We continue to discuss the idea of "team of leaders."  This video well worth your time. Thanks to John Robb at Global Guerrilllas.  See his site for comments.

But let's take this one step further into the context of  "What kind of war"  determination as impacting how we approach "the war" once we have determined "what kind."  Consider the comments from  the Blog – Challenge COIN; Perspectives on the evolving U.S. Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism doctrine. What works, what does not, and what we think we know: "COIN/CT Lessons from drug induced dancing."

... The main lesson to walk away with is how crucial it was to easily mimic the dance. Were this a difficult dance, the originator would have been nothing more than an observed solo performer. Also the role of the first follower made it acceptable for a few more people to join. Once the first follower's friends join in, the tipping point is then reached at 1:15. From then on, people join in groups and the originator or "leader" is irrelevant as the movement has a life of his own. Only the music ending stops everyone from dancing, not the "leader."

Now take that template and apply it to al Qaeda in Iraq. What sort of impact would killing or capturing the leadership have today? This is precisely why the classic insurgency texts emphasized the need to destroy an insurgency at its onset. Otherwise it becomes an integrated part of a society for at least a generation if not longer. So how do we end the al Qaeda-styled movements? Find the music and turn it off…

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

Prior to Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf created a small cell of four majors and a colonel to act as his intimate "brain trust" to plan his campaign. The group became known as the "Jedi Knights." All were graduates of the School of Advanced Military Studies, essentially the Army staff college's second year honors program. The success of SAMS was emulated by other services and became the model for a similar program at the Army War College focused on strategic studies.
Success of the SAMS model provides a good template for an advanced learning program for specially selected strategic staff officers.

EEI #5 – "The Big Picture"- The Nexus Between Education and Grand Strategy - begins with (Mark Safranski at Zenpundit) questioning our educational preparedness to deal with 21st century problems.

Why would our societal orientation in complex, dynamic, fast moving situations be good when our educational system trains people only to think through simplified, linear, sequential problems? Strategic thinkers need to be able to see "the big picture" and handle uncertainty, or they cannot be said to be strategic thinkers.

As a second offering (for the first, see EEI#5) on a thread of "learning, unlearning, relearning," as an Essential Element of Information for a Culture of Preparedness, this post provides an excerpt from Armed Forces Journal by retired Army Major General Robert Scales.  General Scales is a former commandant of the US Army War College, now president of Colgen Inc., a consulting firm specializing in land power, war gaming and strategic leadership, and is a  graduate of West Point, with a PhD in History from Duke University He served more than 30 years in the Army, commanding two units in Vietnam.

As a major theme he notes "The complexities of recent wars suggest that the reforms that dictated jointness, while necessary, are no longer sufficient. Today's conflicts demand officers who can lead indirectly and perform in an uncertain, ambiguous, complex, chaotic and inherently unpredictable environment. Our educational system needs to produce more men and women who can anticipate conditions that do not yet exist. They must be capable of dealing with unfamiliar cultures and an enemy who is unconstrained by Western values and methods of warfare. To be sure, the services possess many talented, and indeed some brilliant, practitioners of the strategic art. But the demand for strategists is greater than the supply. Our system of professional military education produces too few officers capable of understanding and dealing with the complexities of war at the strategic level."

To that I would add/ask  and is it not the same for all this country's leaders?

I highly recommend the full article at Armed Forces Journal, but here in part:

Return of the Jedi

They will fail because the services will not be able to attract the brightest and groom them through proper schooling for positions of responsibility unless the intellectually gifted are rewarded with selection for promotion and command. Unless intellectual excellence is tied to the services' personnel systems, true reform is impossible. Only once in the past century have powers of reform overcome the cultural glue that binds together the services' systems of professional rewards. In the mid-1980s, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., as part of the Goldwater-Nichols legislation, forced the services to learn how to operate efficiently – the essence of "jointness." Skelton's effort gained traction because of the failure of the services to fight together as a team during the invasion of Grenada in 1983. Skelton leveraged the law to hold the services' reward systems for promotion and command hostage to a meaningful commitment to jointness. To ensure that his reforms would last, Skelton legislated that staff and war colleges bring together student officers from all services to study joint as well as service-specific subjects.

