Wider Officer Competence: the Importance of Politics and Practical

Article Armed Forces & Society 2019, Vol. 45(1) 59-77 ª The Author(s) 2017 Wider Officer Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17737498 Competence: The journals.sagepub.com/home/afs Importance of Politics and Practical Wisdom Carsten F. Roennfeldt1 Abstract Identifying and developing officer competence is important to a nation’s security and a crucial attribute of a legitimate military establishment. Critics have claimed that the U.S. officer corps favors a narrow conception of expertise that limits the armed forces’ utility as an instrument of policy. Drawing from the dialogue between Huntington and Janowitz, as well as Aristotle’s notion of practical wisdom, this article proposes a wider understanding of officer competence consisting of four distinct conceptual categories. The U.S. defense establishment favors “military skill” over other categories of competence. As a result, the officer corps is poorly pre- pared for 21st-century warfare. To remedy this situation, professional military education should cultivate military leaders that, in addition to military skill, have sociopolitical competence and practical wisdom. In this context, this article suggests strategies to develop such competencies that officers need to be able to achieve a diversity of national political goals. Keywords military profession, Huntington, Aristotle, practical wisdom, phronesis, politics, civil–military relations, professional military education 1 Norwegian Military Academy, Oslo, Norway Corresponding Author: Carsten F. Roennfeldt, Norwegian Military Academy, Utfartsveien 2, Oslo 0593, Norway. Email: [email protected] 60 Armed Forces & Society 45(1) Introduction This article proposes a conceptual framework to discuss a question of fundamental importance to national security: What proficiencies do U.S. military leaders need to serve the nation’s political goals? The U.S. officer corps’ conventional concept of competence is framed by Huntington’s (1964) phrase: “the peculiar skill of the officer is the management of violence” (p. 13, see Nielsen & Snider, 2009, pp. 295–298). In an era where “[w]inning in war ...is an inherently civil-military task” (McMaster, 2015, p. 11), this understanding is insufficient. Still, Cohen (2002) finds that a “simplified Huntingtonian conception of military professionalism remains the dominant view with the American defense establishment” (p. 229). He argues this view has reduced U.S. military leaders’ utility as an instrument of foreign policy because it portrays their proficiency as technical expertise, indepen- dent from the particular sociopolitical context they are called on to influence (pp. 242–243). To prepare the U.S. Armed Forces to meet 21st-century security challenges, many have taken issue with this conventional notion of officer competence (Sha- dlow & Lacquement, 2009; Stavridis, Rokke, & Pierce, 2016). Commandant of the U.S. Army War College, Major General Rapp (2015) maintains this notion has frequently steered the officer corps wrong in the practical tasks of making and implementing contemporary national security strategies with their civilian counter- parts. He holds Huntington’s separation of the military and civilian spheres in national security policy appeals to U.S. officers, because it delimits their area of responsibility to the former sphere. According to Warren (2015), it has also culti- vated a centurion-mindset in the U.S. Army, making the army “capable of winning nearly every firefight” (p. 28) but unable to achieve political objectives. A U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff related report finds that the country’s armed forces operate well in a force-on-force paradigm but that this is poorly suited to the kinds of wars that have challenged national security since September 11, 2001 (U.S. Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis, 2012, pp. 1, 7, 19–21). In the same vein, Feaver (2011) calls for a different kind of officer expertise and notes in reference to U.S. shortcomings in Iraq since 2003 that “most of the problems resulted from inaccurate judgments about how the ...[w]ar would unfold” (p. 123). Such poor judgments reflect post– World War II deficiencies in U.S. military professionalism associated with an increase in anti-intellectualism and a decrease in strategic mindedness. This, Kohn (2009) argues, constitutes a daunting challenge to national security and calls for reforms in the way the U.S. trains and develops military leader competence. However, what kind of competency the U.S. officer corps needs to succeed in the future remains unclear. For the past two decades, professional debates have brought attention to a myriad of unconventional challenges and demands being placed upon commanders at all levels during missions (Krulak, 1999; Mattis & Hoffman, 2005). U.S. military doctrines and policy documents list a host of relevant skill sets for officers, as the ability to cooperate with civilians in multiagency and multinational Roennfeldt 61 Table 1. An Analytical Framework for a Wider Conception of Officer Competence. Military Sphere Sociopolitical Sphere Technical skill Category 1: military skill Category 3: sociopolitical skill Practical wisdom Category 2: military wisdom Category 4: sociopolitical wisdom operations abroad (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, p. i), the ability to operate beyond the physical battleground and across multiple domains, including public perception (U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, 2014, p. iv) and the ability to think critically and creatively (U.S. Military Academy, 2015, p. 3). Seen through the lens of the conventional notion of officer competence, the breadth and complex- ity of such expectations are overwhelming and their relevance contested; hence, there is a risk that a conventional-minded officer corps will fall back on the management of violence as its approach in future conflicts. To break this futile cycle, alternatives to the conventional conception should be explored. As a contribution to this end, this article proposes a simple framework to map out a wider understanding of officer competence (see Table 1). Table 1 consists of four conceptually distinct analytical categories produced from the Huntington–Janowitz dialogue on civil–military relations, particularly whether officers should be politically sensitive, and Aristotle’s distinction between technical skill and practical wisdom as different forms of competence. Based on the above- mentioned critics and doctrinal demands, I argue that the U.S. defense establishment focuses on Category 1, omitting the three other forms of proficiency officers need to succeed in 21st-century warfare. This article begins by theoretically clarifying notions of the military profession and of competence, respectively, before it combines them to produce the four distinct analytical concepts of officer competence. These concepts are then used to illustrate how the notions can serve as mental constructs to further understanding of professional expertise beyond the conventional concept. Finally, this article suggests methods for cultivating wider officer competence. The Huntington–Janowitz Dialogue on the Military Profession The conventional concept of officer competence is a function of Huntington’s (1964) main thesis in civil–military relations theory: objective civilian control. He argues that for an armed force to be both militarily efficient and under strict political control, it must operate largely autonomously from the civilian sphere, yet accept subordination to the government. The government should seek advice from the highest executive military level, set the goals for the war, and then leave it to the military executives to efficiently achieve those goals. To that end, he conceptualizes a particular understanding of the military profession defined by three main 62 Armed Forces & Society 45(1) characteristics: the expertise, the responsibility, and the corporate character of offi- cership. It is the first of these that encompasses Huntington’s seminal understanding of officer competence. The profession’s quintessential expertise is the management of violence, he claims. Huntington (1964, pp. 9, 14) does mention the importance of a liberal arts education to broaden officers’ minds, but this is of mere auxiliary utility to the technical and instrumental abilities required in his picture of the military profession: “The function of a military force is successful armed combat ...The direction, operation, and control of a human organization whose primary function is the appli- cation of violence is the peculiar skill of the officer” (Huntington, 1964, p. 11). The military profession’s primary responsibility is the military security of society. This implies “that [officers’] skill can only be utilized for purposes approved by society through its political agent, the state” (Huntington, 1964, pp. 15–16). This idea is crucial to the profession’s ethical rationale and constitutes the foundation of its legitimacy maintained by the state’s monopoly on commissioning officers. Hun- tington’s (1964) final characteristic promotes the idea that officers “share a sense of ...consciousness of themselves as a group apart from laymen” (p. 10). While indispensable to objective civilian control, this corporateness of the military profession is the most controversial, since it prescribes the separation of civilian and military spheres. Huntington’s (1964) ideal is an officer corps that is “immune to politics” (p. 464). He is certainly aware that military decisions at

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