PME Issues

Globalised Security and Military Education and Training in the 21st

Century

Dr Michael Evans

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US Hart-Rudman Commission: ‘New World

Coming’

Many of the fundamental assumptions that steered us

through the chilly waters of the Cold War require

rethinking. The very facts of military reality are changing,

and that bears serious and concentrated reflection

New World Coming: American Security in the 21New World Coming: American Security in the 21stst Century Century (Phase 1 (Phase 1

Report, 1999)Report, 1999)

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From ‘Long Peace’ to ‘Long War’

[In the 21st century] there is a novel setting of diffusion and diversification of weapons of mass destruction, percolating global turbulence, and widespread fear of terrorism

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: The Choice: Global Domination or Global Global Domination or Global LeadershipLeadership (2004) (2004)

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Challenging the Profession of Arms: ‘Old’ and ‘New’ in

Globalised Security

– Globalised strategic transition in new millennium

transcends nation and region

– PME and training challenges affect all militaries

– Arrival of ‘two world’ strategic universe means that

countries must prepare for ‘old’ (state-centric) and

‘new’ (multi-centric) challenges

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– Part One examines main features of evolving globalised security environment

– Part Two concentrates on implications of globalised security for PME and training

– Part Two focus on three particular areas: strategic art; military jurisdiction; and integrated skill-sets

Two-Part Presentation

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Globalised Security and 21st Century

Strategic Trends

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‘Two Worlds ofWorld Politics’

– A bifurcated conflict environment

– ‘Two worlds of world politics’ (state-centric and multi-centric and their interaction)

– Complexity created by imposition of multi-centric (non-state) on to state-centric (state-on-state)

– Rapid compression and interconnectedness of change between the ‘two worlds’

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A Non-Western View: ‘An Intertwined World’

The international security issue has become increasingly diversified, traditional security factors and non-traditional ones have become intertwined

Jiefangjun BaoJiefangjun Bao (Chinese PLA), (Chinese PLA), February 2002February 2002

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Globalisation’s Four Strategic Changes

– From territoriality towards connectedness

– Blurring of state-society, foreign-domestic policy distinctions

– Rise of calculus of strategic risk-analysis

– Blurring of ‘near and far’: merging modes of conflict and rise of full-spectrum strategy

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1. From Territoriality to Connectedness: ‘The New Geography

of National Security’

– Globalisation creates supra-territorial space

– Rise of non-state (multi-centric) actors cuts old link between sovereignty and national security

– Societal vulnerability because of permeable open societies

– Lawrence Freedman’s ‘demilitarisation of inter-state relations’ and parallel trend towards non-state warfare

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2. Risk: The Rise of Strategic-Risk Analysis

– Cold War an age of predictable threat

– Globalised security era an age of unpredictable risk

– Threat focuses on tangibles: intentions and capabilities of conventional adversaries

– Risk focuses on intangibles: probabilities and consequences stemming from unconventional adversaries

– Iraq 2003 a product of risk-analysis

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Rumsfeld on Strategic Risk

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know

Donald Rumsfeld, US Defense Secretary, February 2002

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The Anatomy of Risk

– Risk-strategy concerned with rogue and failed states

– In conventional threat analysis Afghanistan less a threat than Haiti

– But Afghanistan a high-risk failed state

– Risk-analysis focuses on consequences not capabilities – from rogues to refugees to viruses to nuclear devices

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Risks in ‘A World Without Precedent’

This world is without precedent. It is as different from the Cold War as it is from the Middle Ages. Tomorrow’s wars will not result from the ambitions of States but from their weaknesses

Philippe Delmas, Philippe Delmas, The Rosy Future of The Rosy Future of WarWar (1995) (1995)

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3. Blurring of the ‘Far and the Near’: National Security

Policy

• Globalised security creates blurred distinctions between state and society and between foreign and domestic policies

• Rise of cohesive national security policies to meet spectrum of threat and risk