The complexities of recent wars suggest that the reforms that dictated jointness, while necessary, are no longer sufficient. Today's conflicts demand officers who can lead indirectly and perform in an uncertain, ambiguous, complex, chaotic and inherently unpredictable environment. Our educational system needs to produce more men and women who can anticipate conditions that do not yet exist. They must be capable of dealing with unfamiliar cultures and an enemy who is unconstrained by Western values and methods of warfare. To be sure, the services possess many talented, and indeed some brilliant, practitioners of the strategic art. But the demand for strategists is greater than the supply. Our system of professional military education produces too few officers capable of understanding and dealing with the complexities of war at the strategic level.

We have too few of these officers because the services tend to accelerate the careers of officers who, early in their careers, show talent at the tactical level of war. Battalion, squadron and ship commanders habitually reward subordinates who mirror themselves. These subordinates tend to be officers who get things done, the go-to, can-do types who make their mark with managerial brilliance. The irony of the system is that the requirement for competence shifts from the tactical to the strategic at just the time in their careers when tactical officers leave command to move on to higher levels of responsibility at the colonel and flag level. As a result, too often we see skillful tacticians thrust into strategic staff jobs they are ill-prepared to perform.

HOW TO DEVELOP STRATEGIC THINKERS
We have met the archetype strategic warrior, and his name is David Petraeus. He is joined by a remarkably successful cadre of leaders who have demonstrated exceptional talent in the chaotic environments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some names are familiar because they reached three or four stars: Chiarelli, Stavridis, Dempsey, Ward, Dubik, Eikenberry. Others are equally successful but less well known because of their lesser rank and profile. These are behind-the-scenes officers who have offered advice and insight to their flag officer bosses: Nagl, Yingling, McMaster and Mansoor, among a few others.

Most of these proven strategic thinkers share a remarkably common provenance. Very early in their careers they learned to think critically and communicate strategically by attending a government-financed graduate program at a top-tier civilian university. Later, most of them sharpened these skills by teaching at a service academy. They all share (along with fellow intellectual travelers such as Adm. Mike Mullen and Marine Gen. Jim Mattis) a lifelong obsession with reading history and studying the art of war. At some time in their careers, they ignored the caution of personnel officers about spending too much time in school while under scrutiny for command selection. Today, this is a critical period for upwardly mobile officers because those who are screened for command are on the fast track to flag rank. Those who don't command will not grasp the brass ring. The proclivities of service culture cannot be easily overcome. The reality is that educational reform hinges on the ability to create a path for the intellectually gifted to be promoted to flag rank. But the climate today tends to reward tactical rather than strategic excellence. This must change.

BEGIN AT THE TOP
Flag officers with highly developed strategic skills are needed principally in the key operations, planning, strategy and civil-military billets – a relatively small cohort that embraces conservatively about a sixth of flag and general officers from all services. Consider a reform scheme that establishes a Senior Strategist Program (SSP) that would identify key strategic appointments and fence them for officers educated in a program of demanding, selective advanced schooling and preparation. ... As in any profession, our young officers are ambitious and seek promotion. They will see that intellectual excellence has become a prized credential for promotion, and they will actively seek higher education and intellectual preparation as the surest means for achieving flag rank.

Promotion of these specially selected and accredited officers to flag rank would begin early in their careers … These officers would study the human and social sciences with particular emphasis on history, international relations, anthropology, economics, language and culture. Officer students would be expected to complete the course requirements for the Ph.D. A successful preliminary examination would waive the education and service requirements necessary to gain credit for joint service, thus leveling the career playing field by giving these officers the same amount of time to command as their conventionally educated peers.

