Why Do Militaries Struggle to Learn?

04.09.16
Saar Raveh

 

Introduction

Why do armies struggle to learn, to change, and to prepare for the next war? It seems that this question has been asked since the dawn of military conflict. In this article I will analyze the cultural barriers to military learning and why armies struggle to learn and change.

The classical theories of organizational learning postulate that organizational learning processes are primarily processes of the transfer of knowledge; the acquisition of information, knowledge or expertise; the development of learning mechanisms and a supportive learning culture; and the use of information technologies to enable workers and managers to make better use of the existing knowledge within an organization.[2]

Learning processes that take place within an organization have the potential to influence the positions and beliefs of its leaders and to shape their worldview; to change their habits and the skills acquired through accumulated experience; to develop adaptive and innovative capabilities; to improve organizational capabilities to deal with new circumstances; and to enhance effective behaviors.[3] Researchers who study learning in institutional organizations, especially in militaries, emphasize that organizational learning process of this type encourage the conditions needed for the following: change at the level of beliefs in decision-makers;[4] an examination of the overall organizational concept of conflict between states including military clashes;[5] change at the level of behavior and execution within an army;[6] and change at the overall cultural level within an organization.[7] Organizational learning serves as a mediation mechanism between the functioning of the army and the dynamic war environment.

Even though armies as institutional organizations engage in learning processes of different types, time after time it becomes clear that armies struggle to learn, to foresee changes and to adapt themselves to the new reality.

The researchers Cohen and Gooch distinguish between two types of failures.[8] The first type they call “simple failures” and emphasize that they result from a failure to envision foreseeable situations and to prepare for them (“to see and understand”); or from a failure to internalize the obvious (existing lessons learned); or from a failure to adapt to new and unexpected circumstances; or a failure of integration.

Failures at a higher level they call “complex failures.” These take place as the result of a combination of all the components - a failure to learn and to foresee new situations and to prepare for them. In this context, Liddell Hart emphasizes that generals choose to open a war at a point close to where the previous one began and because of this they are defeated.[9]

The question that needs to be asked is why do armies,[10] despite the enormous resources at their disposal, struggle to learn and change?

Traditionally, the key learning mechanism in an army is perceived as a process of lessons learned from the missions carried out by the army within the framework of wars or conflicts, whose purpose is to assimilate these lessons to enable more sophisticated management of the challenges facing the army. The learning takes place through the meeting of traditional and revolutionary ideas, and within this framework, strategy and priorities are reshaped. In its widest sense, this learning takes place while the military organization as a whole adopts what was learned by its different components, and the learning directly influences the functioning of the army during war.[11] Heginbotham found that the learning capability of the US Armed Forces, which was better than that of the British Army during the Second World War, was related to the following three elements: the ability to update combat doctrine during the war, including the conduct of broad training and exercises, which enabled the assimilation of the new combat doctrine among the combat forces; informal learning processes, including informal and efficient communication between commanders, which enabled the rapid transmission of knowledge between them (with an emphasis on lessons from battles);[12] and learning processes based on three key questions - What happened? Why did it happen? What do we need to do about this?[13]

The purpose of learning in an army is to create change that leads to innovation.[14] Change can take place at the level of beliefs, the conceptual level, the behavior and execution levels, and the cultural level. When change does not take place in one or more of these parameters, an army struggles to adapt itself to the changes taking place in the environment and to renew itself.[15] As a result, a reduction in achievements and an increase in inputs will be experienced. In general, learning in an army requires the existence of the following conditions: mechanisms that regulate the learning architecture; a culture of independent and critical thought at each of the command levels; open communication that can breach bureaucratic obstacles; an open space for asking critical questions about existing assumptions and doctrine; and a process to convert lessons learned into a written doctrine which can be distributed across the organization. However, does the existence of the conditions outlined above guarantee that learning will indeed take place and change will happen?

This article argues that armies fail to effectively learn because the senior command is conservative and attached to the procedures, structure and doctrines that led the army to successes in the past. They are unable to engage in a critical and relevant assessment for future conflicts. As a result, armies struggle to prepare and to change for new wars.[16]

Learning from Experience

In general, organizations learn from experience.[17] The process of learning begins when managers sense a gap between performance or knowledge, and new demands to fulfil their mission. A learning process is a framework in which an organization uses new knowledge. Sometimes, due to lessons learned, new understandings develop which are assimilated into the institutional norms, doctrine, systems, structure and decision-making processes of the organization to reduce gaps in performance and to maximize the potential for future success.[18] Learning from experience takes place on both sides of a conflict, thereby creating a double challenge. It forces commanders to generate lessons connected to the performance of their forces in the field, while at the same time evaluating the ways that the enemy is learning and changing because of the lessons that they have learned.

