FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (March 29, 2012) -- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey often tells people he can pick up the phone and talk to his former Command and General Staff College classmate, the Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army.
The incoming deputy commandant of CGSC wants students to create the same type of bond that Dempsey shares with his 1988 CGSC classmate, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan Army chief of staff.
"It's pretty amazing that those relationships happen here," said Brig. Gen. Gordon "Skip" Davis Jr., who assumed responsibility of CGSC at a ceremony March 26 at the Lewis and Clark Center.
Davis assumes responsibility from Brig. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who left for an assignment at Fort Riley in November. Col. Mike Johnson served as acting deputy commandant for nearly five months.
The Fort Leavenworth and Combined Arms Center commander, a three-star general, is also the commandant of CGSC. Currently, that is Lt. Gen. David Perkins, who called Davis his "project manager" for CGSC and leader development and education.
"As project manager for leader development, I would encourage you with that, to make sure our weapon system that we call leadership remains the best in the world," Perkins told Davis.
Davis has spent much of his 31-year military career abroad. He spent the last five years in the Army hardly speaking English. Davis completed the nonresident course for the Command and General Staff College, and remembers working on academic papers while on a United Nations mission to help Rwandan refugees after the 1994 genocide.
In addition to deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Davis has also served U.N. and NATO missions to Bosnia, Mozambique, Zaire, Congo and Liberia. Davis' last assignment was as the deputy chief of staff for operations and intelligence for the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, during which time he deployed to Afghanistan. Davis is married to a native Italian speaker, and his daughters are attending college and preparatory school in Europe.
As an Army captain, Davis was an Olmsted Scholar, a program that sends junior officers to study abroad in a foreign educational program. Davis earned a master's in business and international relations in France.
Davis encouraged CGSC students to take advantage of the international resources here at Fort Leavenworth.
"I would counsel to any ILE student to recognize the world-class education they receive here and leverage that," he said.
Davis said his breadth of international experience gives him a different way of approaching the operating environment in a non-U.S. centric way.
"We've got to spend time understanding issues from other perspectives," he said.
Davis said it was his own and the U.S. Army's understanding of cultural backgrounds that was useful during a 2005 counterinsurgency mission in Iraq detailed in an article, "Operation Knockout: COIN in Iraq," in the November-December 2005 Military Review by Col. James Greer.
In this particular mission, coalition forces allowed Iraqi forces to lead, making a division-sized raid designed to destroy and disrupt insurgent activities in Baqubah in Diyala Province. On a single night on Nov. 12, 2005, coalition and Iraqi forces captured 377 suspected insurgents without destroying one house or harming one civilian, according to the article. Only three Iraqi Special Police were wounded. Then-Col. Davis' role was in coordinating a Special Police Transition Team alongside then-Col. Jeffrey Buchanan. They advised Iraqis and planned and coordinated their own support to the mission. Soldiers worked in teams of 10 or 12 -- living, fighting and training alongside Iraqi counterparts 24 hours a day to prepare for the mission.
Davis said although he never attended the School of Advanced Military Studies, that experience was his on-the-job training for military planning and designing. It was his knowledge of the fundamentals -- how to train a division -- that allowed him and the mission to be successful in that particular case, he said.
Davis encouraged current CGSC students and faculty to become masters of the art of war in order to lead the Army into the future.
"To win our nation's wars, to defend ourselves -- our allies and partners -- we must hone and increase our professional expertise, and we must maintain our edge in critical thinking, innovation and creativity," Davis said. "These are not only the insurance policy against the unknown of an unpredictable future, but have been the critical ingredients to our nation's success for over two centuries."
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