CREATING JEDIS
Prior to Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf created a small cell of four majors and a colonel to act as his intimate "brain trust" to plan his campaign. The group became known as the "Jedi Knights." All were graduates of the School of Advanced Military Studies, essentially the Army staff college's second year honors program. The success of SAMS was emulated by other services and became the model for a similar program at the Army War College focused on strategic studies.

Success of the SAMS model provides a good template for an advanced learning program for specially selected strategic staff officers. In this scheme, each service would be responsible for teaching their respective version of SAMS. The SAMS course would last two years with eligibility reserved principally for officers who completed the two-year program at civilian graduate schools. Others could be accepted provided they pass a very rigorous entry examination. During the course, SSP students would be required to finish their dissertations for the doctorate degree and demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language. Like today's SAMS, the course would be enormously rigorous. The curriculum would be history based. Students would follow the case study method and would be evaluated and graded by an experienced faculty, most of whom would be SSP program alumni. Graduates would then return to operational assignments and subsequent selection for battalion, squadron and ship commands…

MAKING THE CUT
.......The Skelton reforms have shown that often legislation is the only sure way to achieve what cultural friction cannot overcome. To be sure, no effort as culturally disruptive as this can be implemented quickly. At least five years would be needed to get it off the ground, and more than a decade would pass before SSP-qualified officers would advance to positions of authority. But if we are to create a body of gifted officers capable of dealing with the complexities of modern warfare, we soon must begin to break the stranglehold of the service personnel systems and offer the proper rewards to those young, talented and ambitious officers who are most gifted in the strategic art. AFJ

Complete article at AFJ

In The Resilience Doctrine, we argue that globalization is both unstable and inevitable, and that governments have little choice but to build collaborative platforms to manage risk. We conclude with a dozen guidelines for building an international system fit for the 21st century.

The introduction …

In a Time of Crisis – In the past year, we have witnessed a global emergency, with the world experiencing the worst economic meltdown since the 1930s. This crisis will not be a one-off. Over the next 20 years, we will be confronted with a series of systemic and interlocking risks that will cross national borders with alacrity. As a result, the divide between domestic and international policy will largely be erased.

To carve out a strategic response to these risks requires huge effort. Our assumptions about the world were formed in another age and are ill-suited to contemporary challenges. The international system, meanwhile, is inveterately short-term in its outlook, national governments are myopic and complacent, and the media is unforgiving towards politicians who fail to conform to the dictates of an increasingly frenetic news cycle.

Leaders therefore need a new lens through which they can view the task of creating security in the 21st century. The projection of power, and attempts to balance the power of others, no longer provides a useful perspective. Instead, the concept of resilience should be at the heart of a new doctrine for managing transnational risk and global instability.

Resilience offers a guiding principle for informing strategy and animating alliances. It also provides a yardstick for measuring success. At present, much of what governments do internationally inadvertently increases vulnerability. This must change if globalization is to be saved from itself.

By Captain Charlie Meinema

Tacoma Washington Police Department

Disasters may be local, but few are.  Even local disasters are not local, as Yogi Berra might say.   This is often because criminals, explosions, terrorists and fires fail to respect jurisdictional borders, and / or because the crisis – even if inside one geographical or jurisdictional boundary – is too big for any one agency to handle with troops available at the time of the incident.  We staff according to anticipated 'normal' work load.  Any major event immediately stresses the system, because we have to send pretty much all we have and that leaves everything else insecure.   We just can not staff to crisis level unless we are SURE the crisis will occur – and when do we know that?  After it has happened.  

>> This is one problem constantly besetting the Israelis.  In the period 1969 / '73, the Arab nations – especially the short lived United Arab Republic of Syria and Egypt – practiced a policy of 'no war / no peace' toward Israel.  There was – like today – constant agitation, raids, small incidents, and every fall large 'war game' exercises in western Egypt and Syria.  Israel routinely activated a significant percentage of reserves when raids reached a certain frequency and / or to offset the potential of the large annual war games, since Israel knew that their neighbors were only waiting for the right moment.  However, the cost of such heightened levels of activation became overwhelming to Israel.  Israel stopped the raised activation level during the fall 'war games,' due largely to the cost of the deployments.  

