Design and the Prospects of a Design Ethic
Design and the Prospects of a Design Ethic
by Christopher R. Paparone
Download The Full Article: Design and the Prospects of a Design Ethic
Neil Sheehan, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, tells a remarkable side story of Edward G. Lansdale. Lansdale's quest illustrates the paradoxes of studying history. Lansdale, equipped with a positivist philosophy that still dominates thinking today in military circles, sought to apply strategies and lessons he learned while helping Philippines President Ramón Magsaysay fight an insurgency in 1952 and 1953 and apply them to Ngo Dinh Diem's regime in Vietnam in 1955 into the early 1960s. Lansdale, an US Army major general and later a senior CIA official, exemplifies the problem of iatrogenesis– intervening with good intentions when presumably applying professional learnedness while unintentionally causing more harm than good. Sheehan concludes:
Lansdale was a victim in Vietnam of his success in the Philippines. Men who succeed at an enterprise of great moment often tie a snare for themselves by assuming that they have discovered some universal truth. Lansdale assumed, as much as his superiors did, that his experience in the Philippines applied in Vietnam. It did not.
In retrospect, Sheehan speculates that Lansdale,, who apparently had a positivist view of knowledge about countering insurgencies, that may have, iatrogenically, contributed to starting a second war of independence in Vietnam that, by 1975, was a debacle for the United States.
The main character in Sheehan's history is John Paul Vann who represents a marked juxtaposition to positivistic thinking and acting. Vann arguably was immersed in the situation and realized that the doctrine of the day (how to deal with insurgencies in foreign nations) was not working with the uniqueness of the South Vietnam situation. Rather than towing the institutional line, Vann-the- whistleblower chose to eventually give up his career in the US Army to become a USAID senior official. His effectiveness in influencing the war was cut short when he was killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam in 1972.
The interrelated histories of Lansdale and Vann are important, not as a source of lessons learned, but more toward the appreciation for the exposed fallacies that military professional knowledge is progressively improved and that military doctrine will be appropriate in wicked situations. This poignant, illustrative statement is oft attributed to Vann: "We don't have twelve years' experience in Vietnam. We have one year's experience twelve times over."
The story of John Paul Vann (as with other so-called "whistleblowers" in US military history) is largely about bucking the institutional ethics — how institutions frame situations. In retrospect, the military institution was not receptive to Vann's discontented ideas about wartime strategy. It was later in the role of a more senior civilian government official that his creatively deviant framings were brought into action, culminating in the 1972 battle of Kontum that was arguably a win for the Republic of Vietnam (Vann died thinking the war was won).
Interestingly, if one examines how the issue of ethical reasoning is approached in the US military institution, the focus of attention seems to be more on the individual rather than the reflexivity of the institution as the frame of reference. The Vann story exposes that the institutional propensity is to orient on ethics of progressivism, compliance, and equality. Progressivism is revealed in the institutional portrayal of convergent and assimilative knowledge artifacts to include published doctrine and regulations and a vast array of organizations devoted to "lessons learned." The institutional ethic on compliance seems strongly favor that, under normal circumstances, an officer shall not question the decided stratagems of the hierarchy (perhaps the assumptive underpinnings are that the higher you go, the more you know and the more accountable you are). At the same time, there are institutional cross-pressures to accommodate equality — (at least apparently) treating those of the same position and rank equally; albeit, the talents and wisdom are diverse. We will address these sequentially.
Download The Full Article: Design and the Prospects of a Design Ethic
Christopher R. Paparone, Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired, is an associate professor in the Army Command and General Staff College's Department of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations at Fort Lee, Virginia. He holds a B.A. from the University of South Florida; master's degrees from the Florida Institute of Technology, the U.S. Naval War College, and the Army War College; and a Ph.D. in public administration from Pennsylvania State University. On active duty he served in various command and staff positions in the continental United States, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Bosnia.
Editor's Note: This essay is the last in Paparone's series on design.