An analysis of the performance of modern armies in the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century shows that armies struggle to learn both from their own experience and from the experience of others. The US Armed Forces failed to learn the lessons of the British Army in Malaya, the French army in Indochina and Algeria and its own lessons from the Vietnam War.[19] World War I illustrated how armies tend to maintain their hegemonic concepts relating to the phenomenon of war and adhere to their accepted customs, even when these are no longer suitable for new challenges, and as a result they fail on the battlefield.[20] Similarly, the US Navy failed to learn the lessons from the submarine war that the British conducted against the German fleet during World War I and during the submarine war against the German fleet in 1940 to 1942, even though they were available to the Americans.[21] Also, the French army failed to learn and to rapidly respond to the new war concept (Blitzkrieg) that the German army used in the campaign to conquer Poland in September 1939. The many months that passed after Germany concluded its campaign to conquer parts of Poland were not utilized by the French army for learning and improving its readiness for the expected war with the Germans. The French chose to deepen the defensive elements of the Maginot line instead of developing a mobile and mechanized defensive concept.[22]

Experience is a key – and sometimes the sole  - element in military learning processes. This is because, unlike business organizations that are constantly measured by their performance in the market, battlefield experience occurs infrequently, and long periods of time often pass between wars and operations. When an army conducts a learning process based mainly on its prior experience, and its previous wars serve as the primary point of reference for approaching its force  design process for future conflicts, it is exposed to bias, given that the lessons learned from previous wars are not likely to be relevant to the new challenges. Carl von Clausewitz, the father of modern military doctrine, characterized the military learning process as follows: “If, in wartime, a certain means turns out to be highly effective, it will be used again; it will be copied by others and become fashionable; and so, backed by experience, it passes into general use.”[23] Clausewitz’s ideas characterize military learning processes in the modern era, when armies have generally faced long periods lasting several years, and sometimes even decades, between wars. If something worked well, an army would adopt it and act on the basis of understandings that were developed during the previous conflict during the next one. Clausewitz emphasized three key ways through which armies learn - historical examples (their own and others), experience on the battlefield, and the experience of other armies on the battlefield. This approach is based on the presumption that every war is a social phenomenon with similar elements, so even in light of variation in each context, it is possible to distill relevant lessons and to generalize them to other campaigns.[24]

The purpose of learning from experience is to prevent, as much as possible, a repeat of behavior that turned out to be unsuccessful in previous wars.[25] Although learning from experience, during training and on the battlefield, is one of the key drivers of military change,[26] learning that can enable change in organizational behavior takes place only if the organization is willing and ready to implement the new knowledge that it gained, and to create changes in procedures, exercises, training and its war strategy.[27]

Given that willingness to change is influenced by the way an organizational narrative develops in relation to events, when a narrative gives an account of a war that describes a close connection between a capability perceived as ‘doing things the right way’ and the new lessons that arose, bias is likely to arise in the learning process.[28] This bias develops when an analysis of past mistakes develops into an account that describes the failures from the perspective of the army. This phenomenon occurs because the organizational learning process is based on a joint awareness, and in armies this leads to commanders primarily adopting interpretations that match their initial perception of reality, leading to change based on their subjective perspective and not on the actual reality.

This bias leads to a situation in which the learning – whose purpose is to develop and expand the possibilities for action – actually leads to a reduction in the possibilities for change. As a result, time after time, armies tend to repeat the mistakes of the last war, since they do not devote enough time to critical learning. They tend to paint a picture of a future war that matches their earlier assumptions and concepts, and when they use past lessons, it is just to validate their existing assumptions.[29]

An additional bias exists when military officers use historical analogues in a non-systematic, biased and narrow manner to support their own decisions which were based primarily on knowledge developed through their own personal experience, or based on limited information sources, to implement the lessons that they perceive as important.[30] This bias is related to a belief held by commanders that success in one campaign guarantees success in future campaigns. This belief caused a failure to manage the new military knowledge that was developed after the long campaign in Malaya and led to its incorrect implementation in the thought patterns of the British command. The lessons that were developed by the British Army during the campaign in Malaya were incorrectly implemented without critical analysis during the additional campaigns that the British Army conducted during the 1950s and 1960s in Cyprus, Kenya, Ireland and Aden Province.

For example, one of the key lessons of the Malaya campaign was the importance of maintaining a fair, efficient police force, free of corruption, to help secure the trust and support of local residents. The commander of British forces in Cyprus, Field Marshal Harding, based the campaign that he conducted in Cyprus on a corrupt and brutal police force, whose ranks included (among others) Cypriot peasants of Turkish origin. They were a source of great hostility for most of the population, who were of Greek origin, towards the local police force. This approach was very useful to Greek rebels in their struggle against the British, which continued until the British were forced to grant independence to the island in 1960. In a similar manner, the experience and lessons acquired by the British Army during the many campaigns in the 50s and 60s in Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, Aden and Borneo, were not successfully implemented by the British senior command during the campaign in Northern Ireland beginning in 1969. This was despite the fact that these lessons were developed and even assimilated into the framework of British doctrine, with the publication of ‘Keeping the Peace’ in 1963 and ‘Counter Revolutionary Warfare’ in 1969.[31] However, the basic concept of the British command for managing conflicts did not change, and it failed to channel the knowledge that was developed while conducting campaigns against uprisings during the 1950s into better preparation for the new campaign that opened in 1969 in Northern Ireland.

