Stubborn as the Mule: Why the Department of Defense Has Resisted Military Change

By Daniel Brooks

Unlike most MSU senior students, I did not start my Capstone on the first day of class this past spring semester, but rather on the streets of Rabiah, Iraq in 2009.

It was my 3^rd Marine Corps deployment to Iraq since 2005, and although much had been accomplished there was still sporadic fighting and the ever-present threat from al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Along with many of my multi-deployment, Jarhead colleagues, I began to ask the increasingly persistent question: “Why are we still here?”

Accordingly, when I was informed that our Senior Capstone topics were to be chosen and formulated by ourselves, I could think of no better research question to try to answer for myself, my fellow Marines and—if I dare say so—my fellow students, faculty and fellow Americans. Why, 30 years after the fiasco of Vietnam, are we still confronted by asymmetrical warfare conundrums (such as combating an enemy who withdraws to the anonymity of citizenry)? Realizing that this was much too broad a topic for a paper limited to 20 pages, I was able to narrow it down with a focus on the Department of Defense (DoD) and its resistance to change. Thus the title of my Capstone: Stubborn as the Mule: Why the Department of Defense Has Resisted Military Change.

Looking at three factors, I hypothesized that the DoD is resistant to change because of: 1) institutional change constraints, 2) concern of politicians about the image of weakness, and 3) the conventional warfare core value inherent in the military leadership of the DoD.

These are not the only factors stymieing change, clearly, but through my research I deemed them the most influential due to their augmentation of each other.

Before addressing these factors, I felt it necessary to explain why the DoD needs to change. To do so, I drew from the work of Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21^st Century, in which he outlines the evolution of modern warfare through four generations. Starting with the Napoleonic Wars (1^st Generation Modern Warfare) and ending with insurgency-based warfare (4^th Generation Modern Warfare), Hammes provides a roadmap showing how warfare has developed and how historically it has never retraced its steps to past generations, and thus consequently calls for military change to address the asymmetrical battles we face now.

Institutional constraints are the first factor to hinder change within the DoD, the most influential being organizational structure. Simply put, the DoD is enormous. Boasting the non-official title of being America’s largest employer, the DoD has a ‘staff’ of over 3 million people. With the Secretary of Defense at the top, there are 35 sub-branches within the chain of command, creating a hierarchy model in the shape of a pyramid. This pyramid is a supremely robust resistor to change as vertical and horizontal attempts to create change are overwhelmed by transaction costs and imperfect information, to put it into economic terms.

The second factor impacting on the DoD’s inability to change are politicians persistent in their almost blind support of American conventional military preponderance out of fear of appearing weak, or ‘soft’ on defense. Essentially, if a rival candidate can make the argument that a standing politician’s weak military policies jeopardize our way of life, it is unlikely that the latter will remain in office. One of my main arguments to support this point is the current policy of President Obama, who is supportive of the proposed $7 billion increase to the defense budget. Dealing with an economic recession plaguing the country, unemployment hindering American productivity and a crippling national debt, this ‘liberal, democratic’ president cannot resist the temptation of shoring up in more conservative circles by showing support for the institution that creates the image of security for voters—the American military, namely, the DoD.

Lastly, the military leadership within the DoD reinforces the conventional warfare ‘core value,’ which also inhibits change. Rising through the ranks with a large emphasis on physical strength, courage, and obedience, members of the military embrace the ethos and norms of the conventional-warfare warrior.

I do not mean to imply that the men and women running the Department of Defense are ignorant yes-men, better suited to charge hills. Most have highly-specialized academic degrees and understand warfare very well. However, most have achieved their rank because of an understanding of conventional warfare, bred into them through their 20-plus years of service. Their understanding of warfare predisposes them to support conventional warfare values, and object to a switch away from the warrior ethos.

Because of the personal nature of the project, I feel that I became entrenched in my own narrative and was remiss in addressing some very important questions solicited to me during my presentation to the panel. Particularly, if these are the three most important factors, how can change occur, if at all? Where does General David Petreaus’s concept of COIN, or ‘Counter-Insurgency’ warfare (‘hearts & minds’), and its ‘long war’ implications fit into the picture? How does the Andrew Bacevich critique of Petreaus and COIN (‘semi-permanent war’) address the need for change?

Though these questions are beyond the purview of a 20-page paper, they are important, and I look forward to future research into these aspects.