• Need for a mixture of expeditionary forces and homeland security to reconcile the ‘far and the near’

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4. Need for Full-Spectrum Strategy

• Globalised security blurs conventional and unconventional modes of conflict

• Need for full-spectrum strategy

• 2005 US National Defense Strategy: traditional, irregular, catastrophic and disruptive categories of threat may intersect

• Deadly cocktails possible (eg irregular Islamist jihad plus catastrophic WMD)

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Globalised Security: Implications for

Military Education and Training

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The Main Challenge: Different Times, Different

Enemies

The enemies of yesterday were static,

predictable, homogeneous, rigid, hierarchical,

and resistant to change. The enemies of today

are dynamic, unpredictable, diverse, fluid,

networked, and constantly evolving

Brian Michael Jenkins, ‘Redefining the Enemy’, Brian Michael Jenkins, ‘Redefining the Enemy’, RAND RAND ReviewReview (Spring 2004) (Spring 2004)

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Cold War Legacy: An Operational Approach to War

• Cold War era marginalised military influence in strategy-formulation

• Professional embrace of operational level of war and operational art

• Accelerated by precision revolution after 1970s

• Operational approach dominant in conduct of Iraq and Afghanistan wars

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A Non-political Military Art?

The operational art appeals to armies: it functions in a politics-free zone and it puts primacy on professional skills

Hew Strachan, ‘Making Strategy: Civil-Military Relations Hew Strachan, ‘Making Strategy: Civil-Military Relations after Iraq’, after Iraq’, Survival Survival (Autumn, 2006) (Autumn, 2006)

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The Paradox of the Operational Level of War

– Operational level often encourages cult of battlefield artisanship

– Prefers ‘aesthetic symmetry’ of similar enemy and focuses

– Operational craftsmanship over strategic coherence

– ‘Lost victories’ of Iraq (1991 and 2003) and of Afghanistan (2002)

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Coherence and Design: The Need to Create Strategic

Artists

– Military must improve knowledge of the strategic level of war

– Need for commanders to concentrate on mastering strategic art in 21st century

– Strategic art: ‘mastery of the principles of coherence, integration and unity of effort in relating military power to political purpose’

– Pressing need in PME for creating better strategic artists who concentrate upon control over victory in the pattern of conflict

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PME’s Objective in the New Millennium

To produce a strategically-

astute and operationally-expert

officer who can function in both

the counsels of state and on the

joint, multinational and

interagency battlespace of the

21st century

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Three Key PME Requirements

– Rediscover strategy and improve conceptual understanding of relationship between policy, strategy and operations

– Refine a realistic concept of military jurisdiction to enhance above

– Create better integration of educational and training skill-sets to maximise professional mastery of war

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1. Rediscovering Strategy: Parameters of Policy,

Strategy and Operations

Among practitioners, politicians often conflate strategy with

policy objectives (focusing on what the desired outcome should

be, simply assuming that force will move the adversary towards it)

while soldiers often conflate strategy with operations (focusing on

how to destroy targets or defeat enemies tactically, assuming that

positive military effects mean positive policy effects

Richard K. Betts, ‘The Trouble with Strategy: Bridging Policy Richard K. Betts, ‘The Trouble with Strategy: Bridging Policy

and Operations’, and Operations’, JFQJFQ Winter 2001-02 Winter 2001-02

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‘The Lost Meaning of

Strategy’

- Serves as a bridge between political objectives and military operations

- But often neglected leading to failure to connect ends (objectives), ways (methods) and means (resources)

- Example of Iraq in 2003: failure of systemic strategic design

- Strategy must integrate policy and operations not separate them

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Civil-Military Integration to Meet ‘Conflict and

Confrontation’

• Cold War conflation of civilian policy with and military operations with strategy must change

• Need for greater civil-military integration in age of ‘two worlds of world politics’

• Rise of Rupert Smith’s ‘conflicts and confrontations’ over classical warfare

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Civil-Military Separatism: The

Huntington Model

• Classic exposition in Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State (1957)