This of course was what the Arabs were awaiting and in 1973 the 'normal war games' were held on the west bank of the Suez Canal.  The Israelis did not make significant additional activations of reserves, because 'they do this every year.'  1973 was different.  On Yom Kippur the Egyptians cut through the berms on the east side of the Suez Canal and the Yom Kippur War was launched.   Israel simply could not afford to keep staffing to a level appropriate to meet the threat unless they KNEW the threat was real on a particular occasion.

 We are all in this situation.  We live our lives day by day and the Devil waits for but a moment – but his moment spans far beyond our lifetimes.  The threat is always there, but we can not afford to staff sufficiently to address it on a daily basis.   

The 'normal' crisis (e.g. Lakewood, a suburb of Tacoma, just experienced a homicide / robbery of an armored car guard inside a major department store.) may be local to Pierce County, Washington, but may span 05 police jurisdictions and as many fire districts. 

One result of the 'squad' or 'all crisis is local crisis' mentality is 'chasing the pain.'  Post operative pain medications are meant to be taken on schedule to PREVENT pain from becoming disabling (help me out here, Dr. von Lubitz).  People are told not to wait until they hurt – get ahead of the pain, don't chase the pain – to take the pain meds because the meds take some time to begin to work.   If someone / agency thinks, 'I can handle this,' and he / they find they can not 'handle it,' the unnecessary delays in obtaining, briefing, deploying the help can result in a greatly increased level of 'pain,' as in New Orleans.    

If we experience a disaster in just one jurisdiction, we still likely have to deal with multiple departments within that one jurisdiction to handle it.  The problem still may require seeking outside help in the future of the event.  We would always be ahead if we not only trained to work together but also had an automatic briefing / notification system to alert nearby agencies of each other's big issues as they emerge.   This would allow the groundwork for effective interaction when and if it is needed.  (e.g. On the small scale compared to the nation, the county wherein Tacoma dwells was 'host' to a large gathering of an outlaw motorcycle gang at one of their taverns.  This was an intentional display for turf and for recruiting – the bikers were in full colors and the party was in the parking lot of the tavern next to a major street.  Although the tavern hosting the event was 02 – 03 miles outside the city, the swing shift commander for TPD contacted his opposite number for Pierce County to determine how we would provide assistance if something were to erupt, such as another gang driving past the tavern and shooting – a plausible issue given motorcycle gang turf and dominance issues in the state recently).

Further, the contact gave the TPD commander a direct line from county on where the group was going when it left the tavern.  'tis always good to know if 40 – 60 bikers in full colors are motoring into your town before they get there.  However, had this gone badly, we would have had officers from other cities and the state patrol arriving to help in short order.   We do not have any automatic incident notification system that would tell ALL nearby agencies of the situation and which could be updated to include direction for responders.   Working on it.).  

A problem that probably hits us all is the scope of the disaster and appropriate assessment of crisis.  "How bad is it, really?"   Inevitably, after some major debacle we have reports of people who DID accurately predict the incident, attack,…., but could not get a serious hearing from anyone in position to make a difference.    Sometimes this is because the predictors – like the seers of old – said there would be an attack, but could not say where or when with any degree of certainty.   They only attain prescience in retrospect – and we have all probably met a few of these folks.   By contrast, sometimes disasters happen and the initial reports are accurate, but are not given sufficient weight.  The response is insufficient and the disaster – which might have been contained – grows out of control. 

[In the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai, I am sure initial intelligence reports / assessments were confusing.  Responses were not in scope to the level of attack.  Worse, the troops responding were using weapons they had almost never shot and suffered problems in coordination, …    I do not disparage Mumbai Police / military.  Any one facing what Mumbai faced is going to have a very bad time of it.  However, getting a handle on how big / bad the problem is as soon as possible is critical.]

