LESSONS UNLEARNED

Hubris in the British Army has caused too little concern for too long. This article lays down a challenge for those who share the fear that, behind the façade, all is not well in the British Army and has not been for some time. A popular Chinese proverb, often employed as a curse, invites its target to ‘live in interesting times’. The curse is being lived through today in Britain – a serious economic recession, withdrawal from Iraq, failing confidence in the route chosen in Afghanistan, and a fin de siècle government. Calls for an inquiry into the road to war in Iraq and its subsequent conduct are beginning to converge with an impending Strategic Defence Review, potentially led by an opposition party already choosing to make clear that all current big-ticket defence projects are open to review. The media criticism of the conduct of the UK's campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan is becoming increasingly perceptive and acute, and is all the more so in the absence of public reflection by the military on what it has done well at and badly at in both conflicts. Recent editorials in The Economist, in terms of both quality and quantity, illustrate this point all too clearly.Footnote1

The UK and its military are therefore at a critical moment – one in which an urge to protect individual (political and senior military) and collective legacies will either follow one of two routes. The route of least resistance is to pass blame for all shortcomings on to a lame duck government. The second option, in the case of the British Army specifically and defence more generally, is to turn the critical mirror on itself. This mirror will lead to an acknowledgement of shortcomings. It will demonstrate unequivocally a willingness to learn, pay the price of failings, and a determination to adapt. The first of these choices fits a public appetite for blaming this government; it is convenient and follows a well worn military tradition and narrative. What it will not do is begin the journey, through a recognition of the UK military's hubris over the last ten years, to recover the ground lost with other professional armies who are too used to having been preached at and biting their tongues. The second of these choices begins, and only begins, what may be a long and painful journey. It would be deeply uncomfortable for many senior officers – as it should be. It may, if mishandled, deflect some of the blame from government – but this is no excuse for failing in this critical exercise.

The Background

There is a more immediate backdrop to these reflections in this article which provides an obvious starting point. At the end of 2005, Brigadier Aylwin-Foster offered the US military in its own in-house publication, the Military Review, some searing insights into its culture, organisation and approach to operations in Iraq. Not only did the US military publish without amendment this blunt and no holds barred appraisal;Footnote2 not only was Aylwin-Foster invited to speak about it further to a high-level US conference on counter-insurgency; but it then published in the following edition of Military Review a surprisingly measured and considered response.Footnote3

At about the same time, a number of middle-ranking serving US Army officers began to give voice to their own fears for their institution. To what extent it was influenced by Brigadier Aylwin-Foster and other outsiders is difficult to ascertain. But what is now clear, however, is that in the period that followed from 2005 to the present day the US Army has undergone a quite remarkable transformation. It has been led by a minority of the senior leadership, encouraged by a previously ignored middle management layer, and coloured by an unusually strong understanding of how it was perceived by partners, allies and adversaries. Amongst the most prominent of those given voice was then Field Artillery Lieutenant Colonel, John Nagl, whose bookFootnote4 has since become the counter-insurgency primer. In it, he directly compared the culture and capacity for learning displayed by the British Army in Malaya and the US Army in Vietnam – by extension, it was a direct criticism of the dominant US Army culture. Indirectly, it had lessons about learning that the British Army should have been equally conscious of, but did not appear ready to reflect on. But more trenchant still was an article by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling, another serving officer, on the failings of his senior leadership, entitled ‘A Failure of Generalship’.Footnote5 The consequence of this movement was a significant internal blood letting exercise at the highest levels of the US Army, recognising that its existing culture did not produce officers attuned to the demands of counter-insurgency. This led to a turnabout in almost every aspect of the US Army's performance in Iraq.

