Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 51

LOOKING FOR A CHAMPION

A later historian would quantify how serious the
difficulty was. “The greatest obstacle in improving
and training the armed forces . . . was the lack of
qualified leadership at all levels, both officer and
noncommissioned officer . . .battalion and company
commanders were often inexperienced and lacked
initiative, few operations were conducted in the
absence of detailed orders. Senior commanders issued
directives, but failed to supervise their execution, and
results were usually negligible. American advisers
continually cited poor leadership as the foremost
reason for unit ineffectiveness. But with the lack
of replacements, unsatisfactory commanders were
seldom relieved.”14
The first problem arising from the lack of qualified
leadership is that there will be no identification of a
burning platform as the products of a noncompetitive
selection system will merely be placeholders or rentseekers. The second problem is that any champion
of change, who might fortuitously arise from the
otherwise unpromising swamp of Afghan leadership,
will find himself stymied, rendered impotent by the
difficult if not impossible challenge of removing
both the merely incompetent and those resistant to
change. Finally, the lingering influence of Russian
doctrine, especially among the higher ranks, will
retard the appearance of any champions in the first
place. Unfortunately, the opportunity to reform the
Afghan officer class has probably long since passed.

Conclusion
The goal of “Afghanization,” even if never formally defined, will be virtually identical to that of
“Vietnamization”: to allow the United States to withdraw from a costly military effort no longer deemed
essential (and possibly considered counterproductive) to the national interest by turning over security
responsibility to a properly trained and equipped local
national force.

Even if one rightly rejects the notion that there
is an inexorable repetition to history, the rapid and
ignominious collapse of South Vietnam in 1975
must certainly give pause to American policy
makers who most certainly do not wish to see
the Taliban return to power. Moreover, they do
not want Afghanistan to turn into a recuperative
haven for Al-Qaeda, which has already shown its
resiliency post Bin-Laden with its efforts in the
Benghazi consulate attack and the Syrian civil war.
To prevent this, today’s military advisors, much
like their forbearers in Vietnam, are hard at work
in Afghanistan, struggling to prepare the ANSF to
assume their national duty. These efforts are made
in the face of illiteracy, corruption, indifference,
incompetence, laziness, and treachery.
However, all of this diligent effort will be for
naught if we do not shift our advising focus from
the mere mechanics of tactics and administration
to the higher plane of process improvement. In this
regard, an understanding of the business consulting
concepts of the burning platform and the champion
of change is not just useful, it is essential.
As a final thought, lest one think that military
advising is a fool’s errand, always destined for
failure, consider the experience of the Continental
Army. In the winter of 1777-1778, this battered force
received its first military advisor, the Prussian Baron
Friedrich von Steuben, who introduced the first
manual of arms to American forces. The “burning
platform” was the need for Continental units to stand
firm in the face of highly trained and well-disciplined
British and Hessian infantry. And making sure that all
of this happened during that long, miserable winter in
the face of naysayers who said back-wood colonials
could never learn and critics who saw the specter of
dictatorship in the creation of professional American
soldiers was General George Washington, America’s
first champion of change. MR

NOTES
1. Mathieu Rabechault, “U.S. to end combat role in Afghanistan in 2013:
Panetta,” Agence France-Presse, 2 February 2012.
2. Robert Burns, “DOD offers details on shift in Afghan mission,” Associated Press, 15 February 2012.
3. Philip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History 1946-1975 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991), 61.
4. Daryl Conner, Managing at the Speed of Change (New York: Random
House, 1992), 94.
5. Anthony Buono, ed., The Changing Paradigm of Consulting: Adjusting to
the Fast-Paced World (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2011), 143.
6. Stuart Rothenberg, The Army of Francis Joseph (Lafayette, IN: Purdue
University Press, 1998), 127.
7. Special Inspector Ge