Comments

## Comments ### Comment by LouJo 🇬🇧 on 2022-01-05 09:44:57 +0000 Really great read- very well written and hits the nail on the head with the direction of travel. Well done to the author for writing it. (Twitter comment) ### Comment by Stonker on 2022-01-06 09:17:32 +0000 Happy New Year. And to kick off 2022 on this thread – latest from Wavell Room seems to be a good fit for this discussion (ARRSE comment) ### Comment by Cold_Collation on 2022-01-06 09:49:31 +0000 By God, that went on. It was even more turgid than some of my posts. The fundamental problem in terms of leadership is that the values espoused need to be being demonstrably exhibited by those at the top. (ARRSE comment) ### Comment by twentyfirstoffoot on 2022-01-06 10:25:42 +0000 Possibly a major improvement would be to take the Wavell Room offline for a decade or so. One of the Army’s flaws is pseudo intellectuals espousing the minutiae of vague theory bent out of shape to fit their particular argument thus over complicating what is nothing more than simple management tasks. Leadership has developed into a bit of corporate mythology. It is a very rare officer who finds themselves in a situation where they are required to lead. A good 80% of their careers they will be nowhere near close proximity with soldiers, even on Regimental Duties. Most of their role at RD can be delivered effectively by maintaining and demonstrating the highest personal standards. Real leadership, that required in moments of immediate unexpected high levels of stress or during extended periods of arduous conditions comes from within and can be neither taught or rehearsed, but can be reinforced by strength of character and an unshakeable sense of Duty. (ARRSE comment) ### Comment by Alamo on 2022-01-06 12:19:16 +0000 Anything that offers James Blunt as an example of the right man, in the right place at the right time lacks credibility. (ARRSE comment) ### Comment by TamH70 on 2022-01-06 12:23:26 +0000 Well, he kinda was. If all that’s been said (not by him but by others) in his role at Pristina Airport is true, that is. (ARRSE comment) ### Comment by Cold_Collation on 2022-01-06 12:43:57 +0000 That piece did seem to need to throw as many examples at the point to 1) make them stick and 2) prove that the author had read widely. It wandered (wondered?) all over. (ARRSE comment) ### Comment by Nigel Jordan-Barber on 2022-01-10 14:08:09 +0000 An excellent and really focussed article on the risk that the future structure of the Army May create the conditions for moral failure. I think that it’s a strong article making strong points. Some areas could do with a refine, but I think it’s fit. the British Armed Forces’ understanding of leadership is seriously limited. Not going to argue against this. Army Leadership Doctrine is good, but there is a risk that it allows box ticking: good leadership is expected and if seen then it is assumed. what follows is
1. performative leadership – particularly on social media (there’s a whole thread on coins waiting to emerge); and
2. paying lip service to the dogma without the depth of leadership.
the examples that are cited are mostly extreme but I’m not going to challenge them each (Powell and McChrystal as war criminals; Rommel as representative of the clean Wehrmacht) and makes the really good point of Arendt about the banality of evil / Eichmann – that while we might not have an Eichmann lurking in us, his motivations were simple: self image; promotion; demonstrating success; and complacency. Performative staff work – getting stuff done, and the rewards for getting stuff done – as an allegory that’s quite useful, but Eichmann was a highly motivated Nazi, was an architect of the final solution, and Arendt’s representation was / is as vulnerable as Liddell Hart (in my opinion) as not challenging the self-delusion and other pathologies of the subject, but the point stands: the conditions for moral failure were set by the machine. The contemporary examples are ok – but, again, they’re extreme: the real banality of evil can be seen in the widely reported behaviours in 2003–05 in Iraq: what were the conditions then? what I took most from this article is plus ca change. This quote is taken from a study written in the year I joined the Army. The Army appears not to have a comprehensive understanding of society, or the basis of good civil-military relations beyond normal PR activities needs to develop its understanding of civ-mil relations, promote an understanding of its values system, and justify its performance amongst the wider public. Then it will be able to argue … its right to be different on really important values and practices. Plus ca change so what to do?
1. Moral / ethical leadership training must run through all leaders careers. Is there enough? How highly do we value it that we don’t even ask in place of what??
2. dispense of the performative bollocks; and
3. engage with our nation.