Even when the combat forces of the US military succeeded on multiple occasions to adapt themselves to the operational circumstances on the battlefield during a military campaign, the military as a system suffered an ‘institutional failure’[32] in implementing the lessons that arose. A situation was created in which the combat forces were forced to learn each time afresh, even when they encountered missions that other forces had performed and had learned lessons from.[33] This phenomenon clearly occurred during the conflict in Vietnam, during which US forces failed to implement both lessons learned over the course of that conflict, and the lessons of the British Army in Malaya and the French army in Indochina and Algeria, which had been learned several years prior.[34]

The failure to learn from experience also occurs when positive lessons (those that should be  maintained), which were learned in previous conflicts, are implemented in a non-critical manner and are not adapted to new conflicts. For example, the key failure of those who shaped American security policy after September 11, 2001, was related to the fact that the US Armed Forces relied on a doctrine designed by the Marines which was termed ‘small wars.’ This was completely based on lessons from the American involvement in operations which were not wars during the 1980s and 1990s and were not relevant to the new conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, US forces found themselves without an appropriate doctrine for the new challenges and had to rapidly develop a new doctrine for the forces who were sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This doctrine was built on the basis of lessons from small wars during the Cold War period, modernist and post-modern theories, and historical lessons of other militaries.[35] This doctrine led to a failure in the functioning of the army as a result of the incompatibility between the lessons of the British, French and American armies which were learned during the colonial conflicts and the new conflicts facing the United States. These were not merely additional conflicts triggered by a national insurgency against the colonial state which controlled them, but rather a war against a combination of an ethnic and religious insurgency. The tendency of armies to seek existing ideas from old conflicts instead of engaging in a learning process to assist in locating and examining new ideas for the new reality, causes them time after time to fight the previous war.[36]

Sometimes, to be released from the straightjacket of learning from experience, a change in military leadership is required. The British Army was thought of as highly experienced and even registered several successes in dealing with low intensity conflicts before the Second World War. It could be expected that its learning and change processes would be relatively fast when it needed to deal with the new colonial conflicts after the Second World War. Even though the British campaign in Malaya had an ethos of success, in practice the commanders in the arena took four years from the beginning of the conflict to change and adapt their military strategy to the new challenges that the insurgents presented. During the first four years, British commanders stuck to the same concepts and tactics that helped them to succeed during the later stages of World War II and used a failed war strategy that was stuck in the operational concept of jungle warfare against the Japanese.[37] Only when Sir Gerald Templer took over as the Commander of British forces in Malaya in 1952, were the conditions created for ‘strategic learning,’ which led to a deep change in the strategy for managing the British conflict. This change led to the development of a new approach, which till this day is seen by some as the preferred approach for managing ongoing conflicts in a densely populated environment. This approach was called the battle for ‘Hearts and Minds.’[38]

Organizational Politics and Learning

The lack of an openness by senior military leaders to adopt lessons learnt in previous campaigns is directly connected to organisational politics common in militaries. This leads to a situation in which existing learning products are not assimilated and there is a tendency to reject them. An example of this can be seen after the American withdrawal from Vietnam, when US forces refused to deal with the lessons learned from the Vietnam war or to change their doctrine, structure and training. In practice, even though evidence was published during the war pointing to the fact that combat against an insurgency is dramatically different from combat against regular armies, the US deepened its preparations for a potential threat in Europe at the expense of better preparations for the war that took place in Vietnam.[39] Even after the end of the Vietnam War, the approach of the military leaders was to conclude with “tears for the battles in Vietnam.”[40] The most significant lesson, which was burned into the American military consciousness after the war was that in the future, the military needed to avoid, as much as possible, additional involvement in an ongoing war against irregular forces. However, a new reality struck them as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and the development of new conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.[41]

These examples and others show that the basic conservatism of militaries causes them to stick to old lessons and the same combat techniques, without adapting them to a changing reality, and also that victory or failure in a particular conflict does not necessarily predict the success or failure of the same state in another conflict. This evidence leads to the conclusion that the common assumption that learning from successes that occurred during a particular conflict and copying its products to another conflict will guarantee success, is an assumption of limited validity only.[42] It is important to avoid unrestrained generalisations about the lessons of past wars, especially at the senior echelon, given that each time the strategic context changes, and past lessons are likely to have limited validity in relation to the new reality.[43]

The great importance that military institutions attribute to history leads them to act in a systematic manner to analyze the lessons that arose during previous campaigns, to integrate them with new understandings of the environment, and to implement them among the military forces.[44] Change whose essence is in ‘learning’[45] processes and strategic learning,[46] can also be characterized by the terms ‘adaptation’ and ‘innovation.’ Farrell distinguishes between two basic states which are related to learning as a change process: in the first, change is based on adapting the organization to its environment on the basis of existing capabilities, which will lead to change at a primary level. In the second, change is based on the creation of innovation that enables an alternative method of coping with existing challenges and leads to secondary and tertiary change.[47]

At the strategic level, armies primarily learn when required changes relate to their key mission, and change takes place as a result of the existence of one or more of the following learning catalysts:[48] The first, ‘externally motivated learning’, takes place when actors outside the military, usually the political echelon or influential actors in civil society, are not satisfied with the army’s performance in general, or as a result of a significant crisis to which the military failed to provide a response, or as a result of defeat in war.[49] The second is learning that is primarily developed by commanders who have political status and the capability to change accepted conventions. The third is related to an integrated learning approach, which includes both internal and external motivators.[50]

The primary catalyst of change in an army is the emergence of external pressure. This pressure is likely to originate from the political-civilian authorities, who may perceive an army is not being able to achieve their war aims. An example of this pressure can be seen in the second year of the Second Intifada, when Ariel Sharon took over as Prime Minister, and demanded that the army abandon its “containment strategy” and engage in a “offensive war strategy” against the Palestinian Authority and its security apparatuses.[51] The military industries, who have a clear interest in the army purchasing new weapon systems and changing in a manner that would support the purchase of these systems, is also an external actor of great power pushing for change. Additional actors are other governmental institutions such as the Ministry of Finance (financial constraints) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the image and interests of the state globally). The fourth actor to apply external pressure is likely to be the civil society including institutions such as the Supreme Court, extra-parliamentarian movements such as “The Four Mothers” or “Women in Black,” and other NGOs.

