Douglas Macgregor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.(March 2008) Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

Douglas A. Macgregor
Place of birth	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Allegiance	United States of America
Years of service	1976–2004
Rank	Colonel (ret)
Commands held	1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry
Battles/wars	Battle of 73 Easting, Operation Desert Storm of 1991
Awards	Defense Superior Service Medal Bronze Star ("V" Device for Valor in Combat) Meritorious Service Medal (4) Army Commendation Medal Army Achievement Medal National Defense Service Medal (2) Southwest Asia Service Medal (2 Bronze Stars) Kuwait Liberation Medal Kosovo Campaign Medal Humanitarian Service Medal French Meritorious Service Medal, Bronze Parachutist Badge, Ranger Tab

Colonel Douglas A. Macgregor PhD. is a retired American senior military officer and author. He is widely recognized as one of the most influential military thinkers of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.^[1] Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich characterized Macgregor as being, “To the information age joint military what Billy Mitchell was to airpower and what Liddell Hart, Fuller, DeGaulle and Guderian were to armored warfare.”^[2]

Macgregor’s seminal work, Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century (Praeger, 1997) was the first book by an Active Duty military author since Brigadier General William Mitchell, U.S. Army Air Corps, to challenge the status quo and set forth detailed proposals for the radical reform and reorganization of U.S. Army ground forces. His follow-on work, Transformation under Fire: Revolutionizing How America Fights (Praeger, 2003) expands on the concepts and ideas for reform and includes a foreword by a former British four-star general, Sir Rupert Smith.

Breaking the Phalanx with its foreword by Professor Donald Kagan, was quickly translated into Chinese and read by senior officers inside the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Negotiations are reportedly underway to translate Transformation under Fire into Chinese as well. Transformation under Fire was translated by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) into Hebrew. According to the IDF general who wrote the preface to the Israeli edition, had Macgregor’s concepts been implemented inside the IDF, the IDF’s recent intervention in southern Lebanon might have turned out differently.

Macgregor’s advocacy for fundamental reform naturally makes him a controversial figure. According to his critics, many of whom are generals now serving at the highest levels of the Armed Forces, Macgregor’s career in the Army was harmed by his bluntness – some call it arrogance – that fetches comparisons with the combustible George Patton.^[3] But men who served with Macgregor in combat like Dr. John Hillen, former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs in the Bush Administration, and Colonel H.R. McMaster, former commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and author of Dereliction of Duty, praise his combat leadership, his intellect and his ability to inspire soldiers to fight.

Macgregor is now the lead partner with Potomac League, LLC, an intellectual capital brokerage and consulting firm based in Reston, Virginia. He occasionally appears as a guest military affairs commentator on television and radio shows. He has two sons; Cameron, a 2007 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy now serving with the Pacific Fleet, and, Alick, a college student in Northern Virginia.

Macgregor’s newest book: Warrior’s Rage: The Battle of 73 Easting; How the Soldiers won the Battle and the Generals lost Iraq will appear in 2008. In it Macgregor explains how the failure to finish the battle with the Republican Guard in 1991 led to Iraq’s second major confrontation with the United States in 2003 resulting in two hollow military "victories" and the tragic blood-letting that continues today in Iraq.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Trouble with the Brass 4 Brief Summary of Macgregor’s thinking 5 Selected Published Works 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Early life

Macgregor was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the home of his maternal grandfather, Henry Abbott, a 1917 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and despite his Quaker origins, a World War I Army veteran. Like his Quaker ancestors, Macgregor was educated for twelve years in Philadelphia’s Society of Friends’ private school system, graduating from the William Penn Charter School in 1971. From 1969 to 1970, Macgregor also studied abroad at the Martino-Katharineum Gymnasium in Braunschweig, Germany. By all accounts, Macgregor’s command of German is exceptional and his knowledge of German, culture, history and military affairs is profound. In this period, he also became an accomplished musician, composing several short works for classical piano.

Unable to secure an appointment to the Military Academy after graduation, Macgregor spent one year at the Virginia Military Institute before finally reaching West Point. At West Point, Macgregor played intercollegiate squash and tennis, sang in the Protestant Chapel Choir, and founded the Cadet Pipes and Drums, activities he described as mental health breaks from the engineering curriculum he loathed. He graduated in 1976, 312 out of 835 in his class.