Day by Day, Rock by Rock: Transforming Mineral Wealth into Economic Development

By Laura Villegas

Recent Graduate, Department of Political Science, Montana State University

There is no pretty way to say this, so I will just say it: I am an optimistic version of a masochist. I find lots of satisfaction in undertaking tasks that involve huge deals of effort. That's why for my political science capstone project I chose to find a solution to a problem that has been puzzling economists and political scientists for over 30 years.

Common sense says that countries that are rich in natural resources can grow faster than countries that lack natural wealth. Well, it turns out that what has happened in the developing world since 1970 is quite the opposite. In general, countries that are well endowed with natural capital have underperformed their counterparts.

This phenomenon is often called the "paradox of plenty" or the "resource curse". I wanted to investigate the mechanisms of transmission of this so-called resource curse and explore ways to avoid it. On top of that I wanted to apply my findings to the specific case of mining coltan in Colombia. Coltan is a very valuable mineral, relatively new to the world and hence highly controversial. I believe coltan has the potential to trigger Colombia's collapse, as it is believed to have done in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I did not start my project with a question but with a vision. Death, despair, suffering, social injustice, infants dying suffocated in dark mines, women being raped in the fields, militias abusing of rural residents, and corrupted officials smoking million-dollar cigars. It was not a picture of the future, it the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Because on Earth humans are loss averse—I yet have to discover if this behavior persists in the blogosphere—the fear to lose my country to some economic model of development encouraged me to find an escape to fate. My specific research question was: How can the government of Colombia avoid the resource curse and responsibly transform coltan-generated wealth into sustainable social and economic development?

To make a long story short, I found that the resource curse is far less common in developing countries than originally thought. Moreover, the type of resource happens to matter a lot when determining the effects of natural wealth on future development. For example, it is not the same to be rich in forests than to be rich in gold. Obviously, countries rich in the so-called "point-source resources", like gold and diamonds, have had a harder time evading the resource curse, basically because it is a lot easier and much more profitable to smuggle gold than wood. Hence, smugglers and criminals are attracted to the country and set corrupted institutions that deteriorate the very foundations of society.

The key to turn natural wealth into a blessing is to coordinate the efforts of bureaucrats, mining companies, and institutions. First, for society to actually benefit from mineral wealth it must have a well defined set of laws and an adequate institutional framework that can regulate and enforce the laws.

Institutions are social capital creators. They attract certain kinds of personalities into certain activities and further promote particular types of legal, political, historical and cultural relationships. Also, they assign process incentives, and set frameworks of behavior that are fundamental for determining the tone of the legal discourse and for making policy. Moreover, institutions solve the problem of transaction costs and asymmetric information and thus foster economic efficiency and social welfare optimization. Finally, they help private and public entities to minimize the risk and maximize the profits associated with a potential deal. The bottom line is that efficient institutions allow countries to absorb benefits from thriving corporations and healthy states.

To build strong institutions that guarantee accountability and transparency Colombia’s government must privatize its mining sector; consolidate a diverse economy; and promote a healthy political environment.

Second to institutional development is the need to invest mineral revenues in interest generating assets.

In conclusion, the solution to avoid the resource curse is to open the mining sector to private domestic companies and to invest mineral revenues in social infrastructure to improve the quality of human capital and the productive capacity of Colombia's factors of production. In other words, the Colombian government must pass policies that allow the state to secure a sustainable source of revenue and policies that guarantee the fair and efficient distribution of those revenues—given a strong institutional framework.

Maybe the answer is not eccentric, but who says that parsimonious is easy? The fact that I have theory and evidence to support my findings make me feel comfortable about the way I am structuring my worldview and raising my level of awareness about the importance of managing natural resources for in the quest of allowing humans to flourish.

Rehberg and Tester: They Ain't Legislators

On Friday, both Senator Tester and Congressman Rehberg's March 31 Quarterly fundraising numbers were released and discussed in the media. Check out the article from the Helena Independent Record here.

Long story short: Both candidates had good quarters. The long story will have to wait until the reports are posted online at the FEC. Once that I have those numbers, I can dig into them more deeply to figure out how each campaign is doing.

In the meantime, I'd like to explore an issue raised by Senator Tester in some recent remarks he made here in Montana. Last month at a fundraising dinner in Helena, Senator Tester ripped Congressman Rehberg for his relatively slim record of legislative accomplishment. Tester said that Congressman Rehberg's record consists of naming a few post offices, and that's about it. The article can be read here.

The bigger point is how should we, as voters, evaluate the jobs that both Tester and Rehberg have done while in Congress. Should we evaluate them by their legislative accomplishments? If so, the record is pretty slim indeed for both candidates.

