Wider Officer Competence: The Importance of Politics and Practical Wisdom

• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17737498
• Author: Carsten F. Roennfeldt
• Date: 01 January 2019
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article
Armed Forces & Society
2019, Vol. 45(1) 59-77
Wider Officer
ª The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17737498
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Importance of Politics
and Practical Wisdom
Carsten F. Roennfeldt1
Abstract
Identifying and developing officer competence is important to a nation’s security and
a crucial attribute of a legitimate military establishment. Critics have claimed that the
U.S. officer corps favors a narrow conception of expertise that limits the armed
forces’ utility as an instrument of policy. Drawing from the dialogue between
Huntington and Janowitz, as well as Aristotle’s notion of practical wisdom, this
article proposes a wider understanding of officer competence consisting of four
distinct conceptual categories. The U.S. defense establishment favors “military skill”
over other categories of competence. As a result, the officer corps is poorly pre-
pared for 21st-century warfare. To remedy this situation, professional military
education should cultivate military leaders that, in addition to military skill, have
sociopolitical competence and practical wisdom. In this context, this article suggests
strategies to develop such competencies that officers need to be able to achieve a
diversity of national political goals.
Keywords
military profession, Huntington, Aristotle, practical wisdom, phronesis, politics,
civil–military relations, professional military education
1 Norwegian Military Academy, Oslo, Norway
Corresponding Author:
Carsten F. Roennfeldt, Norwegian Military Academy, Utfartsveien 2, Oslo 0593, Norway.
Email: cronnfeldt@mil.no

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Introduction
This article proposes a conceptual framework to discuss a question of fundamental
importance to national security: What proficiencies do U.S. military leaders need to
serve the nation’s political goals? The U.S. officer corps’ conventional concept of
competence is framed by Huntington’s (1964) phrase: “the peculiar skill of the
officer is the management of violence” (p. 13, see Nielsen & Snider, 2009,
pp. 295–298). In an era where “[w]inning in war . . . is an inherently civil-military
task” (McMaster, 2015, p. 11), this understanding is insufficient. Still, Cohen (2002)
finds that a “simplified Huntingtonian conception of military professionalism
remains the dominant view with the American defense establishment” (p. 229).
He argues this view has reduced U.S. military leaders’ utility as an instrument of
foreign policy because it portrays their proficiency as technical expertise, indepen-
dent from the particular sociopolitical context they are called on to influence (pp.
242–243).
To prepare the U.S. Armed Forces to meet 21st-century security challenges,
many have taken issue with this conventional notion of officer competence (Sha-
dlow & Lacquement, 2009; Stavridis, Rokke, & Pierce, 2016). Commandant of the
U.S. Army War College, Major General Rapp (2015) maintains this notion has
frequently steered the officer corps wrong in the practical tasks of making and
implementing contemporary national security strategies with their civilian counter-
parts. He holds Huntington’s separation of the military and civilian spheres in
national security policy appeals to U.S. officers, because it delimits their area of
responsibility to the former sphere. According to Warren (2015), it has also culti-
vated a centurion-mindset in the U.S. Army, making the army “capable of winning
nearly every firefight” (p. 28) but unable to achieve political objectives. A U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff related report finds that the country’s armed forces operate well in a
force-on-force paradigm but that this is poorly suited to the kinds of wars that have
challenged national security since September 11, 2001 (U.S. Joint and Coalition
Operational Analysis, 2012, pp. 1, 7, 19–21). In the same vein, Feaver (2011) calls
for a different kind of officer expertise and notes in reference to U.S. shortcomings
in Iraq since 2003 that “most of the problems resulted from inaccurate judgments
about how the . . . [w]ar would unfold” (p. 123). Such poor judgments reflect post–
World War II deficiencies in U.S. military professionalism associated with an
increase in anti-intellectualism and a decrease in strategic mindedness. This, Kohn
(2009) argues, constitutes a daunting challenge to national security and calls for
reforms in the way the U.S. trains and develops military leader competence.
However, what kind of competency the U.S. officer corps needs to succeed in the
future remains unclear. For the past two decades, professional debates have brought
attention to a myriad of unconventional challenges and demands being placed upon
commanders at all levels during missions (Krulak, 1999; Mattis & Hoffman, 2005).
U.S. military doctrines and policy documents list a host of relevant skill sets for
officers, as the ability to cooperate with civilians in multiagency and multinational

