Leadership Forum: Classical Approach to Leadership

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For the last three or four years, journalists, politicians, psychologists, and educators have seized on the theme of “leadership” to deal with a variety of social ills. The word now aches from overuse. In the effort to bend and stretch it to fit elegant theories, it has lost much of its sub­stance, and the result has been a vague and confusing notion of what leader­ship actually means. For the mili^tary leader, whose responsibilities demand a particularly lucid understanding ⁰ leadership, the confusion is especially vexing.

A way to recover the essence ⁰ leadership is to shine a light on the so-called leadership crisis, which, ^,n the military, has grown out of a creep­ing disregard for the basic motivation of both the leaders and the followers- It is precisely on such elemental mot¹ vation that military success depends, whether the war is hot or cold. It 1° lows that leadership is, in part, th^e ability to expose that motivating con viction, that moral lode. Definm? leadership in those terms, pointing ^t0 its absence, and exploring some causes of its decline lead to fundament³ questions about the nature of off>^cer education.

It is a severe truth that the concept of leadership in the military is rnu easier to pinpoint during war than during peace. In war, the fact of m¹

tary life—the prospect of death m

the

line of duty—is clearly exposed. Th^at

reality raises questions that ha^v^.

gnawed on men since the beginning

time. What, for instance, makes

individual willing to die for such an °               11 \\C

abstraction as idealism? Why follow one man into certain phy^sl _? danger, and continue to follow hi^ And how does he resolve the moral lemma of taking another human ¹ For some men, the answers are se evident. For others, their solution quires an agonizing emotional en And there are a few for whom

the

questions are too enormous,

who ^re'

they

are questions that are essential to exercise of leadership. Those who s ceed in dealing with these quest* exhibit a concrete integrity, the rg adherence to what is right, the re to bow to moral expediency

fuse to confront them at all. But

who

ing

^ertitude and unshakable integrity, problem, of course, is that the ation of these questions of moral

leader:

hteak

“The military services, when not actually fighting, become more or less corporations with white-collar executive structures necessarily geared more toward persuasion, compromise, and political maneuver than life-or-death conflict.”

^sh°rt, moral leadership.

The concept of moral leadership is ^{not new}—it is fundamental and al­^Ways has been. Many of the great military leaders in history took pains develop an intellectual foundation the moral aspect of their leader- *P- General George Patton, for ex- ^arnple, was famed for blood-and-guts 'tteverence; but underlying his chain triad was a sensitive, philosophical ^reader of classics and the Bible. Ad­^miral Chester Nimitz, also, was an ^av*d reader, as conversant in the sub- ’^ects °f books and history as on the position of aircraft carriers. Simi- ^arly> Ulysses S. Grant, George Washi­ngton, Charlemagne, and Alexander • ^e Ureat were all men of conspicuous ^nteIlectual ability as well as legendary _ , ^ership. But even the great leaders

were not noted for formal learn- were consistently men of moral

^e*plor;

ship cannot wait until the out- of war. The military goal of ^ Pared ness does not simply apply to condition of equipment and the ^ ning ₀f personnel; it means also j ^at Baders be morally prepared for ^t7- Today, this leadership pre- the ^dness‘^{s s}l>Pping away, not only in military community, but also in ^Vp’^an society as well, inh ^{art t}^^le P^r°bl^em l*^es with the

_t ^rent nature of the peacetime mili- The military services, when not _Co ^a y lighting, become more or less tive°^rat'°^nS whh white-collar execu­te ^Structures necessarily geared more u persuasion, compromise, and

eOlitjp.i

^c°nfl maneuver than life-or-death _t| ^lct- American society is tradi- _ta . y suspicious of a standing mili- _vj. ^lnstitution. As a result, the indi­es ^{3 S W}^° ^steP ^out °fi ^rhe civilian _rai^^at'^0nal process to fill military |_tas^^S °fien dispose themselves to be _St ^{C a}fi^fasive to popular fashions and _Cep_t ^ards, both for survival and for ac- p_er, ^nce- This phenomenon has been sin ^a^^{S most} noticeable in the decades tj^⁶ Korean War. Leadership of Q^^jUpe is not based on unswerving 1pij '^ence and confidence in the

^cad_er y •

^and ^U depends, rather, on cajolery teward, as in the fragile

agreements between labor and man­agement in civilian industries. The implications here for military effec­tiveness in battle are unnerving.