The long-term impact of the change in the US approach in Iraq and Afghanistan, is, of course, still unclear and remains the subject of enormous speculation. Indeed there may be some in the UK content to see it falter, because to see it succeed so obviously challenges the whole UK military approach to both theatres. But this should not overshadow just how difficult it is to do what General Petraeus and others have sought to do to the US Army. Yet the reality appears to be that none of these different themes – whether the confidence to accept external criticism, the courage to publicise painful internal reflection, the momentum built up by more junior officers for change – seem to have counterparts of such significance in the UK. The preparedness to accept external criticism, such as that most obviously voiced by Aylwin-Foster, contrasts uncomfortably with the absence of any such exchange of views in British professional literature. When was an equally critical appraisal of the UK military by an American or European officer last published in the British Army Review or any other British defence publication? The answer is never. However, cracks in the façade, as indicated by General David Richards in a recent Channel 4 documentary,Footnote6 suggest the state of denial is changing at last. But this does not explain why a process, underway in the US Army for the last four years, has had so little impact on the British Army for so long.

This paper attempts, albeit briefly, to explore these issues, fleshing out the principal charges, before offering one view as to how matters might be improved. It seeks to do so by first exploring the importance of perspective before examining the ‘why’; in this case, a climate for command and communication has not enabled the sort of radical adaptation required. It then concludes with some measures meant to revitalise the internal reflexive capability of the British Army, by making fundamental improvements to its culture and thereby to its ability to understand itself, and how it is perceived by friends and allies.

Searching for New Perspectives

Generations of US and European partners have grown up with the notion developed inside the British Army that it had more to teach than it had to learn. Generations too of foreign students at the UK Staff College have grown accustomed to the little or no interest paid to their own experiences, and still less to their unique perspective on the British approach. One has to wonder therefore what might be written by a foreign observer, if invited to produce an Aylwin-Foster type critique. It could be drawn from what an overseas officer might have been taught at the UK Staff College, what he or she might have understood from UK colleagues on operations, and what is all too readily available in open sources.Footnote7 Whatever the sources, it is clearly apparent that they would not be short of material. They might look at equipment procurement, doctrine, cross-government co-operation, officer education, training, structures, the selection of senior officers – the list could go on.

One example of the sort of external observer to whom one might go for an illuminating external perspective is Lieutenant Colonel Brian Mennes, the previous commanding officer of US Task Force 1/Fury in 2007, an 82^nd Airborne Division battalion, and now commander of a Ranger battalion. Not only was he already an extremely experienced operator even before his battalion's deployment to Afghanistan, but by the time of the operation to re-take Musa Qala, he and his battalion had amassed unrivalled counter-insurgency experience across Afghanistan. This included having worked for two British brigade commanders prior to the arrival 52 Brigade and Brigadier Mackay. His role in Operation Snakebite gave him a quite unique vantage point, exposed, as he was, to the workings of Task Force Helmand, and to its subordinate (but his peer) battle groups. Whilst extensively and informatively interviewed by Stephen Grey for his book on Operation Snakebite, no process of critical debrief was undertaken by the UK. Indeed, suggestions to the UK Operational Lessons Identified and Post Operational Interview staffsFootnote8 that Colonel Mennes was the ideal candidate to draw out some of these unique perspectives were not followed. The comment was made that the organisation was so busy gathering UK perspectives that it lacked the resources irrespective of how much more valuable, in a relative sense, such an external perspective might be.

At a more strategic level, Thomas Ricks's account in The Gamble of two advisers appointed to Generals Petraeus and Odierno is salutary. One adviser, a British woman, Emma Sky, simply cannot imagine a British Army general having space or appetite for her approach. Yet a closer analogy still is to imagine a senior British officer employing a foreign national, most obviously a US civilian, as his main adviser – surely an even less likely proposition. The other adviser is Sadi Othman: an ex-taxi driver, Palestinian-Jordanian by upbringing, born in Brazil, and re-naturalised as an American. He was undoubtedly key to the way that Petraeus thought about and engaged with his Iraqi counterparts. Again, as with Sky, it is not easy to imagine a British pro-consul employing a figure with such a background, and then promoting them against considerable resistance to such an influential position as that held by Othman.

