by Tom Clancy
Careerism is corrosive to the principle of truth telling. So is political expediency. In both cases, the hope of personal gain outweighs personal integrity and honor. “Don’t rock the boat” leads to moral blindness about threats to the mission or the lives and welfare of the troops and of their families. The troops are interested in more from their leaders back home than statements such as, “We back them one hundred percent.” That’s the mentality of the château generals in World War One who sent hundreds of thousands of fine young men to useless deaths. If you make a political mistake, the troops have to pay for it with their blood. Our political and military leaders must be held accountable for their mistakes. Somebody has to tell them that the measures of success they’re selling are not what is really happening on the ground.
The troops want leaders who understand them, fight for them, and appreciate what they’re going through. Credibility is lost in their eyes if their leaders are silent when things are not right. To them that silence is either incompetence or careerism. It is not a demonstration of support.
I have often been called “outspoken.” I am. Too many of our senior commanders have been “Stepford Generals and Stepford Admirals.” They fail in their obligation to speak the truth. And when they do, they’re vilified. Recently, the Army chief of staff testified that we would need 300,000 troops to pacify Iraq. Everybody in the military knew he was right. But the party line down from the Pentagon decreed that the number was half that, and he was pilloried.
Incidents like that are not lost on our subordinates. Many are disgusted and disillusioned, and leave the service of their country. Others learn that following the party line is the course to high rank.
In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption. False rationales presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain dumped on our overstretched military, all of these caused me to speak out. I did it before the war as a caution, and as an attempt to voice concern over situations I knew would be dangers, where the outcomes would likely mean real harm to our nation’s interests. I was called a traitor and a turncoat by Pentagon officials. The personal attacks are painful, as I told those young midshipmen, but the photos of the casualties I see every day in the papers and on TV convince me not to shrink from the obligation to speak the truth.
Our obligation to tell the truth extends even to the media.
Over the past forty years, we have seen strange things happen with regard to the media. To be sure, there are few Ernie Pyles out there — great journalists who make combat come alive the way that the boots on the ground experience it — but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the media. It has the same percentages of good guys and bad guys as other fields.
Yet technology has changed things. The media are on the battlefield; the media are in your headquarters; the media are everywhere. And the media report everything — good and bad, warts and all. And everyone knows that the warts tend to make better stories. As a CINC, I was chewed out by seniors maybe five times; four of the five were about statements I’d made to the media. At that stage of my life, it didn’t really bother me — because where in hell did I go from there? But if you are a lieutenant or a captain and you see another officer get fried, you have a different reaction. The message is clear: “Avoid the media.” And the message hardens into a code: “They are the enemy. Don’t be straight with them.”
And that is bad. That is bad because we live in the Information Age. Battlefield reports are going to come back in real time, and they are going to be interpreted — with all sorts of subtle shadings and nuances — by the reporters and their news editors. But the relationship between the military and the media, which should be at its strongest right now, has bottomed out. It has begun to heal a little, but a lot more must be done. We need to rebuild a sense of mutual trust. My uncles in World War Two generally experienced a friendly press — with Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe cartoons and Ernie Pyle’s stories. The press then was part of the war effort. G.I. Joe was lionized and bad news was suppressed — if not by the military then by the media. The relationship generally remained positive through the Korean War, despite its ambiguities. But the relationship soured during and after Vietnam, for a number of reasons — not the least of which was mounting distrust of government by the media and the American people.
The military and the media need to regain the mutual trust that once existed. It will be hard, given the recent past and the speed and sophistication of today’s media technology, but it’s crucial to protecting one of our most cherished freedoms, while keeping vital operational information secure.
LEADERSHIP AND LIFE
You can’t lead unless you love those you lead. That’s principle number one. All other leadership principles flow out of it. Too much leadership training focuses on the leader and not enough on the led. Your charges are your family. In professions that are truly callings, you have to have that. In my profession, guys put everything on the line and can die for it. We have to care about these guys. They have to mean something to us. We must know what makes them tick; who they are; what they want and need; what motivates them.
I remember talking to Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia a few years ago. Before he became leader of his government, he was a fighting general in a twenty-year-long revolution. He knew his troops. They’d lived and fought together for two decades. One day during the fighting, his troops had to pass through a minefield, without any of the mechanical devices we use for our protection. He had no choice. He had to send troops ahead of everybody to find lanes. Many of them died, but his forces successfully made the passage.
When he told me the story, tears were in his eyes for the troops he’d lost. If you don’t or can’t feel that, then you shouldn’t lead.
The second principle is to know yourself. Few leaders are as good as they think they are. And commanders develop skills in finding measures of success that make them look good, such as body counts. What’s the real measure of success? You get it from truly understanding the conflict and by seeking feedback from the guys with boots on the ground. They’re there; they know. An ego can be bruised by feedback, but it’s critical truly to know how you stand as a leader. True leaders seek feedback regardless of the news. They learn from it.
