learning organisations

some lessons

A fellow I met several years ago runs a not-for-profit inside the Beltway. I have seen his organisation’s effect over the past seven years so when asked me to speak to his group this evening., I was honoured. It’s a commemoration of World War II which I find too little studied as we recede from the occurrence. I have given much thought to my remarks because speaking ought meet the inviter’s target rather than my own interests at a given moment. He asked me how we use history to teach leadership.

We look back on World War II as one of the most glorious events in our history, after the Pearl Harbor attack. We waged a two pronged, simultaneous war along two massive fronts halfway around the world from each other and from us. Sure, we sequenced campaigns and deployments so the efforts would be effective. We also worked closely with our allies, particularly the British.

The British part was not always smooth.

Not everyone in the United States was happy about the Franklin and Winston show as British interests did not coincide with our own. No two nations have absolutely the same priorities and concerns, much less instruments to achieve the aims. Franklin Roosevelt, however, was the Commander-in-Chief and Chief Executive who acquesced to Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s desire to keep Britain independent from Nazi threat for our interests. Analyses deemed that the most important step, regardless of the anti-British feelings of Admiral Ernest King or some of the Army generals, was focusing on rolling back the Nazi threat from northern Africa, then Italy, then France. Churchill, of course, hoped to preserve the massive British Empire but he could not do that if Germany defeated Britain. In good, professional chain-of-command fashion, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall put aside any personal preferences to give his best advice to Roosevelt, then execute the president’s choices.

Great Britain never recovered fully from World War I. The twentieth century saw an inexorable decline in Britain’s global power, with the threats from 1940 to 1945 most overt but not unique. It was, undoubtedly, the ‘junior’ partner regardless of the rhetoric to the contrary.

What Britain did have, among other things, was a military that coordinated effectively in preparation for staff talks with the United States. The war planning required more than two dozen many major meetings between the leaders, whether the Arcadia Conference (1941), or their staffs. Most were primarily military but envisioning the post-war world required civilians as well. Britain often proved far more savvy in presenting its case as a unified one while Washington struggled for many reasons.

As the war concluded and the Truman administration focused on the post-war environment, Generals Dwight Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander and in subsequent positions, along with General Marshall in his several capacities, noted how poorly the United States performed vis-a-vis our British cousins. U.S. Army and Navy officers were ignorant of the other service’s capabilities. The Navy was stovepiped alone into that Surface, Submarine, and Naval Aviation communities who distrusted each other. At the time, there was no separate U.S. Air Force but its long evolution towards a separate service created its own tensions within this environment.

The lesson of the war planning meeting, thus, was that we had mass and we had money. Those resources were luxuries Britain did not have but they did have to strength of putting aside service rivalries and prioritising to extract their desires in the planning sessions. Marshall and Eisenhower, among others, noted we had much work to do to assure the United States could assert its priorities in the newly emerging post-war world (the one we monotonously discuss as the Liberal World Order).

The National War College, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and the Armed Forces Staff College were the children of Eisenhower’s and Marshall’s concerns. All created or recast, as the Army Industrial College expanded its role to a broader government clientele, as three institutions to develop the leaders of the national security community through understanding within our own system far better and creating opportunities for disperate segments of our government to co-mingle for an educational experience. History played an important role in all three curricula.

The institutions, however, built on learning from what we were not doing well, it at all. Our leaders had the self-confidence to apply the traditional military responsibility of an honest assessment of strengths and weaknesses in the existing operations and organisations. Each of the new schools had a distinctive mission related to national security strategy, preparing leaders with specific skills and approaches.

The Industrial College of the Armed Forces, constituted in 1924, built on lessons from World War I about the logistics of overseas conflicts. General Eisenhower actually sericed simultaenously as a student and faculty member at the prior Army Industrial College in the 1930s. The National War College began educating the future leaders of the services and select civilian agencies on national security strategy as no one else was doing that. The Armed Forces Staff College focused on assignments in staff positions at intermediate level grades in various operational assignments.

The three institutions formed the basis to the National Defense University created three decades after the war as an administrative structure to leverage the institutions’ similarities. The Goldwater-Nichols Reform of 1986 added additional goals to these institutions’ responsibilities as did civilian accreditation in the 1990s.

Eighty years ago we saw the stakes high enough to ask, then employ the lessons we learned. We are no longer learning lessons, it seems. Everything in our society appears sui generis: the only instance of something. We don’t want often enough studied what has happened to others. We like citing anecdotes as if that were history by itself. Americans have always focused on the future rather than the past; it is who we are and we don’t like to study others much of the time.

It’s unfortunate we don’t use history to help us address the challenges ahead. Americans, however, have always viewed the past as something distracting from moving ahead, not appliable for our needs. I am not sure that is because we don’t teach it well or because we don’t like hearing that something proceeded us in the world. We also are not keen to hear about failures but after World War II we decided through these institutions that learning about some failures was vital to preparing leaders. Studying them would prevent repeating them, we hoped.

We are amazing at learning when we set our minds to it but we appear discarding that tradition. At our peril, I fear.

I look forward to hearing the reaction by the audience this evening. Their feedback as citizens will offer me more perspective on why and how we look to solving problems but, as former Secretary of Defense James Mattis said throughout his career, there is nothing new out there. I would add, except context. But if you don’t know any history, can you really understand the context you are in? I am not sure.

Thank you for reading Actions Create Consequences today and any day. Please feel free to stack this to anyone you think would enjoy it. Thank those of you who subscribe as your support inspires.

The days are cooling and the light softening. A couple of photographs from our Eastport walkabout today. Be well and be safe. FIN