On Wednesday we discussed this story from the Boston Globe on concerns about the quality of the officers being promoted by the Army. Frederick Kagan told us that the attrition of the Army’s officer corps is “unquestionably bad,” but not everyone thought so. Michael Tanji, a frequent contributor to THE DAILY STANDARD and a former senior intelligence officer, wrote in with this comment:
Far be it from me to argue military issues with a Kagan, but I don’t see the high volume of resignations as a major problem.
First of all, the selection process for field-grade officers is dicey at best. I’ve seen a lot of highly qualified Captains get passed over and forced out while functional retards (and that’s not hyperbole) got the call. The practical difference between someone at the top of the selection pyramid and someone who under normal circumstances wouldn’t make the cut can be very nominal indeed. People who manage to punch all their tickets more rapidly than others are not necessarily better officers.
Second, “up and out” has long been noted as a flawed system. If someone is a good Captain or Major, why force the Peter Principle upon them? Some people don’t aspire to command a brigade and some couldn’t do it no matter how much training and time you gave them. In an Army where small-unit-tactics are becoming ascendant, “Best g-d company commander in the army” is a title a lot of guys who cherish more than “Colonel.”
Third, I’d like to see a more in-depth analysis of this data. How do we know the best of the best are the ones getting out? That large portions of a year-group in a given battalion are leaving means little beyond the size of the gap. Most of a given year-group wouldn’t make it to the top even under the best circumstances.
Here’s Frederick Kagan’s response:
I don’t really disagree with any of the points that Mr. Tanji makes about the flaws and unreliability of the officer promotion system, which anyone who has been close to the Army for any period of time has observed. I can report anecdotally that some of my best former students are leaving the force, to the detriment of the Army, but that process has been going on for some time–going back into the 1990s, in fact, when we thought that repeated deployments to Bosnia and Kosovo were “stressing” the force unacceptably. The truth is that of the best officers in the Army at any moment, some want to stay in, some want to leave, and individuals make choices, as is right and proper. But I do think that the extremely high promotion rates at certain grades are an indicator of a problem, because they indicate a shortage of officers in the force, and that problem is very difficult to rectify. The strain on the ground forces is real and a matter of concern. But those who wish to argue that we should withdraw from Iraq in order to reduce that strain must consider in detail what effect defeat will have on retention, and what effect the spillover from an all-out Iraqi civil war will have on future American force requirements. Failure to maintain an appropriately-sized ground force after the Cold War has put us in a bad spot. Losing in Iraq will make it worse. The only real solution is to grow the ground forces to the level necessary to face the challenges the world of today poses with some equanimity–a level significantly higher, in my view, even than the increase the president has already proposed.
And finally, Stuart Koehl, senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Transatlantic Relations, puts things in perspective:
This happens in every war, and in fact is usually beneficial, at least for the U.S. Army. In peacetime, the Army tends to promote not on merit but on a combination of “rounded career profile” and “zero defects”. The result is a lot of mediocrity promoted beyond its competence, which is why, at the beginning of every war, the Army has to clean house and relieve incompetent, timid or just plain unlucky commanders. In wartime, only effectiveness counts, so the guys who climb the pole are the ones who can produce–whether in combat or in supporting roles. The ironic thing is these officers frequently are the ones passed over in peacetime, since their particular skill sets are not valued when bullets aren’t flying. And, logically, once the bullets stop flying, these men either leave the service or find themselves shunted off the the sidelines again. The problem of maintaining “institutional excellence” in military organizations usually driven by bureaucratic imperatives during peacetime is a perennial problem, and few armies have ever managed to solve it. The U.S. Army is pretty notorious for just ignoring the problem altogether. Thus, every war we fight is marked by a steep learning curve as we figure out the things we thought we knew aren’t that useful, and that the leaders we thought we needed isn’t.
I would also add that the optimal ratio of officers to enlisted men is about 5 percent. In elite forces such as the German Reichswehr and Wehrmacht, that ratio could be as low as 3 percent. The Germans were very persnickity about the training of officers, and did not skimp even as the Third Reich was imploding. In their mind, better no officer than an unqualified one, and it was not unusual to find platoons and even companies commanded by sergeants.
In the U.S. Army, by contrast, the ratio of officers to enlisted men is 17 percent, not counting commissioned aviators. In World War II, the ratio was 8 percent, which was rather high and reflected the large tail-to- tooth ratio of the Army as a whole. At the end of the Second World War, the Army looked at its mobilization experience and found that it could raise a new division from scratch faster than it could bring a National Guard division up to snuff, provided it had the necessary officer cadres. Thus, it decided simply to retain twice as many officers as it needed, jacking the officer to enlisted ratio up to 16-17%, where it hovers today. This would not be a bad thing, if the Army had found some way to keep these officers on its rolls without giving them any real duties–something like the “half pay” system used in the 19th century. But they couldn’t do this, and had to find gainful employment for all of them, which led to top-heavy staff organizations, a large administrative and R&D overhead and generally a lot of officers involved in bureaucratic make-work. In short, the plethora of officers has been a constant drain on Army effectiveness. If the Army can’t fill all of its officer billets right now, it should look around and decide which billets are not necessary, abolish them, and move the officers into line positions.
I would not be surpised to discover that the Army functions much better as a result of having fewer officers.