Change is connected to the army’s need to maintain its powerful political strength by maintaining or increasing the resources available to it. This tendency leads to a situation in which senior army officers work to receive new resources and to increase their influence through learning processes that support these objectives. For example, the IDF, which is interested in defending the homefront, conducted learning processes; developed a new doctrine for defending the homefront; opened a new regional command; added specialized units with both regular and reserve forces; and purchased new systems and technological tools, in order to maintain and even expand the resources provided by the political echelon, during both peace and wartime.

Change and innovation in the army take place through learning processes whose purpose is to develop new capabilities for the army. Their purpose is to engage in more extensive preparations for future conflicts. Innovation is not the product of these technological changes, it is driven from within, by leaders and commanders with vision who work to change the overall functioning of the army. At other times, the learning is actually driven by the junior command, who describe new problems on the battlefield which require the development of new solutions. When these solutions are effectively implemented by the combat command, they also have the potential to influence the more senior command echelon as well.[52]

For internally driven learning to be more effective, it is very important that the command at the different levels of the army learn in an integrated fashion. In the early stages of a war, learning and innovation take place through the ‘adaptation’ of the tactical command level to changes taking place on the battlefield. These include changes in tactics, combat techniques or improvements to existing technologies. ‘Adaptation’ is the preferred direction given that it takes place on the basis of the conceptual framework shaped by ‘joint mental models’ and the maximization of existing capabilities.

At this stage, the capability to create innovation is limited, due to the uncertainty and fog of war, and due to the requirement to provide an immediate response to the needs that arise on the battlefield. Consequently, while adaptation is ongoing, learning that creates innovation frequently takes place only after a campaign has ended.[53] ‘Adaptation’ is likely to lead to innovation when new combat techniques and tactics are institutionalized within the doctrinal framework, or when technological improvements or adaptations lead to the development of new technologies.[54]

For example, in the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US needed a convergence of two processes in order to change. The first, a young leadership that worked in the field to solve the immediate problems that the military institutions had failed to predict and to find suitable solutions. This was combined with the second, the creation of a critical thought space by senior commanders about the armed force’s doctrine and strategy. Each of these processes on their own would not have had sufficient power to create the required change. Only when the two forces worked together where they able to drive change. The products of this learning rose to the most senior military echelons and even to the political echelon and created the opportunity for innovation.[55]

Although some argue that armies change due to defeat on the battlefield or the expectation of defeat,[56] in reality militaries tend to engage in a low level of learning after both failures and successes. One of the most prominent examples of this is the learning and innovation processes that the German and French armies undertook after the First World War. Both armies studied the lessons of the First World War, but only the German Army reached conclusions and changed.[57] Therefore, the experience of failure alone does not guarantee that learning will definitely take place. These cases teach that militaries do not learn from success, but rather success encourages them to maintain the same concepts that led to the success, as the IDF did after the Six Day War. The IDF, which experienced a dramatic military victory over the Arab armies, maintained and even strengthened its decisive components and aerial and armoured superiority in its force generation and doctrine. Cracks in this concept had already appeared during the War of Attrition, but because the IDF insisted in adhering to its conservative concept, it absorbed a difficult blow in the initial stages of the Yom Kippur War, just six years after its experience of a dizzying victory.[58]

To conclude our survey of why militaries fail to learn, one can argue that the following variables explain the difficulty that militaries face in learning and change: organizational theory, politics and bureaucracy, culture and mental models. Different researchers and theoreticians have presented the military organization as a conservative organization opposed to deep change, especially in connection with changes to its doctrine and operational concepts.[59] As a result, change is driven at a delay and only after existing doctrine is unable to provide a response to new threats that have developed. This conservatism led to the fact that on many occasions, change took place due to pressure by external actors on the military organization. The external actors initiated the process, frequently with the assistance of critical officers within the army, and not necessarily as a result of internal learning processes led by the senior command echelon. The organizational theories posit that internal resistance to change in an army derives from an organizational mechanism which does not support change and innovation processes. Among the different actors within the system there is no desire to change the basic assumptions of the existing doctrine and organizational structure, and there is a tendency to cling to existing norms and work processes. Therefore, in a situation where only internal forces are pushing for change to doctrine or military strategy, other forces opposed to change obstruct them and subjugate their desires.

An army can be an innovator in a particular field (for example technology) and exceptionally conservative in other fields. As a result, even when an army faces unceasing pressure to change, its organisational culture is likely to obstruct the of learning lessons and to present existing policy as a complete success.[60] The advocates of learning driven by internal forces as the primary engine of change will point out that even when problems in the functioning of an army become apparent, the civilian leadership often doesn’t succeed in changing an army. Accordingly, the role of military leadership within the military staffs is strengthened and the importance of engaging in internal learning processes rises.[61]

An additional key factor in the deferral of strategic learning is organisational politics. An army’s senior command works to preserve its prevailing concept in relation to the purpose, objectives and capabilities of the military organisation.[62] Missions that do not match the mental models and aspirations of the senior command will be vetoed, or given a lower priority, unless they help increase the importance and dominance of the army and help its commanders attain resources to maintain its status.

