Preparing leaders for nationbuilding

Military Review, May-June, 2004 by Patrick J. Donahoe

TRADOC [The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command] develops competent and adaptive leaders while ensuring currency in our doctrine and looks to the future while maintaining a firm grasp on today ..., imbu[ing] the qualities and skills necessary to dominate across the spectrum of conflict.

--TRADOC Commander's Intent (1)

IN A RECENT article, author Robert Kaplan set forth 10 rules for "Managing the World." (2) The first rule is "Produce More Joppolos," referring to Major Victor Joppolo, the protagonist of John Hersey's 1945 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Bell for Adano. (3) In Kaplan's view, the fictional Major Joppolo can serve as the model for soldiers during military occupations and peacemaking operations. We clearly need more Joppolos, he says and asks, where are they?

The United States has been waging the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) since shortly after 11 September 2001 and, arguably, has been unofficially at war with terrorists since the end of Operation Desert Storm. U.S. involvements in international conflicts in the past decade demonstrate that the U.S. Army needs leaders who can shift quickly from combat to stability operations and back again with an eye on winning both war and peace in the Islamic Middle East battlespace. The Army trains the force across the spectrum of conflict but focuses most of its training efforts on high-intensity combat operations while ignoring training on cultural, civic, ethical, and city planning duties that soldiers must perform in Iraq and elsewhere.

The Army must train its leaders to adapt to a fundamentally changed security environment. While the Cold War demanded Army leaders who could lead formations into battle, the new GWOT era demands leaders who can fight as well as their Cold War predecessors could but who can also transition quickly and effectively to stability operations and nationbuilding to defeat radical Islam and its proselytizing terrorists.

Send More Joppolos to Iraq

In Iraq and elsewhere, the Army asks battalion and company combat commanders to conduct nationbuilding and act as civil affairs officers. Soldiers must master warfighting skills to seize and secure terrain and towns while working peacefully with the local populace and, hopefully, persuading them that nonviolence is the best path to stability. Failing to win the hearts and minds of local people might not sound a mission's death knell, but it makes success in suppressing insurgencies and terrorism more difficult. What is the Army doing to prepare leaders for these undertakings?

In Hersey's story, Joppolo is the archetype for the U.S. military officer or senior noncommissioned officer (NCO) who finds himself working with the "natives" after a successful military campaign. The Army transformed Joppolo, an Italian-American clerk from the Bronx, into a civil affairs officer and assigned him to follow combat troops into Italy during World War II. Eventually he became the military mayor of an Italian town.

After the invasion and liberation of Italy, Joppolo became the face of the American Military Government of Occupied Territories to the people of Adano, Sicily, a small seaside fishing village. A fair-minded man intent on being a just and well-liked city administrator, Joppolo worked diligently at settling Adano's internal disputes, including punishing the village's former mayor, a fascist. Joppolo received permission from the U.S. Navy for local fisherman to return to sea to earn their livelihood. Joppolo's final task was to find a replacement for Adano's bell, which Italian Fascist Benito Mussolini's soldiers had melted down for armaments.

Joppolo had certain advantages that today's Army peacemakers in Iraq do not have. As an Italian-American, he was fluent in Italian, understood Italian culture, and had a personal connection to Italy. Today's Joppolo is an infantryman or tanker who does not have Joppolo's training and skills and faces an incredibly steep learning curve to successfully execute his mission. Still, Army commanders in the field in Iraq expect to be as successful as Joppolo was, even though they do not speak the language, have little understanding of the culture in which they are immersed, and have no personal connection to the country. Also, the Army expects combat arms officers and NCOs to accomplish the tasks that Joppolo as a trained civil affairs specialist performed. The Army has been unsuccessful in recruiting adequate numbers of Afghani- or Iraqi-Americans to fill its ranks of civil affairs officers and cannot conscript them to do so.

Retired U.S. Central Command Commander General Anthony Zinni described the challenges facing the Army's new Joppolos in a recent speech: "On one hand, you have to shoot and kill somebody; on the other hand, you have to feed somebody. On the other hand, you have to build an economy, restructure the infrastructure, and build the political system. And there's some poor lieutenant colonel, colonel, brigadier general down there, stuck in some province with all that saddled onto him, with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and political wannabes running around, with factions and a culture he doesn't understand [sic]." (4) Such conflicts are occurring today, and these responsibilities are being juggled right now in Iraq and Afghanistan.