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By John H. Mitchell
When General H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Rear Admiral Virgil Hill commissioned the Naval Academy class of 1991, many midshipmen still looked at liberal-arts studies as “bull.” Truth is, the modern leader needs to go beyond a narrow focus on technology. And to understand the humanities is to know people—no bull.
Back in 1968, when I was the operations officer of a tank landing ship in Vietnam, we served as the mother ship for a number of fast patrol craft and also conducted extensive resupply missions out of Da Nang—from the Marine outpost on the demilitarized zone at Cua Viet southward into the brown-water reaches of the Mekong Delta. One afternoon in Da Nang Bay, we had just anchored after a long and arduous run, during which our watches had been filled with groping river navigation, rocket and machine-gun fire, and a full load of tension. I was riding our landing craft in to pick up mail. As we churned along, all of us played out, silent, I spotted the black hull of an admiral’s barge, approaching on a reciprocal course. As senior officer on board (a lieutenant, junior grade!), 1 duly alerted everyone to render passing honors. The barge slid past, its two stars gleaming against the black hull. We faced it and saluted. On the afterdeck, relaxing in canvas chairs and spotless tennis togs were two senior officers, holding racquets and cold drinks while their spiffed-out whitehats maintained picture perfect military bearing. They acknowledged our honors with nothing more than the imperial wave of a tennis racquet. At that time, in that place, such behavior was somebody’s bizarre idea of leadership.
This is not to say that senior officers do not deserve— or should not enjoy—many of the “perks” that they do, given the high level of responsibility they bear. If anything, it is incumbent upon them to show a little splendor in the proper place and time. It adds mystique and commands attention, both valuable qualities in certain military settings. But there is a great difference in quality between the brute gleam of an admiral’s stars and the lambency of inspirational example.
Inspirational leadership passes a magic wand over the situation, from day-to-day peacetime military routine to the white-hot, moment-to-moment horror of combat. True, excellent training and state-of-the-art equipment help in making the adjustment, together with a clarity of mission and a sense of purpose. But in the final analysis, leaders make the difference by determining their subordinates’ views of their own capabilities and defining the importance of the objectives. From this quality of inspirational leadership, success is bom. The question, then, is, whence inspirational leadership? First, there must be energy and tight focus on the mission. From there, however, the spectrum widens broadly to embrace pure charisma at one extreme and pure knowledge at the other.
Charismatic leaders are born, not made. They are the classic heroes. They await the proper set of circumstances before they burst into bloom, all the while specifically preparing for their specific roles. These people emerge in every walk of life and command attention, even devotion, because they exude in a magical, illuminated way their own clear sense of mission, whether they fully understand it themselves or not. They possess an unusual level of energy and purity of focus to follow their instincts in this regard. And they succeed so spectacularly, because their charisma obscures their otherwise ordinary selves.
Adherents both consciously and subconsciously trust the charismatic leader’s motives and judgment, because they understand that the leader is—at least at his or her best—single-minded enough never to compromise a cause by recklessness or weakened conviction. Further, they admire the innovation and boldness with which the charismatic leader prosecutes the mission. They see in the leader what they would like to see in themselves, and the leader has the natural capacity to make them believe it. Subordinates gladly stand by such a leader in purity of vision and the thrill of the hunt. This is the magical and time-
less quality of charismatic leadership. Strong examples were Crazy Horse, Joan of Arc, John Paul Jones, Stonewall Jackson, and Adolf Hitler.
At the other pole of the leadership sphere is the learned leader, a student of the world and the mission as well as an intellectual proponent of them. Such a person may not have a scintillating personal presence but has so devoutly pursued such a greater understanding of, and a facility with the character, context, and theory of mission that leadership follows naturally. This person has outstripped most others in the broad scholarly pursuit and application of relevant knowledge. This knowledge would
MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY. RICHMOND. VIRGINIA
include that of the cause itself as well as of all things necessary or advisable for the achievement of the goal. These things can be concrete, abstract, or flesh-and-blood.