Culture is also a key element in the capability of an army to learn and to change.[63] Specific cultural patterns encourage change in one place and block it in another. Given that organisational culture influences the development of ‘joint mental models’ of the organisation’s members, opposition to change is likely to take place when decision-makers hold strong beliefs in relation to reality, to the point that they ignore new information or distort it.[64] When members of an organisation perceive change as hostile to the accepted worldview within the organisation, they adopt a defensive behaviour to prevent embarrassment or threat to the organisation.[65]

Defensive behaviour constitutes an inseparable part of a culture of mutual responsibility that is common in armies and in any reality that generates controversy. The senior command of an army adopts a strategy of rejecting change, and it preserves and defends the processes that have proved themselves, even when it’s clear that they are wrong. An additional reason for opposition to change is self-image; this is related to the gap between the perception of reality within the army and the way it is perceived by others. That is, an army is likely to perceive war at the tactical and operational levels as successful and to stick to its existing doctrine and strategy, even though they are perceived as a failure by civil society and the political echelon. General Smith notes in his report on the lessons learned from Vietnam: “with everything connected to Vietnam, we won all the battles, but we lost the war. This is a new experience, annoying, saddening, but correct. It is essential that we learn how we won all the battles but lost at the strategic and political level. This is unique. This is not something that we would want to duplicate.”[66]

Additional influences on the capability to change within an army are also related to these phenomena: a lack of institutional memory, false beliefs (based on past experiences), an inability to act and a lack of coordination between different units within an army.[67]

The Path to Strategic Learning

The failures of militaries also point to the difficulty in learning from their and others’ experiences (successes and failures), and raise the question -What could contribute to learning processes that are critical to the successful functioning of an army in war? In order to evaluate this question, we need to define the three levels of learning within an organization: adaption, learning, and strategic learning;[68] and to analyze how an army learns at each one of these levels.

At the first level of learning, a military primarily deals with ‘adaptation.’[69] This level reflects the implementation of changes in strategy, methodology and structure within the framework of existing policy. Adaptation is based on a presumption by the members of an organization that the current objectives are worthy and that change is required only in the means to achieve them, and not in the definition of the objectives themselves. Similarly, armies adapt themselves to the environment, when they strive to maximize existing core capabilities and to adapt them to new challenges through changes in tactics, combat techniques and technology. The organizational culture sanctifies maximization of the existing over the development of new horizons, the senior command avoids innovation because this might threaten its political and economic interests which are related to the army’s existing investments.[70] This level is the most effective for learning from experience as it invites the learner to copy their or others’ patterns of behavior that were successful in the past, and to implement them in the present or the future.

On the second level, learning takes place when existing policy, objectives and the ways to achieve them are challenged as a result of the outcomes attained by the organization. Consequently, learning processes in the organization encourage change in commanders’ beliefs about the way that the army functions to achieve its goals and its priorities. These changes are developed by attributing new significance to the joint experience of the organization’s members.[71] This learning level takes place when two processes coalesce.  On the one hand, the adaptation processes fail, and on the other, the senior command is open to critical thinking.[72]

At this level, learning from experience is likely to generate bias when consensual experience is integrated into the organization and actually increases the tendency of decision-makers to preserve existing beliefs instead of undermining them. Rotmann and his co-authors noted that change in the American military during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan occurred as a result of the coalescing of these two learning processes. The first was a young leadership that worked in the field to solve immediate problems that the army’s institutions had failed to predict or find suitable solutions for. The second was a combination of critical thinking by senior officers about existing military doctrine and strategy and the resonance of their criticism upwards. Each one of these processes was not sufficiently powerful to create the required change, but the two together ignited the change.[73]

The third level is ‘strategic learning.’ This learning takes place when army commanders also change their worldview in relation to the environment, in relation to their enemies and in relation to the operational capabilities of the army; as well as the way they act to create the required change. As a result of learning processes, the commanders change their basic assumptions, their policy objectives and the methods of achieving them. This learning is likely to take place as the result of a strategic failure of the decision-makers, but its significant advantage is that when it occurs, this learning does not just deal with a response to the immediate events in line with the prevailing assumptions of the organization, but rather enables the identification of emerging changes and their further development into a new response.[74] ‘Strategic learning’ arrives through the evaluation of results, creativity and discovery. It is different from its two predecessors in that it distinguishes between a learning process through identification (whose essence is learning from experience, on which are based ‘adaptation’ and ‘learning’) and is directed at learning through prediction, which strives for innovation – foreshadowing.[75]

This learning is based on an ability to interpret events as they take place in order to create expertise and new knowledge,[76] to create different meaning from events,[77] to adapt the existing intellectual consensus to the new reality[78] and as a result to point to possible future conditions in the world.[79] The purpose of strategic learning is to create alternative meaning from experience, in order to develop new and joint understandings of current and future events[80] and to change in accord, at the conceptual level and the functional level.[81] ‘Strategic learning’ challenges learning from experience. At the basis of learning from experience lies the mistaken assumption that existing knowledge enables one to cope with future situations, but the purpose of strategic learning is to prepare for a future which is not necessarily known and understood. Accordingly, learning from experience primarily assists in adaptation and is liable to constitute an obstacle when we are talking about the higher levels of learning. Learning from experience is even likely to constitute an obstacle to learning at a higher level, and one should therefore evaluate a mechanism to enable the maintenance of this learning pattern alongside strategic learning.