For every legitimate disaster we have multiple Chicken Littles yelling 'The sky is falling. The sky is falling,' in regards to relatively minor issues.   We have to develop the ability to make rapid and accurate determinations of the level of crisis to trigger the appropriate level of response as quickly as possible.  . 

The military analogy to the above is having a plan for incorporating reinforcements / augmentations into the battle without loss of coordination.  Each squad has to fight as a squad (and often each man in the squad only knows what the squaddie to his right or left is doing at best), but it needs to be aware of at least what the squad on either side of it is doing, in case it has to defend a flank if their neighbor is overrun or has to detach a couple of riflemen or machine gun / mortar crew to reinforce a squad getting hit hard next to it.   No officer should go into battle without knowing some idea of what will need to be done, how do we proceed to the forward edge, where do we go, what do we need to prepare, how will we exploit a sudden opening, where is the rally point,.. ,if the enemy fails to react as expected – something the unpleasant enemy has a habit of doing.

All this is a lot of coordination even if we are on the attack.  'tis all that much harder when adversaries attack us.  If we fail to assess enemy strength and assume an assault is only a probe or the famous 'reconnaissance in force,' we are courting disaster.  The penny packet reinforcements sent will be gobbled up as they arrive and the crisis will only get worse.  If we make the right assessment and an effective deployment of reinforcements in strength coupled with combined arms support, we can – hopefully – stop the attack or at least minimize the damage.

In the civilian world, we are almost always on the defensive.   We can not eradicate a threat before it strikes.  We can not plan to attack a specific problem – we can and must develop the best possible plans for general responses.  In the modern world, such plans would not be old fashioned plans as we know them, but effective preparation for and use of the 'teams of leaders' concept and related ideas. 

In our world we have done a better job of determining generally what is available and how to request it in the past few years.  Alas, we still tend to await the actual crisis to have any serious work on what is needed at that moment in that situation, and how to integrate it effectively into our reaction without unnecessary loss of time and effectiveness.  We are still.'chasing the pain,' and the patients often suffer..

Culture:  The sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another. Culture is transmitted, through language, material objects, ritual, institutions, and art, from one generation to the next.

This post is intended to set the stage for a new group of FORUM articles/discussions expanding on the recently introduced Culture of Preparedness thread.

Since first publication in Fall 2006, Project White Horse 084640 has focused on providing multiple and varied perspectives on severe crisis environments and the decision making processes required.  With the introduction of the "resilient community" concept as a major theme, we began usage of this FORUM to bring multiple discussions and articles between editions with intent to move beyond "perspective" to exploration of workable approaches for "survival on our own terms." (Boyd)

The latest edition offers that a culture of preparedness is the necessary link between the threat generated environment (whether by accident, acts of nature, or purfoseful acts of man) and the threatened community. We have offered multiple perspectives to assist in understanding the problem, but one must ask, what actually defines a resilient community, what are the quantifiable ingredients, what is the make up of this culture, we state that we need?

Consider the following, borrowed from Department of Defense definitions:

Essential Elements of Information:  The critical items of information regarding the enemy and the environment needed by the commander by a particular time to relate with other available information and intelligence in order to assist in reaching a logical decision – required to plan and execute an operation.

These next FORUM offerings will expand the original PWH theme-defining triangle of worst case events, time criticality , and leader team response by offering multiple "elements of essential information" that seem inherent yet not necessarily obvious – in the makeup of a Culture of Preparedness.

As always your thoughts and inputs on the elements and future inclusions will be most welcome at projectwhitehorseatroadrunnerdotcom.

I'm very pleased to announce that Project White Horse 084640 Edition #8 – A Culture of Preparedness and Intersectional Ideas  – is now on line.

