I think there are two major factors leading to the promotion of incompetent personnel to leadership positions. The first one is the bureaucratic nature of personnel evaluation, the second being the lack of actual 'real' wars to train the leaders (as sadistic as it appears).
_Disclaimer_ : I only have an observer experience of the US Army (I went on tour in Afghanistan in a mixed US/Canada brigade), but my actual employment was in the Canadian Forces. I was on tour when Gen McChrystal was relieved and replaced by Gen Petraeus, and also when (CA) Gen Menard was relieved and replaced by Gen Vance.
1. In the early ranks of officers, promotions are very strongly linked to evaluation reports. Evaluation reports came to be very sanitize and politically corrected documents where you need a load of supporting documentation if you want to negatively score someone. If someone received an hypothetical score of 3 last year, you need very strong arguments if you want to reduce that score the year after. The system is somehow 'humanitarian' in that it believes that no one can become worse over time, and no one is incompetent. Also, there is a lot of 'political' pressure coming from relationships inside the military. I saw first hand some obviously incompetent Captain be promoted to the rank of Major, simply for political reasons. Somebody back in the country had plans back home for this officer, and this promotion was planned ahead of time (the officer had time in rank and was put in the position they were to give them some 'action' cred).
Put together with the fact that promotions are expected after certain specific check-in-the-boxes, this leads to the promotion of incompetent leaders on purely bureaucratic grounds. Eventually leading to a wider range of incompetent officers in the pool of Colonel in which Generals are chosen.
2. Recent wars are not related in 'danger factor' to what WWII has been. Nobody's in actual danger of having their family killed/their country harmed if they don't succeed in their missions oversea. Those missions are political disturbance of far away countries. They are, sadistically, good for the troops as they give them first hand experience with real combat - it's essential for an army to always have veterans in their ranks to train other members. If a generation of the army would go without seeing combat actions, the technical abilities of this army would quickly evaporate. In that regard, while recent conflicts provided combat experience to field personnel, they have not been of a large enough scale to train generals. Generals thus can't really become battle-hardened and provide hands-on experience while on tour.
Finally, the idea of doing a 'tour' when you're a general, like noted by the article. They come in theater with a vision (but often no general field experience, and sometimes even no field experience at all) and have only a few weeks/months to try out their vision and see what happens, and that's when they're actually on site and not back home dealing with politicians. Then regardless of the outcome, they are relieved and replaced by another general.
There is a big problem with generals with battlefield experience - they fail in the next war because they cannot break free of what worked in the previous war.
Technological progress is so rapid that doctrine has to be rewritten from the ground up for each conflict.
For example, we went into WW2 with heavy reliance on battleships. They were quickly discovered to be worse than useless, the aircraft carrier was far more effective.
The examples are endless, such as the disastrous misuse of cavalry in WW1, and Hitler using obsolete WW1 tactics.
There is a big problem with generals with battlefield experience
An interesting datapoint, historically is Churchill. If your read his history of the world wars, he was the 'sea lord' or somesuch and head of the royal navy. in advance of wwi, he actualy revolutionized the fate of the world in the 20th century, by preparing GB for the next war (WWI). In particular, the switch to the use of diesel vs coal, to increase the range of the Naval fleet. This is the source of the WWII battleships example. And also the origin of the politicization of the Middle east. This supports your notion (becaue he wasn't a general), but undermines the idea that you cannot act with foresight. He also had battlefield experience. [1]
[1] Also, your last sentence is curious, as I think you missed the example of Hitler conquering europe from russia to the english channel, inventing the Blitzcrieg, and the various dry-run live-fire experiments, eg Spanish Civil war.
Which "fixed fortifications" would those be? If you're talking about the Allies' final attack on Germany of late 1944-early 1945, then I'd say by that time Hitler had already lost the war. The two most crucial moments I can think about are the battle of Stalingrad which did not allow the German Army to lay its hands on the Caucasus and its oil resources, and then the battle of Kursk, which had nothing to do with WW1 tactics.
And to copy-paste Clausewitz's name in here (the article makes a passing reference to him when it talks about "Franks fundamentally misunderstood generalship, which at its topmost levels must link military action to political results"), I'd say Hitler's final chances were political in nature, more exactly I'm talking about his tries to intervene between Churchill and the US on the one hand and the USSR on the other, trying to convince the first bunch about the perils of letting the Soviets be on the victorious side. The Tehran Conference put an end to that. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference)
Hitler did fall into the battleship trap, grossly underestimated the value of long range aircraft and fighter aircraft, relied heavily on fixed fortifications like the Atlantic Wall and the Siegfried Line, both of which were easily bypassed, etc.
He squandered his men by not allowing them to retreat and regroup, again thinking like it was WW1.
Of course he would have lost anyway, but he could have made it much harder.