In the past, the American military community has consistently re­bounded from such periods of peacetime lassitude. But what is dis­turbing today is the leadership vogue that grew out of the early Sixties, both in the military and civilian worlds. The new doctrine has been analyzed by Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale, whose educational background in his­tory and philosophy simultaneously endured and grew throughout his eight-year experience in the crucible of a North Vietnamese jail cell. He calls practitioners of the new wave “gamesmen.”¹ Gamesmen preach the doctrine of compromise, avoidance of conflict, and maximization of personal ease. They compose the me- generation,” a generation which neces­sarily crosses the boundary into mili­tary ranks.

The gamesman doctrine is one that challenges the principles of honor and ethics which predate the rise of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The games- man doctrine has led to a wavering foreign policy stance in government and to a tendency toward abdication of international and domestic respon sibilities in favor of avoiding conflict and shying from the strenuous exercise of moral strength. The effect of the gamesman doctrine on the military has been no less profound, not only because of the ultimate authority of civilian policymakers, but also because the military’s leaders are necessarily drawn from American society one that has collectively subscribed to gamesmanship. As Admiral Stockdale suggests, education is the key to suc­cessful leadership, and it follows that the leadership crisis of gamesmanship stems from some failure of America s

schooling.

That failure rests on two causes. On the one hand is a preoccupation with technology. The fund of man’s knowl­edge about science has multiplied geometrically over the past few dec­ades. Departments of engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology are the heavies on most campuses, while the liberal arts, once the sparkling centerpiece of higher education, often recede, in the popular view, to the category of irrelevant intellectualism. The problem with this, of course, is that even while science grows by leaps and bounds, man continues to be man, and in order to deal with him—especially to lead him—it is es­sential to understand his collective historical experience, his motivating philosophy, and his moral platform. It is, furthermore, essential to under­stand oneself and to establish some sort of personal, ethical boundaries of conduct. Yet, colleges and secondary schools are bowing to a burgeoning demand for technical knowledge at the expense of the humanities.

The academic curriculum for mili­tary officers has fallen into this new pattern as well. In an analysis of the training of officers in the three mili­tary academies, Jeffrey Record wrote: “The empirical record of the past has given way to war technology and techniques of command as ob­jects of inquiry. The focus is on tac­tics, strategy, logistics, the mar­shalling of hardware, and the or­ganization of ever-unfolding tech­nology . . . [This] has encouraged a mentality characterized by unwar­ranted confidence in the malleabil­ity of war, and by a faith that most, if not all, problems on the battlefield are susceptible to technological or administrative so­lutions.”²

In the naval service, the problem can

"And now that the junior officer ranks are filling with expertise in technology instead of humane wisdom, a vacuum of moral leadership is a disturbing possibility

American history and our social pt‘ lems, but had heard it all bef°^rej knew both sides of every story, thought we were on the right trao Then, there was the third categ⁰¹^ "The ones who were in trouble ⁵⁵ . the high school graduates who ^ enough sense to pick up the innuen ^ and yet not enough education ^t0 ^ commodate it.” This analysis based on a psychologist’s study or rean War POWs. If repeated today-

would have to include a fourth ^c

• •                                    u bee*¹

gory: those individuals who have ^

actively inculcated throughout ^c

be further distilled to the institutional emphasis on the officer corps as a technical profession. The “eighty- twenty split”—whereby 80% of all NROTC and Naval Academy students must pursue a technical major— discourages the exploration of moral

and historical issues which always have and always will bear enormously on the outcome of war. Intangible con­templation df human nature is not generally an object of engineering in­quiry; it is, however, an essential as­pect of the art of inspiring and leading men. And now that the junior officer ranks are filling with expertise in technology instead of humane wis­dom, a vacuum of moral leadership is a disturbing possibility.

