Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 82 (3rd Quarter, July 2016) (Download the PDF)

Articles Include:

Switching the Paradigm from Reactive to Proactive: Stopping Toxic Leadership
By Mike Rybacki and Chaveso Cook

Ask any member of the U.S. Armed Forces if they have witnessed firsthand the effects of a toxic leadership environment, and they will almost certainly say “yes.” They will usually further elaborate on the damning effects of the toxic environment by providing examples of everything from combat ineffectiveness to low rates of retention and morale. Given this depth of information, we must ask, “Why is there not a proactive approach to preventing these leaders from advancing in leadership roles?” The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the current thoughts on toxic leadership and provide an actionable approach for countering and preventing the development of toxic leader environments.

#SocialMediaMatters: Lessons Learned from Exercise Trident Juncture
By Gregory M. Tomlin

With the ubiquity of inexpensive smart phones and Internet access, increasing numbers of people around the globe—especially youth—glean as much of their news as their entertainment from social media platforms. For information operations (IO) professionals long accustomed to incorporating messages into host-nation newspapers and radio broadcasts, it is now imperative that they consider online methods to reach the widest audience targeted by their contemporary information campaign. Recognizing this paradigm shift, headquarters from the brigade to combatant command levels must understand how to establish credibility and gain popularity through social media if they are to effectively shape the information environment during modern military operations.

China's Goldwater-Nichols? Assessing PLA Organizational Reforms
By Phillip C. Saunders and Joel Wuthnow

In the past few months, China has announced a series of major reforms to the organizational structure of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA): the Central Military Commission (CMC) has been revamped, the four general departments dissolved, new service headquarters created, and five new theater commands established in place of the seven military regions (MRs). These changes are part of a sweeping transformation of PLA institutions, force structure, and policy that will be ongoing through 2020. In pursuing these reforms, China’s leaders hope both to tighten central political control over a force that was seen as increasingly corrupt and to build the PLA into a credible joint warfighting entity. Yet important obstacles remain, and it may be years before the implications of these reforms come into full view.

What It Means to Be Expeditionary: A Look at the French Army in Africa
By Michael Shurkin

Former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno elaborated a vision for the Service’s future that left many questions unanswered. Specifically, he called for the Army to be more expeditionary as well as more scalable, tailorable, and regionally aligned. General Odierno’s successor and the current Army Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, similarly has spoken of the need for the Army to be “agile,” “adaptive,” and “expeditionary,” and to have an “expeditionary mindset.” Lieutenant General Gustave Perna, writing in the March–April 2016 issue of Army Sustainment, has also evoked the imperative of having an “expeditionary Army.” What, however, do these terms mean? What would it take for the Army to realize the generals’ vision, and what, if any, are the associated risks?

Abandon Ship: Interagency Decisionmaking during the Mayaguez Incident
By Richard B. Hughes

In the spring of 1975, Cambodia’s communist Khmer Rouge government seized a U.S. merchant ship, the SS Mayaguez, leading the United States to mount a joint operation to rescue the ship and its crew. The focus of this effort became an assault on Koh Tang, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand approximately 30 miles from the Cambodian mainland. Despite the notable evolutions in joint and interagency doctrine in the more than 40 years since this incident, it remains strikingly relevant because of the nature of the challenges it presented to interagency decisionmakers: a short timeline, limited intelligence, forces not tailored to the mission, an unpredictable opponent, and fevered public interest. At the time, the “Mayaguez Incident” was generally viewed as a success. A more sober review, however, shows that the military operation nearly ended in disaster. A close examination of interagency decisionmaking reveals a series of pitfalls, including intelligence failures, poor interagency communication, and incomplete assessment of risk. These factors led the National Security Council (NSC) to make decisions that had little chance of furthering President Gerald Ford’s foreign policy objectives and that placed U.S. forces at grave risk. Military and civilian leaders would do well to review the lessons of this crisis, lest they make the same mistakes in the future.

How Smartphones are Shaping Kashmir's Insurgency by Justin Rowlatt, BBC

It is all too easy to dismiss the upsurge in violence in Indian-administered Kashmir this weekend as just another cycle in a conflict that has ebbed and flowed ever since the country's independence in 1947.

But that would be to ignore a new factor that is transforming the nature of protest in the region.

There's a clue to what is happening in the government's response to the threat of disorder.

They [Smartphones] are the fastest selling gadgets in history, outstripping the popularity of even the mobile phones that proceeded them. And nowhere is the revolution more pronounced than in India…

Here you can pick up a basic but perfectly functional smartphone for as little as $30 (£22).

Even these humble devices pack in more number-crunching muscle than NASA had when it put men on the moon…

What's changed in Kashmir is how many people are now able to receive the messages.

Until the rise of smartphones, accessing these kind of messages meant a trip to the local Internet café - something only a tiny minority ever did.

Now they flash up on your Facebook feed as you are doing the dishes or feeding the goats.

And, with data prices plummeting - in 2005 a megabyte of data would cost you $10, now it is just a couple of cents - everyone can afford to listen in.

No surprise then that the ready audience Wani found in the now-connected valleys of Kashmir has become a key factor in the evolution of the unrest here.

It isn't good news for India…

Read on.