Book Review: On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Norman F. Dixon

by CPT Adrian Choong 

A review of the classic On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Dr. Norman F. Dixon (Time Warner Paperbacks – March 1, 1991).

Incompetence, as defined in Dr Dixon’s book, refers to the chronic inability to do a particular job or activity successfully. Incompetence may be due to a lack of adequate training, skill, aptitude or experience.

Incompetence can be found in any industry, field or discipline. But incompetence in war takes on a significance far greater than in any other field.

Because the conduct of war involves vast sums of money, the application of a massive amount of destructive power, and the fact that millions of lives are at stake, a study of military incompetence is directly relevant and important to all persons involved in the field.

This book examines the issue in three parts. Part One presents examples of incompetence in British military history over the past hundred years, from the Crimean War to the Allied defeat at Arnhem , during Operation Market Garden. Although the study of military incompetence is universally relevant, the inclusion of the loss of Singapore lends this book some welcomed local relevance. Parts Two and Three examine the common features of military incompetence and seek to find the origins of this incompetence from a psychological point of view.

The Nature of Incompetence

Dr Dixon raises many instances and examples from British military history, from both great wars and small actions. Through all these wars, he picks out some common characteristics of military incompetence, for example:

• A fundamental conservatism and clinging to outworn tradition, as well as an inability to profit from past experience.

• A tendency to reject, suppress or ignore information which is unpalatable or conflicts with pre-conceptions.

• A tendency to under-estimate the enemy and over-estimate the capabilities of one ’ s own side.

• An undue readiness to find scapegoats and suppress news about military setbacks.

• A predilection for frontal assaults and the belief in brute force rather than the use of surprises or ruses.

• Indecisiveness and a general abdication from the role of a leader.

• A failure to exploit a situation due to the lack of aggressiveness.

There are obviously other reasons for failure in war, such as the lack of training, technological inferiority, the lack of proper intelligence equipment, failure of logistical support, ineffective flow of information and communication as well as the destruction of morale. However, those factors are external to the leader, whereas military incompetence is an inherent fault in military leadership. All else being equal, a well-equipped, well-trained fighting force will be made ineffective by the presence of an incompetent leader, and no amount of military intelligence, regardless of how accurate and timely it is, will be used effectively by an incompetent general. Therefore it is clear that a military leader is one of the most important force multipliers of any military organisation.

Intellectual Ability or the Lack Thereof

Dr Dixon examines in the subsequent chapters the possible causes of military incompetence. He examines, firstly, the premise that incompetent generals are also those lacking in intellectual ability. This was true for the British Army, up to the early years of the 20 th Century, due to three main reasons:

Firstly, the officers of the Army were selected primarily for their position in a higher class in society, on the virtue of the importance and social status of their fathers, and other social connections. These people were sometimes wholly inadequate for their job, and some displayed mediocre intellectual ability at best.

Secondly, the examinations for entry and graduation from Staff College and the Royal Military College were not wholly relevant to what was actually required for competent generalship, and could be passed with flying colours simply by memorisation of answers and learning by rote. This meant that officers with poor intellectual ability were not filtered out by the system.

Finally, in such military training establishments, prowess in games, muscle and masculinity then constituted the main criteria by which a man was judged, and anti-intellectualism was prevalent in the armed services.

Dr Dixon then examines the pro-position that military incompetence, manifested in the phenomenon of incredibly poor decision-making, was a direct result of poor intellectual ability. However, he could draw no direct link between decision-making and intellectual ability, and therefore rejected the suggestion that military incompetence is a result of poor intellectual ability.

This review agrees with Dr Dixon. Intellectual ability is best suited to an intellectual profession. Furthermore, I believe that intellectual ability and innate intelligence are not directly related, and that a person can be highly intelligent, inventive and cunning without being intellectually gifted.

There are lessons here to be found from Dr Dixon’s argument. Firstly, we have to ensure that officers are chosen based on their own merit, and not due to their relationship with any class in society, hereditary reasons or because of race or religion.

Also, training in a military institution must prepare officers professionally for the task they will perform. In addition, examinations must test the officer candidate adequately. Those who set examinations must be clear on what qualities they are supposed to examine, and be clear on the distinction between memory and ability.

Finally, any officer candidate must not be hindered in his recruitment or professional advancement based on academic qualifications obtained outside the military establishment. Nonetheless, the premise that a highly educated person makes for a more capable officer is questionable. Instead, an officer should be chosen and promoted based on his performance.