Beyond the sheer effort put forward to obtain it, such a body of knowledge is in itself impressive and commands respect and admiration. Further, it commands trust. Followers of such a leader can understand the cogently presented mission. And they also know that this leader’s block of knowledge carries with it sound judgment, thorough preparation, and a realistic assessment of sacrifice. Subordinates follow the logic to embrace this, under well-defined circumstances. Solid examples have been the likes of Ho Chi Minh, Peter the Great, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, and Chester W. Nimitz.
Most people in leadership positions, however, fall somewhere between these extremes. In shaping oneself into a leader and in shaping the leaders of tomorrow, raw charisma is not a product of hard work. One either has it or not. It is a form of artistic talent. What makes the difference, then, is knowledge acquired through hard work and a cultivated excitement for learning. A young officer does not automatically gain leadership ability by pinning on the bars any more than Peter the Great achieved his unique world renown by being born a czar. Many czars achieved little and changed their Russia not a whit. Peter’s unique energy and desire to change his country for the better by embracing knowledge made the difference.
Knowledge is a broad thing, and all of it matters. The military officer of today must create and facilitate at the very least an interface between flesh-and-blood human beings and highly technical and capable combat systems. Student devotion to the combat systems alone cannot be enough to achieve the highest success. Knowing people and getting the most from them means studying their multidimensional character through a conscientious and open- hearted study of the humanities, from art and literature to history and political science. These disciplines teach us in the most profound way who we are and what we want. The “we,” of course, includes not only the officer understudy but also the people he will meet and lead in the immediate future. Will they figuratively embrace the young officer? Will they be willing to work and sacrifice for a shared goal? It all depends on whether or not they feel that they have been taken fully into consideration in the young officer’s understanding of responsibilities and vision of the professional future.
The tests of leadership and personal vision create a precarious and delicate balance between glory and folly, lucidity and obsession. For every man or woman, real or fictional, whom we perceive as a clear hero, a tragic figure exists who has either failed outright or failed to live up to his or her potential because of some fatal flaw. Consider George Armstrong Custer, George Patton, Captain Ahab, Icarus, and even Robert E. Lee. This is not to say that these people did not have courage, intelligence, and a personal vision. Demonstrably, they did. Yet history regards them as tragic, because in keeping with the classic definition of tragedy, they possessed tragic flaws. General Patton’s brute precipitance and bull-headedness precluded his combat brilliance from becoming a wider brilliance. Ahab’s obsession for the White Whale ended in the destruction of himself, his ship, and his crew. The thrilling metaphorical success of Icarus’s ingenious idea melted his judgment as surely as the sun melted the wax holding his great wings together. And Robert E. Lee, a tactical and strategic genius, patrician and beloved patriarch, allied himself with a fundamental evil the end of which was as certain as evolution itself.
Ideally, we want our military leaders at all levels to have at least some of the charismatic classic hero in them. We want their leadership to inspire us, as their subordinates. But, even as we so wish, we need to recognize that one unsung quality in every successful leader is humility, even vulnerability. This is not to say that the person demonstrates some reprehensible weakness. It means that those who follow and admire this person can see or sense that their leader is so committed to his or her cause that everything else, including the leader, must be subordinated to the mission. The leader is humbled before the altar of cause. The leader demonstrates by demeanor a preparation to share the fate of the legion, or even become its martyr. Along with this humility, subordinates sense fear and doubt as well. The successful leader, however, banishes fear and doubt either through the sheer force of charisma or through the considered application of intellectual experience. Both approaches add up to a contagious courage. In the consequent communality, the leader’s dynamic comes full-circle.
All successful leaders of history have readily, consciously stood up in the firestorm of fear and doubt. They have worn their suffering on their sleeves, representing their people’s dilemma and resolutely leading the way forward. The tragic heroes, so obsessed with or committed to their personal crusades, have led their people to catastrophe, or would have, had they been allowed to do so. Only the perceptiveness of those in command—as well as his own tragic nature—prevented George Patton from ris- ,r|g to the position where his precipitate nature might have sPelled disaster against the Soviets.
In U.S. service academies, the humanities have traditionally been referred to as “bull.” In other words, the study of art, language, and human experience is dismissed as unessential in the training of combat leaders. The implication is that its study is dilettantish, even effete. In realty, the opposite is true. First, arts and literature and history are not merely intellectual exercises outside ourselves. They are who we are. Second, history and literature are filled with dynamic individuals, worthy of emulation or rovulsion. They hold the keys to understanding the difference between hero and tragic hero and beast.
