Atlantic Community:Open Think Tank Article "Reshaping Pentagon Leadership"

Reshaping Pentagon Leadership

Donna M. McAleer: NATO and the US limit women’s involvement in top ranking military positions, but both would benefit from abolishing discriminatory rules. Including more experienced women can provide fresh thinking on waging war, creating peace and influencing international security.

In November 2010, the estimable Thom Shanker of the New York Times wrote "President Obama is about to receive an unusual opportunity to reshape the Pentagon's leadership, naming a new defense secretary as well as several top generals and admirals in the next several months." But one option Obama does not have is to name a senior military woman to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the president's senior group of military advisors and leaders of their respective services.

While the US Army has its first female 4-star general, women comprise less than 6 percent of that service's senior leadership, despite constituting more than 17 percent of the Army's active duty officer corps. Including women at the senior most strategic leadership and decision-making levels is an issue of national security. Though two of the names proffered to replace Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates include Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Michele A. Flournoy, the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy and a preeminent national security specialist, no women are eligible to serve at the top ranks within the military itself.

This trend is similar to that of the private sector. Gender diversity enables a broader perspective and decision-making capability, and increased performance. Several private and academic studies conducted by Catalyst and Harvard Business Review empirically demonstrated that Fortune 500 companies "with the highest female representation at top management levels consistently and significantly outperformed companies with the lowest level of women executives." The Harvard study found that companies with the most female leadership performed up to 69 percent better than their competitors as measured by ROI and shareholder value. Yet women make up less than 3 percent of CEOs and hold less than 17 percent of corporate board seats.

The White House Project, the national, nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization released a study titled "Benchmarking Women's Leadership" that established that companies with three or more woman on their corporate boards, created a "fundamental change in the boardroom and enhance corporate governance." The comparative military equivalent to the corporate board is that of the 10 four-star general positions. Perhaps the inclusion of a few more women with broad tactical and operational experience would provide some fresh thinking on waging war, creating peace and influencing international security.

Twenty-five percent of military jobs are not open to women, and those excluded jobs lead disproportionately to higher command. Yes, it's true that few men become commandant of the Marine Corps or sergeant major of the Army, but all men have the chance. Military women, however, do not. It is important to look to the future and where we are headed in terms of our workforce and our Armed Forces. Earlier this year women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in history.

An evolution is also taking place in US colleges. According to The Atlantic's Hanna Rosin, "women now earn 60 percent of master's degrees and about half of all law and medical degrees… Most important, women earn almost 60 percent of all bachelor's degrees." No longer an issue of equality; it is about a rapidly changing talent pool. It is one of the reasons the Navy has opened billets on two of the four classes of nuclear submarines to women -- they are the largest resource to draw upon.

Women play a critical role in counterinsurgency operations (COIN) in Afghanistan, yet they remain prohibited from serving in units with a direct ground combat mission by federal law.

The combat exclusion policy was instituted for a linear battlefield with front and rear lines of combat clearly demarcated. Today's asymmetric battlefield requires soldiers to prosecute the war and engage in combat in a 360 degree environment. Women are everywhere on the battlefield. The law has not yet caught up to the historical as well as present reality of war. The exclusion policy does not keep women out of combat, but it does prevent them from gaining the battlefield experience required to rise to positions of strategic decision-making and national and international security influence.

"The challenge facing the president will be to identify leaders who will provide him with disinterested advice, informed by a concern for the national interest, and in, doing so, to avoid the appearance of the reality of politicizing the senior leadership," said Andrew J. Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and professor of history and international relations at Boston University. Following a decade of war, budget cuts and economic turmoil, this new group of senior military leaders will contend with even greater fiscal constraints, the need to modernize, and to improve significantly the health and morale of Armed Forces personnel stretched beyond their limits.

In field after field it has been demonstrated that women bring an additional and valuable perspective to the table. Although there are female generals in the Army, current policy prevents a woman from being appointed as Army chief of staff. That position is reserved for a combat arms branch officer only. Of the Army's 10 four-star billets, only one is designated for an officer with branch experience other than combat arms.

At NATO, only 3 of the 19 most senior posts are held by women.

Both United States and NATO would be well served by increasing the number of sharp minds at the planning and negotiating tables. To do this, the ground combat exclusion policy must be abolished to grant women the opportunity to gain the same experience as their male counterparts. If abolished, it will take a generation, at least 30 years, for military women to gain the appropriate tactical, operation and strategic experience. The president needs to select a team of senior military leaders that reflect the make-up of the 21st century Armed Forces and that can represent a part of our population and resource pool that is important economically, diplomatically, and militarily. Are we going to continue to exclude half the population?

