The Centurion Mindset and the Army’s Strategic Leader Paradigm

December 15, 2015 ·
Strategic Leadership  The Centurion Mindset and the Army’s Strategic Leader Paradigm
Jason W. Warren
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/issues/Autumn_2015/6_Warren.pdf
Abstract: Army culture does not currently value or incentivize education and broadening for senior leaders, as it did prior to 1950. Various structural factors, such as the creation of a mega-bureaucracy, co-equal service branches, and a fixation with tactics, have contributed to the decline in numbers of educated and broadened leaders in the molds of Generals Pershing, MacArthur, and Eisenhower. The Army’s strategic performance since the Korean War is symptomatic of this cultural decline. 

 
On October 12, 1972, General Creighton Abrams became Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA), a promotion that symbolized the further devaluation of broadly educated leaders in favor of tactically minded “centurions.” Centurions in the Roman legions, combining the command authority of a contemporary company commander with the experience of a sergeant major who directed tactics. Superior legates or generals orchestrated campaigns to achieve Rome’s strategic objectives.1 Abrams epitomized the tactically centered centurion paradigm, and it is no small irony the US main battle tank bears his name. In his mold, well-meaning but misguided Army leaders of the post-World War II era, have championed tactical career progression that stunted officer strategic broadening, and ensured the rise of centurions often incapable of performing as true “generalists.” The institution’s transition from valuing an officer career path that produced sufficiently developed leaders helped birth the so-called training revolution, which Abrams and like-minded leaders enshrined. These men sought to ensure “no more Task Force Smiths” would occur, referring to an untrained and underequipped Army task force that North Korean tanks rolled over in 1950.