Study of history allows the student to examine the thinking of these people, to understand with the clarity of hindsight the causes and effects of an individual’s context. From this, the student can deduce more obvious lessons— power corrupts” or “pride goeth before a fall.” But the student can also learn the power of compassionate vision, faith in principles, and the value of humility, which by definition allow other, potentially useful points of view into the mix and enhance one’s credibility.
What about literature and the arts? Literature, painting, and sculpture are also pilloried as “bull.” Yet the People who appear in these works are not fictional characters. These are real people. If this were not so, they Would not ring as true as they do; we would not willingly suspend our disbelief as we become immersed in the stories and feel our hearts swell and our minds clarify as we do. The characters’ crises are our crises, in one Way or another.
Again, cries the “bull” inquisitor, military leadership has nothing to do with inner struggle. On the contrary— to understand man in crisis is to understand what is happening to people not only in combat but in everyday lives: Crisis is not only a rare strike, an automobile accident, or a child’s seizure. Crisis can also be muted, protracted as in the self-doubt, uncertainty, and anger of everyday modern life. Protracted crises become syndromes. They disrupt people’s lives and need addressing just as surely. The study of the arts opens one to the hearts and souls of others and engenders compassion. In turn, this affects judgment positively in personal decision-making.
It is facile and shallow to pass brutish, cavalier judgment on literary characters: Don Quixote, Ahab, Henry Fleming in The Red Badge of Courage, and Francis Ma-
comber in Hemingway’s The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. And what about Picasso’s stunning epic mural, “Guernica,” which portrays the agony of apocalypse in the upthrown hands of its victims? Writers and artists draw on their own wells of human experience at the edge of crisis for their stories and paintings and sculpture, especially in the modern age. To dismiss all this is to shutter an important window on our culture of today.
Literature teaches us that people in crisis struggle to achieve an equilibrium in their lives that they can live with. They are all characters struggling to come to grips with who they are. Leading characters are traditionally called heroes, not because they are all Galahads, but because they are amalgams of humanity and have been selected by the writer to fight our struggles for us. They possess the ingredients for both tragedy and its mirror, comedy. In comedy we can also see ourselves, our foibles and the ludicrous contortions produced by the wrestling match between our desires and how we behave to achieve them. We should be able to recognize when our behavior can destroy us, especially when others’ lives and our own credibility are at stake. The tragic or comic hero is Everyman, with a universality that by definition makes the character a particularly moving sacrifice to our own struggle to carry on and prevail. Literature and the arts provide this altar of understanding.
Little of modern military leaders’ careers are spent in combat. It would behoove them to devote some attention to the dynamics of their subordinates’ life crises. By understanding these through the study of literature, they will be generally more compassionate. And they will better understand how people in crisis can be made to focus on the things that will redeem them and give them purpose, higher principles, admirable moral values, and mission. Modem leaders ignore the individual realms of human crisis at their own peril. The result will be alienation, spiraling anger and resentment, and, when the chips are down, either outright disobedience or lack of intestinal fortitude. One can learn these lessons from reflecting honestly on years of experience, or one can get a valuable foothold much earlier—as a young student of literature and the arts. You must understand those whom you lead and appreciate in your heart what it is you are asking them to do.
One of the realities in the United States today is that the most recent generations have been raised, manipulated, and educated to value—in some ways, to a fault—the cult of the individual. Of course, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution formalized notions such as equality and the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today’s culture, however, extends and enshrines the individual to the point where personal considerations have become endemic to—even primary in—the American instinct.
Accordingly, the young officer of today has to motivate and secure the loyalty of people who demonstrate Pavlovian reluctance to subordinate their own wishes, points of view, and appetites to anything or anyone else. In the past, an officer’s insignia of rank, denoting experience and seniority, were enough to command obedience from the command as a whole. But today, in the post- Vietnam era, the young officer must ideally be deemed accessible, sympathetic, and empathetic by a diverse variety of individuals.
