A senior Army strategist recently forwarded me an interesting, albeit obscure, piece of Army history. Dated January 20,1983, it is a memo from the director of the Combat Studies Institute to General Jack Merritt, the commanding general of the Combined Arms Center. The memo outlined a proposal for Merritt to appoint a special assistant—one that should have a unique role and, per the memo, should have specific qualifications.
The ideal candidate should be “literate” (someone “who appreciates that words are important”) and should be a major or lieutenant colonel with an advanced degree in the liberal arts and able to speak a foreign language. The special assistant should be “self-confident” but have a “very small ego.” The individual should also be “mature” (which the memo’s author further describes as “not an old grouch, but clearly satisfied with his lot in life and generally with his army”) and have “an inquiring mind.” And the person must be a “hard worker” (“but not tense”)—knowing “how to be constructively critical, demonstrating “intellectual courage,” and “anticipat[ing] well.”
This special assistant, the memo declared, should be a “ghost,” working directly for (and reporting directly to) Merritt, with no routine administrative functions, and making Merritt’s “mind (thoughts) an object of his daily study.” Additionally, the ghost would have free reign to track down ideas, gather information, cultivate expertise, self-select into tasks, and tell Merritt “what he thinks as opposed to what he thinks you think.” The author further cautions Merritt that his ghost will need to be protected from short-term requirements, enjoy the functional equivalent of tenure, be able to appear idle (time for reading, writing, and thinking), and have license to debate ideas with him in a free and dialectical manner.
I do not know if Merritt ever selected a ghost or, if he did, whether the special assistant was employed to the effect that the memo’s author envisioned. What is interesting about the memo, however, is its description of work that is now seemingly the purview of commander’s action groups or strategic initiatives groups (CAGs/SIGs), an organizational innovation that was ushered in by the Army’s adoption of mission command doctrine over the past two decades. And yet, I received the memo from an officer who has worked as part of CAGs/SIGs at the highest levels of the Army and forwarded the document to me along with a declaration: “I would like to be a ghost!” It would appear, therefore, that the ghost concept and the actual work of CAGs/SIGs are not entirely aligned. Moreover, while there are certainly some flag officers who employ their aides-de-camp, CAG chiefs, political advisors, speechwriters, or executive officers in a ghost-like role, this is inconsistent across the enterprise and almost certainly does not conform to the requirements that the memo’s author prescribed.
Such inconsistencies are to be expected since the ghost concept is not something that could easily (or even prudently) be institutionalized. Flag officers have rightful prerogative on how they constitute and employ their personal staffs—CAGs/SIGs included—and not every flag officer would benefit from a ghost given variances in command styles and organizational needs. However, as evidenced by numerous discussions I have had with various flag officer staffs that have visited the Modern War Institute over the past three years, certain commands need a ghost but are unable to get or create one.
Although the ghost concept cannot perhaps be institutionalized, the de facto proponents for CAGs/SIGs—the Army strategist community (functional area 59), the Army War College’s Strategic Education Program, and the Combined Arms Center’s School of Advanced Military Studies—can surely develop a way to identify the need for ghosts in certain commands and provide options for the flag officers at those commands on who their ghosts should be. To these ends, it is important to look beyond the normal talent pool for prospective ghosts, such that the memo author’s envisioned qualifications are preserved. As it stands, CAG chiefs and executive officers—the extant positions most analogous to a ghost—are often too senior in rank (the author was adamant that a ghost should not be a full colonel) and selected based on very different criteria than that laid out in the memo.
Fortunately, and at the risk of organizational self-advocacy, there is a ready-made population to serve as ghosts where and for however long needed, and with the desired qualifications as outlined in the original memo: permanent faculty (functional area 47) from the non-STEM academic departments at the United States Military Academy. West Point permanent faculty all have doctoral degrees and, since they cannot move up or out from the faculty track, are presumably satisfied with their lots in life. And while not all have small egos (no sample population anywhere in the Army uniformly does), they are all surely inquisitive, confident and hardworking in their academic fields, and intellectually courageous at levels that exceed most (if not all) of their peer groups. Moreover, there is an established mechanism for West Point permanent faculty to rotate back into the operational Army to leverage their intellectual talents against real-world problems within flag officer commands. This operational experience program (akin to a sabbatical in civilian academia) could easily accommodate ghost requirements. Additionally, increasing the functional area 47 population, either at West Point or through new billets at the War College or Combined Arms Center, against projected ghost needs would be a low-cost and low-scale workaround to the institutionalization challenge.
