5 Star – Page 12 – Public Intelligence Blog

2017/01/152017/01/13

Worth a Look: Don Vandergriff – Raising the Bar – Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War

5 Star, Force Structure (Military), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power

Don Vandergriff's experiences, research and interaction with fellow military professionals suggest that a cultural revolution within the U.S. military is essential if the nation is to successfully adapt and prevail in the emerging 4th Generation Warfare (4GW) or asymmetric warfare threat environment. An Army cultural revolution has three parts:

1. Strategic leaders must change a counterproductive array of long-established beliefs including many laws, regulations and policies, which are based on out-of-date assumptions.

2. Military leaders must drive and sustain a military cultural evolution through effective education and training of the next generation(s) of leaders in a system that is flexible enough to evolve alongside emerging changes in, and lessons from, war, society and technology.

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2017/01/152017/01/13

Worth a Look: Don Vandergriff – Manning the Future Legions of the United States – Finding and Developing Tomorrow’s Centurions

5 Star, Force Structure (Military), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power

An Industrial Age model continues to shape the way the Army approaches its recruiting, personnel management, training, and education. This outdated personnel management paradigm―designed for an earlier era―has been so intimately tied to the maintenance of Army culture that a self-perpetuating cycle has formed, diminishing the Army's attempts to develop adaptive leaders and institutions.

This cycle can be broken only if the Army accepts rapid evolutionary change as the norm of the new era. Recruiting the right people, then having them step into an antiquated organization, means that many of them will not stay as they find their ability to contribute and develop limited by a centralized, hierarchical organization. Recruiting and retention data bear this out.

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2016/12/132016/12/12

An American Grand Strategy: Evidence-Based, Affordable, Balanced, Flexible (Re-Inventing National Security Book 1)

5 Star, Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics, Government, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

The American Republic is out of balance — collapsing from poor governance and the triumph of special interests over the public interest. There are two root causes — the corruption of the US political process that disenfranchises sixty percent of the public and blocks Independents and small parties from ballot access, and a dysfunctional intelligence architecture that lacks integrity — as Henry Kissinger has observed, intelligence is not necessary to the exercise of power (as practiced by the elite-driven US national security state) and is often useless.

No one since President Ike Eisenhower and Project Solarium has ever attempted an official honest, comprehensive, and coherent formulation of a grand strategy that balances ends, means, and ways for all government functions, not only in the national security arena, where the military is consuming 60% of the disposable budget in 2015, but across the domestic front as well.

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2016/12/132016/12/12

Global Reality: Overview of Planning and Programming Factors for Expeditionary Operations (Re-Inventing National Security Book 2)

5 Star, Atlases & State of the World, Complexity & Resilience, Ethics, Geography & Mapping, Government, Military, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Reality bats last — the US military has not been designed in the context of a Grand Strategy, nor has it been designed with any attention at all to Global Reality.

The US military is too slow, too heavy, too expensive, too complex, and spread too thin to be effective — it cannot deter, defend, or defeat. From the F-35 in the US Air Force to the USS Gerald Ford in the US Navy to the varied cancelled and cumbersome systems of the US Army, the US military is good for one thing and one thing only: enriching the military-industrial complex and the banks behind that complex.

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2016/12/132016/12/12

Re-Inventing the US Army: Strategy, Reality, Precepts, Structure, & Leadership (Re-Inventing National Security Book 3)

5 Star, Ethics, Force Structure (Military), Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

We have, with the election of Donald Trump,a once-in-a-century opportunity to rethink, reinvent, and reinvest in our national military concepts, doctrine, human capital, organizations, technologies, and command structures, while eradicating much of the waste that is characteristic of a “government specifications cost plus” approach to contracting. Donald Trump won against all odds, against both parties, without the support of the military-industrial complex. Donald Trump is “unshackled” (his word) – his instincts on costly foreign entanglements and the utility of organizations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are on display.

Wars are won or lost in the decade or two before those wars begin. Whether countries have a Grand Strategy or not; evaluate all high-level threats or not; devise a coherent force structure in which all services and civilian agencies are complementary, inter-operable, and sustainable or not; invest in the human factor for leadership and solider agility or not – these will determine the outcome of future wars a decade or two before the first shot is fired.

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2016/10/182019/11/04

Review: Margin of Victory – Five Battles that Changed the Face of Modern War

5 Star, Force Structure (Military), War & Face of Battle

Col Dr Doug Macgregor

Speaking Truth to Power — Senator McCain Agrees, the Flag Officers Do Not

5 Stars

Margin of Victory is a hugely important book that should be required reading in all of the war colleges, as well as all national security programs in political science and international relations courses across the country.

In sailboat racing the race is often won or lost before the boat ever hits the water. If the hull is not perfectly formed; perfectly painted; and perfectly clean before it gears up, then the boat starts with an automatic embedded penalty factor – it goes slower. What the author has done with this book is demonstrate that wars are won or lost 10-20 years before they are fought, based on whether the nation-state devises an effective grand strategy and properly develops a balanced approach to organization, technology and human capital, with human capital being most important.

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2016/10/142016/10/13

Pre-Order Review: The Art of Peace – Engaging in a Complex World by Juliana Geran Pilon

5 Star, Complexity & Resilience, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Diplomacy, Humanitarian Assistance, Peace Intelligence, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

5 stars

Compelling, Insightful, Useful – Glosses Over Some Fundamentals

This book excels at offering a compelling overview of the severe deficiencies in US national security strategy, policy, and operations – it is one of the strongest indictments I have seen of our total inability to wage peace instead of war. Among the many high points covered by the author and included in my extensive notes:

01 USA has no Grand Strategy and no process for creating and executing a Grand Strategy. Deep in the book the author observes that not only is Grand Strategy the only means of fully employing all sources of national power, but it is also how one anticipates and avoids unintended consequences.

02 The elements of the US Government (USG) nominally responsible for waging peace – the Departments of State and Commerce, the US Agency of International Development (USAID), the US Information Agency (abolished in 1999) are under-trained, unsynchronized entities unable to deter conflict or build a lasting peace.

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