Donna McAleer of Park City, Utah, is a West Point graduate, a former Army officer and the author of Porcelain on Steel: Women of West Point's Long Gray Line (Fortis Publishing, 2010).

Read related articles from atlantic-community.org members:

This article was submitted for the atlantic-community.org's competition: "Empowering Women in International Relations." It coincides with the 10th Anniversary of UN resolution 1325 calling for an increased influence of women in all aspects of peace and security. The contest is sponsored by the U.S. Mission to NATO and the NATO Public Diplomacy Division.

You can find more information about the competition here.

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Comments

March 11, 2011

Sue Fulton, Knights Out, (2)

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As a former military officer, I agree with McAleer's thesis. We need the best and the brightest to lead the Pentagon forward, and Secretary Gates and others have warned us about choosing the leaders who will fight the last war instead of the next.

If we are going to get innovative thinking, we have to include everyone in the selection pool including women.

Well-written and thoughtful piece!

March 11, 2011

Jeremy Wysakowski-Walters, University of Łódź, Gold Contributor (84)

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Donna,

Your essay looks at the issue of women in the forces from two very distinct perspectives: that of strategic command and tactical leadership. Interspersed with this are references to the corporate world. Perhaps I will start with the latter.

While your facts are no doubt correct reference the affect of women in the boardroom and decision making processes, please do not confuse the boardroom with the battlefield. I am not saying that women can not handle battlefield, but rather it is unhelpful to your argument to make to close an analogy between the two.

I agree that having women at strategic level is something to be striven for and your premise as regards opening up the combat positions is of course correct. However, there are various social factors that must be considered first. Is the US or any NATO country ready for the dramatic increase in female casualties that such a move would entail. Although it has been 50 years since the sexual revolution started, many people are still aghast at the idea of women in combat and the public could react badly to such an increase. This is something that any President (or PM) would have to include in their thinking as it could affect their re-election.

Further to this some evidence suggest that psychologically men are not ready to see women in combat. Men's instinctive impulse to protect women means that mission focus could be destroyed by the injury of female comrades. Therefore the addition of women to combat units could have an adverse affect on the overall ability of the team.

Perhaps the above points are 20th century problems and 21st century society and men are ready for this change. I have intentionally left out physical abilities as that is perhaps the least of the problems. All I will say is that there should be no gender specific fitness test and that regardless of sex, an infantry recruit should do the same route march, assault course, press-ups etc...

March 12, 2011

Mike McCormack, Florida International University, Gold Contributor (88)

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Ms. McAleer,

You make some very salient points with regards to the US Army's current policy on women in combat arms. However, it is inaccurate to use the Army's policies to describe what women are and are not allowed to do within the military as a whole. The fields that generally produce the major operational commanders in the Air Force (pilots) and Navy (aviators, surface warfare, and very recently submarine warfare) do not have exclusions on women. It is also worth noting that the Vice Commandant of the Coast Guard--the second highest position in that service--is a woman. Even the US Marine Corps--which, like the Army, bars women from ground combat positions--currently has a career aviator as their Commandant for the first time, a field that also does not currently exclude women.

It is also inaccurate to paint "top leaders" as only being operational commanders. Support fields such as logistics, intelligence, and communications are of equal importance to overall defense readiness as combat arms and are fields where women serve in very senior positions both at the service-specific and national command level. If this was not the case then we would not see a female Army officer at the rank of General under current policies, to use your example.

Lastly, the quote you began your article with is not wrong in itself--the President won't be nominating any women to serve as a service chief because there aren't any "in line" for promotion to that position. However, we must also consider how much time has passed since regulations allowing more freedom for women in their military careers took effect. Many regulations allowing women to serve in combat aviation or naval positions took place from the mid-1970s (when current military leaders were first entering the military) to the mid-1990s. As such, we may not see a woman service chief for at least a decade as the time it takes to progress to that level needs to catch up to the time period in which more women initially entered the services in those positions.

March 13, 2011

John Hadjisky, Blogger, Platinum Contributor (324)

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I would distinguish between the civilian leadership (the US Dept. of Defense, or the NATO analogs) and the military leadership (the Generals). It seems to me that the civilian leadership is the logical place to advance the project of getting more women in leadership positions. This is the area in which the analogies to the corporate world make the most sense. We should be very, very hesitant to weaken the general rule that generals must serve in combat. Therefore, the focus should be on getting women into combat, rather than elevating women with no combat experience into the most senior ranks of the general officer corps.

I am a feminist, therefore I believe that in the long term, women will take their rightful place as warriors and citizen-soldiers. The Israelis (are there any other examples?) have shown the way.