Against fixed targets battleships gave higher firepower. Aircraft cqrriers were the new technology for naval operations away from large land masses. The heavy fortification of the atlantic wall was only for first landing, the defence line was deep but it was annihilated with heavy bombardment from allied battleships. The Siegfried line was pretty much abandoned during the war and was hastily manned during the last defence. German efficiendy wasn't very good at this point since t was against the original planing and they had even lost their fortifications and underground plans in some places.
The doctrine after WW1 was not keeping an advanced position but moving forward with tanks and keeping the enemy of balance. That was an extarpolation of Rommels "Infantry attacks" book, who was succesful in the WW1 and was already famous and a teacher in the german military academy in the interwar period.
The problem with battleships is they were incredibly vulnerable to air attack.
Ambrose's book "Citizen Soldiers" details the failure of Hitler's fixed fortifications, and Galland's book "The First and the Last" details Hitler's failure to understand air power.
The texbook counter-example on circumvention of fixed fortifications was done by Hitler's army, at the start of the war. Viz:
The Manstein Plan is often seen as either the result of, or the cause of a mid-twentieth century Revolution in military affairs. In the former hypothesis, expounded by Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart immediately after the events, the Manstein Plan is presented as a natural outcome of deliberate changes in the German military doctrine during the twenties and thirties by men as Guderian or Hans von Seeckt implementing Fuller's or Liddell Hart's ideas.[1]
Diesel-electric Submarines were ultimately also vulnerable to air power. But not before their use in warfare was pioneered by the Germans, to devastating effect. And france was germany's "aircraft carrier", don't forget its less than 100 miles from the UK, couldn't be sunk, and didn't need a fleet-escort. (etc).
Further innovations:
- Jet fighters
- Cruise Missles
- Ballistic Missles
- Submarine Warfare
- Armored Calvary
It was a war, and 'improvisation' would be expected as losses mount and access to resources were curtailed. The general thesis that the Nazis were fighting "ww1" style is not really a teneble notion. At all.
1. Hitler basically stalled and wrecked the jet fighter development, diverting its resources to developing a fairly ineffective jet bomber.
2. The cruise missiles and ballistic missiles contributed essentially nothing to the war effort, while consuming vast resources. They simply weren't accurate enough, and were misused as well (London was a political target, not a military one).
3. You're right about that, but U-Boots were big in WW1, too.
4. Hitler still put his faith in fixed fortifications, despite the success of his generals with mobile warfare.
There's no doubt that the German army had many forward thinking ideas. But I'm talking about Hitler overriding them and refighting WW1.
I think it's sadly obvious at this point what is going to happen: the inherited technology is going to require expert knowledge, and being able to constantly learn different complicated technology is simply too much to expect of most soldiers, sadly.
I think there are people who do want to work in the military, but more than that they want to know that they can complain. If you can't complain about your commander being a terrible leader, how on earth is shit supposed to get fixed? If you can't report incompetency, and it's not being effectively measured, how are any warnings going to be listened to?
Ironically, the cure is also a big fear: wikileaks. There needs to be a way to complain about failures in people as well as mechanical in an anonymous manner. It can't be seen as ratting or it won't work.
It needs to go from being a boys club to being autonomous units with high transparency and measured expectations. No more excuses, no more delays: if you can't train yourself in competency on the job, you will most likely never excel in it.
If anybody knows the government's reaction to the Peter principle besides mercenaries I'd love to hear it.
I almost completely agree with your post except for one tidbit: "... the lack of actual 'real' wars to train the leaders ...".
The US is almost continuously involved in plenty of wars. Afghanistan and Iraq surely have been big enough to train generals (a WWI/II scale war is luckily the exception rather than the rule), but the generals have been slow to adapt to a new type of enemy (insurgency vs. straight up battle against a conventional army) and a new way of fighting a war.
The excellent article quite eloquently makes the point that this kind of big scale thinking and adaption is exactly what a general needs to be able to do, and which the current system fails to promote.
There is something I don't understand: The US (or at least certain agencies) have been involved in creating or supporting insurgencies in different scenarios (even Afghanistan itself) for most of the post-WWII era. There has to be an enormous amount of experience dealing with para-military groups and a lot of examples of how not to deal with one, e.g. the Soviets in Afghanistan.
I would have expected that experience to pay off in the current situation. Either supporting an insurgency is radically different from combating it or all that knowledge is lost in the cracks between the different agencies conducting those operations.
I don't think Afghanistan and Iraq have been big enough to train generals. In fact, its less about the size of the wars than their nature. They're just not the kind of wars that general will be trained for. There is no front in Afghanistan. The war out there are much less about the military application of force than about the political restoration of nations. But the military is given the control of what's going on because of the poor security conditions. The Afghan and Iraqi theaters are 'distractions' to what the military are prepared to do.