To conclude this brief reflection on the importance of external perspectives, it is worth pondering John Nagl's recent comments to Stephen Grey about the British Army:Footnote9

John Nagl forms part of a rather unusual cohort of middle ranking military authors, along with Thomas Hammes and David Kilcullen,Footnote10 all of whom appear to have had significant influence in the development of new US doctrine and the change in its underlying culture. If one accepts this, and acknowledges that the UK has not managed to produce any published officers of a similar rank or influence, then it follows that his comments above should be taken very seriously indeed. These comments, if accepted, make a significant contribution to what William Owen, a regular contributor to the British Army Review, describes as the ‘comforting myths that sustain the glib and unreflective’.Footnote11They are part of a perspective, currently unwelcome, that needs to be more systematically addressed. In the absence of meaningful internal debate, external perspectives are as good a tool as any.

The Epicentre: Command Climate

The Chief of the General Staff's frequent controversial comments to the press on overstretch and valuing the nation's soldiers will seem to many external observers to represent a useful pressure valve.Footnote12 Equally, the steady outbursts by retired senior officers on similar issues will also come across as not unwelcome.Footnote13 But, crucially, they do not deal with or reflect the root causes of pressures that appear to have built up. Most importantly, there seems to be a feeling amongst middle tier officers that they are not listened to, are largely expendable and that their own hierarchy does not adequately reflect their concerns. This contrasts markedly with the very direct criticism by US officers of their own leaders’ ‘generalship’, where in Paul Yingling's article the hierarchy is accused of failing to deliver on its responsibilities to Congress and the state, and requires significant reform as a body to be fit for purpose.Footnote14 By contrast, in and amongst the noise generated by retired senior officers sounding off about resource shortages, there has been too little equivalent internal reflection on and acknowledgement of these same issues of command and hierarchy.

This is an issue at the very heart of the British Army's view of itself, and of what style or environment it believes will be most militarily productive. As with a number of issues, it is generally assumed that its friends and allies envy the UK military's command style and climate. Certainly, the UK often expects commanders at all levels to make full use of the latitude given them, something often assumed absent in other armed forces. It is also the case that the relationship between officers and NCOs in the British Army is widely admired, for generally producing a very effective command climate at unit level. But this is where much of it ends, for there is just as much anecdotal evidence that at more senior levels effective communication becomes more, not less, difficult. Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal's description of ‘…senior officers trying to perhaps dilute the objective raw military advice’Footnote15 is sadly telling in this respect. Language in briefing becomes more bland and insipid, and in particular relies on extensive euphemism, leading to great difficulty in communicating the undesirable. The way in which formal questions to visitors are controlled at Staff College offers some insight as to how this looks in practice. Middle ranking officers, albeit Staff College trained and highly experienced, have been directed quite threateningly to ‘stay in your lane’ in their dealings with media, indicating a quite extraordinarily defensive attitude by senior military officers who paradoxically do not have remotely the equivalent operational experience that their subordinates have amassed over the last eight years. In another example, the Chief of the General Staff told journalist Stephen Grey that only senior officers with a specific level of experience were equipped to properly interpret the judgement of a Board of Inquiry into the death of Captain Jim Phillipson in 2006, a statement that may have caused disquiet amongst those who have had to take similar risks.Perhaps of still greater concern than the deterioration in the ability to ‘communicate the unwelcome’ is the sense that the British Army's ability to manage a system full of aggressive and ambitious commanders seems to be struggling. In places there are indicators of the presence of symptoms associated in the US with ‘toxic leadership’. The key characteristic of this term is that destructive styles of leadership in a hierarchy are tolerated over the short term because they produce immediate results in spite of their harm.Footnote16 Almost every officer serving or retired has examples of seriously ‘toxic’ commanders, who have bred deeply dysfunctional command climates, and yet have seen their careers sail on undisturbed. With no systematic approach to its eradication, such as a robust 360° appraisal system, a climate that encourages the ambitious to mimic these behaviours is sustained. There is little wonder that external observers could be forgiven for believing that this is as much a problem in the UK as it is anywhere.