[edit] Career

Macgregor first came to attention during an early rotation to the National Training Center in March 1983. In one battle, Macgregor’s tank company single-handedly destroyed 123 vehicles of the Opposing Force Regiment (OPFOR) in less than forty minutes, an event that later elevated Macgregor to the position of Brigade Operations Officer (S-3), a position normally reserved for a major. In the summer of 1983, Macgregor began a five year tour that included two years of graduate schooling at the University of Virginia and three years of teaching in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. While teaching, Macgregor was awarded his PhD in international relations in 1987 and his doctoral dissertation was published as a book in 1989, The Soviet-East German Military Alliance, by Cambridge University Press in England.

On completion of the Fort Leavenworth command general staff college course, Macgregor was assigned to the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. In 1991, Macgregor was awarded the bronze star with “V” device for valor for his leadership of combat troops in the 2nd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment; the lead element of the VII Corps attack during Desert Storm. Macgregor won notoriety for his personal leadership of the cavalry troops from Cougar Squadron that destroyed most of a full-strength Republican Guard Brigade in less than 40 minutes on 26 February 1991.

This action later became known as the Battle of 73 Easting, the U.S. Army’s largest tank battle since World War II. Macgregor’s performance in the Iraqi desert reinforced his reputation for excellence in tactical leadership, this time under the enemy’s direct fire.^[4] According to McMaster, Hillen and others who served with him, Macgregor personally trained and led the 1,100 man battlegroup into action, commanding the unit from a tank with the lead element.^[5] After Desert Storm, Macgregor commanded the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry. Under his command, this unit decisively defeated the Opposing Force of the National Training Center in four major battles that became the focus of a 1994-1005 RAND study on high performance units. According to observers, the squadron’s performance was not equaled after November 1993, but Macgregor’s tactical concepts and his fervent belief in the importance of educating soldiers to initiate action without orders from above were not well received by the generals. They dismissed his squadron’s performance as anomalous.

From July 1994 to August 1995, Macgregor served in the War Plans Division of the Army Staff. The year of working on plans for America’s military intervention in Haiti and the run-up to intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina was critical to the development of his book, Breaking the Phalanx. Macgregor wrote the book in the spring of 1996 during his War College year as a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C..

After a short assignment as the Director of the Battle Command Battle Lab at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Macgregor was assigned in November 1997 to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) as the J5, Director of Strategic Planning for the Balkans. During this period he was responsible for the strategic planning that led to the Kosovo Air Campaign. In October 1998, Macgregor became the Director of the Joint Operations Center at SHAPE, a position from which he supervised the conduct and planning of strategic operations during the Kosovo Air Campaign with a staff of 240 officers and noncommissioned officers from 19 NATO nations.

In January 2000, Macgregor was reassigned to Washington, D.C., as the senior military fellow at the National Defense University. In the fall of 2001, after reading parts of Macgregor’s work, Breaking the Phalanx, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that General “Tommy” Franks and his planning staff meet with Colonel Macgregor on 16-17 January 2002 to discuss a concept for intervention in Iraq involving the use of an armored heavy force of roughly 50,000 troops in a no warning attack straight into Baghdad. The plan called for a surprise offensive over the Euphrates River with 30,000 armored combat troops and the eventual deployment of an additional 15,000-man infantry force to control Baghdad, once the city fell into U.S. hands. The plan also assumed that the Iraqi Army and administrative structures would be retained, assumptions that were subsequently over-turned. Though modified to include substantial air attacks on Baghdad, less armor and vast numbers of Army and Marine light infantry, Macgregor’s offensive concept was largely adopted.

After the fall of Baghdad, Macgregor was disappointed by the Bush Administration’s failure to reform and reorganize the ground force. In addition, he opposed the Administration’s policy of dismantling the Iraqi Army and state and the senior military leadership’s conduct of the occupation, an occupation Macgregor claimed was never necessary to achieve American security goals in the region. As a result, Macgregor requested to retire from the Army on 1 January 2004.

[edit] Trouble with the Brass

Macgregor’s challenge to the military status quo in the form of his book, Breaking the Phalanx, did not go unanswered. Though Army Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer initially supported Macgregor’s ideas for reform and reorganization in Breaking the Phalanx, his four-star contemporaries did not.^[6] Together with the most politically influential retired Army four stars the generals closed ranks, opposing any change in a force structure the generals claimed was validated by winning Desert Storm. To put it bluntly, from 1997 onward, Macgregor’s otherwise promising career was over. Fortunately, he was already on the colonels’ list, but his advocacy for change meant that further promotions were out of the question.