To meet this challenge effectively, the young officer must have a broader sensitivity to the cultural realities of the day, something not taught in engineering classrooms. This comes only from a study of the parallel evolution of the arts and literature to the present day, tracing the conscious and subconscious character of who, what, and why we are. What elements have shaped our national character? From such an irradiation over the period of four college years, the young future officer’s instincts will sharpen, completing an identification with the full burden of the contemporary mentality. From there, the future officer’s well-developed intellectual discipline will be able to discern, when the time comes, appropriate paths toward goal fulfillment that appeal to the fundamental convictions of subordinates.
And what of courage in combat? Literature offers many models of courage born in crisis. There is redemptive courage, as with Francis Macomber and Henry Fleming- And there is also the courage of delusion and bravado, found in Ahab and Don Quixote. The courage of bravado is mindless folly. It is self-destructive fanaticism, contemptuous of danger, ignorant of reality and circumstances. Redemptive courage is the cleanest kind, because it is conscious of principle as well as danger. Neither Francis Macomber nor Henry Fleming acquitted themselves well when they first faced danger. But at least they recognized their own fear to be their first and greatest enemy. When next they were tested, they were ready.
The best leaders recognize what is going on in their subordinates’ minds and hearts. Charismatic leaders intuitively and creatively deal with it. The studious ones know what to do, both intellectually and viscerally. And both appear in the history and literature of our species, open for contemplative examination.
If sacrifice is the only way to sustain a greater, higher order, the most effective leader, inspirational and strong, can communicate this to subordinates; the leader can communicate something beyond the courage of bravado and one-dimensional hierarchy. The result will be a redemptive courage, born of an education that enables a leader to uplift principle and use knowledge of our own flawed nature to assume the appropriate bearing, words, and gestures, even while making crucial decisions at critical moments. Such is the opposite of effete. This is not the dilettante. This is Hemingway’s “grace under pressure.” This is not “bull.” This is the real thing.
One of the reasons our Civil War holds such fascination for Americans is that it represents a watershed between a world characterized by romanticism and another characterized by hard-nosed realism. Indeed, at the time, the romanticism of the mid-19th century was giving way to the realism of Steven Crane and Walt Whitman and the naturalism of Theodore Drieser. At Appomattox, the consummate genteel Southern gentleman in spotless general’s uniform surrendered to the rumpled, muddy, self-effacing Northerner in a private’s broadcloth coat. At one point in the war, Robert E. Lee had said, “It is a good thing that war is so terrible or we should grow too fond of it.” We can understand and appreciate Lee’s apt insight.
Maybe some opponents of “bull,” such as the midshipman who scoffed at humanities majors as people who “can’t hack it in the sciences,” are subconsciously afraid that the humanities will undermine the fighting spirit, that they serve only to make people kinder and gentler, hardly desirable qualities in a combat situation. But human beings are capable of a bit more versatility than the midshipman in his youth might imagine. Some exposure to the humanities might help him recognize this; As Ham-
let proclaims to his friend after having seen his father’s ghost, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy!”
But what is really happening in humanities education is a broadening—an acquisition of wisdom about the full spectrum of the human experience—from the kind and gentle to the rapacious, merciless, monstrous, and savage. Literature and art encompass all of this, lending the student a sense of the broad homogeneous phenomenon of human nature and human behavior. Tragedy is the Poignancy of human beings’ tendency for unwitting assault on the “better angels of our nature.” To know this is to move poignantly and effectively against it.
Truly educated military people of the future should be those who will do everything in their power to steer civilization toward its best qualities while being prepared to be current in the worst. The U.S. military must produce leaders who can act and speak articulately across the broad range of human—and national—progress. The narrowly educated person, focusing only on technology, systems, and assets, will only perpetuate a mentality keyed to the worst human qualities and forestalled from progress toward the best. That person will be Sisyphus, condemned for eternity to roll the rock to the top of the mountain only to have it roll back down mere inches from the summit.
After all, the bottom line is that the military serves its nation. We portray ourselves and see ourselves (or want to see ourselves) as a nation capable of proving that the best aspects of human nature can be institutionalized into government. The U.S. military, therefore, must include in its job description the capacity to move in concert with the nation, at the service of the nation. It cannot not simply be the hired gun, the world’s policeman, or the pit bull chained near the gate. It cannot be characterized by a siege mentality of us-against-them by some putative constituency. These images, and such a reputation, will, at the hands of voters in a world increasingly seen as a less dangerous, more communal place, spell long-term disintegration. We know the terrible danger of that.