• Study reflects Westphalian warfare: strategy begins when diplomacy ends

• Armies mobilised across territorial frontiers

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Inadequacy of the Huntington CMR Model

• Model no longer reflects interactive threat-risk conflicts of 21st century

• Military force not autonomous but used in complex multinational and interagency frameworks

• Major intellectual challenge for military professionals to bring greater coherence to strategy in order to improve link between politics and operations

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Mastering Eliot Cohen’s ‘Unequal Dialogue’

• Need for robust civil-military engagement

• Clemenceau was right: ‘war is too serious to be left to generals’

• But corollary is without military involvement to shape strategy war will not be prosecuted effectively

• In 21st century need for improved uniformed knowledge of strategy

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Challenge of Teaching Strategy in PME

• Guide should be intellectual pragmatism

• Remember Dr Johnson’s advice: ‘always temper the splendours of ornamental erudition with practical application’

• Need to create blend of strategic leader-theorist-practitioner and avoid Clausewitz’s ‘pretensions of false genius and fruitless scholarliness’

• Teaching should serve as primer for mental preparation of commander’s mind

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2. Refining Military Jurisdiction

• Better strategic art linked to tailoring PME and training to realistic parameters of professional jurisdiction

• Modern spectrum of conflict has expanded boundaries of professional jurisdiction

• Huntington’s concept of the autonomous ‘manager of violence’ and MacArthur’s ‘no artifice under the name of politics’ difficult to uphold

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Jurisdiction during Kosovo

The old separations in time between the military

and the political and between echelons of

military command were no longer the same . . .

What we discovered increasingly [during

Kosovo] was that the political and strategic

levels impinged on the operational and tactical

levels . . . Sometimes even insignificant tactical

events packed a huge political wallop. This is a

key characteristic of modern war General Wesley K. General Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern Clark, Waging Modern

War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat Combat (2001)(2001)

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‘An Alchemical Blend of Multiple Archetypes’

– Military jurisdiction confronted not just by politics but by multiple civilian agencies

– Includes journalists, aid workers, security contractors

– Military professional at once anthropologist, police officer and diplomat and warfighter

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Jurisdictional Boundaries and Warrior Knowledge

of Strategy

– Jurisdictional expansion must be tempered by the uniqueness of the profession of arms

– Unique skills of warrior must not be diluted

– One jurisdictional area that does require expansion – improved knowledge of strategy

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Future Operational-Strategic Preparation in JPME

– Cold War PME formula of twenty year ‘stairway process’ of PME

– Globalised security conditions may expose officers to operational-strategic responsibility much earlier

– Need to consider ‘glide path’ model of PME

– Need to construct continuum of PME knowledge by move from phased to continuous learning model

– As much philosophy as program

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3. Integrated Skill-Sets and Future Education, Training

• The ideal: ‘one trains for certainty; one educates for uncertainty’

• But education and training are difficult to separate

• Technical training an essential foundation of military expertise

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Training and Education as Siamese Twins

• Intertwining of training and education apparent even at strategic level of war

• Training and education are to military profession what surgery and anatomy are to the medical profession

• Symbiosis between the practical and the abstract

• Educated strategic artist must first be a trained operational expert

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Theory and Practice in Military Problem-Solving

• Close linkage between education and training reflected in many contemporary military problems

• Levels of war debate on networked battlespace

• Future of the operational art

• Reconciling indirect high-level command with direct low-level control

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Conclusion

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Ages of War

Every age has its own kind of

war, its own limiting conditions,

and its own peculiar

preconceptions, its own theory

of war

Carl von Clausewitz, Carl von Clausewitz, On WarOn War

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Future Military Effectiveness and PME

– Cold War PME legacy of operational artistry and civil-military separatism in increasingly policy-operations inadequate

– PME must give greater attention to conceptual integration of policy, strategy and operations

– Overarching aim: to merge the narrow 20th century operational artist into a broader 21st century strategic artist

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QUESTIONS?