FORT BENNING, Ga., (Jan. 8, 2014) -- The Maneuver Center of Excellence welcomed historian Brian Linn to Fort Benning Dec. 19 for a lecture as part of the Combat Leader Speaker Program.
Linn, a professor of history and liberal arts at Texas A&M University, has served as a visiting professor at the Army War College and has authored four books, the most recent being Echo of Battle, a book that examines the Army's history of developing strategies, weapons, doctrine and commanders for future conflicts in the immediate wake of recently ended conflicts.
With Linn having conducted extensive research on the Army's history of transitioning from war to peace, he said he sees parallels to the mid-1950s after the conclusion of the Korean War.
"I think you've got so many parallels to the 1950s that it's kind of eerie," Linn said.
"You've got an Army that has just come out of a very long, unsatisfactory and indecisive war. You've got enormous problems with people who are combat experienced, but don't have a whole lot of experience with the full responsibilities of their duties. For example, you've got captains who are very good at being combat company commanders, but have no idea really about what else a captain is supposed to do. You've got enormous personnel turmoil. You've got technologies that threaten your entire existence. … The other services are promising that precision guided munitions and so forth can deliver rapid and decisive conflicts where no blood has to be shed. You've got a generation of wartime equipment. Who's going to maintain it? Does it serve your future needs, and what are you going to do with it in the meantime?"
Linn said as the Army transitions into peacetime operations after more than a decade of combat, it is vital that the most emphasis is placed on leader development, rather than technology or doctrine.
"Invest in people," he said. "Technology can last for five or 10 years. Organizations come and go. You might have the ultimate thing now in the brigade combat team, and five years from now it might not be that anymore. You can reorganize TRADOC or FORSCOM. You can put them together and take them apart. You can bring schools together and separate them, but what you can't do instantaneously is create leaders who have a vision that in 10 years will be able to step into the challenges. That is something the senior leadership has to recognize.
"Ultimately, it's all about people, and the Army always has been. It's greatest triumphs have been people triumphs, not because we had the best tank or rifle. Other services can claim that, but the Army has always had the best people to step forward and face these challenges that we didn't anticipate."
In addition to the transition from combat operations, the Army also faces increasing budgetary pressure and the looming drawdown.
Linn said it's up to Army leadership how to deal with those concerns, but that there's one area that should be left unaffected.
"The Army's leadership has to decide where the cuts are going to happen, and I would argue that the one place they shouldn't happen are in the schools and the leadership and development centers," he said. "That's a cut that if it's made, it's going to hurt you five years, 10 years and 15 years down the road. If you can create a group of leaders who can adapt not just to circumstances in the next five years but in the next 10 or 15 years, then I think that's the best you can hope for in a period of declining resources and an uncertain future."
Finally, while Linn said he sees parallels to other eras of American military history, he cautioned Soldiers not to assume that the past will repeat itself.
"Don't seek easy lessons from the past," he said. "There are a lot of people who will come and say that the past proves something. It really doesn't. Another thing is to recognize that this is going to be extremely difficult. The next five or eight years are going to be incredibly challenging, and there's not an easy path through that. I think most of the officers I've talked to are aware of those challenges, and are reflecting on them and really doing a great deal of long-term thinking about them."
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