The processes meant to govern and manage complex decision-making, policy formulation, and doctrine writing are equally under pressure. The UK staffing system, by process and culture, is one in which documents travel along complicated web-like chains of command, hitting repeated road blocks, and suffering delays. Senior officers are capable at any stage of reversing the advice of their staff. On occasion, this is paralysing. It has certainly been partly the cause of the tortuous gestation of the UK's own counter-insurgency doctrine – in contrast to the extraordinarily brief staffing process required to write and endorse the US equivalent. The outcome of this climate and associated processes is what business describes as ‘destructive consent’Footnote17 and is the antithesis of an organisation so proud of its conversion to and adoption of mission command.

The final issue in this section is that of senior officer performance. Again, there are worrying historical parallels, as well as contemporary parallels, with the US Army. In the UK, outside commentators have expressed doubts as to the rectitude of senior officers too busy pursuing the next rung on the ladder to speak out with sufficient conviction and vigour to have an impact,Footnote18 whilst at the same time internally nothing is said or done. A process of Darwinian selection has typically occurred inside all successful armies at senior officer level during conflict. Any military historian will be able to identify large numbers of senior officers during the Second World War who were found wanting and sacked. Equally, any serving middle ranking officer will know of commanders at sub unit level and below who have been relieved of command, or (more euphemistically) ‘short toured’. But few will have evidence of the same process applying at senior officer level today. So should external observers really be expected to believe that this adaptive process, a historical reality regardless of how well selection and training has improved since the Second World War, and which has affected the US Army,Footnote19 is not applicable to the British Army of today?

Consider these strands together and it is impossible not to conclude that there have been, and still are, serious systemic shortcomings in the system. It should be impossible for the senior leadership to ignore this strongly held perception, not least since it is one increasingly played out in the media, and is therefore all too evident to external observers.Footnote20 It has led to a command climate in which bad news is routinely camouflaged and where the ability of junior officers to influence a future which they will be inheriting is distinctly limited. It is one described by Tim Collins as one in which ‘obsequious behaviour by career-conscious senior officers on the ground’Footnote21 contributes to a sadly muddled picture in Whitehall. Being unable to accept being submerged, their views diluted or just unheard, many of the more talented officers will probably have been long lost to the armed forces altogether through departure to less stratified civilian employment. It is certainly not unusual to hear UK contemporaries express the view that there are no heretics left, few non-conformists and not enough original thinkers. And since the British Army monitors only its quantitative losses in manpower, it simply has no feel for how much of its quality has left prematurely. There is meanwhile a smug satisfaction that in the teeth of a recession it knows that the numbers are fine, but this cannot hide what many middle ranking officers and ex-officers know is the truth – far too many high quality officers have in fact left for precisely the reasons described above.

In summary, a range of observed phenomena gives rise for concern. The current climate, with themes of deteriorating communication, intolerance of dissent, tolerance of toxicity, poorly designed processes and perceived tolerance of inadequate senior officer performance, is a real obstacle to learning and adapting. It plagues the UK military every bit as it does many other militaries. The climate needs redressing urgently.

The Response

The US Army's response to its cultural and institutional problems required the coming together of some very unusual circumstances: a retired four-star general, Jack Keane, able to circumvent the chain of command; a growing groundswell of opinion amongst middle ranking US officers that neither the strategy nor the tactics on the ground were coherent and consistent with each other; enough space for middle ranking officers to experiment successfully (McMaster in Tal Afar); and a willingness by key senior officers to reach out, accept and absorb external criticism, and react to it with real despatch. The key catalyst in this endeavour was the role played by General Petraeus: most evidently his humility in reaching out, his confidence in accepting and embracing debate, and his wisdom in harnessing what his more junior officers now understood on the ground. And so a set of questions for the British experience arises: if the British Army has now reached, or perhaps passed, an analogous crisis point, how should it respond? Even more critically, what can it do to ensure that a crisis point, borne of an insular culture, a belief in its ‘omniscience and rectitude’,Footnote22 is never reached at any future point?

