In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on October 15, 2009

The 2009 Army Capstone Concept will be released on Dec. 21, but until then, Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center’s Concepts Development and Experimentation Directorate, invites the public to preview and provide feedback for the draft copy on the Small Wars Journal blog.

Source: Draft Army Capstone Concept hits Web for public input

As some of you know, I was one of three invited “live bloggers” at the TRADOC Senior Leaders Conference at Gettysburgh two months ago.  At that time, there was a lot of discussion about the Army Capstone Concept (ACC) but, without a draft, it was hard to say much about it.

Crowdsourcing the ACC

On September 22nd, 2009, BG H.R.McMaster sent a copy of the ACC draft to Small Wars Journal in an effort to get some feedback from the community on it (Discussion Thread, Blog Post, Draft ACC).  This was part of a new way of dealing with the public – using “crowdsourcing”.  Crowdsourcing is a concept that has really come of age with the development of net 2.0 technologies, although it certainly existed before them.  The basic idea is simple: for any given area of interest, there is probably one (or more) communities of interest and/or practice that will have a freedom of thought not available within various institutional bodies.

In all honesty, I have been quite impressed with TRADOCs willingness to both crowdsource and to test out the use of net 2.0 technologies.  I have also been impressed by their willingness to listen to people outside of the military (and outside of the US) talking about issues that they normally don’t want to think about, mainly because they are outside of the charter (in the Malinowskian sense) of the military.

What is the ACC?

This, IMO, is the $64,000 question.  Here is what TRADOC has to say about it officially

The 2009 Army Capstone Concept from TRADOC on Vimeo.

This is a pretty “slick” video in many ways.  While it gives an overview of the logic behind the current draft version of the ACC it is also much more coherent than that draft.  In effect, the video gives one impression of the ACC while the draft gives another.

My comments and critiques

One of the interesting effects of crowdsourcing such a draft to a community of interest such as the SWJ is the types of comments and critiques that show up.  My own (post, document) were, to put it mildly, somewhat disparaging over a number of issues, although they tended to concentrate on word choice and conceptual limitations.  Probably the most disturbing trend in the draft that I noticed was the change in the language from being very dynamic and interconnected at the start (a “process” language) to becoming very prescriptive and deterministic towards the end (a “state” language).

I was also extremely concerned with the passivity implied in a number of the “concepts” contained in the document. Possbly the clearest example of this was contained in lines 349-352 of the draft ACC which reads

Consequently, the U.S. Army must develop the capability to think in terms of friendly (partners and allies), the enemy, and the people, and possess the flexibility to secure populations while simultaneously attacking or defending to defeat and destroy enemy forces and organizations.

This bothered me in many ways and, most especially, in the lack of agency ascribed to “the people”.  My suggested revisions, and their rationale, were as follows

Suggested change:
“Consequently, the U.S. Army must develop the capability to think in terms of supportive (partners and allies), oppositional (enemy) and neutral (the “population”, NGOs, etc.) groups, and possess the flexibility to secure populations while simultaneously attacking or defending to defeat and destroy or neutralize (convert) oppositional forces, organizations and ideologies.”
Rationale:
(I) The current wording maintains current military taxonomies (“the enemy”, “the people”) that have caused significant problems in current conflicts. A much more flexible version of this taxonomy is based on situational motivational attitudes of groups as “oppositional”, “neutral” and/or “supportive”, a taxonomy that not only allows for but, also, is conducive of thinking that would encourage groups to shift their stance in ongoing conflicts (e.g. The Anbar Councils).
(II) Simplistic taxonomies of enemy, friendly and neutral encourage thinking by US Army forces that is contrary to the lived reality of the actual populations, sometimes producing associated “perceptions” that are completely erroneous (e.g. Of the “if they are friendly, then they will do X, Y and Z. If the don’t, they must be the enemy.”).

As the document progresses, the language increasingly becomes that of prescribed “states” as if the writers were capable of foreseeing the future; a dangerous assumption and one that is not made at the start of the document.

These, however, are my comments and perceptions and i would encourage people to not take them as they are stated, but go and read the draft yourselves.

Open invitation to comment

Many of the SWC people have make their comments and critiques, but the “discussion” is not closed.  The ACC will go into its final planning stage on October 21st (source), and TRADOC is hoping to get more input from people by publicizing the discussion.

Regardless of where one stands in relation to current operations, this is an opportunity for everyone who wishes to to have their voices heard by some fairly high level people at TRADOC.  And, speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that they will read everything posted there.  They may not like what they read, but they are quite likely to take contrary viewpoints and incorporate them in the final version of the ACC if they fall within the charter of their organization.

Category: COIN, Professionalization
Tags: Army Capstone Concept (ACC), TRADOC