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27 July 2009
GPPi Fellow analyzes US military learning in counterinsurgency
Together with David Tohn and Jaron Wharton, both active-duty officers in the U.S. Army, GPPi Fellow Philipp Rotmann published an article on the US military’s efforts to learn and adapt as an organization to the challenge of counterinsurgency after 2001. The article entitled, “Learning Under Fire: Progress and Dissent in the US Military” is a product of a collaborative project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and appears in the August/September issue of “Survival: Global Politics and Strategy.”
Rotmann, Tohn and Wharton argue that the critical, albeit belated and incomplete change to a counterinsurgency posture was catalyzed by a combination of two dynamics: on the one hand there are the creative and innovative junior leaders who responded well to the tactical problems that confronted them. They are the products of an organization that prizes flexibility and responsibility at lower level. On the other hand, senior institutional dissidents drove deep and controversial changes in doctrine and culture some of them outside the established channels.
While both components were necessary, neither was sufficient on its own. They were the product of an organizational culture that strove to be self-learning, with more success on the tactical than the operational and strategic levels. On the latter, existing organizational learning mechanisms failed to bring about decisive and sustainable change. Instead, it was a campaign of external political intervention that brought about the "surge" in Iraq.
Based on this analysis, the authors offer recommendations to systematically strengthen the link between the experience gained in the junior command positions in the field and the builders of doctrine and culture at centres of organizational learning such as the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).
The article is published in Survival vol. 51 no. 4 (Aug/Sep 2009). To view the article on-line, please click here.
For more information, please contact Philipp Rotmann