The military will be shrinking in today’s post-Warsaw Pact world. The U.S. military must become a more sophisticated and versatile element of foreign policy. To see pathways to this greater role, a study of literature, history, and political science needs to be part of the aspiring military officer’s education. History and political science offer the bridge between a sensitivity of who we are as sentient creatures—as portrayed in the arts—and the purely rational constructs we have built to become the world we live in and the tools we use. Only a complete liberal arts education can deliver the entire package.
We know that history has secreted away countless anonymous men and women who, in their own modest way, have behaved splendidly and deserve the appellation of hero. They are, quite literally, the heroes of our cultural literature. They have reacted without thinking to throw themselves on an enemy grenade or have carefully decided to leave home and family behind in order to serve a cause in which they devoutly believed. They are leaders of one, coming to terms with their own crises, and they are the leaders of many, charged with a mission for which they can leave no stone unturned, no option untried. The arts and letters are filled with them and how they persevered. They are us and we are they. The arts link us all.
Get to know these men and women early in your life so that you may be worthy of them. If you do, then you will from day to day—or from second to second in the white heat of battle—do the right thing. Your heart as well as your mind will see to that. It will be instinctive, and it will be as civilized as can be expected. You will recognize their courage and your own, because you will have read about it before, you will have thought about it, absorbed it, felt it grow within your heart and acted it out between the lines. And they will recognize that in you. They will be with you. What more can you ask?
More important, what more can they ask?
Mr. Mitchell is a freelance writer who also teaches his craft in the Ohio prison system. He graduated from Yale in 1965, commissioned as an ensign in the naval reserve. He served as assistant navigator on board the USS Topeka (CLG-8) and as operations officer on board the USS Page County (LST-1076) during the Vietnam War. He subsequently served as a reporter for the New Haven, Connecticut, Register and received a Master’s Degree in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University.
ARLEIGH BURKE ESSAY CONTEST
The U.S. Naval Institute is proud to announce its ninth annual Arleigh Burke Essay Contest, which replaces the former annual General Prize, Essay Contest.
Three essays will be selected for prizes.
Anyone is eligible to enter and win. First prize earns $2,000, a Gold Medal, and a Life Membership in the Naval Institute. First Honorable Mention wins $1,000 and a Silver Medal. Second Honorable Mention wins $750 and a Bronze Medal.
The topic of the essay must relate to the objective of the U.S. Naval Institute: “The advancement of professional, literary, and scientific knowledge in the naval and maritime services, and the advancement of the knowledge of sea power.”
Essays will be judged by the Editorial Board of the U.S. Naval Institute.
ENTRY RULES
- Essays must be original, must not exceed 4,000 words, and must not have been previously published. An exact word count must appear on the title page.
- All entries should be directed to: Publisher, U.S. Naval Institute, 118 Maryland Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21402-5035.
- Esays must be received on or before 1 December 1992 at the U.S. Naval Institute.
- The name of the author shall not appear on the essay. Each author shall assign a motto in addition to a title to the essay. This motto shall appear (a) on the title page of the essay, with the title, in lieu of the author’s name and (b) by itself on the outside of an accompanying sealed envelope. This sealed envelope should contain a typed sheet giving the name, rank, branch of service, biographical sketch, social se
curity number, address, and office and home phone numbers (if available) of the essayist, along with the title of the essay and motto.
The identity of the essayist will not be known of the judging members of the Editorial Board until they have made their selections.
- The awards will be presented to the winning essayists at the 119th Annual Meeting of the membership of the Naval Institute. Letters notifying the award winners will be mailed on or about 1 February 1993, and the unsuccessful essays will be returned to their authors during February.
- All essays must be typewritten, double-spaced, on paper approximately 8 'A x 11". Submit two complete copies.
- The winning and honorable mention essays will be published in the Proceedings. Essays not awarded a prize may be selected for publication in the Proceedings. The writers of such essays will be compensated at the rate established for purchase of articles.
- An essay entered in this contest should be analytical and/or interpretive, not merely an exposition, a personal narrative, or a report.
Deadline: 1 December 1992