There are solutions available that will help ameliorate the situation now and begin to cure it over the long term, and that are far beyond the ‘reversible’ tinkering that the British Army is currently involved in (Operation Entirety Footnote23). Some of this tinkering will be productive and should be welcomed, particularly within the training domain – but it has avoided looking more critically at how it has taken so long to arrive at its principal conclusions, and is therefore insufficient. The most significant missing piece is the view from the outside in. The British Army and the defence sector need to encourage writing on the strengths and weaknesses of British strategy, tactics and doctrine from unique foreign perspectives – whether from UK-based exchange and liaison officers, operationally subordinate attached commanders or the overseas student population. Regardless of it being an experienced one-star general writing after immersion in a UK HQ, unit commanders (the Lieutenant Colonel Brian Mennes for example) who have served inside UK formations, or officers at OF3-level writing after the Advanced Command and Staff Course, is not the issue – all should be welcome and encouraged. Re-invigorating the standard of critical writing in our professional journals would be another piece of the jigsaw. The editors of the British Army Review and the Navy Review recently reflected in print a comparison of the relative strengths and weaknesses of their publications. Both agreed that British Army Review showed a slightly greater degree of ‘institutional rectitude’Footnote24 than its naval companion. This needs to be re-cast as a matter of urgency. The next part of the puzzle is solved by demanding more from the army's own liaison and exchange posts spread across the UK's friends and allies. This could go further than it does in encouraging greater interest in developments abroad in doctrine, structures, training and technology. The army can also generate and invigorate ‘red teams’Footnote25 from the brightest and best Intermediate Command and Staff Course graduates (land, air, and maritime), designed to engage the senior commanders of the next decade more formally in the validation of concepts and policy. Equally, ‘red teams’ of sub unit commanders immediately after operational tours may provide Permanent Joint Headquarters with far better qualitative analysis than any they receive from their deployed formation staffs – an equivalent to the US Council of Colonels, but set as a Council of Majors. Additionally, the US practice of employing retired officers also seems to offer some merits. Whether as used as mentors or conscience, they must be radically minded. A career spent as a conformist will not be a qualification for this position. Officer education must also be overhauled, shifting emphasis towards developing the educational base for war amongst the people. In this context, which will not disappear soon, sociology, social anthropology and international development should all become critical military disciplines. In concert, every young officer should be invited to study a language at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and formally associate with a region to pursue as a career-long speciality. Finally, it is time that 360° appraisals were introduced. Toxicity in command structures, brought about by commanders ill-suited for their roles, is something the army can no longer afford – particularly in a world where the softer skills of being able to operate successfully in such complex human terrain (reconcilables and irreconcilables, accidental guerrillas,Footnote26 sceptical military partners, suspicious civilian development organisations – and so on) is so paramount.Put together, these new steps would help challenge orthodoxies and, above all, reform a flagging institutional culture that has been too slow to adapt to present challenges. They would offer an environment in which competing philosophies, strategies, processes and structures would flourish. In short, a creative tension should exist at the heart of the British Army, in which orthodoxies survive only under great and continuous pressure. ‘Constructive dissent’ would be allowed to play a fuller part whilst ‘destructive consent’Footnote27 would be bred out. And in this regard, the conformism of much military writing would be erased. Continuous re-invention is a difficult solution for any regular military to accept, even if it works for some commercial brands. The sustained dynamism required to survive and succeed in tomorrow's environment is the single greatest challenge that faces the British military, and it demands an intellectual integrity that currently evades it. Hiding behind tradition is no answer. In short, if the British Army wishes to recover its former pre-eminence, it must stop evangelising and start reflecting more deeply on the outsiders’ view. ▪