Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 42

advance moral reasoning skills as well as historical and cultural understanding of likely theaters of deployment. A tiered approach that provides more extensive instruction for strategic leaders is necessary. However, junior leaders require meaningful ethical instruction that includes vignettes and exploratory discussions and goes beyond simple PowerPoint indoctrination.72 When dollars are short, the last thing cut should be education. There are alternatives to our growing leaders who can practice true mission command and win the best possible peace. We could, for example, continue as we have done, pulling our oars against the current of an increasingly remote past, often exhausting ourselves and our nation’s treasury for the sake of little (if any) lasting battlefield progress. Or worse, we could give in to this current, let go of what adaptive doctrine we have created, and float unmerrily down the stream toward the next series of rapids waiting to capsize us. Surely though, such alternatives are unacceptable. MR NOTES 1. Eitan Shamir, Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the U.S., British, and Israeli Armies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 33. 2. Ibid. 3. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 46. 4. Ibid., 65. 5. Like Clausewitz, Moltke recognized the importance of friction in war. He embraced attempts to counter and exploit friction by empowering leader initiative at the lowest levels: “The advantage of the situation will never be fully utilized if subordinate commanders wait for orders. It will be generally more advisable to proceed actively and keep the initiative than to wait to the law of the opponent.” See Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings, ed. Daniel J. Hughes, trans. Daniel J. Hughes and Harry Bell (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1995), 133. 6. Martin Samuels, Command or Control: Command, Training and Tactics in the British and German Armies, 1888-1918 (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 11. 7. Antulio J. Echevarria, “Auftragstaktik: In Its Proper Perspective,” Military Review (October 1986): 50-56, 55. Much later, the World War II German Gen. Hermann Balck would say: “We lived off a century-long tradition, which is that in a critical situation the subordinate with an understanding of the overall situation can act or react responsibly. We always placed great emphasis on the independent action of the subordinates, even in peacetime training.” See William DePuy, “Generals Balck and von Mellenthin on Tactics: Implications for NATO Military Doctrine,” DTIC Online, 19 December 1980, (5 July 2013), 19. 8. Herbert Rosinski, The German Army (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940), 311. 9. Jonathan House, Toward Combined Arms Warfare: A Survey of 20th-Century Tactics, Doctrine, and Organization (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, August 1984), 34-36. 10. Clinton J. Ancker III, “The Evolution of Mission Command in U.S. Army Doctrine, 1905 to the Present,” Military Review (March-April 2011): 43. 11. U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 6-0, Mission Command (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office [GPO], 11 August 2003)