The last few years dominated by the Iraq adventure/fiasco yet again raise the issues of human frailties. Many books have now come out of the Bush administrations' war on terror. Richard Clarke's Against all Enemies was an earlier brave attack on the wrong war, while Bob Woodward's State of Denial brought us a candid view of the blindness of the organisation we trusted with waging a war and planning a peace.
Some years ago my dad introduced me to Norman Dixon's 'On the Psychology of Military Incompetence'. Originally published in 1976, it is sometimes difficult to get through the British dialect, but it remains an absorbing and frightening insight into the nature of military incompetence, and the predominantly British examples are universal in their lessons.
Probably there is little pyschological difference between military incompetence and any other. Unfortunately, the higher stakes of the military and, especially these days, political arena make the results of that incompetence even more damaging.
He has a host of examples, beginning in the Crimea and taking us through the Boer War, WWI+II and up to Vietnam
A favorite is the slow development of tanks in WWI. It was only the politicians and Navy who pursued the dream against the Army! Then the lack of progress between the wars is shown through the attitude to tanks, planes and horses. It is no wonder that Hitler's Blitzkrieg was so effective.
The British loss of Singapore in WWII is a tail of its own forces - navy, army and airforce - failing to work with each other. The audacious battle of Arnhem was always a high risk plan developed by very clever men, but they failed to change on the receipt of new information. How many times have we seen how difficult it is for administrations, generals, and even ourselves change our plans after we have emotionally committed ourselves?
Through these cases, and we can add our own more up to date examples, Dixon believes that there is a case to answer for incompetence as something more than accidents. And it is difficult, although tempting, to put it down to stupidity or 'bloody fools', since it is simply not possible that this many idiots can be in these positions.
There are psychological grounds for describing the difficulty that we all go through when new facts arise which conflict with a decision we feel that we have already made, creating what is called dissonance.
'Once the decision has been made and the person is committed to a given course of action, the psychological situation changes. There is less emphasis on objectivity and there is more partiality and bias in the way in which the person views and evaluates the alternatives' (p.166, Pimlico ed 1994). It seems to me that at this point in the process, challenges and disagreements are confronted by appeals to personal beliefs rather than rational arguments.
Nixon then goes on to describe how the military system itself drives a climate of achievement through fear of failure, and through its system of discipline and anxiety reduction actually reduces flexibility and self confidence. This inflexibility in the face of uncertainty is often what drives action to extremes - of inaction or forward in the belief that it is the right thing to do.
In government and in business there should be less excuse of the system itself developing those who are not able to remain flexible in decision making under uncertainty, and yet often that seems to be what we see. Ever more detailed business planning contrains the thinking of leaders. In politics the Bush administration is a good example of the constraints of belief, as well as its powers.
Some years ago my dad introduced me to Norman Dixon's 'On the Psychology of Military Incompetence'. Originally published in 1976, it is sometimes difficult to get through the British dialect, but it remains an absorbing and frightening insight into the nature of military incompetence, and the predominantly British examples are universal in their lessons.
Probably there is little pyschological difference between military incompetence and any other. Unfortunately, the higher stakes of the military and, especially these days, political arena make the results of that incompetence even more damaging.
He has a host of examples, beginning in the Crimea and taking us through the Boer War, WWI+II and up to Vietnam
A favorite is the slow development of tanks in WWI. It was only the politicians and Navy who pursued the dream against the Army! Then the lack of progress between the wars is shown through the attitude to tanks, planes and horses. It is no wonder that Hitler's Blitzkrieg was so effective.
The British loss of Singapore in WWII is a tail of its own forces - navy, army and airforce - failing to work with each other. The audacious battle of Arnhem was always a high risk plan developed by very clever men, but they failed to change on the receipt of new information. How many times have we seen how difficult it is for administrations, generals, and even ourselves change our plans after we have emotionally committed ourselves?
Through these cases, and we can add our own more up to date examples, Dixon believes that there is a case to answer for incompetence as something more than accidents. And it is difficult, although tempting, to put it down to stupidity or 'bloody fools', since it is simply not possible that this many idiots can be in these positions.
There are psychological grounds for describing the difficulty that we all go through when new facts arise which conflict with a decision we feel that we have already made, creating what is called dissonance.
'Once the decision has been made and the person is committed to a given course of action, the psychological situation changes. There is less emphasis on objectivity and there is more partiality and bias in the way in which the person views and evaluates the alternatives' (p.166, Pimlico ed 1994). It seems to me that at this point in the process, challenges and disagreements are confronted by appeals to personal beliefs rather than rational arguments.
Nixon then goes on to describe how the military system itself drives a climate of achievement through fear of failure, and through its system of discipline and anxiety reduction actually reduces flexibility and self confidence. This inflexibility in the face of uncertainty is often what drives action to extremes - of inaction or forward in the belief that it is the right thing to do.
In government and in business there should be less excuse of the system itself developing those who are not able to remain flexible in decision making under uncertainty, and yet often that seems to be what we see. Ever more detailed business planning contrains the thinking of leaders. In politics the Bush administration is a good example of the constraints of belief, as well as its powers.
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