One of the examples of a failure of strategic learning in the IDF is the campaign in Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. Between the years 1982-1985, the IDF conducted several withdrawals from Lebanese territory until a defensive line was created along the Litani River. During the 1990s, the Hezbollah organization established control of South Lebanon and gradually reduced the IDF’s ability to be active on the ground, until a loss of legitimacy within Israeli society led the government of Israel to instruct the army to prepare to defend northern Israel along Israel’s international border.[82] From the moment that the IDF deployed to the border, it began to see airpower as a response to the new limitations on maneuver. Airpower was used as the leading response in subsequent conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza. The existing tendency in the IDF to fight based on the strategy of the last war is described by Shelah in his comments on IDF achievements during Operation Protective Edge: “the combat itself was conducted as expected in as heavy and clumsy a manner as possible. As in each of the previous rounds, the IDF opened with an aerial blow, this time without any symbolic achievements such as the elimination of Jabari… The strike reflected the total superiority of the IDF in platforms and precision weapons, but also the limitations of this method of operation: it has no significant effect on a dug-in enemy, which hides among a civilian population  and exposes an enormous number of targets, with the value of each one being negligible, and damage to them, even cumulative damage, is not able to silence the enemy nor change its intentions.”[83] Shelah emphasizes that it is especially notable that during Operation Protective Edge, all the failures that were identified by the different investigative bodies after the Second Lebanon War were repeated.[84]

Conclusion

There are of course learning limitations even when the military is ready to change itself, its organizational culture and the preferences of its elites.[85] Despite the need for constant change, armies minimize change. They adhere to their hegemonic concepts about the phenomenon of war and adhere to their doctrinal traditions, even if they are no longer appropriate for the challenges on the battlefield.

Military organizations change in a predictable fashion. In the first stage they adapt themselves to the environment and work to maximize their existing core capabilities, improving or changing tactics, combat techniques and technology. That is, they adapt the existing to new challenges. During this stage, due to the way that innovation is frequently perceived - as a threat to political and economic interests related to the investment that the army has made in existing resources - the organizational culture encourages maximization of the existing over the development of new horizons.[86] During the second stage, a process of discovery is prioritized, and managers and researchers develop new capabilities through the development of new directions of action. When the research has maximized itself, it leads to innovation and changes in doctrine, structure or technology. The longer a war continues, the more a need for innovation rises and is expressed in new definitions of strategic objectives and renewed planning of military operations.[87]

The following variables can be identified as the key influences on the capability of an army to change:

  1. The need to combine the efforts of the civilian and military leadership in order to generate military change.
  2. The critical need to engage in integrated internal and external learning processes if innovation is to take place.
  3. The internalization of the experience of strategic failure. Without an experience of failure, significant learning will not be generated, and the army will stick to the traditions that define it.
  4. In contrast to the tendency of the senior command to avoid adopting lessons that would challenge its core assumptions, organizational learning is essential for the assessment and transformation of their beliefs on an ongoing basis;
  5. It is essential to encourage innovation and creativity, especially among young officers; an important part of new processes develop outside the official systems.
  6. Despite the tendency of commanders to maintain resources (capital, human resources, technology, etc.) that have already been invested in the army and to defend them, an ongoing analysis of the suitability of these resources to the real challenges facing the army is required.

When dealing with strategic learning, different mechanisms exist that enable learning at a high level, such as simulations and thought games, multidisciplinary thought processes for the development of innovation, and others. One mechanism worth expanding upon is a methodological assessment of military doctrine to track the way in which changes in the environment, within the army and within the adversaries, influence the ability of an army to fulfill its purpose and function. An assessment of this type and ongoing research into the prevailing logics in the military system in order to assess their validity, can help better distinguish the biases at the basis of the army’s thinking and action. Part of this doctrinal assessment should also take place with the purpose of methodologically assessing the operational plans in the different operational sectors and their adaptation to existing and developing challenges.

In summary, learning that leads to innovation is a basic capability that armies need to prevent them from fighting the previous war. All the different learning mechanisms are essential for the military command to successfully learn at a high level and to avoid failures that could have been identified and prevented in advance.

 

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[1] LTC (res.) Dr Saar Raveh served in his last position in the IDF as Head of the Palestinian Arena Branch and as the Acting Head of the Information Operations Center.

The Dado Center Journal would like to thank Attorney Narkiss Aharon Azrad for copy-editing the Hebrew version of this article.

[2] R. Liphshitz, & M. Poper. “Organizational Learning: Mechanism, Culture, and Feasibility,” Management Learning, 31(2), 181-196, 1994.

[3] S. J. Levy. “Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield,” International Organization, 48(2), 1994, pp. 279-312; C. Argyris & D. Schön, Organizational Learning 2: Theory, Methods and Practice. Reading, Addison and Wesley, 1996.

[4] S. J. Levy, op. cit.

[5] R. Jervis. “Hypotheses on Misperception,” World Politics, 20(3), 454-479, 1968.

