The Political-Military Army Officer:

Soldier Scholar
or
Cocktail Commando?
(Part II)

By Norvell B. De Atkine

While the military culture has evolved over the years and we now have an Army almost unrecognizable to pre-Vietnam war veterans, one issue has remained pretty much the same—the place (or lack thereof) of the political-military officer in the military establishment. His role, usefulness, education, and career opportunities have always been considered somewhat nebulous. A recent study conducted at the Air Force Academy highlighted the deficiencies of their system of identifying and using political military officers.¹⁴ The problems identified in the report are similar to those in the Army, as I very well know from my own experience and those of my peers. The death knell of a career is to be identified by the career-makers and -breakers as being out of the mainstream. When I returned to the States after six years in a foreign area officer assignment, my artillery assignments officer made it clear that I was henceforth a second class citizen.

The political-military officer is sometimes identified by outsiders as an area specialist, but I use the phrase as an umbrella term for officers who work in the field of security assistance, liaison officers, peacekeeping assignments (in which there is contact with local people and officials), or as political-military army officers in State Department, CIA, or in the Pentagon in such agencies as ISA, or DSAA. I also include military attaches abroad in our embassies, who, it should be noted, do more representation and trend reporting than any espionage operations. The officer may specialize in civil affairs, psychological operations or security assistance; he may serve as a liaison officer or in other roles requiring regional and in-country expertise. But he will find that he is an orphan in terms of guidance and branch (e.g., infantry or artillery) interest in his career progression. Alternating tours usually means that he is behind his contemporaries in terms of new doctrine, equipment, and area knowledge. For instance, when I left the Vietnam-era Army artillery to go to the Middle East, artillery fire direction computation was manual. When I returned it was semi-computerized. After leaving the artillery again for about three years, I returned to find it fully computerized, and with many other fundamental changes in all aspects of the branch.

Generally speaking, a choice must be made early on. Does the officer want to pursue a progressive career pattern with a shot at senior rank or will he be content to forego any such possibility to work within a field that only a certain type finds satisfying? However, the problem is even deeper than that. Many of these officers would accept the reduced chances for higher rank and command if allowed simply to continue doing what they do best. Unfortunately, this course of action violates the Army’s grossly inefficient “up or out” policy, which has no place for officers not considered to have the potential for higher rank and elevated roles.

It is a field for the adventurous, slightly off-beat, sometimes downright eccentric officer (T. E. Lawrence wrote of the effectiveness of the British officer in working with the Arabs because "nearly every young Englishman has the roots of eccentricity in him. . . .").¹⁵ He does not feel threatened by ambiguity or feel unloved by a lack of feedback on his performance, knowing that often his evaluator is far removed from him, not only in terms of miles, but also in a sense of what the job entails. Moreover, the political military officer must understand that more than likely he will never appear on a command list—the epitome of success in the military world. Political-military fields have very few command positions and access to them is rarely achieved as a result of work in a political-military assignment.

Worst of all in the environment of the combat soldier's ethos, he may be regarded as "touchy feely,” a sort of habitué of embassy cocktail circuits. As are most stereotypes this one is also wrong. In fact, I experienced far more close calls as political-military officer in the Middle East than as an artilleryman in an infantry division in Vietnam. The "pucker factor" was far more frequent in the alien and always unsettled political turmoil of the Middle East environment. Moving through the Michelin rubber plantation in Vietnam with an infantry battalion was scary, but one always felt the security of numbers of people around that you trusted and knew you could count on. Not so in the essentially individual tasks required as a political-military officer in the field. Driving through Amman, Jordan, during fire fights between government troops and the Palestinians to ascertain the latest developments during the “Black September” war of 1970 was a very dicey proposition, particularly since I was there to replace an American officer shot down in front of his family by Palestinian terrorists. Who was the enemy? Which group? Being abducted by Arafat’s Fatah organization or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine made a difference of being roughed up and released, or being tortured and killed. Holed up in the U.S. Embassy for two weeks surrounded by very hostile Palestinians who fired at anything that moved added to the drama. Some years later maneuvering through the chaos and hysteria of the crowds at the parade site immediately after the Sadat assassination in Cairo (my wife and I were about thirty meters away from Sadat at the time) and driving back to the Embassy through totally empty streets, which were usually filled with people, was an eerie experience. It was a sure sign that that no one knew what would come next—a mass uprising, a military coup, or both. We were fully cognizant of the happenings of “Black Saturday” in January 1952, in which the normally docile Egyptian crowds roamed the streets destroying symbols of Western presence and killing foreigners.

In essence, the political-military officer cannot expect suitable recognition for the role he plays. This is, of course, not new; it has always been this way. In the Vietnam war the extremely complex and personally demanding job of being an advisor with the South Vietnamese units was advertised by the Army personnel managers as being equivalent to a command position with American troops. In actuality it was not so. Even those senior advisors who came up with high marks in their respective provinces experienced low promotion rates.¹⁶ It is indicative of the emphasis put on the education of the advisor that at Ft. Bragg's Military Assistance Training Advisor Course (MATA) the future advisor who would eat, sleep, fight, and sometimes die with his South Vietnamese soldiers received ten hours of instruction on the geography, culture, and history of Vietnam, and four hours on the insurgent forces, this out of a total of 270 hours of training.¹⁷ Nevertheless, John Paul Vann, a typical maverick of the type that makes successful political-military officers, in his capacity as a corps group commander of the advisory effort in Vietnam expected his advisors to know within their districts even the price of “pork, beer, soft drinks, labor, sampan motors, [and the] number of school class rooms. . . ."¹⁸ His untimely death cut short the energy and understanding of one political-military officer who made a difference.

Continue reading
The Pol-Mil Army Officer:
Scholar or Commando? (Part III)

14. James E. Kinzer and Marybeth Peterson Ulrich, Political-Military Officers and the Air Force: Continued Turbulence in a Vital Career Specialty. (US Air Force Academy, CO: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, April 1997). “In short the system does not fully appreciate the efforts made by those in political-military affairs.” The report goes on to indict the Army system as well, noting some slight recent improvement.

15. T.E Lawrence, "The Evolution of a Revolt." (Ft. Leavenworth. CSI reprint of an Army Quarterly and Defense Journal article of October, 1920), p. 19.

16. Jeffrey C. Clarke, Advise and Support: The Final Years: The US Army in Vietnam. (Washington DC: Center of Military History, 1988), p.511.

17.U.S. Army Special Warfare School Program of Instruction. The Military Assistance Training Advisor Course, 1966.

18. Clarke, Advise and Support, p. 66-67.

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