Generals are trained, like the rest of the army, for conventional warfare, to protect the sovereignty of their nations should a full scale war take place. We could shift the focus of the training on counter-insurgency, but that would effectively train the whole army to responds to a single kind of problems: insurgency. Then the country itself would be left with an army that is unable to defend its sovereignty, but that is very good at throwing down weak governments and shutting down rebellions.
Generals, along their careers, are not primarily trained for counter-insurgency. Counter-insurgency is a spin-off of recent conflicts, but it's not the main goal of the military. Because of that, there's no sentiment that generals should go on a theater and take care of it until it's over. They just go in and fill the seat. The Afghans are well aware of this and it removes much credibility from our military : "You say that you will change things, but the guy before you said that, and in 6 months the next guy will say the same thing. I will still be there, and you will be back home. I will still be stuck in this conflict, and you will watch TV with your children and talk strategy about an eventual clash with China."
In a 'real' war, there's a sentiment of urgency, there's an actual threat. The generals, the army, MUST defeat the enemy or a _real_ defeat will take place. In a war like Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam, if they win or lose will not change much to their lives, except for the price of gas and some more or less fear in the airports. It's more complex than the price of oil, but the end result is that recent conflicts are pawn-moves in the current state of the world.
It's in that sense that I say recent wars are not big enough. They are not engaging enough to justify a shift in training, and they are not the type of war generals are mainly prepared for (thus the lessons they will get out of them are of limited apparent usefulness - although everybody thinks counter-insurgency is the big thing.)
I can see your point, but disagree with it. I would say that, as the article also asserts, it is the job of generals to adapt to new kinds of warfare. Saying that these are not "real wars" or "conventional wars" is pointless. In the end the generals have to be able to lead the military in whatever situation the political leaders and the global geopolitics put them in.
The US military is facing these kinds of insurgencies, because the enemy has adapted it's strategy: The Taliban are not stupid enough to engage the US in full on frontal assaults, because they'd lose.
Assuming that generals would only have to face a specific kind of conflict ("conventional" warfare) is a losing proposition. In fact, if you examine conventional wars more closely, you'll find that the way these have been fought has changed drastically from one to the next, and a military leadership that is not able to adapt to new kinds of war has a huge drawback. (For example, WWI was a trench war, a few years later, in WWII the method of warfare has completely changed, towards fast tank assaults and air raids. During the cold war area, a large scale tank battle in Europe was still a realistic threat, nowadays it's unthinkable. During the later part of the 20th century the US has had great success by relying on an almost invincible air force to exhaustively bomb the enemy before sending in any troops, ...).
As the main task of the US military nowadays seems to be less in territorial defense and more in engaging in "messy" wars similar to Afghanistan and Iraq, I think the leadership needs to adapt accordingly instead of waiting for the next war that fits their preconceived notion of what a war should be.
_Disclaimer_ : I only have an observer experience of the US Army (I went on tour in Afghanistan in a mixed US/Canada brigade), but my actual employment was in the Canadian Forces. I was on tour when Gen McChrystal was relieved and replaced by Gen Petraeus, and also when (CA) Gen Menard was relieved and replaced by Gen Vance.
1. In the early ranks of officers, promotions are very strongly linked to evaluation reports. Evaluation reports came to be very sanitize and politically corrected documents where you need a load of supporting documentation if you want to negatively score someone. If someone received an hypothetical score of 3 last year, you need very strong arguments if you want to reduce that score the year after. The system is somehow 'humanitarian' in that it believes that no one can become worse over time, and no one is incompetent. Also, there is a lot of 'political' pressure coming from relationships inside the military. I saw first hand some obviously incompetent Captain be promoted to the rank of Major, simply for political reasons. Somebody back in the country had plans back home for this officer, and this promotion was planned ahead of time (the officer had time in rank and was put in the position they were to give them some 'action' cred).
Put together with the fact that promotions are expected after certain specific check-in-the-boxes, this leads to the promotion of incompetent leaders on purely bureaucratic grounds. Eventually leading to a wider range of incompetent officers in the pool of Colonel in which Generals are chosen.
2. Recent wars are not related in 'danger factor' to what WWII has been. Nobody's in actual danger of having their family killed/their country harmed if they don't succeed in their missions oversea. Those missions are political disturbance of far away countries. They are, sadistically, good for the troops as they give them first hand experience with real combat - it's essential for an army to always have veterans in their ranks to train other members. If a generation of the army would go without seeing combat actions, the technical abilities of this army would quickly evaporate. In that regard, while recent conflicts provided combat experience to field personnel, they have not been of a large enough scale to train generals. Generals thus can't really become battle-hardened and provide hands-on experience while on tour.
Finally, the idea of doing a 'tour' when you're a general, like noted by the article. They come in theater with a vision (but often no general field experience, and sometimes even no field experience at all) and have only a few weeks/months to try out their vision and see what happens, and that's when they're actually on site and not back home dealing with politicians. Then regardless of the outcome, they are relieved and replaced by another general.