[6] D. R. Downie. Learning from Conflict: The U.S. Military in Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Drug War, Westport, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998.

[7] A. J. Nagl. Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, University of Chicago Press, 2005.

[8] A. E. Cohen & J. Gooch. Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War. New York: Free Press, 1990, pp. 25-26.

[9] B.H. Liddell Hart. Thoughts on War. Faber & Faber, 1944.

[10] By using the term ‘armies,’ I mean the senior command of an army, which is the command that is responsible for doctrine, military strategy and the general war plans. Within an army there are additional command levels such as the systemic and tactical levels, which will not be dealt with in this article.

[11] G. R. Sullivan & M. V. Harper. Hope Is Not a Method: What Business Leaders Can Learn from America's Army, Crown Business, 1997.

[12] E. Heginbotham. “Military Learning,” Military Review, 80(3), 88-94, 2000.

[13] H. R. Scales. “The Second Learning Revolution,” Military Review, 86, 37- 44, 2006.

[14] One can use Rosen’s definition (1991), which proposed that the significance of innovation in an army is the creation of changes to its concept for combat force engagement, while creating new ideas on how to engage these forces to win a war.

[15] P. J. Kotter & A. L. Schlesinger. “Choosing Strategies for Change,” Harvard Business Review, 86(7/8), 130-138, July-August 2008.

[16] S. Naveh. Operational Art and the I.D.F: A Critical Study of a Command Culture, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, for the Director of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defence, 2007.

[17] S. J. Levy. 1994, op. cit.

[18] D. R. Downie. 1998, op. cit.

[19] T. Tobi. Like Eating Soup with a Knife: The American Experience in Vietnam 1959-1973, Israel MoD Publications, 2006. [Hebrew]

[20] See for example: B. Posen. The Source of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany between the World Wars, Cornell University Press, 1984.

[21] A. E. Cohen & J. Gooch, op. cit., pp. 55-94.

[22] Ibid, pp. 197-230.

[23] C. von Clausewitz. On War, Michael Howard and Peter Parton Eds., Princeton University Press, 1984.

[24] M. R. Cassidy. “Back to the Street Without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars,” Parameters, 34, 2004, pp. 75-79.

[25] R. Phillips. “Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: Lessons Learned, Ignored, then Revived,” Small Wars Journal, 2009.

[26] S. P. Rosen. Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military, (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs), Cornell University Press, 1994.

[27] A.J. Nagl, 2005, op. cit.

[28] D. Ucko. Innovation or Inertia: The U.S. Military and the Learning of Counterinsurgency, Orbis, 2008.

[29] W. Murray. Military Adaptation in War, Institute for Defense Analysis, 2009.

[30] A. L. Yates. “Military Stability and Support Operations: Analogies, Patterns and Recurring Themes,” Military Review, 72(4), 1997, p. 54.

[31] J. Kiszely. “Learning about Counter-Insurgency,” RUSI Journal, 151(6), 2006, pp. 16-21.

[32] The role of military institutions is to conceptualize a military problem and to develop an appropriate doctrine for it. This should be based on historical sources, primarily the lessons learned from other militaries and lessons learnt from the combat experience of that army's own forces. This doctrine should be institutionalized in exercises and training for the army’s forces. When these processes do not take place, an institutional failure develops, which reflects a learning failure. This is the result of a partial or failed institutionalization of learning by the military’s institutions.

[33] F. R. Weigley. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy, Indiana University Press, 1973.

[34] T. Tobi, 2006, op. cit.

[35] M. Fitzsimmons. “Hard hearts and open minds? Governance, identity and the intellectual foundations of counterinsurgency,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 31(3), 2008, pp. 337-65.

[36] S. Metz. Learning from Iraq: Counterinsurgency in America Strategy. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2007.

[37] A. J. Nagl, 2005, op. cit.

[38] ‘Hearts and Minds’ is an approach directed towards the population, which is seen as the key audience to be influenced.

[39] D. R. Downie, 1998, op. cit.; M. R. Cassidy, 2004, op. cit.

[40] P. J. Lovell (1987). “Vietnam and the U.S Army: Learning to Cope with Failure,” in G.K. Osborn, A.A. Clark, D.J. Kaufman & D.E. Lute (Eds). Democracy, Strategy and Vietnam: Implications for American Policy-making, D.C. Health, p. 132.

[41] P. Rotmann, D. Tohn & J. Wharton. Learning Under Fire: The US Military, Descent and Organisational Learning Post 9/11, Balfour Centre Student Paper Series, Harvard Kennedy School, 2009.

[42] K. Sepp. “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, Vo 85 (3), May-June 2005.

[43] R. R. Tomes. “Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare,” Parameters, 34 (1), 2004, pp. 16-28.

[44] T. Tovi. “Learning from the Past for Present Counterinsurgency Conflicts: The Chieu Hoi Program as a Case Study,” Armed Forces & Society, 38(1), 2012, pp. 142-163.

[45] S. J. Levy, 1994, op. cit.

[46] K. Kuwada. “Strategic Learning: The Continuous Side of Discontinuous Strategic Change,” Organization Science, 9(6), 1998, pp. 719-736.

[47] T. Farrell. “Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand 2006 to 2009,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 33(4), 2010, pp. 567-594; C. Argyris & D. Schön, 1996, op. cit.