[edit] Brief Summary of Macgregor’s thinking

For Macgregor, military transformation begins with a new concept for warfare and results over time in new tactics, doctrine, and organizations for combat. This approach may be summed up in four points:^[7]

• A new operational concept. A joint operational concept requires the integration of service core tactical capabilities to achieve unity of purpose and action in the conduct of military operations.

• A new joint operational architecture to integrate service core tactical capabilities. Operational architecture determines command relationships; establishes connectivity between communications nodes; provides structures for information exchange requirements; and, ultimately, produces the systems architecture that determines technology and equipment needs for new military organizations.

• New thinking and organizations to execute the concept that dramatically increases fighting power. A new joint operational concept with a new joint operational architecture drives the services to organize core service capabilities into specialized modules of mission-focused combat power that can be integrated as needed into joint forces. This is the definition of plug and play.^[8]

• A new approach to modernization, education, training, and readiness. New concepts for employment and new organizations change the parameters of force modernization and materiel development. Adaptive readiness and training structures must exist to accommodate the need for military organizations to co-evolve routinely with concepts and emerging technologies.

If effectively executed, Macgregor insists this process will transform the ground force into a component of the larger integrated Joint force that includes sensors, remote targeting capabilities, stand-off weapon platforms, and surveillance systems. He also argues that there are no technological silver bullets and that successful strategy still depends on the effective organization and application of power.^[9]

In his books Breaking the Phalanx (1997) and Transformation under Fire (2003), Macgregor does not specifically outline a national military strategy, but his strategic thinking is not hard to discern. Macgregor argues that the United States should avoid a great power conflict that could fatally undermine American power and prosperity the way Britain’s superpower strength was destroyed in World War I, a war Macgregor contends Britain did not have to fight. Avoidance of great power war together with Macgregor’s strong advocacy for a powerful, standing professional army and strident opposition to the draft are definitely inspired by Britain’s successful global maritime strategy before 1914.

Macgregor argues these points in the key state strategy presented in Breaking the Phalanx by advocating the establishment of close cooperation with key states that ring the Eurasian periphery; states like Great Britain, South Africa, Turkey,Kuwait, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. In Macgregor’s view these states are as important to American economic stability as they are to America’s ability to project military force in crisis or conflict. The strategy, however, does not aim to establish new, large garrisons, but to maintain U.S. military access with the smallest military presence possible.^[10] In fact, Macgregor argues for the global reorganization of American ground forces through dramatic reductions in European and Northeast Asian garrisons and their reconsolidation into largely U.S.-based expeditionary forces designed for use on the periphery of Eurasia, Africa and Latin America.^[11]

On the operational level, Macgregor argues for the reorganization of Service-based headquarters into Joint Force Headquarters and the permanent assignment of these integrated Joint Force Headquarters to the regional unified commands. These headquarters are the foundation for Macgregor’s theaters of Joint Strategic Action, an inspired application of the Soviet or Russian concept of the TVD or theater of strategic action to global expeditionary warfare.^[12]

Macgregor’s Joint Force Headquarters are manned and equipped for what Macgregor calls, “all arms” warfare or joint integrated warfare. Macgregor’s idea is to effectively eliminate the U.S. Armed Forces’ single-service headquarters and supporting concepts of warfare that Macgregor argues are both antiquated and prohibitively expensive to maintain. In practice, the C-2 structures inside Macgregor’s theaters of Joint Strategic Action are designed to speed deployment of Service-provided modules of specialized combat power, “lego-like” elements that can be snapped together quickly under regional Joint C-2. The point is to speed deployment and commitment of tactical expeditionary forces under regional Joint command and control. Macgregor also wants to create a strategic reserve corps under a National Guard/Reserve three star who would be responsible for providing a similarly organized set of combat groups on rational readiness to the Active Component when needed.