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Roennfeldt
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Table 1. An Analytical Framework for a Wider Conception of Officer Competence.
Military Sphere
Sociopolitical Sphere
Technical skill
Category 1: military skill
Category 3: sociopolitical skill
Practical wisdom
Category 2: military wisdom
Category 4: sociopolitical wisdom
operations abroad (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, p. i), the ability to operate
beyond the physical battleground and across multiple domains, including public
perception (U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, 2014, p. iv) and the ability
to think critically and creatively (U.S. Military Academy, 2015, p. 3). Seen through
the lens of the conventional notion of officer competence, the breadth and complex-
ity of such expectations are overwhelming and their relevance contested; hence,
there is a risk that a conventional-minded officer corps will fall back on the man-
agement of violence as its approach in future conflicts. To break this futile cycle,
alternatives to the conventional conception should be explored. As a contribution to
this end, this article proposes a simple framework to map out a wider understanding
of officer competence (see Table 1).
Table 1 consists of four conceptually distinct analytical categories produced from
the Huntington–Janowitz dialogue on civil–military relations, particularly whether
officers should be politically sensitive, and Aristotle’s distinction between technical
skill and practical wisdom as different forms of competence. Based on the above-
mentioned critics and doctrinal demands, I argue that the U.S. defense establishment
focuses on Category 1, omitting the three other forms of proficiency officers need to
succeed in 21st-century warfare.
This article begins by theoretically clarifying notions of the military profession
and of competence, respectively, before it combines them to produce the four dis-
tinct analytical concepts of officer competence. These concepts are then used to
illustrate how the notions can serve as mental constructs to further understanding of
professional expertise beyond the conventional concept. Finally, this article suggests
methods for cultivating wider officer competence.
The Huntington–Janowitz Dialogue on the Military Profession
The conventional concept of officer competence is a function of Huntington’s
(1964) main thesis in civil–military relations theory: objective civilian control. He
argues that for an armed force to be both militarily efficient and under strict political
control, it must operate largely autonomously from the civilian sphere, yet accept
subordination to the government. The government should seek advice from the
highest executive military level, set the goals for the war, and then leave it to the
military executives to efficiently achieve those goals. To that end, he conceptualizes
a particular understanding of the military profession defined by three main

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characteristics: the expertise, the responsibility, and the corporate character of offi-
cership. It is the first of these that encompasses Huntington’s seminal understanding
of officer competence.
The profession’s quintessential expertise is the management of violence, he
claims. Huntington (1964, pp. 9, 14) does mention the importance of a liberal arts
education to broaden officers’ minds, but this is of mere auxiliary utility to the
technical and instrumental abilities required in his picture of the military profession:
“The function of a military force is successful armed combat . . . The direction,
operation, and control of a human organization whose primary function is the appli-
cation of violence is the peculiar skill of the officer” (Huntington, 1964, p. 11).
The military profession’s primary responsibility is the military security of soci-
ety. This implies “that [officers’] skill can only be utilized for purposes approved by
society through its political agent, the state” (Huntington, 1964, pp. 15–16). This
idea is crucial to the profession’s ethical rationale and constitutes the foundation of
its legitimacy maintained by the state’s monopoly on commissioning officers. Hun-
tington’s (1964) final characteristic promotes the idea that officers “share a sense
of . . . consciousness of themselves as a group apart from laymen” (p. 10). While
indispensable to objective civilian control, this corporateness of the military profes-
sion is the most controversial, since it prescribes the separation of civilian and
military spheres. Huntington’s (1964) ideal is an officer corps that is “immune to
politics” (p. 464). He is certainly aware that...