[48] A. Down. Inside Bureaucracy, Little Brown, 1967; C. Argyris & D. Schön, 1996, op. cit.; G.J. March. A Behavioural Theory of the Firm, (2nd ed.), Blackwell, 1997; C.D. North. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press, 1990; B. Posen, 1984, op. cit.

[49] B. Posen, 1984, op. cit.

[50] M. R. Coffey. Improving Interagency Integration at the Operational Level - CORDS a model for the Advanced Civilian Team, School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2006; D. R. Downie, 1998, op. cit.; Downie emphasises doctrine as the centre of military learning processes. In this paper, the focus is on military strategy; that is, the manner in which doctrine is implemented in practice, in the unique context of a particular military campaign.

[51] A. Harel & A. Issacharoff. The Seventh War: How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians, Yediot Ahronot, 2004.

[52] T. Farrell, 2010, op. cit.

[53] W. Murray, 2009, op. cit.

[54] T. Terriff, F. Osinga & T. Farrell. A Transformation Gap? American Innovation and European Military Change, Stanford University Press, 2010.

[55] P. Rotmann, et al., 2009, op. cit.

[56] B. Posen, 1984, op. cit.

[57] Q. Wilson. Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, Basic Books, 2000.

[58] M. Finkel. On Flexibility: Flexibility as the Key to Dealing with Technological and Doctrinal Surprises on the Battlefield, Israel Ministry of Defence Publications, 2006.

[59] D.D. Avant. “The Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine: Hegemons in Peripheral Wars,” International Studies Quarterly, 37(4) 1993, pp. 409-430; G.J. March % D.J. Olsen. “The New Institutionalism: Organisational Factors in Political Life,” American Journal of Political Science, 78 (3) 1984, pp. 734-749; L.R. Waddell. The Army and Peacetime Low Intensity Conflict 1961-1993: The Process of Peripheral and Fundamental Military Change, PhD Thesis, Columbia University, New York.

[60] A. J. Nagl, 2005, op. cit.

[61] R.S. Ahern. Breaking the Organisational Mould: Why the Institutional US Army Has Changed Despite Itself since the End of the Cold War, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2009.

[62] M. Halperin. Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, Brooking, 1974.

[63] A. J. Nagl, 2005, op cit.

[64] S. J. Nye. “Nuclear Learning and U.S. Soviet Security Regimes,” International Organization, 41(3), 1987, pp. 371-402.

[65] C. Argyris. “Reasoning, action strategies, and defensive routines: The case of OD practitioners,” in R. A. Woodman & A. A. Pasmore (Eds.). Research in Organisational Change and Development, Vol 1, JAI Press, 1987, pp. 89-128.

[66] BDM Corporation, A Study of Strategic Lessons Learned in Vietnam: Omnibus Executive Summary, BDM Corporation, 1980.

[67] W. Snyder & T. Cummings, Organizational Learning Disabilities, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, 1992.

[68] A. P. Hall. “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic Policy-Making in Britain,” Comparative Politics, 25(3), 1993, pp. 275-296.

[69] M. P. Haas. “International Institutions and Social Learning in the Management of Global Environment Risks,” Policy Studies Journal, 28 (3), 1990, pp. 558-575.

[70] T. Farrell, 2010, op cit.

[71] S. J. Levy, 1994, op. cit.

In this sense, learning is an analytical structure. Individuals in an organisation create meaning from past experience, through the ‘lens’ of their basic assumptions and worldview. As a result, decision-makers actively seek information that validates their past experiences. In the first stage they create tests to evaluate their assumptions. As a result of the learning that they develop, they create small changes in policy, observe the results, learn through a process of trial and error and assign value to the experimentation based on its results. Observation of each experience and the significance they attributed to them leads to change in an individual’s beliefs and these changes influence their behaviour.

[72] P. Rotmann. et al., 2009, op. cit.

[73] Ibid.

[74] K. Kuwada, 1998, op. cit.

[75] J. Hirshleifer. “The Private and Social Value of Information and the Reward to Inventive Activity,” American Economy Review, 61, 1971, pp. 561-574.

[76] J.C.  Henderson, W. S. Sussman & B. J. Thomas, “Creating and Exploiting Knowledge for Fast-Cycle Organisation Response,” in D. Ketchen (Ed.). Advances in Applied Business Strategy 5, JAI Press, 1998, pp. 103-128.

[77] E. K. Weick. Sensemaking in Organizations, SAGE Publications, 1995.

[78] B. Levitt & G. J.  March. “Organizational Learning,” Annual Review of Sociology, 14, 1988, pp. 319-340.

[79] E. Mosakowski & S. Zaheer. The Global Configuration of Speculative Trading Operation: An Empirical Study of Foreign Exchange Trading. (Working paper, Strategic Management Research Centre, University of Minnesota.)

[80] K. Kuwada, op. cit.

[81] D. A. McGregor. Transformation Under Fire: Revolutionizing How America Fights, Praeger, 2003.

[82] G. Merom. How Democracies Lose Small Wars, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

[83] O. Shelah. The Courage to Win - Israel's Security Policy, Hemed and Yediot Books, 2015, p. 37. [Hebrew]

[84] Ibid, p. 45.

[85] R.S. Ahern, 2009, op. cit.

[86] T. Farrell, 2010, op. cit.

[87] Ibid.