In Transformation under Fire, Macgregor sets forth a new, revolutionary design for operational command and control (C-2) that is not merely Joint, it’s integrated to the point where service distinctions vanish completely on the operational level of war. Service-based distinctions vanish in favor of functionally-based C-2 organized around maneuver, strike, IISR and sustainment (logistics). These functions replace the traditional G-1 through G-5 and related J-1 through J-9 staff sections. Macgregor was among the first to advocate a fundamental departure from the age-old staff structure with its roots in the Napoleonic Wars to institutionalize primary staff positions for both Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations.

When it comes to the tactical level of war, Macgregor’s inspiration is decidedly German insofar as he wants to eliminate both brigades and divisions in favor of powerful, standing combat groups (Kampfgruppen) under the command of brigadier generals with robust staffs. The brigadier generals would command forces ranging in size from 5,000 to 7,000 depending on whether they are organized to do; maneuver, strike, IISR or sustainment. Each combat group is designed with the organic command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR), as well as logistics, firepower and mobility to operate independently and dispersed in a warfighting environment that includes weapons of mass destruction (WMD). His formations are cohesive combat groups capable of mobilizing combat power disproportionate to their actual size.

The various combat groups numbering roughly fifty or more inside the active component and they are placed on joint rotational readiness linking them to air and naval expeditionary forces within the same rotational readiness framework. Macgregor argues that this would create an expeditionary ground force of 50-60,000 Army and marine forces in a state of routine readiness to deploy and fight anywhere in the world on short notice.

An outspoken proponent for fast sealift, Macgregor thinks that too little has been done to design and build new ships to carry expeditionary forces wherever they are needed. In the 1990s, Macgregor was among the first advocates for the use of fuel efficient engines including hybrid-electric power and the expansion of theater missile defense capabilities to cope with both tactical ballistic and cruise missiles. In general, Macgregor favors tracked armored platforms for reasons of survivability, off-road performance, fire power and stability. He is a harsh critic of the road-bound nature of the Stryker truck and the Future Combat System’s (FCS) failure to embrace rapid prototyping and to use off-the-shelf technologies in the form of robotics and software.^[13]

It’s important to keep in mind that Macgregor’s works do not simply tinker on the margins of the old Army by eliminating standing division formations. They actually destroy the Cold War structure along with its policies and rebuild the force from the top down and the ground up. For instance, Macgregor’s C-2 structure would not simply eliminate the intervening echelons of C-2 that have shaped the conduct of land warfare since the end of World War II, they would also radically alter career paths inside the services, most specifically, the Army. And, therein, as Shakespeare would say, lies the rub.

Above, the one-star level of command, Macgregor’s C-2 is inherently Joint and this condition necessitates substantial reforms of officer education, training and career management. Macgregor is alone in his belief that flag officers from the air and naval services should be able to command Joint Force Headquarters that control ground forces.

Macgregor is also a strong critic of the officer evaluation report system and the cronyism that favors officers who’ve served three and four star generals as aides, military assistants, executive officers and speech writers, jobs Macgregor argues have no operational value. Instead, Macgregor describes a merit-based system that incorporates evidence from multiple sources for demonstrated competence in training, deployments and combat. Macgregor also describes a system that selects officers who’ve completed their tactical command and staff requirements for general staff and graduate schooling based on rigorous examinations given once a year. He dislikes the Army’s insistence on reviewing all of an officer’s evaluation reports whenever he or she is considered for promotion. Macgregor would simply shelve the files of captains who’ve qualified on the tactical level and start officers promoted to major with a clean slate.^[14]

In both books, Macgregor notes the time and conditions needed to establish a modern democratic society and state. He argues against occupying and directly governing other peoples’ countries with American military power in an effort to export democracy, a theme that eventually placed him in opposition to the Bush Administration’s policy of occupation in Iraq.^[15]

Macgregor’s views can be traced to his experience working for Lieutenant General Wesley K. Clark. Clark employed Macgregor on the ground in Sarajevo and as a member of his personal staff during the Proximity Talks in Dayton, Ohio in the fall of 1995. Three years later, Macgregor served under General Clark as the Director of Strategic Planning and, later, as the Director of the Joint Operations Center at Headquarters Supreme Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), posts that focused on operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. These experiences seemed to have soured Macgregor on nation-building with the use of force.

In an article entitled, “The Balkan Limits to Power and Principle,” published in Orbis Macgregor attacked the Wilsonian policies of the Clinton Administration in ways that foreshadow his opposition to the Bush Administration’s decision to occupy and govern Iraq with Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines.