The last two editions have provided perspective on "resilient communities" and leadership required. In Edition #8 we shift from providing "perspective" to creating actionable understanding and answers. The first part of the Edition #8 focus (and) title borrows from General Russ Honore's stated goal – developing a culture of preparedness. As Russ's words have been featured on the site, having "a culture…" seems to highlight the very essence of developing and nurturing a resilient community. As such, "culture of preparedness" can be seen to complete a "strong triangle" with the additional sides of "resilient communities," and Team of leaders. Faced with severe crisis, that model demands creative approaches. We must look beyond the norm to multiple fields and experience bases and find ideas and answers at the intersections.

Intersectional ideas are those resulting from combining concepts from multiple fields – areas of specialization gained through education and experience – as compared to those created traditionally by combing concepts within a field – noted as directional ideas. Success in intersectional idea generation is dependent upon breaking down barriers of association that would more than likely indicate a "non relationship" or at best limited context between or among fields.

To date, the site has consisted of the electronic magazine website and a Forum for posting of articles between editions. Based on the above, INTERSECTIONS now becomes a third element of PWH. This intersection will be created by providing the thinking of a group with multiple and diverse backgrounds, including medicine, first response, intelligence, academia, and military with experience from Great Britain, Israel, service in both Iraq and Afghanistan and on mean street USA. The content will be operational threads selected for potential to increase actionable understanding. The following two topics have been under discussion and the dialogue provided:

1. Actionable Intelligence and Resilient Communities
2. Training Decision Makers to the "Ace' Level

Please see the Editors Note and the article introductions for more detail and to put this edition in the context of actionable tools – useable by emergency responders, private sector organizations and citizens in the process of building a culture of preparedness. Most assuredly you will find perspectives and intersections. You will find understanding that can be acted upon. You will find answers.

A final note: Given the obvious, finding a picture of a leader on a white horse will surprise no one, but in this case there is more, there is purpose. While there are many representations of those who have been America's leaders throughout our history, including scores of George Washington as commander of the Continental Army and as our first President, the depiction of Washington with his troops, having crossed the Delaware and moving toward the attack at Trenton is, to me, iconic reflection of leadership in severe crisis, His adaptability and audacity after three major defeats saved not only the spirit of the Continental Army, it provided the underpinning that would remain through the victory at Yorktown. In so doing as General Nathanael Greene would say "he will be the deliverer of his own country." A century later, in a classic study of the Revolution, Sir George Otto Trevelyan stated "It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever deployed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world."

It was he who held the army together and gave it spirit through the most desperate of times… not a brilliant strategist or tactician, not a gifted orator, not an intellectual… (but) above all, Washington never forgot what was at stake and he never gave up … again and again in letters to Congress and his officers calling for unremitting courage and perseverance. 1776 by David McCullough

Noted as one of the world's 100 most decisive battles, the Battle of Trenton was most certainly testimony to General Washington's perseverance. He would not quit on the fragile American dream. In the sense of William Shakespeare's Henry V, I submit it is America's Agincourt moment – we few we band of brothers.

As stated in the previous edition, our forefathers by their actions in 1776 placed this country forever at the "dawn of victory." That victory demands perseverance in the face of great crisis and turmoil. It will be found in "a culture of preparedness."

Please join us at Project White Horse 084640

Ed @ PWH
29 April. 2009

We now move to

• >> Intelligence implications for a resilient community response force team in a low probability/high impact  worst case disaster environment:

• critical information – what, where and how


• education aimed at preventing "victimhood"


• planning on multiple levels


• being a responder not a victim


• building leaders AND followers – who, how 

By necessity that team will most likely include professionals (public safety and military – Guard and  Active Duty), private sector, and individual citizens or community organizations

If all would agree on the "team" response requirement and given the above – how do you inform, plan, and educate/train/learn across a team with few common linkages on a very practical basis?  How do you get ready for the "Black Swan?

It is easy to identify the problems, not too hard to come up with solutions, BUT the how and the doing is something else.

Invest in preparedness, not prediction…I will never get to know the unknown since, by definition, it is unknown. However, I can always guess how it might affect me, and I should base my decisions around that…you always control what you do, so make this your end.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb – The Black Swan; The Impact of the Highly Improbable