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this trend. New doctrine, new training scenarios, and, lately, new educa-
tional curricula based on the past 15 years of operational experience
re: ect an effort toward institutional learning. This shift is a result of
1. Michael Howard, Military Science in an Age of Peace, RUSI Quarterly 119, no. 1
(1973). Quoted in Gordon Sullivan and Michael V. Harper, Hope Is Not a Method: What Busi-
ness Leaders Can Learn from America s Army (New York: Random House, 1996).
2. David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. (London:
Praeger Security International, 2006). The 9 rst edition was published in 1964.
191
192 " lifting the fog of peace
post-Vietnam structures and processes that were actively designed to cap-
ture and disseminate experiential knowledge.
In his comparison of the U.S. Army in Vietnam and the British Army
in Malaya, John Nagl emphasized organizational culture as the primary
obstacle to or catalyst for contemporaneous institutional learning and
military change. It is, he writes, the organizational culture of the mili-
tary institution that determines whether innovation succeeds or fails. 3
Using organizational learning theory, Nagl concluded, The organiza-
tional culture the persistent, patterned way of thinking about the cen-
tral tasks of and human relationships within an organization played a
key role in allowing an organization to create a consensus either in favor
of or in opposition to proposals for change. 4 Indeed, the research pre-
sented here also highlights organizational culture as a signi9 cant obsta-
cle to military change. It is not, however, insurmountable or completely
determinate.
In contrast to theories of military change that focus on organizational
culture and external political intervention as the most signi9 cant obsta-
cles to and catalysts for change, the research presented here demon-
strates how internal institutional structures and processes can prevent,
promote, or permit military change through learning. Whereas previous at-
tempts at disseminating and institutionalizing experiential learning were
often stymied by the military s cultural preference for big war and its
structural inabilities to transfer knowledge to the next generation, the
case of the post Cold War Army suggests that organizational systems de-
signed to actively capture and disseminate new experiential lessons can
act as a counterweight to cultural resistance and organizational change.
In contrast to the Vietnam-era Army studied by Nagl and others, to-
day s Army presents a case for how formal institutional structures and
processes that are consciously designed to generate contemporaneous
institutional learning can act as a powerful counterweight to entrenched
organizational culture. With organizational structures and processes in
place that are designed to permit and even promote the transfer of ex-
periential knowledge, traditional cultural preferences for sustaining an
organization s essence can be effectively challenged by new opera-
tional experience. This is exactly what the post-Vietnam Army s learning
system was designed to do and how it operated throughout the 1990s at
3. John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup
with a Knife (London: Praeger, 2002).
4. Ibid.
Conclusion " 193
the tactical level. Although the system is still susceptible to interference
by powerful and savvy political actors, the modern Army s internal
propensity for learning in more recent years, compared to previous eras,
has had a demonstrated effect on its capacity to learn.
Institutional Amnesia or Lessons Learned? A Mixed History
Conducting operations other than war is nothing new for the U.S. mili-
tary. Unfortunately, military doctrine, education, and training have
rarely prepared troops well for these tasks, and the institution has not
managed to incorporate lessons from these operations into doctrine, ed-
ucation, and training for the next generation. The perennial mismatch
between operational experience and institutional knowledge is a re: ec-
tion of both military and civilian cultural preferences. Culturally, Ameri-
can society has resisted the use of its military forces for imperial pur-
poses. U.S. military professionals have re: ected these preferences by
limiting their perceived role to 9 ghting and winning the nation s wars,
rather than internalizing a broader conceptualization that would in-
clude more limited uses of force. Popular theories of big war as pre-
scribed by European theorists such as Jomini and Clausewitz have rein-
forced this preference. For commanders throughout history who have
been sent to accomplish tasks other than major war, however, these two
cultural predispositions have resulted in strategic and political ambiguity
over mission objectives and military roles, complicating commanders
abilities to operate.
Throughout history, commanders have coped with this ambiguity by
relying on a handrail of personal experience and the experience of
others. Failing the availability of either of these, they have coped
through trial and error on the job. This has resulted in inconsistent ap-
proaches across time and space within the same operation, depending
on the personality, experience, and knowledge of the commanders on
the ground. Occasionally, veterans of these nontraditional missions
have attempted to overcome this cultural and organizational inertia by
sharing their experiences with each other and with the next generation.
They have attempted this through informal networks and military jour-
nals and, when allowed or positioned to do so, through changing formal
doctrine, education, and training. These attempts at institutional learn-
ing have been moderately successful when high-level leaders have of-
fered their support and when formal structures and processes existed
through which their ideas could be disseminated.
194 " lifting the fog of peace
Military Learning: What Has Worked and How
Amid the perennial institutional amnesia in the U.S. military, there have
been a few minor victories by military veterans of irregular operations.
Their examples are worthy of examination in order to identify the mech-
anisms that permit or promote learning and change. For example, the
authors of the Small Wars Manual (published in 1940) were able to trans-
fer the lessons learned from two decades of collective personal experi-
ence in the Banana Wars to educational curricula and formal doctrine.
Key factors in their success were (1) institutional mechanisms in the
form of the Quantico School and the of9 cial Marine Corps Gazette and (2)
the fact that the general in charge of the Quantico School supported
their efforts. In doing so, this commander countered the Marine Corps
commandant s preference for amphibious warfare studies and the pre-
vailing cultural resistance to small wars and demonstrated the impor-
tance of leadership in promoting institutional learning.
This laudable attempt to institutionalize collective contemporaneous
learning was not sustained, however. By 1944, the Small Wars Manual was
no longer incorporated into formal Marine Corps education, as all ef-
forts were focused on the problem of amphibious warfare during World
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