The Organisation as the Source of Incompetence

Dr Dixon goes on to postulate that it is the military organisation that contains the potential to create incompetent leadership or to promote incompetent persons to positions of great power and responsibility. He lists several characteristics and values which the military holds in high esteem and strives to achieve, as well as their negative consequences. Among these are:

• Uniformity, to the extent of oppressive conformity and the crushing of individual thoughts and the devaluation of initiative.

• Hierarchy and the importance of proper authority, to the extent of a fear to report bad news to superiors, the rejection of suggestions or corrections from the lower ranks, and hostility towards those of lower rank who initiate action without permission, however effective or necessary the action was.

• A love of regularity and regimentation and an inability to think outside of drill.

• The fact that ambitious and achievement-oriented officers are highly esteemed and respected in the military, so much so that self-serving and vainglorious officers are sometimes promoted to high leadership, with disastrous consequences.

The factors listed above correlate to the nature of incompetence as previously listed. However, the values which can so easily lead to generation of incompetent leadership and organisations are also crucial to the success of any conventional armed forces. The learning point here is that a balanced application of these values is required. As with all methods to achieve military readiness, these methods must be applied with their objective in mind, and not be applied for their own sake. The objective here, as in all military forces, is the efficiency and effectiveness of the military.

For example, drill is a vital part of military training. Drill trains the military operator to carry out military action fast, efficiently and without error. However, drill when taken to its extreme, robs the military of flexibility and wastes time. A love of drill hinders the development of novel fighting techniques and prevents the adaptation of military forces to new fighting environments. A striking example of this can be found in the Boer War, where British forces were so steeped in drill that they did not evolve a new process of attack which could counter the Boer’s novel idea of using trenches as cover. For the British, massed formations and open frontal assaults were the drill, which proved especially costly against the Boer ’ s use of cover and concealment.

Incompetence Today

These four factors are less prevalent in modern fighting forces. By and large, modern militaries understand the importance of flexibility, initiative and feedback, vital especially to situations where communications are unreliable and information is of questionable accuracy. Additionally, the years of rapid technological change after WWII highlighted the importance of innovation, technology and ability to adapt to rapidly changing situations.

It is a pity that this book (published in 1976) is unable to include the Vietnam War, which is arguably a good example of military incompetence by an advanced nation, or the Gulf War, which is commonly acknowledged to be a “ textbook ” campaign, an example of how to conduct a war successfully. A survey of global events in the past three decades suggests that incompetent leadership has, by and large, become a less significant problem than it used to be a hundred or even fifty years ago. After the Vietnam war, it seems to this reviewer that administrative incompetence and strategic in-competence have become the leading problems, taking the place of the incompetence of tactical or theatre leadership.

Administrative incompetence refers to the inability of an organisation as a whole to adapt to change and innovation as well as the inability of an organisation to learn from past mistakes. This bureaucratic inefficiency is not caused by any one person, but by organisational culture as a whole. Organisations, like physical masses, possess a kind of inertia that resists change, and it takes a great force to effect significant change. One solution to this is to put in place mechanisms whereby change can be implemented. This has to take place at many levels, from the ground up, as well as from the top down. This reviewer feels that this is one manifestation of incompetence which deserves greater exploration.

Another form of incompetence raised in the book is strategic incompetence. This refers to incompetence at levels beyond the military, occurring when the decisions made in deploying or withdrawing the use of military force. Often this incompetence takes place at the political and national level. Some examples are:

• Sending a military force to a situation without a clear mission or objective.

• Sending a military force into a situation without the legal ability to defend itself or the mandate to fulfill its role effectively.

• Leaving a military force in a situation where it becomes progressively more committed, to the point where it is unable to withdraw safely, or when resources and lives have to be continually poured into a situation with no clear end.

• The lack of political will to sustain losses, or an unrealistic political definition of “acceptable losses”.

• Withdrawing a military force before the successful completion of objectives.

Recent notable example like the Somali “mission creep” debacle and the US War in Iraq (OIF) readily come to mind.

Conclusion

Today, with realistic and effective training, innovative use of new doctrines and technology, effective feedback as well as the understanding and effective use of military intelligence, incompetence on a personal and tactical scale can be eliminated. However, the malaise of incompetence in this era arises more from organisational inefficiency and ineffective political direction which can be important topics for another book.