Isegoria

The Strategy of Technology notes the importance of true strategists in positions of authority:

Strategists are almost never found in universities, or indeed in civilian life. These rare birds will generally have had a long career of working with military officers and military problems. Most strategists are, of course, military officers of reasonably high rank and long service. The converse is not true; many high ranking officers of long service have no conception of strategy — this is not intended as a criticism. The vast majority of military assignments involve the implementation of a strategic plan rather than its generation. Leadership of men, technical proficiency, courage, stamina, and careful attention to detail are all required of the successful field officer; yet nearly all these qualities may be lacking in a good strategist.

The strategist is, above all, an intellectual, but he is an intellectual of a different order from the scientist and engineer, or the average university professor. The strategist, unlike the scientist, deals with a world of secrecy, incomplete information, and real uncertainties which cannot be measured by statistical procedures. He lives in a world of intelligent opponents who seek to thwart him at every turn. He is concerned with the generation of plans which will be carried out by others, and he makes use of principles rather than scientific laws.

Strategists may in fact be unable to carry out their own plans. Many great strategists have lacked the vital qualities of leadership required of great military captains. Some have suffered from severe personality defects which prevented them from convincing anyone of the soundness of their plans. Consequently, strategists are not necessarily carried to the top of the military services unless they have been diligently sought and carefully chaperoned during their careers.

The U.S. armed services are not organized to locate and promote strategists, and originality in strategy has never been plentiful during out history. American military history shows rather the reverse: in all our wars, we have generally started with poor strategists in command and had to muddle through until we found strategic competence — e.g., Lincoln’s difficulties in locating a general who could take advantage of the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of the Union Army.

The solution is to “encourage strategic thought, particularly among younger officers, and ensure promotion for officers who show genuine strategic talents” — something associated with the Prussian general staff:

This nation has always been fearful of a general staff, falsely identifying this useful military instrument with Prussia and Nazi Germany and supposing it to be incompatible with democratic institutions. When the structure of a general staff corps is explained, not one American in a thousand recognizes what it is; yet he no longer fears it when he does understand it. There may be good reasons for rejecting the general staff concept, but we venture to suggest that it be rejected for something better than a pipe dream such as that which was brought to an end by the historic event at Kitty Hawk.

In fact, the general staff corps concept is this: at an early stage in their careers, certain young officers are selected as potential strategists, intelligence experts, and staff officers. Management of their careers is then given to the general staff; they are posted to staff assignments and schools where they study war, strategy, tactics, military doctrine, and history. School assignments are alternated with service in the field and with such special arms as artillery, infantry, and armor. They remain in the general staff corps until they are thought to be unsuitable for it, whereupon they can either be transferred to one of the line services or retired.

During their careers in the corps, the selected officers alternate between appointments to general staff headquarters and its specialized branches — such as logistics, and attache duties — and appointments in the field, where they serve as chiefs of staff to the field commanders of successively larger units. Thus, commanders learn to command and staff officers learn the functions of staff work. Commanders and staff officers each have their own paths of promotion, and are not in competition with each other until they come to the highest positions. Even there, competition may be kept to a minimum because staff officers often make good commanders above the corps level.

This, in brief, is the general staff corps system. It produces officers who have considerable knowledge of strategy; it requires them to be familiar with the operations of the military services and the tactics of the field forces; and it encourages them to think in intellectual rather than command terms. The system has been proved to be effective, although it is subject to improvements.