Separate from the untapped potential in functional area 47 population, ghost requirements could be serviced in the long term by changing how we educate Army officers. It is reasonable to infer that the memo author’s use of the term ghost related to the modern understanding of the paranormal concept: someone who could serve as Merritt’s “soul” or “spirit,” which diffuses throughout the command. This conception, coupled with the qualifications listed in the original memo, suggests that an effective ghost display two fundamental “habits of mind”: empathy and critical thinking.
Empathy and critical thinking are not new concepts to the Army officer education system, of course. They are fields of study in various core curriculum courses here at West Point and (presumably) other commissioning outlets, a point of emphasis in theater-specific training for recent conflicts, and prominent features in much of the Army’s planning and visualization doctrine. These are piecemeal approaches that fall well short of the habit-of-mind threshold, however, and the fact that Army officers routinely underperformed quasi-diplomatic and development roles in Iraq and Afghanistan that required cognitive discomfort and cultural sensitivity, is an indictment a posteriori. The Iraq and Afghanistan experiences serve to illustrate the utility of changing officer education beyond simply creating a future ghost pool.
To be sure, curriculum adjustments and policy changes have a tendency of running into brick walls of bureaucratic resistance. But as an aspirational thought exercise, if we were to reimagine Army education to reinforce in officers the habits of mind that will equip them for the challenges of the future battlefield, what might that look like? What are the pedagogical prescriptions? First, provide foundational liberal arts instruction, arrayed against the three initial levels of the officer education system and taught by credentialed civilian faculty. This will normalize officers’ baccalaureate-level education, irrespective of their commissioning source and college major. At basic officer leader courses, all Army officers will take a course on world history but presented through a non-Western and non-Eurocentric lens. At captains career courses, all Army officers will take a course on illiberal political orders, such as those manifest in autocracies and nonsecular states. Lastly, all Army officers will take a course on international relations during intermediate-level education, with the course itself refreshing officers on the main theories of international relations as well as providing a history of American foreign policy.
Second, enforce proficiency in a second language. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis posits that language shapes the fundamental cognition of its speakers, so speaking another language can literally enable Army officers to think like others—a core precept of empathy, and a pathway to more effective relationships with allies and partners in coalition warfighting. As such, all Army officers will demonstrate proficiency in a second language prior to graduating from captains career courses, to be measured by the Defense Language Proficiency Tests. The language can be of the officer’s choice, as long as there is a corresponding test available. The pedagogy envisions this as an individual responsibility, but school commandants across the officer education system would be well-advised to develop supplemental instruction programs during both basic officer leader courses and captains career courses. An officer who is unable to demonstrate proficiency by the end of his or her captains career course will be flagged until passing a proficiency test. Additionally, pegging the requirement to captains career courses allows officers to self-select out of the requirement after their initial terms of service are completed (by submitting an unqualified resignation or transitioning to the Individual Ready Reserve).
Third, formally train all Army officers on negotiation theory. Not only are negotiations a form of problem solving by way of formal conflict resolution—and thus inherently valuable to military professionals—but they require incisive understanding of individual behavior and how behavior influences decision-making. Understanding of this type is basically empathy defined. This training is best suited for the captains career courses and can be accomplished by exporting curricula from either the West Point Negotiation Project or Harvard University’s various programs on negotiation.
Lastly, certify all Army officers on the Paul-Elder Framework for Critical Thinking. This framework is world-renowned and influenced much of the initial development of Army Design Methodology. As suggested earlier, however, in order to affect cognitive change at the habit-of-mind level, Army officers need to formally learn critical thinking skills separately from their appearance in planning and visualization doctrine so that the skills do not become pigeonholed. There are numerous online courses that meet the certification requirement, which the Army could easily subsidize or even license. As with language proficiency, the pedagogy envisions this as an individual responsibility to be completed any time prior to the end of the captains career course.
At first blush, these pedagogical prescriptions are intimidating. Scary, even. But ghosts are scary, too—until you read a forty-year-old memo that puts them, and their eminent utility, in a different light. Happy Halloween, indeed.
Colonel Patrick Sullivan, PhD, is the director of the Modern War Institute at West Point.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.