American foreign policy in the past century has frequently been shaped not by the realities confronted by diplomats and soldiers, but by an idealistic longing to remake the world in the United States’ own image. The first American attempt to do so in the Versailles Treaty ended in tragic failure. The supposedly moral peace that concluded Woodrow Wilson’s “war to end war” actually perpetuated injustice and set the stage for World War II. At the start of the twenty-first century, the moral imperative in U.S. foreign policy again compels American allied troops to pursue idealistic goals in Bosnia and Kosovo long after the ideas that underpin those goals have become irrelevant and unattainable.^[16]

[edit] Selected Published Works

Book: Warrior’s Rage. The Battle of 73 Easting: How the soldiers won the battle and the generals lost Iraq, (to be published fall 2008).
Article: “Washington’s War,” Armed Forces Journal, (October 2007).
Article: “Fire the Generals!” Defense and the National Interest, (March 2006).
Article: XVIII Airborne Corps, Spearhead of Military Transformation, published in Defense Horizon, Center for Technology and Security Policy, National Defense University (2004).
Book: Transformation Under Fire: Revolutionizing How America Fights, Praeger Publishing, Inc. (2003)
Article: Transformation in the Post-Industrial Age, published in Defense Horizon, Center for Technology and Security Policy, National Defense University (2001).
Article: Balkan Limits to Power and Principle, published in Orbis, Vol 45, No. 1 (2001).
Article: Transformation and the Illusion of Change, published in National Security Studies Quarterly, Vol. VI, Issue 4 (2000).
Article: Joint Operational Architecture: The Key to Transformation, published in Strategic Review, (2000).
Article: Transforming Operational Architecture for the Information Age, published by The Jaffee Center, Tel Aviv University, (2001).
Article: Command and Control for Joint Strategic Action, published in Joint Force Quarterly (1999).
Article: Initiative in Battle Past and Future, published in Marine Corps Gazette (1997)
Book: Breaking The Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century, Praeger Publishing (1997).
Article: Setting the Terms of Future Battle for Force XXI, published in Land Warfare Paper, No. 20 (1995).
Article: Future Battle: The Merging Levels of War, published in Parameters, Vol. XXII, No. 4 (1992)
Article: US and Soviet Military Disengagement From Germany, published in Comparative Strategy, Vol. 8. (1989)
Book: The Soviet-East German Military Alliance, Cambridge University Press (1989).
Article: The Reliability of Non-Soviet Forces in the Warsaw Pact, Journal of Soviet Studies, University of Glasgow, 1986.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Tom Ricks, A Test Case for Bush’s Military Reform Pledge, Washington Post, 15 November, 2001, page A-3.
2. ^ Comment by the Honorable Newt Gingrich on the book jacket of Transformation under Fire, (Westport Connecticut, Praeger, 2003)
3. ^ Richard Newman, “Renegades finish last,” U.S. News and World Report, 28 July 1997, page 35.
4. ^ Jon Grossman, “The Transformation Generation,” Armed Forces Journal International, October 2001, page 62.
5. ^ For a short synopsis of McMaster’s comments on Macgregor’s role see Tom Clancy’s Armored Cav, published in 1994.
6. ^ Sean Naylor, “A lieutenant Colonel with a view,” Army Times, 9 June 1997.
7. ^ Douglas Macgregor, Transformation under Fire, page 95.
8. ^ Examples of this approach are marine expeditionary units and carrier battlegroups.
9. ^ Douglas Macgregor, Breaking the Phalanx, (Westport, Connecticut, Praeger, 1997), page 141.
10. ^ Douglas Macgregor, Breaking the Phalanx, pages 24-25.
11. ^ Douglas Macgregor, Transformation under Fire, pages 171-178.
12. ^ Douglas Macgregor, Transformation under Fire, pages 109-111.
13. ^ Douglas Macgregor, Transformation under Fire, pages 22-23.
14. ^ Douglas Macgregor, Transformation under Fire, pages 209-215.
15. ^ Douglas Macgregor, Breaking the Phalanx, pages 23 and Transformation under Fire, page 57.
16. ^ Douglas Macgregor, “Balkan Limits to Power and Principle,” published in Orbis, Vol 45, No. 1 (2001)."

[edit] External links

• Douglas Macgregor's Webpage