serbian and Bosnian-Serb militaries did the same in the
former Yugoslavia.
Militaries often emphasize their
need for autonomy, especially during wartime, if they are to get on and fight their war. Many commentators have argued that
autonomous militaries tend to be innovative militaries. These factors are too remote - there are many much more tangible factors
affecting warfighting effectiveness and innovativeness. In any case, autonomy is the opposite of civilian oversight and can
allow internally-oriented loyalties to develop. Such internally-oriented loyalties have perpetuated socially unacceptable
and sometimes illegal behaviour, such as the carnivalesque abuse of civilians by Canadian and Belgian airborne units in Somalia
in 1995.
So far my comments have focused on illegal behaviour towards non-combatants outside of combat itself. Non-combat behavior
is more deliberative. Combat behaviour is more situational. The historical evidence shows that most combat atrocities are
associated with extraordinary situations rather than extraordinary people.
Even the execution of prisoners, the stereotypical atrocity, is usually best conceived in terms of hasty, insecure
reactions under the uncertainties of the transition from combatant to non-combatant. The Second World War has been an intellectual
battleground on this issue and deserves some attention because of the extreme misconceptions. Simplistic historians perpetuate
the propaganda of the time or their own prejudices and associate combat crimes with national character, principally German
national character. Reputable historians attribute German atrocities on the eastern front, which were no less frequent than
Soviet atrocities, to the unusually long, intense periods of combat in bitter conditions with little relief and few comforts.
Although the comparative frequency of illegal killings is lost to history, “victor’s justice” has biased the popular perception
that the Germans were more often guilty. For instance, a divisional trial of two US
officers for a massacre of German prisoners near Tambach, Germany, was ultimately dismissed when one defendant suggested that his divisional
commander had set a precedent by ordering the execution of a German sniper. Two similar trials of US massacres of German troops
in Italy were defended on the grounds
that General Patton had ordered “no prisoners.” Loyal Nazis, snipers, and troops wearing the uniform of the Waffen Schutzstaffel
were all considered “bad Germans” and were more likely to be executed after capture. When the military situation had been
particularly stressful or resulted in retreat (which was rarely true for US soldiers) there was a tendency for all German
prisoners to be executed. The Vietnam War also manifested American war crimes: common factors were lax oversight, poor stress
management, and low discipline in stressful situations. A few American soldiers have been prosecuted already for war crimes
in Iraq and Afghanistan: the same factors can be identified.
In summary, most war crimes can be attributed to organizational permissiveness or even encouragement; combat crimes
tend to be more situational.
Monday, May 7, 2007
What is wrong with the new Iraqi Army? (Anonymous)
Neither the coalition nor the Iraqi government have released enough information into the public domain for anyone to
answer this question fully. Indeed, they probably do not collect all the information we would need. Nevertheless, the formation
of the new Iraqi Army (formed after the coalition disbandment of the old Iraqi Army in 2004) has obviously broken some of
the prescriptions in the book. Here I am going to highlight three: heritage; training; and oversight.
For a start, the new Iraqi Army is just that - entirely new. All its units have been formed from scratch, without the
heritage, institutional memory, cohesion, or leaders of the old Iraqi Army's units. Even after formation, personnel instability
has not encouraged the development of a new heritage. Some new units have been disbanded due to poor performance. The rest
remain unstable due to desertion and inconsistent attendance.
Intra-unit promotions, in which all junior leaders must begin from the bottom and are retained within the unit after
promotion, would incentivize performance and establish vertical cohesion within the unit. An effort to reunite personnel,
at least officers, who served together in the old Iraqi Army would re-establish some horizontal cohesion. Also, personnel
should be discouraged from collecting with others of similar demographic profiles. This encourages social cohesion, which
can protect rule-breakers from the organization and interfere with task cohesion. New units should share representative demographic
profiles. Task cohesion should be encouraged by running the unit through challenging collective tasks - during training or
deployment.
Secondly, training has been poor, not for lack of resources, but for lack of skills and motivation. Trainers are usually
assigned from coalition forces, without any particular training themselves in how to train others, with insufficient translators,
without any systemic evaluation of their performance as trainers. This is not to deny that trainers are well-intentioned,
but even the best-intentioned trainers are victims of the skills and incentives provided by their organization.
Trainers need better training as trainers. The trainer's performance needs to be reviewed by independent evaluators.
And trainers need a direct stake in their training. In general, trainers train several trainee units rotating through
the trainers' area of responsibility but they could be assigned to train just one unit. For instance, sometimes coalition
forces shadow Iraqi units as they first deploy, which might be considered one part of the training cycle. Unfortunately, training
and combat assignments are not systemically linked. If coalition forces were assigned to train the same Iraqi units with which
they will serve in combat, they would be better incentivized to train well.
Thirdly, new Iraqi soldiers and units have developed without much professional, ethical, or legal emphasis
or accountability. Reportedly, Iraqi soldiers routinely keep unreliable hours, share loyalties with militias and other agitated
interest groups, perform below standard, and engage in unethical or illlegal behavior, including the abuse or even murder
of prisoners and other "out-groups". These are not problems that can be dismissed as national, cultural, or personal peculiarities.
Personnel develop within an organization; to put it another way, organizations condition the values and behavior of their
personnel. For instance, Iraqi Army training and other formative experiences have reportedly normalized illegal violence.
Training standards need to improve. After training, the performance of every unit needs to be observed by independent
observers accountable to an independent department.
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2007.06.01 |
2007.05.01 |
2007.04.01
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