Witnessing History’s Momentum — An Anecdote about Seeing Institutional Inertia Create the Future

24 August 2015

Occasionally, we witness History brewing

A few days ago, at a low key military event welcoming new civilian spouses to the armed forces environment, I had the opportunity to see how History’s “current” builds itself on a foundation of understandably unquestioned thinking.

What follows is not (at all) a criticism of the people involved

Paradoxically, everyone I met that day impressed me with their excellence.

What follows is, instead, an observation about (a) the nature of American military and political institutions and (b) the importance of having thoughtful political leadership at the pinnacles of both.

In other words — in the military system — when our top civilian leadership screws up, down-chain mid-level commanders almost inevitably have to follow. It is the old Nazi phenomenon that “We were just following orders.” Which is an understandable, even reasonable defense under ordinary (not genocidal) circumstances.

How the Hapless Momentum phenomenon works

In the United States, part of a commander’s duty is to orient subordinates to the nature and goals of the shared mission. Historically, the American armed forces have taken orders from civilian political leadership headed by the President in his role as Commander in Chief.

This organizational structure gives intermediate level military commanders relatively little room in which to publicly express objections to the President’s conception of the various missions that he, via the chain command, assigns them.

No dutiful American military commander will overtly express policy objections in front of his or her subordinates. The civilian world, in at least some of its aspects, is not much different.

Once a mission (or even a way of thinking about it) is assigned, momentum that favors its implementation is already in place. History — meaning consequences and outcomes — manufactures itself from there.

My point is that, when top leadership does dumb or mistaken things, bad things are almost guaranteed to happen.

The Commander in Chief and the Military Industrial Complex that he purportedly heads gives History a nudge and inertia (momentum) builds and everything rolls metaphorically downhill from there.

How these institutional characteristics affected the “welcome to military spouses” that I attended

Sessions like the one I attended orient new spouses to the military environment. A commander usually explains the installation’s military mission because everything evolves and revolves in its support. However, the focus of these spousal orientations is usually on the agencies and offices that can assist couples in solving the problems that inevitably arise in military life. Most spouses have some difficulty finding employment, kids have to adapt to new schools, and deployments stress everyone out.

At our session, one commander explained the installation’s purpose in about as brilliantly accessible and a concise fashion as I have ever witnessed. Shortcutting the political and strategic implications that underlay our installation’s then-heightened alertness level, he said only that “Russian sabre rattling” had necessitated it. Europeans, he indicated, needed visible reassurance that we were here for them.

This was an accurate and eloquently concise representation of President Obama’s (commander in chief) thinking.

However — the overlooked nuance to the “sabre rattling” summary

“Russian sabre rattling” is not a historically complete description of the strategic situation that we occupy. Its inaccuracy is a conceptual defect that makes an obvious difference, if achieving a rational response to the actual circumstances is our national goal.

Note

What I am referring to here is the fact that Russian aggressiveness was reflexively prompted by American and NATO encroachment on Russia’s historically “granted” sphere of Great Power influence.

The Russian Federation’s reaction to NATO’s threatening encroachment has been pretty much identical to what the United States would have done had Russia or China started nibbling at bits of Mexico, Central America, Canada or South America.

The fact that most Americans do not recognize the “tit for tat” predictability of what the Russians have done — and our complicity in having caused it — explains (in part) why we Americans are such lousy geopolitical strategists.

When one knows neither history nor culture, it is exceedingly difficult to make anything other than destructive and bloody moves on the geopolitical chess board.

Importantly, even if a (high but still intermediate) commander agreed with my own sense of the “saber rattling” phrase’s inaccuracy, he and she would not be in a position to say so. Commanders are duty and honor bound to express the party line even when they have reservations about it.

Consequently, the Commander in Chief’s relayed and incomplete description of the current European situation encouraged everyone in attendance at the spousal orientation — and everyone whom they will pass his description onto — to adopt a critically incomplete understanding of:

(a) how we got to this point

and

(b) how we can effectively deal with it.

This institutionalized truth-distortion is what I mean about History’s “building” momentum

Feed the ball with energy, and it begins rolling wherever it will.

The Commander in Chief announces a policy. All five (including the Coast Guard) of America’s armed services follow and implement it. There is not much room — outside the very top — for questioning policy wisdom in ways that might actually change it.

In that room those few days ago, I was witnessing how tiny steps like these build toward usually unnecessary armed conflict. Our attitudes are too frequently shaped in the confines of ignorance, and they stay that way throughout. The Russian side, I am certain, responds just as ignorantly and intemperately as we do.