Using both THOMAS and the Congressional Bills Project, I examined the number of bills Tester and Rehberg have sponsored while serving in the Senate and House, respectively. I also looked to see if those bills passed their respective chambers and was eventually signed into law. For this analysis, I only looked at the bills where Tester and Rehberg were the primary sponsor. The analysis is in the chart below:



Neither candidate is what one might call a stellar legislator. None of Tester's sponsored legislation has signed by the president, and of the 77 bills sponsored by Congressman Rehberg, only four have (and yes, two of those bills are renaming post offices).

Of course, these data need to be placed into some broader context. Using the 110th Congress as a baseline, I looked at the total number of bills sponsored in each chamber and then broke out the average number of bills introduced by member and their success at passing legislation into law.



As one can plainly see, most legislation goes to Congress to die. Very few bills become law, and the average number of bills sponsored becoming law is only 1 in the Senate (close to 2 if you just look at the Democratic majority in the Senate), and less than 1 in the House. The mean number of bills sponsored in the Senate is 36 and only 16 in the House.

If we use these numbers as a guide, both Congressman Rehberg and Senator Tester are less active than the average member in terms of bill sponsorship (although Congressman Rehberg approaches the mean in the 11th Congress). Their inability to pass any of their preferred legislation into law is not surprising either. If you look who was the MOST successful legislators in the 110th Congress, they tended to be more senior, more seasoned, and holders of key instituitonal positions such as committee chairmanships. They also, surprise surprise, tend to come from the majority party. Senator Kennedy successfully sheparded 13 bills to passage in the 110th Congress, followed by Senator Leahy (8), and Senators Biden, Feinstein, and Harkin (7 each). In the House, Congressmen Oberstar and Berman got 8 and 7 of their bills passed, followed by Congressmen Conyers and Kildee (6 each). As you look at those names, the amount of seniority is clear--and this is not surprising at all. The literature on congressional careers (see Hibbing in particular) shows that legislative productivity increases over a member's term in office.

Neither Senator Tester or Congressman Rehberg are particularly senior, and Congressman Rehberg has only now achieved a leadership post as chairman of one of appropriations subcommittees. Evaluting their accomplishments as sponsors of legislation is perhaps not the best approach to figuring out who is doing a better job for Montana. Quite simply, neither are particularly distinguished legislators but we should not expect them to be given their career stage.

As Mayhew (2000) points out, legislating is only half of what members of Congress do. Members of Congress investigate, they take stands, they oppose presidents, they engage in foreign policy discussions, and they attempt to affect the flow of public discourse more generally. In the words of Richard Fenno, members of Congress are not just policy experts. They are constituent servants and they strive to demonstrate to voters that they are in touch or "one of us". Members can chose which aspects of their jobs to highlight to constituents. Perhaps the most useful way to evaluate both Tester and Rehberg is less on their legislative accomplishments, and more on their work as constituent servants and how close they are to the voters of Montana in terms of policy positions. Do they listen? Are they responsive? Do they successfully help Montanans navigate the federal system? And what are they doing to make sure the needs of Montanans are address? All of these questions can and often do have very little to do with legislation.

Jobs vs. the Environment, Part II

In my last post, I suggested the jobs vs. the environment policy debate and legislative agenda was a false choice and cited a recent paper that demonstrated a positive relationship between economic well-being and environmental quality. Here is what that relationship could look like in Montana.

When we produce basic commodities like wheat, beef, or minerals, global markets set prices; commodity producers are price takers not price makers. Nationally, U.S. cattle producers slaughtered 2.96 million head totaling 2.29 billion pounds in 2010. Montana producers shipped 1,700 head or 1.5 million pounds. A consumer would be hard pressed to differentiate a steak from Chouteau from one raised in Texas because of the way beef is distributed and marketed. As a result, beef producers make far less money that they could. What if we branded our beef as being raised in an environmentally sensitive way and capitalized on Montana’s clean environment, water, and open ranges? The short answer is – producers could make more money on each cow.

There are many niche markets for beef – Lean, Organic, Natural, and Pasture-finished are just a few examples of efforts to brand meat raised and finished in a nontraditional manner. They all base their higher prices on issues of quality. In Montana, we have the advantage that quality is already inherent in our state. For many of our products, the Made in Montana label should be a proxy for “clean and healthy”. Efforts to undermine environmental protections are economically short-sighted and counterproductive to a state economy that could be less dependent on global markets. Our beef market is so relatively small (we are not in the list of the top ten beef producing states), the adjustment could be done in a few years.