All people come in three parts: body, mind, and spirit. No one is complete unless all three are developed and tended to. As a leader, you need to care for these in yourself and in those you lead.
Each leader needs a code to live by. That code can be formed by many factors. Our family, our schooling, our faith, our friends, and our calling in life can all be counted among those factors. My daughter once asked me what I would die for. I thought about that a lot before I answered her. I knew the answer would truly define me. I told her I would die for my faith, my family, my friends, my freedom, and my flag — the five “Fs,” a simplified expression of my code. But a code is worthless unless you live it. Words like integrity, ethics, honor, etc., need to be lived and not just uttered.
You never stop learning unless you decide to. I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. It is an obsession for me. My sources for learning are all around me. When I make a mistake or fail, I have to know why. I need to know what makes things and people tick. I am amazed at how much people miss by not observing the world around them with an open curiosity.
I have learned more from sergeants than I have from generals. The troops relate to a leader by testing him or her to see if they relate to them, to see if they’re open to them and listen to them. They want to know if they’re fundamentally honest with them. This is not a “buddy” thing. Leaders can’t be buddies with the led. But the troops want to be able to say: “I can talk to this captain. He listens.” If you don’t listen, they will be polite,
but you can forget about their respect… or about getting the truth where the rubber meets the road. You want them to tell you: “Sir, this is not working.” Or: “It is working.” Or: “Yeah, it’s working okay, but it could be better.” When you know such truths, and can do something about them, that’s when you have real success.
I love to teach. It is a principal function of leadership.
My teaching philosophy is based on two principles. The first has to do with the mission of the teacher. His role is to provide the students with the facts and with a clear articulation of the varying views, opinions, and options on a given subject. His purpose, after he has provided this framework, is to then teach the students how to think and not what to think about the subject. You want to teach the student how to ask the questions that really count and not how to give answers that satisfy conventional wisdom and long-fossilized received opinions. If you know how to ask the right questions, the best answers usually follow… though it may take time.
The second principle deals with the foundation of thinking. It must have a set of values at its base. This requires teachers to emphasize the importance of a values-based thinking process without imposing personal interpretations of those values. The values will be more powerful in a student’s life and in his way of thinking, his decision making, and in how he defines his ethical code if he has discovered and defined them on his own.
The greatest enjoyment for a teacher is to see that moment of discovery or that moment of doubt that wasn’t there before, but now presents the student with a spur to reason.
Learning is guided discovery. The guide is the teacher. His scholarship provides the factual basis for the student’s journey of discovery; and his leadership, personal example, and mentoring skills provide the moral basis. A teacher’s competence, therefore, comes in two inseparable parts. He must be expert in his subject and he must be qualified in his leadership ability. Technical competence alone is not sufficient. Leading and teaching are synonymous. You cannot assume to do one without the other.
As a teacher, I strive to meet the obligations articulated in this philosophy. It requires me to develop in myself the mental, physical, and spiritual qualities I desire to impart and instill in my students.
As a young captain, I began writing down everything I believed about my profession. I expressed my beliefs, asked others to challenge them, and sought more insight into each of them. I continuously changed or altered them as a result.
Over time these dynamic beliefs settled into three categories: those that I was absolutely sure were right; those that I was pretty sure were right; and those that were up for grabs. It was an even split, with new ideas coming and some old ones going; they were in a constant state of morphing over time. I called these my “Combat Concepts.” To me they were a mechanism for continuous learning.
The particular concepts themselves don’t matter as much as the process. This process was so important to me that I extended it from war fighting to other areas — leadership, life, other people, team building. I kept asking myself: “What makes people tick? What do they want in life? What makes teams tick? How can I bring them together more strongly and effectively?”
I’d write down my thoughts on these things, but they were always open to challenge and to change. I wanted always to be able to keep examining my core. I learned long ago that when you stop examining your core, you can really be shaken when you take a hard hit.
AMERICA AND THE WORLD
Our country is great. It has become great because it strives to be good. That is, our country is values based… values we hold dear in good times and bad. Our country is admired, respected, envied, and hated for its greatness. To some it is the beacon that Jefferson said we should strive to be. It offers hope and promise. As a first-generation American, I know what that means. Everything is possible here.
We have to stay with all that. We might not always succeed, but we must always try. It’s important not to stop being America when we take bad hits. It’s most important for America to be America when it’s hardest to be America. When the going gets tough, the temptation is to start compromising on our values. After 9/11, it’s been hard to be America. True leadership is not to slip into compromises.
