With Patience and Careful Teaching of Sound Doctrine: The U.S. Army on the Brink of Change

As part of the U. S. Armor Association’s annual banquet, General Donn A. Starry was formally recognized as the latest member of the International Commander’s Wall on 18 May 2006. Currently, the portraits of five legendary armor leaders, who changed the art of war, adorn a dedicated wall of the central hallway of Boudinot Hall. General Starry’s portrait will soon be the sixth. The International Commander’s Wall is a portrayal of great leaders, which includes General Creighton Abrams, General George S. Patton Jr., Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, General Musa Peled, General Israel Tal, and now General Starry, who all believed training and educating leaders was critically important. Fundamentally, they were teachers, passing on knowledge and experience earned during difficult times to prepare young Soldiers for future wars. Each was a true student of history; learning from the past, they had the ability to both recognize present and future challenges while laying the foundations for changing their armies to meet emerging threats. Each served as an agent of change; a champion whose leadership and force of will became the standard by which other leaders are measured. The honor of being selected for the International Commander’s Wall is rare and the next selection may not occur for years to come. ARMOR would like to share General Starry’swarm and generous acceptance speech with its readers. “To say I am deeply honored by this would be the understatement of the century. To say I am humbled to be included among those already honored on the Commander’s Wall would equally be an understatement. However, I am profoundly grateful to those who had apart in the events for which I am being honored. What we celebrate here is not something I did by myself. We celebrate the rebuilding of our Army from the dismal conditions in which we found ourselves as we redeployed from Vietnam in the early 1970s, to the magnificent Army we deployed to the Middle East in Desert Shield and Desert Storm nearly 20 years later — the Army that so dramatically won the Hundred-Hour War. That Army was the creation of many people — goodly numbers of whom are in this room tonight. That Army was very much our Army, not mine — OURS. And for that, I stand as representing all of us. When I discovered what was to happen here tonight, I sought advice about what I might say — if anything. First to mind came the frequent admonition of the elder General Abrams that one should never pass up an opportunity to remain silent. The senior advisor at home, Lefty (his wife), 6 — advised that since I would be having the last word, it should be nice but brief: “Just thank them nicely and sit down,” she said. Given these circumstances, however, it seems to me that I do owe you a few hopefully relevant words. Long ago, a very wise American made the following observation: ‘If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it.’ Those words of Abraham Lincoln, more than a century ago, well reflect where we were as we began in the early 1970s the work we celebrate here tonight. They could, in some measure, also describe where we are today. But in either case, standing on the threshold of the future, we were and are really at the leading edge of the past. Some of that past was and is of our own making; more of it reflected then, as now, how we have come to where we were and are. In either case, the past reflected and reflects the long sweep of the history of the purpose of war — and the art of war — especially war since the onset of the industrial revolution, the kaleidoscope of national strategies, supporting operational and tactical level military strategies, and accompanying systems of war — equipments, structures, and organizations, training and education of soldiers and leaders. In both cases, then and now, the past defines the changing purpose of war as an instrument of national policy. So it was that when the elder General Abrams came to office as Chief of Staff in 1972 our Army was confronted by a dilemma. To the east was the threat of nuclear Armageddon — an end to civilization as we knew it, by means of thermonuclear warheads aboard intercontinental ballistic missiles. Instead of the traditional unconditional surrender, there was the real possibility of unconditional destruction. Further to the east, or to the west if you prefer, there appeared the equally ominous, but less well understood threat of the destruction of states and their peoples by the work of radical revolutionaries of various persuasions from political to religious. Before us, in the wake of Vietnam, lay our own Army, largely incapable of coping with either threat. We were without a clearly stated national strategy. The Army had been twice mortally wounded in the Vietnam years; once by the early and persistent refusal to mobilize large Reserve Component forces for Vietnam, closer to hand by ongoing political pressure to end the draft. Forces that deployed to theaters other than Vietnam suffered mightily from personnel turbulence, the drug culture, multitudinous disciplinary infractions (the military jails were full to overcrowded), and depletion of the experienced NCO corps, all reflected in a serious lack of confidence in leadership at virtually every level. Units deployed to Europe did not believe they could successfully defend against an attack by Group Soviet Forces Germany whose numbers, structure, and equipment inventories had been substantially enhanced while we were away in Vietnam. Against NATO Europe, the Soviets had embraced new doctrine, which sought to bring down NATO Europe by either conventional or nuclear means, preferably the former, but the latter if necessary. It was enough to concern even the most steadfast. Those of us who knew him well enough to do so, responded to the newly nominated Chief of Staff’s question, ‘Where are we?’ The response from the Army whose Chief of Staff he was about to become was, ‘out on its ass.’ His response was (characteristically) more questions: ‘You’ve told me where we are; if that be true, then: Where are we going? What do we need to do to get there? How best should we go about doing it?’ He echoed President Lincoln; thus, was born an Army for what we now call the Cold War. The war we won, but never had to fight. Four years ago, before an earlier audience much like this, I reflected on the great Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe’s characterization of society’s need for three kinds of people. He called them drummers, warriors, and storytellers. Drummers, Achebe said, are those who develop a deep understanding of the past, a realistic appraisal of the present, then drum up enduring causes for the future. Warriors are those who go forth to fight battles — military, political, even social, and perhaps economic, for great causes — perhaps many times, demonstrating thereby the enduring worth of the causes. Storytellers, Achebe said, are the most important, for it is their version — right or not right — of what happened, which becomes recorded history. I went on to characterize the then residents of the Commander’s Wall, of whom there were five, as drummers, warriors, and storytellers; even though, in some cases, their story had to be told by others. Particularly the case with General Abrams, whose story has been told in Bob Sorley’s two great books: Thunderbolt and A Better War. Shortly after the event, that speech appeared in Army. Certainly, you all have studied it and taken its lessons to heart, so they need no further embellishment. Finally, one of history’s greatest letter writers, a man who wrote in a completely different venue, provided relevant observations for the situation in which we found ourselves in the 1970s, and perhaps today as well. Two thousand years ago, Paul the Apostle wrote to his friend, Timothy, words that provide, as the media likes to say today, useful insights: ‘Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful teaching for the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine; instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their own ears away from the truth, and turn aside to myths.’ For the past fifteen years, I have served as a Senior Fellow on the faculty of the (now) Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk. For thirteen of those years, we conducted a course called the ‘Joint and Combined Warfighting School.’ Twelve weeks in duration, the course took 05- and 06-grade officers, graduating from service war colleges and en route to assignments on joint staffs, through a course in joint and combined force planning and operations. The last of those twelve-week courses was on a visit to the joint staff in the Pentagon. Here, an eloquent young Army brigadier general from the J8 staff held forth on joint matters as seen by his staff section. When he finished, a class member asked if the general could provide a statement of the National Military Strategy. After a pause the reply was, “Why — to deter forward and to win decisively.” The questioner then observed that to be Cold War strategy a la George Kennan, but in counterinsurgency warfare, ongoing at the time, what does it mean to ‘deter’ and what does ‘win’ mean against a threat that seeks to destroy our very civilization, and that now has, — 7 or soon may have, the nuclear means to do so. The general suddenly remembered that he was late for another meeting and departed quickly. The Senior Fellows led the after-dinner discussion of the matter that evening — it lasted long into the night. But that, you see, is the 21st-century question. It was earlier a serious question in the last half of the 20th century, one about which we had considerable information; information we had not studied seriously enough to set forth a relevant operational concept — a doctrine. In the early 1970s, after considerable discussion with the newly appointed Chief of Staff, it was decided that the primary threat remained against NATO Europe; and to that we turned our undivided attention. Well, indeed we did, for under President Ronald Reagan’s enlightened leadership, it led to the end of the Cold War. As Cold War survivors focused on the future, counterinsurgency war came under closer scrutiny. Its character and conduct have along and complex history. In the 20th century alone, our experience, together with that of the South Koreans in their country, the French experience in IndoChina and Algeria, and the unmasking of militant Islam in various venues post-Cold War, struck home recognition of an active virulent threat to our very existence. The history of the matter in Korea, Indochina, and Vietnam signaled the virtual impossibility of conflict termination under favorable circumstances to either side. Once the possibility of nuclear arms in insurgent hands became real, the threat of nuclear Armageddon (total nuclear war) and insurgent Armageddon (total insurgent war) merged to create a demand for new measures and countermeasures; new doctrine, new equipment, new organizations and structures, and new training and education of military cohorts and leaders. It also raised once more what is perhaps the signal lesson of the Korean, French, and our own counterinsurgency experiences — that quite likely military forces can handle only apart of total counterinsurgency warfare. If conflict termination under favorable circumstances is to be sought, it will require the total resources of the nation, organized, trained, equipped, deployed, and coordinated in action in order to bring about termination under acceptable conditions. In our own country, we have not experienced a coherent effort to face that problem since Project Solarium, undertaken by President Dwight Eisenhower in his search for the means to cope with an uncertain, but threatening future, when stakes were high and there appeared little or no consensus as to what to do about a growing threat to national survival. And so the world has turned over once more, as so eloquently remarked by General MacArthur in his famous farewell address at West Point. This now turned-over world is your world. The difference between where you are now and where we found ourselves in the early 1970s is almost incomprehensible. Today, we have a good, indeed a great, Army. It is well equipped, well trained, well organized, well led; it operates well under extremely difficult conditions, both in-theater and in the homeland. Even the most severe problems seeking resolution have been rationalized, if not resolved. So your work begins from afar better ‘where we are’ than did ours. But remember Paul to Timothy — what happens next begins with great patience and careful teaching of sound doctrine — operational concepts that form the basis — a beginning for everything else. The answers to President Lincoln’s questions, where we are, whither we are tending, and how best to judge what to do and how to do it, are all in new hands. They are your hands; they invite anew phalanx of patient and careful teachers who are also drummers, warriors, and storytellers, all without itching ears. Good Luck.” General Donn A. Starry, U. S. Army, Retired, enlisted in the Army in 1943. He won an appointment to West Point and was commissioned in 1948. Subsequently, he commanded armor and armored cavalry units from platoon through corps in Europe and in Vietnam. During his notable career, he served in various command positions, to include commander, U. S. Army Armor Center at Fort Knox, Kentucky (1973-1976), V U. S. Corps in U. S. Army Europe (1976-1977), the U. S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (1977-1981), and from 1981 to 1983, the U. S. Readiness Command, whose forces included what became U. S. Central Command, the force that deployed and fought Operation Desert Storm 1991, as well as Operation Iraqi Freedom 2003. He served twice in Vietnam, leading the famous 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment into Cambodia in May 1970. He was principal staff designer of the post-Vietnam Army force structure, then in a succession of commands, principal architect of AirLand Battle doctrine. A graduate of the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the U. S. Army War College, he holds an M. A. from George Washington University and several honorary Doctoral degrees. He is author of Mounted Combat in Vietnam (USGPO 1977), co-editor and co-author of Camp Colt to Desert Storm, The History of US Armored Forces, and has authored more than a hundred articles for professional journals and encyclopedias. Since 1991, he has served as a Senior Fellow on the faculty of the Joint and Combined Warfighting School at the Joint Forces Staff College, Norfolk. 8 —