Even the media, in their perpetual debate over national defense, dwell on numbers and specifications: How many ships? How many tanks? What range missiles? How many helmeted heads? And when the subject turns to the quality of the troops, the debate is more likely to turn on their ability to deal with complex circuitry than on their moral fiber, their confidence in and commitment to the national cause.

To be sure, technical considerations are extremely important. The phalanx, the stirrup, the pike, the machine gun, the airplane, and the bomb al­tered the course and conduct of war. But the defense of the Alamo, or the exploits of the Bon Homme Richard, or the grueling advance through the Japanese-held South Pacific, or the Marine Corps stand at Khe Sanh were achievements not of technology, but of human spirit, derived from un­swerving commitment, courage, per­sonal integrity, and the Cfertainty that the cause was right. Where did that certainty come from? From Bernoulli’s equation? From the laws of ther­modynamics? From an encyclopedic knowledge of ballistics? Clearly not. Those successes of leadership derived both from a sense of national tradition and from rigid codes of personal con­duct. Both of these qualities have, until recently, been fundamental in American education.

Admiral Stockdale remarked:

“. . . I believe a good classical

education and an understanding of history can best determine the rules you should live by. They also give you the power to analyze reasons for these rules and guide you as to how to apply them to your own situa­tion.”³

Stockdale is proof that technical ability—which the complexity of a jet pilot’s environment calls for—and an enlightened mind are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are, as Stockdale’s experiences suggest, often interdependent in today’s mili­tary community.

The second contribution of modern education to gamesmanship and the leadership crisis is the nationwide ex­periment in "progressive” educational techniques, along with teachers’ enthusiastic endorsement of revisionist thought. Revisionism is defined by its proponents as a healthy, objective, "new” view of history and its lessons. The accomplished student, they as­sert, is the one who is taught to deal with an array of historical facts and draw from them his own conclusions. The problem, however, is that the lib­eral arts are notoriously difficult to present objectively, and a student looking to make sense out of discrete facts must usually turn to the teacher for guidance and for a scale of values with which to measure those facts. Here is where a subjective influence is exerted, and in keeping with the popularity of national guilt and the prevailing liberal ethos of the Sixties and Seventies, the student is often guided toward such conclusions as the “fact” that the Vietnam War was wrong, or the “fact” that the exercise of military power is always immoral, or the “fact” that American democracy is a front for capitalist interests. Thus, the values being taught are often out of line with traditional moral wisdom-

This is the germ that society—mid consequently the military—acquires from educational institutions. There is no way to assess, short of trial by fi^fe’ the effects of this educational backdrop on, for instance, a young Navy pilot tasked with delivering ^:l load of bombs on a heavily defended bridge somewhere in the Middle East- Was he ever impressed, in his forma' tive years, with the importance ⁰ duty, honor, integrity, and the tradj' tions of his country? Probably nor, ¹ he was born in the late Fifties. M°^r^j likely, his friends on campus snickere at the mention of those terms orgroane when obliged to stand for the nation³ anthem. And his teachers, thinking themselves progressive, discoursed ⁰⁽¹ America’s crimes in the world comm** nity. To be sure, the young pilot proba bly does not share his friends’ standaf of values, otherwise he would not be ¹³ uniform. But when the missiles an MiGs rise up to meet him, what m^otl vational base will he turn to? Gam^eS manship or integrity?

Admiral Stockdale points to a stu ) of correlations between the education backgrounds of POWs and their sponses to brainwashing attempt^5. The first category was the “redne Marine sergeant” whose flat resp°^nSe to the enemy’s denigration of Ame^flC^ was “B.S.” “He didn’t give it a seco*¹ thought. Not much of a historian perhaps, but a good security ris • Second were the sophisticates. ¹ j were the fellows who could be ^t0 ^

these same things about the horrors

■ -om

ana

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