I am also a pragmatist, who recognizes that institutions such as the armed forces are inherently conservative. What I mean is, corporations can afford to fail, therefore, there is more room for innovation, experimentation, etc. as we try to achieve what has never, in the history of the human race, been achieved before: the full equality of women in every sphere. Whereas, there is only one military per country, and it cannot afford to fail; if it does, the cost is too high to contemplate. The need to respect this natural (as opposed to political/ideological) conservatism is acutely relevant in the case of the US military, which is currently attempting to fight 2 1/2 wars while integrating openly gay men and women for the first time. There's only so much they can do.

Meanwhile, Europe's armed forces are less engaged at the moment. For many of these services, the question of integrating openly gay soldiers is well settled, or at least, they are well ahead of the US. Perhaps the time is ripe for them to take up this new challenge. Integrating women into combat and leadership roles seems like yet another prime opportunity to show independent leadership...but will they?

March 15, 2011

Donna McAleer

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Sue, Jeremy, Mike and John,

Thank you for your comments and points in this important discussion.

Conventional wisdom and current law prevent women, no matter how able, from serving in units with direct offensive combat missions—Infantry, Armor, Special Forces and specific Field Artillery, Air Defense Artillery and Engineer units. The justifications for this exclusion include that women are not fit for combat and battlefield stress because they lack the emotional stability and physical strength. The media often has proffered that Americans would not stand to see their daughters coming home in body bags. The purported fear and outcry of a women’s violent death from enemy fire has not materialized during the last 10 years of the on-going war. At least no more than it has for a man – we are all at a terrible loss when we lose a Soldier. In reality, the strained Armed Forces need women in the fight.

Secondly, there needs to be a standards-based physical fitness requirement for all soldiers. This would require the army to published physical standards for all military jobs and specialties currently closed to women. Both servicemen and women would be required to meet those standards to serve in such roles. Publication of such standards will allow all soldier to prepare and train for the test This idea is similar to the physical fitness policies of most American police and fire departments.

While physiological differences are often cited as the “limiting” factor of physical strength and endurance, looking at the physical performance of women in various competitions provides another date point. The Leadville Trail 100 is a 100-mile endurance trail race run at 10,000 feet above sea level in Leadville, CO. Each year, more than 90% of female runners in the race, cross the finish line, but only 50% of the men do. Perhaps extrapolating the performance of women in one of the most grueling endurance race to the rigors of serving in a combat arms role is not too extreme.

Presuming that very few women will initially meet the standards, with focus, preparation and training, many who want to and train to meet the requirements, can pass such a physical fitness test.

A crucial, but rarely mentioned component of a truly integrated military force, is that the integration of women into combat arms, begin on a small scale. Beginning with the few women who might initially meet the requirements of a standard based test, it is important to concentrate them into a specific unit to gain critical mass. If spread through multiple units in the Army, it is likely the few women would be considered outliers.

The US Navy is in the process of integrating women into and onto two of the four classes of nuclear submarines in target and concentrated manner. We have much to learn from the sister services.

In 1948 Congress passed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act that first allowed women to serve in the US Armed Forces. It imposed a grade/rank ceiling on women as well as capping the number of women to just 2% of the force. It also excluded women from ground combat, combat ships and combat aircraft. During the next 63 years many of the original provisions of that 1948 act were challenged and repealed. Two of the most notable are the combat aircraft and combat ships.

In 1991 Congress repealed the ban on women serving on combat aircraft based largely on the extraordinary performance of women pilots during Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield. Two years later, the restriction of duty on combat ships was repealed. In 1994, the Secretary of Defense abandon the risk rule in order to all women to serve in all positions for which they quality, but still prohibits the assignment of women to direct ground combat units.

John points out the Israelis have women serving in combat roles. Data exists to their performance. 225,000 American women have engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, thus creating a database of men and women serving together as military professionals that has never existed previously.

In the 10 eight years, U.S. men and women have served together in situations and for durations that have never existed in previous conflicts. Whatever issues remain to be resolved, the feared "disasters" did not materialize: There have been no epidemics of rape, no waves of "get me out of here" pregnancies, no orgies and no combat failures. In short, our men and women in uniform have performed as military professionals.

March 23, 2011

Joerg Wolf, Atlantic Community, Editor

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@ All

Thank you for your insightful comments.

I find this very interesting:

A female general commands the U.S. air campaign against Libyan targets:

"Maj. Gen. Margaret Woodward, commander of the 17th Air Force, based in Germany, seems to be an expert in refueling and mobility, which is probably why she was picked for Africa Command, whose planners likely expected the command mainly to be doing humanitarian relief missions. Instead she is overseeing airstrikes by B-2 bombers, F-15E fighter/bombers, and F-16 CJ jammers.
To my knowledge, this is the first time a woman has ever overseen an air campaign."
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/22/the_new_face_of_war...