This version of economic good tied to environmental quality demands that we need to rethink how we do business. If, as a rancher, your customer is a meat packer, your production will have to conform to industry standards for everything from breed selection to use of antibiotics to yield and quality grades. But, if your customer is an individual looking for lean beef raised and finished on a local family farm, or raised organically, you will be working with a very different production model. This requires new skills and ways of thinking about what and how we produce goods and services. It would require infrastructure and human investment.

The logic can apply to other areas. Montana could adopt a quality management assessment for public policy including not only food but also timber production (i.e. sustainable, low impact to watersheds), predator control (predator friendly wool), tourism (triple bottom line accounting), and manufacturing (energy and water efficient). None of this is revolutionary and examples can be found around the world. Montana’s competitive advantage is that we already have the environmental quality; all we need to do is design an economy that benefits from it.

Engage! Mill’s "On Liberty" and the MSU Campus Smoking Ban

The Political Theory Consortium met last night to discuss John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, particularly chapter four, “Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual.” Our objective was to discuss how Mill helps us think about the recent 61-39% vote at Montana State to ban smoking on campus.

Let me start by saying this: I am no fan of smoking. As I said at our gathering this evening, I come from a family of smokers (some now ex-smokers, to whatever extent that is possible). I was always the one left in restaurants holding down the table after dinner while everyone else went outside to smoke. You would think that, at the very least, having to remember everyone’s dessert and coffee orders would have prepared me well for the job of waitress. It didn’t. My short stint as a waitress was a miserable failure. And it turns out that most people who work in the restaurant industry smoke, so even my breaks were kind of lonely.

My point is that I’m an odd defender of the so-called “right to smoke.” But after steeping myself in Mill (we read chapters 1, 2, and 3 of On Liberty in my Modern Political Thought class this week), I am having a hard time figuring just how this smoking ban is consistent with a commitment to individual liberty in those areas of life that don’t do harm to others.

In case you haven’t read Mill lately, here’s what he says:

“the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.”

This is famously known as Mill’s “harm principle.” He makes clear that he only has in mind purely self-regarding conduct here. So, for example, a person should be free to drink themselves silly if they want, but if this results in their physically injuring someone, or their failing to uphold their “distinct and assignable obligation” to others (say, this leads them to neglect their children), then it’s no longer purely self-regarding conduct. Importantly, though, we have no right not to be offended by others, and Mill rejects any claim to rights that “society” has against, for example, what it might deem morally deviant behavior that entails no identifiable harm.

Mill is kind of the thinking-girl’s Liberal (in the sense of “defender of liberty”), because he also had a strong sense of civic virtue, social responsibility, mass public education, and a deep commitment to an ideal of humans as progressive beings. He was an avowed feminist, against slavery, and just generally ahead of his time. He was no atomistic libertarian. For example, he wrote,

“Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter. They should be forever stimulating each other to increased exercise of their higher faculties, and increased direction of their feelings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead of degrading, objects and contemplations. But neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it.”

We will inevitably shower admiration on those who live lives we think are “good.” And those whose conduct or character we deem deficient may rightly incur our loss of consideration (and not complain about it). But our loss of consideration cannot be justifiably turned into prohibition or prosecution, where no damage or definite risk of damage exists. A deep aversion to others is not, for Mill, a reliable guide for invoking the law against them or destroying their reputation and socially ostracizing them. Reading Mill is good therapy for anyone irked by the contemporary American inclination to moralize.

So what does all this have to do with the smoking ban at MSU?

A lot hinges here on the empirical evidence regarding whether exposure to second-hand smoke outside in the open air poses a health hazard. It may. Some studies suggest that exposure in outside spaces is not insignificant. These would be very localized spaces, but conceivably the five foot area immediately outside the door to a building would qualify, and since the 25 foot no-smoking zone around buildings at MSU is not respected by many smokers, the question of harm is relevant. If smokers routinely observed this smoke-free zone, the question of harm would not carry much water.

But if harm to others is the primary concern, then why does the pending ban also include smokeless tobacco? This seems to me to be classic self-regarding behavior. Perhaps the concern is that when people who chew tobacco spit on the sidewalk it is really gross. But so is spitting generally. Why not ban spitting? Or if the concern is more broadly to “promote health,” then why not remove soda machines from campus buildings, and only serve fried food at the Student Union one day a week? Why not make physical education part of the Core requirements? I wont even raise the obvious and intractable question of enforcing this ban, but it is certainly an issue.