I have not really seen the way that the Armed Forces and Army has been able to argue convincingly and confidently its right to be different on really important values and practices but internally we’ve convinced ourselves of our exceptionalism without fully analysing it. that perception of exceptionalism contributes to moral failure: no one understands what we do therefore they’ll never understand what we have to do; and then borne out by our outpouring of sympathy for moral failure because the machine, set the conditions I recommend the following books if you’ve come this far: * East West Street by @philippesands * Achilles in Vietnam by Dr Jonathan Shay * How Democracies Lose Small Wars by Gil Merom * Ethics, Law and Military Operations by @davidwhetham (Ed) * And the plus ca change paper: Value, Values and The British Army, A Seminar Report Edited by Patrick Mileham The opening comments are worth copying below: > The British Army is having to face a period of great change and it has realised the need for some fundamental re- thinking of its position on many matters, before it can make firm plans for its future. A central premise of social enquiry is that self-knowledge is a fruitful prelude to better understanding by others. A premise of rational planning is that change occurs at all levels, and at different rates, whether or not one prepares for it. Since at least the eighteenth century, notions of change, context and complexity have played central roles in problem analysis. But the current rates of change in complex issues prevent accurate prediction, except in the short term. This means that long term strategies and the configurations for implementing them are increasingly difficult to devise. (Twitter comments) ### Comment by Gareth Sutton on 2022-01-10 23:44:15 +0000 This is truly well written and seems to be an accurate reflection of so many other micro-threads. The one thing the Armed Forces can’t afford, for want of reputational destruction, is a moral deficit. (Twitter comment) ### Comment by PewseyWelch on 2022-01-11 07:09:23 +0000 A barrack room discussion, well articulated. 20yrs of the best resourced (allied) partnering imaginable saw abject failure and our ignominious withdrawl. Yet we restructure for more dubious efforts with much less resource. Thank god for a new beret & badge! #emporersnewclothes (Twitter comment) ### Comment by Ollie Kingsbury on 2022-01-13 23:43:40 +0000 Some really important points in here Too much idolisation of an Achilles-ideal generally in western militaries. Leads to the end justifies the means, tactical victory as metric of success, and glorification of combat arms. I personally think this @wavellroom article tries to join a few too many dots, but Cassandra’s key points are bold and powerful. Strong work in putting your head over the parapet! Tim Challans’s Awakening Warrior and Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America are essential reading, on the same subject (Twitter comment) ### Comment by SO2 Plausible Deniability on 2022-01-14 08:03:55 +0000 Whether you agree or not, this is a well argued piece about the irrelevance of individual traits, a lack of accountability and what that means for the performance of our troops in future deployments. For me, individual leadership is important because over time, it’s how the macro situation is changed. Striking the balance between the judgement of hindsight and operational necessity is hard, but not impossible and I believe a descent into moral failure is not inevitable. But if Cassandra is reading this; great effort; I hope the debate is generated and continued. This is the sort of article we should read more of, talk more about and encourage more like it. (Twitter comment) ### Comment by ARubbishBot on 2022-01-15 08:39:31 +0000 I thought this was an excellent article. The phrase its systems, not people, is one that has real cut through – and it’s not just the military: how many of our public institutions have failed because of their systems and structures, regardless of the good people in them? (Twitter comment) ### Comment by Borja Álvarez on 2022-01-15 12:52:10 +0000 An extremely interesting and well-written read for those with any interest in what the future might bring for defence in the UK in connection with international law, particularly humanitarian law. (Twitter comment) ### Comment by Mar Charbel on 2022-01-15 15:05:20 +0000 Secretive towards society or secretive towards the state? Two different things (Twitter comment) ### Comment by Sönke Marahrens on 2022-01-16 12:38:07 +0000 The dark side of #lethality (Twitter comment) ### Comment by The Securocrat on 2022-01-16 15:04:32 +0000 A couple of interesting articles recently from @wavellroom which are worth reading, but include some odd claims and analysis. The first _appears_ to be about leadership and oversight of unconventional activity, but is rather muddled. It opens with this eyebrow-raising footnote on men who could be called war criminals. Kissinger’s record is well-known, but on Powell and McChrystal, this is simplistic analysis, to say the least. There was plenty of on Powell when he died last year. The Guardian – no friend of U neo-conservatives or the second Bush administration – probably summed up the UN controversary well here. Suffice to say he wilfully lied to go to war is the sort of student politics hand-waving that belongs to Stop the War rallies, rather than the more human (and useful) study of how governments make decisions that Iraq provides. As for McChrystal, first of all, it wasn’t his surge in Iraq: he was the special operations commander, and Petraeus was the author of the surge. Second, the reference to death squads in the linked article is a nonsense. The ethnic (sectarian) cleansing mentioned did happen, but it wasn’t perpetuated by US special forces; it was conducted by militias and elements within Iraqi forces (especially those of the Ministry of the Interior) and was a massive problem _for_ the implementation of the surge. Part of the strategy involved tackling these units; while it’s fair to criticise the success of that, it’s false to argue they were _part_ of coalition efforts. Indeed, US forces sometimes had to step in to protect Sunni units later stood up under the Sons of Iraq programme. Given the article is about aping US special operations (along with a throwaway and unsubstantiated reference to contractors) it doesn’t help that the argument references two examples of war crimes in Iraq – Haditha and Abu Ghraib – that were conducted by _conventional_ forces. Maybe the author really means Afghanistan, where coalition SF activity (especially night raids) was hugely controversial throughout. But those with memories will remember that McChrystal caused a stir by calling for a reduction in the use of force and courageous restraint. The article rightly points out examples of atrocities committed in Afghanistan, and that the media keeps finding hints of complicity by UKSF. But this article fails to actually dig into the detail of that reporting and what that says about leadership. Instead it makes dubious and inaccurate comparisons with other areas, and has as its source an article that refers to coalition terrorist tactics. Not, I’d suggest, the strongest argument, when there are so many other better studies on Western (in)effectiveness. Basically, it’s a bit disappointing that @wavellroom lets through a hand-waving reference to Stan McChrystal – war criminal without expecting a better argument to back it up, as opposed to a flimsy one that could have been cribbed from Declassified UK. On the broader point of oversight of both normal special forces, and the new Ranger forces, better critical challenge has been offered by @war_pod and the Oxford Research Group, and now @Saferworld. I’m not convinced the Rangers will operate under the same neither confirm nor deny policy that UK SF currently use, because they are still conventional units, publicly identified and deployed and hiding them would not be easy. The jury is therefore out on what updating the frameworks that govern our operations mentioned in the Defence Command Paper _means_ for the Rangers, but this article doesn’t really corral its various grievances into a convincing argument about that oversight. I’ll probably return to the other article later on… (Twitter comment)