We are now an empire. Not an empire of conquest in the traditional sense. We are an empire of influence. Our power, our values, our promise affect the world. We are more than Jefferson’s beacon. We are an expectation of better things. The world demands of us the delivery of the promise we project. We are seen to have an obligation to share our light. Other peoples want help, leadership, and guidance in getting to where we are. They want our help in reaching their potential. But they don’t want or expect us to put them on the dole. Go back to what I said about teaching. They want us to show them how to move up to what we are. They don’t want handouts.
We are, however, reluctant to deliver. We have never comfortably settled on our role in the world or on our obligations to the other citizens of this planet. The Wilsonian dream of using our blessings to better the world has always clashed with the opposing isolationist heritage to “avoid foreign entanglements.” In my view, this will be the true issue with which we will have to come to grips in this century. The world at our gates demands it of us.
And it’s not a clean, well-ordered world. It’s messy. A lot of folks don’t like us. Or they envy us. Or they don’t like the way we throw our weight around.
In a sense, it’s going to be back to the future: Today’s international landscape has strong similarities to the Caribbean region of the 1920s and ’30s — unstable countries being driven by uncaring dictators to the point of collapse and total failure. We are going to see more crippled states and failed states that look like Somalia and Afghanistan — and are just as dangerous. And more and more U.S. military men and women are going to be involved in vague, confusing military actions — heavily overlaid with political, humanitarian, and economic considerations. And those representing the United States — the Big Guy with the most formidable presence — will have to deal with each messy situation and pull everything together. We’re going to see more and more of that.
Certain of these collapsed states will continue to provide sanctuary to extremist groups who will continue to use these bases to plan, train, and organize for strikes against U.S. forces and other targets. Natural and man-made humanitarian catastrophes will continue to be on the rise; along with civil strife that seems out of control in many parts of the world. Regional hegemons and rogue states will learn the lessons of our wars with Iraq and develop what we call “asymmetric” capabilities — threats designed to exploit our evident military vulnerabilities and gaps. These threats range the spectrum from weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles to low-tech sea mines and terrorist tactics. All are designed to challenge a perceived weakness in our military, political, or psychological ability to use force.
Victory no longer happens when you capture the enemy capital. And we can’t just declare victory in a photo op on an aircraft carrier. These events signal that the home team is ahead in the third inning. The game goes nine innings — or longer if necessary; and victory happens when you put in place a lasting, stable environment.
Globalization and the explosion of information technology have meanwhile made the world ever more interdependent and interconnected. Geographic obstacles such as oceans and mountain ranges no longer provide impenetrable boundaries. Economic, political, or social-related instability in remote parts of the world will likewise continue to affect our security interests and well-being on our ever-shrinking planet. Added to that will be the continued rise of non-state entities, such as nongovernmental organizations, transnational criminal groups, extremist organizations, global corporations, and warlord groups, all bringing a confusing new dimension to a world previously dominated by the interactions of nation-states.
In recent years, an arc covering a large part of the earth’s surface — from North Africa to the Philippines, and from Central
Asia to Central Africa — is chaotic and in turmoil. We are going to be dealing with this turmoil for decades. Remote places such as Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor, Aceh, Colombia, and others have become flash points that required our intervention at some level. At the same time, the need to contain regional threats such as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea still remained a major military requirement. These became more threatening as they developed greater military capabilities aimed at denying us access to their regions and to our allies within those regions. More and more, our security interests have drawn us into remote, unstable parts of the world.
As a result of these commitments, our shrinking and adjusting armed forces were hit by an onslaught of strange, nontraditional missions that pressured their dwindling ranks and resources with an operational and personnel tempo that was not sustainable. With some exceptions, the U.S. military resisted these missions and the adjustments it should have made in doctrine, organization, training, and equipment needed to meet this growing new mix of commitments. Traditionalists in the military leadership insisted on holding the line; they wanted to fight only our nation’s wars, and hoped to go back to “real soldiering” as they were mending a transitioning force suffering from all the pressures on it. One of our most senior military leaders was quoted as saying, “Real men don’t do OOTW”—a term that became the title for all of those messy little low-end commitments (we now call these missions “Stability Operations”).
THE TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY MILITARY
Several serious questions and challenges face our military. The first has to do with the growing number of these nontraditional threats. Will these continue to increase, with new types added to the confusing mix, and will we rely on the military as our principal instrument to deal with them? Second, can we afford the kind of military that can meet all the potential challenges ahead? The third question relates to the much-needed military reform. Can the military change, reform, or transform to meet the challenges of the new century and adapt to the rapid development of new technologies that could radically alter the military as we know it today? The fourth issue deals with the interagency reform necessary for other agencies to move in parallel with military reforms. Can we meet the demand for better decision making and the integration of all the instruments of power (political, economic, informational, etc.) to solve the multidimensional challenges ahead?
