Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 49

LOOKING FOR A CHAMPION

change. Out of selfishness or simple wrongheadedness, individuals and groups often ignore all signs
that change is upon them and that they are in peril of
being left behind as the world changes about them.
Typically, members need an influential individual
to push them off the burning platform into the
uninviting waters below. “The consultant must
have a strong internal leader/change champion to
support her efforts. This would be the individual,
clearly accepted and respected by the organization’s members, who would speak up (and speak
first) to highlight the change’s positive elements.”5
Without doubt, the consulting business is prone
to a frothy jargon that makes the critic rightly
wonder if the practitioner has an original thought
in his head or if he is merely spouting the latest
canned buzzwords. A phrase like “champion of
change” may especially cause the reader in uniform to ask, “What is this nonsense? The military
is already full of leaders.” Unfortunately, being
a leader and being a champion of change are two
separate entities, especially when one considers
there is generally a link between military promotion and upholding the status quo, not for agitating
for reform.
As an example, in 1906, the Austrian Army conducted a series of maneuvers before the watchful
and anxious eyes of the Hapsburg emperor, the
octogenarian Francis Joseph I. By this point in time,
the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, not unlike
Afghanistan, was already under great pressure
internally from its numerous ethnic divisions and
externally from rapacious neighbors like Italy and
Russia. Worse yet, there was little regard for the
Austrian army throughout Europe. This combination of internal feebleness and external aggression
should have provided a sufficiently incandescent
burning platform to have driven the Austrians to be
on the lookout for any advantage, receptive to any
innovation, “[but] when the vehicle [an armored
car] scared the horses of the imperial suite, Francis
Joseph, visibly annoyed, declared that ‘such a thing
would never be of military value.’”6
Naturally, Francis Joseph was neither the first,
nor the last not to recognize the implications of
onrushing technological innovation. It seems that,
often, only disaster can spur much-needed reforms
in both business and war, though even then it is not
a certainty.
MILITARY REVIEW

January-February 2014

As an aside, the need for a champion of change
is not to suggest that this champion will be correct
or his quest for change laudable. History is rife with
misguided initiatives for change (societal, business,
or military) that led to disaster (Mao’s Great Leap
Forward perhaps being the bloodiest example). Thus,
it is not the purpose of this paper to examine whether
any particular desired end-state for the ANSF, be it an
emphasis on light infantry units, heavy mechanized
formations, or teams of time-traveling cybernetic
organisms, is appropriate or not. Such a debate,
especially within the Afghan apparatus, would be
highly laudable. However, there is no evidence that
any such conversation is taking place.

Whither the Platform? Whither
the Champion?
“I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks they can just copy from
Japan—but they don’t know what to copy!”
—W. Edwards Deming

So what are the consequences of missing these
two essential pillars of reform? As of the latest
round of the now discontinued Commander’s Unit
Assessment Tool (note: the CUAT has been replaced
by the Regional Command ANSF Assessment
Report [RASR] as of September 2013) reports in
July 2013, only 257 of 827 combined units in the
Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National
Police received the highest rating, that being the
oxymoronic “Independent with Advisors.”7 At the
ministries of interior and defense level, only two of
78 staff sections or cross-functional areas received
the CM-1A rating of being capable of autonomous
operations.8 To see only 31 percent of the ANSF and
2 percent of the staff sections receive their highest
respective ratings is discouraging after a decade of
American and NATO tutelage and a disbursement
of $60.28 billion on Afghan reconstruction out of
$96.57 billion appropriated by Congress—and all
this from a nation renowned for its warrior ethos.9
However, even these dismally low ratings may
be overly optimistic. An audit by the DOD Office
of the Inspector General noted, “The Commander’s
Unit Assessment Tool did not capture the capability and effectiveness of ANA logistics and maintenance systems at or below the corps level. As a
result, the International Security Assistance Force
Joint Command was unable to adequately measure
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