Book Review: America's Army

America's Army: A Model for Interagency Effectiveness. By Zeb B. Bradford, Jr., and Frederic J. Brown. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security International, 2008. 250 pages. $49.95. Reviewed by Professor Charles D. Allen, Professor of Cultural Science, US Army War College.

At first glance, the title America's Army is likely to bring to mind the highly popular video game that was initially released as a public relations initiative to assist with Army recruiting. In the same vein, this informative book serves to educate its reader on the foundations, structures, cultures, and ongoing initiatives of America's preeminent land power force. The subtitle offers the US Army as a model for dealing with strategic issues of the contemporary and future environments that require joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational (JIIM) collaboration.

The book is a collection of types. It builds upon an earlier work by the authors, The U.S. Army in Transition, which detailed efforts to rebuild the Army as an all-volunteer force after the Vietnam War. This work lays out the history of the Army after the end of the Cold War and its transition into the twenty-first century. Brigadier General (Ret.) Bradford and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Brown are well-connected and in the know-it is obvious they are heavily engaged with senior levels of national defense policy and Army leadership. General Bradford is a former Military Fellow to the Council on Foreign Relations, and General Brown is a senior mentor to US European Command. The book also serves as a primer on the national security policy process as it lays out the top-level documents from the US National Security Strategy to The Army Plan and The Army Game Plan for executing its strategic responsibilities. A well-organized work, it begins with a strategic review of the global environment, provides an assessment of existent defense policy and strategies, then details the efforts of the Army to fulfill its mission to "fight and win the nation's wars."

The book has an explicitly stated purpose beyond showcasing the Army as the model "learning organization." The authors deride the lack of grand strategy for our nation and the default overreliance on the Army as a substitute for the prudent development of capable agencies to exert the diplomatic, informational, and economic elements of national power. They contend that "America's Army as an instrument of policy . . . has been held hostage to dysfunctional planning and execution within the government." The book uses the word "inept" several times in referring to civilian political leadership and that of senior policy and defense officials. The gauntlet is thrown squarely in their faces with sections titled "Strategic Misemployment" and "Mismanagement" of national defense in general and of the Army in particular. In light of those assertions, the authors are unabashed champions for the Army as it has evolved to deal with the challenges and obligations of the new century. Generals Bradford and Brown reinforce their observations that the Army is overused, underresourced (budget), and undersized.

The middle set of chapters provides insight into the Army of today by detailing its demographics, citing how the Army is reflective of American society, and ahead of it in inclusiveness and development of diversity. The authors offer The Army Plan and The Army Game Plan as paragons of strategic documents for the force. Army uniformed professionals will be familiar with the Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leader Development, Personnel, and Facilities (DOTMLPF) framework to execute strategic imperatives. Generals Bradford and Brown provide succinct examples of how the DOTMLPF framework may be useful for other agencies of the executive branch following the Army's lead.

The book, while interjecting JIIM in every chapter, rarely addresses the joint nature of military operations, an aspect which will not endear this work to the sister services. While it chronicles the rationale and efforts put forth to meet the challenges faced by the Army, critical assessment of the Army is not presented. We have experienced difficulties with the Army Force Generation model to meet the requirements for brigade combat teams and enabling support units for operational missions. Likewise, the modernization (read: Transformation) efforts of the Army embodied in the Future Combat System (FCS) have long been under scrutiny, and a recent decision by Secretary of Defense Gates has cancelled the FCS program in favor of individual, integrated acquisition efforts. DOTMLPF has been challenged as a set of processes that has been too slow to meet the exigencies of contemporary operations. Recent efforts of Business Process Reengineering and now Enterprise Management seek to redress those charges.

Unique offerings are found in the chapter on "Team of Leaders" which is part of a project that General Brown developed for European Command. Included in that section are calls for better integration of information and knowledge management to support collaborative teams. The concluding sections of the book present suggestions for strategic redirection for the twenty-first century (probably from the work of General Bradford with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars). The authors advocate revising a strategy of containment for our known and emerging threats. In addition, they present arguments for hedging strategies for those uncertain and unknown "wild card" scenarios the United States may face.

The book is well written and provides a ready reference to the evolution of the American Army in this new world. The detailed presentation of ongoing Army initiatives to achieve its strategic imperatives will inform military professionals and civilian readers alike. Both groups will no doubt benefit from reflection on the policy-strategy-execution recommendations provided by two well-thought leaders.

----

More book reviews

More book news