World War I started this way. And World War II had its seed in the equally thoughtless and unnecessarily vindictive terms of the peace agreement that ended the First World War. A chain of uncorrected narrow mindedness (stupidity) created two deadly world wars and all the grief that went with them.

Therefore — competent and integrity-bound leadership at the top matters

Part of the reason I rail (complain angrily) against America’s unforgivably inane high level political leadership is that its low quality condemns the world — given the scope and depth of US power — to a seemingly unending series of future human (including American troop) disasters.

This is why knowledgeably thoughtful people so often call for leadership reform

For example, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore joins former Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich in a group of thoughtful critics of the repetitive mistakenness exhibited by policy-makers in our military and political establishments.

The core of Astore’s objection to the way things institutionally exist today is this one — my insertions in brackets:

West Point’s library . . . prominently features two quotations for cadets to mull over. In the first, Jefferson writes George Washington in 1788: “The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace.”

In the second, Jefferson writes Thomas Leiper in 1815: “I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”

Have America’s military officers and politicians learned these lessons? Obviously not.

I want to focus on two [reasons for this]: what cadets at America’s military academies really learn and the self-serving behavior of America’s most senior military officers, many of whom are academy graduates.

[Military academy students] are driven by the idea of advancement within the conformist norms defined by their particular academy and branch of service. A system that rewards energetic displays of conformity also tends to generate mediocrity as well as cynicism.

As one former cadet put it to me . . . “The ‘golden boys’ . . . got the coveted slots but were generally hated by their cynical peers. Cynicism seems to define the Academy experience.”

Scandals involving cheating, sexual assaults, and religious discrimination have often been made worse by not being dealt with openly and honestly. Cadets know this, which is another reason many emerge from their education as cynics . . . .

By giving our commanders so many pats on the back . . . and thanking the troops so effusively and repeatedly . . . . we've written them what is essentially a blank check. We’ve given them authority without accountability.

They wage “our” wars (remarkably unsuccessfully), but never have to take the blame for defeats . . . . the buck never stops with them.

By failing to hold military boots to the fire, we've largely avoided unpleasantness between the military and its civilian leadership, not to speak of the American public.

Having witnessed these military trends myself, across a span of more than two decades, I agree.

Can we encourage intelligent counterweights — to the too frequent carelessness exhibited at the top?

As William Astore implies, we need to recruit and train conscientiously capable leaders from the lowest ranks up.

A society cannot reasonably hope that:

(i) a random (often ass-kissing) mediocrity,

(ii) who floated (uncontroversially) upward from among the troops,

(iii) will suddenly develop levels of:

(a) intelligence,

(b) insight

and

that he or she did not exhibit before.

Mediocrity — by its quantitatively defined averageness — breeds powerful and usually painfully experienced historical momentum.

Genuinely great nations and peoples should (one can argue) . . .

. . . strive to elevate excellence from the pool of self-seeking moral and intellectual sloth.

We don’t. And we have not for quite some time.

The moral? — Who leads from the top matters more than one might think

Here I am, at somewhat advanced age, wondering whether the 21^st Century’s level of geopolitical imbecility is soon going to equal the early 20^th’s. One would think that a supposedly intelligent species would seek to avoid repeating something that remains in reasonably close historical memory.

Yet, I have seen no sign that we are expending any effort in that ameliorative direction. Despite the excellence of the people I shared that spouse orientation room with, I felt ourselves trapped in falling ball of someone else’s construction.

Throughout History, institutions and unquestioned culture are too often the enemy of sense. We make a sad mistake, when we fail to recognize this. Certainly, one can reasonably question the ability of any one person or group of people to change the institutional inertia that governs American policy. Professor Michael Glennon made this point in his outstanding analysis of the nation’s bureaucratically inclined security apparatus, National Security and Double Government (2015).

That said — and Professor Glennon’s cautionary point accepted — the military chain of command lends itself to potential correction, if any government institution does. “Do what I say” has a force here that the phrase lacks in other parts of our society.

Theoretically, a respected and very forceful Commander in Chief could make some changes that hold down-chain military leaders’ feet to Accountability’s Fire.

Though I am often pessimistic about the tolerability of the coming future, I still think that favorable American change is possible. Admittedly, even in the “do this because I say so” military sector, beneficial change will take someone of genius and almost monomaniacal force to pull off.

One can hope. Perhaps naively, Astore, Bacevich and I keep talking.

PeteFree.com

Witnessing History’s Momentum — An Anecdote about Seeing Institutional Inertia Create the Future