Our discussion last night dug into all these matters and more. There was no consensus, I’ll say that. But we did arrive at an interesting question: How might this issue be dealt with creatively, in a way that didn’t invoke the force of law against a minority of people who are only potentially doing something that is other-regarding and harmful? How might “politics” – or the face-to-face confrontation about how we live together – come into play? What if smokers who respect the 25 foot no-smoking zone around buildings chastised those who fail to? What if non-smokers who were put out by the smell of cigarettes they encounter upon leaving the library, for example, said “I would really appreciate it if you all would move away from the door”?

There are lots of non-legalistic options open to us, but they require courage, responsibility, and on-going, and personal, negotiations about values, virtues and vices, and that is hard work. But if college is going to train students for life beyond the bounds of campus, this seems like as useful and important a lesson as any.

So stay tuned for the recap from our next meeting, where the topic will be “revitalizing the political.” When I say “engage,” I don’t mean lock and load. I mean On Liberty.

Jobs vs. the Environment: Again?

An effort to change the language in the Montana Constitution that guarantees a “clean and healthful environment” failed in the state senate this week by a vote of 26 for and 89 against. The change is promoted by supporters because the wording gets in the way of energy and other development in the state – it is either jobs or the environment. But is it?

A recent paper in the Journal of Economic Geography - The Rural Growth Trifecta: Outdoor Amenities, Creative Class and Entrepreneurial Context by some economists at the Economic Research Service and the University of Tennessee suggests otherwise. They wanted to look at the economic performance of counties that attract members of the “creative class” – Richard Florida’s label for those well-educated entrepreneurial types that engage in business startups and who possess high levels of social capital. The creative class includes professionals who work in high-tech sectors, financial services, the legal and health care professions, and business management; technicians working in materials engineering, medicine and research. They may be people who apply their problem solving skills to management or business processes. Creativity is a valuable commodity. The almost 40 million people that make up this cohort make twice the salary of the so-called “working class” or “service-class” worker.

Creative class workers are relatively footloose in their choice of where they live and work. They are drawn to places that offer interesting lives as well as interesting work. For many, not all, rural areas have a lifestyle appeal. If your income is generated by ideas, you can live almost anywhere you choose. With good access to the Web and the occasional airplane trip to do business, many rural locations are great places to raise a family and enjoy a healthy lifestyle in a desirable climate.

Here is what the authors found. Recruitment of creative class members was not in itself sufficient to explain economic well-being as measured by business startups and job growth. Rather, it was those counties with a high level of local outdoor amenities that demonstrated the highest levels of economic success. The counties that performed best were those with high numbers of members of the creative class, a very entrepreneurial context (i.e. friendly to small business) and high levels of outdoor amenities. Conversely, those counties that did not do well engaged in “smokestack chasing”. These low amenity counties rely on outside employers and access to low-cost labor and natural resource endowments.

The lesson for Montana is that preservation of our quality of life – a clean and healthy environment, diverse recreation opportunities, and intact scenic beauty, are good for our economy. I published a paper that demonstrated this fact almost 20 years ago, others have been reinforcing the point ever since. The tradeoff is not jobs or a clean environment. The lesson is that our constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment” is good for Montanans and good for our economy.

There are things the legislature can and should do to ensure our environmental values leverage a healthy economy. I will address those in a future post.

Tester-Rehberg a Dead Heat: A follow-up

Politico has a story this morning about Senator Tester's vote on healthcare reform. The NRSC has put out a press release to "remind" Montanans that Tester was the "60th vote" and "deciding vote". You can read Politico's story here and the NRSC press release here.

According to Politico, Tester's staff responded with video showing that Tester was the 52nd--not the 60th--vote for the healthcare plan. The NRSC responds that with 60 votes needed for passage, every vote was critical.

This, of course, relates back to what I had posted earlier in the week. Note that the NRSC story calls the healthcare plan the "Obama-Tester" Overhaul. Obama is unpopular in Montana, and so is (depending on how you spin it) his healthcare plan. You'll see Tester constantly tagged to Obama by the Republican Party because the Obama brand isn't so hot at the moment. Senator Tester, meantime, needs to decide if he should pivot away from the healthcare reform or educate Montanans as to why his vote was necessary and good from the state. It would seem that Tester has decided to defend his vote and point out all the benefits the plan brings to the state.

Is this a good strategy? Again, it depends upon which framing of the issue sells among voters. Tester blasts Congressman Rehberg for defunding healthcare reform when he has a nice healthcare plan provided by government. This populist story line has the potential to work: it makes Congressman Rehberg look heartless. Rehberg, of course, will focus on the negatives of the plan: it costs too much, takes away too much control from patients/doctors, and places an undue burden on small businesses. This also can work. The key, I think, is which story will work with independent voters.