21st-Century Challenges of Command: A View From The Field - Softcover

Simons, Anna

9781387583447: 21st-Century Challenges of Command: A View From The Field

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1387583441 ISBN 13: 9781387583447

Publisher: Lulu.com, 2018

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For all of the attention that is accorded leadership, very little has been written about the day-to-day challenges of command. Dr. Simons’ Letort Paper aims to redress this gap. She examines 21st-century challenges of command through the lens of Special Operations Force (SOF) experiences in Afghanistan (and to a lesser extent Iraq), primarily at the O-4 through O-6 level. Her purpose is twofold: to describe the kinds of choices commanders face under the dual pressures of too little time and too much (incomplete) information, and to draw attention to the debilitating effects of what she dubs “objectiveless warfare.” The lack of clear, tangible objectives is but one among a number of factors that, she contends, prevent commanders at all levels from being able to affect lasting changes. However, rather than use this to tee up the usual argument about the need for a coherent strategy, she concentrates instead on hierarchy, and argues that without a singular hierarchy, coherent strategy will prove insufficient.

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About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANNA SIMONS is a Professor of Defense Analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), joining the faculty in 1998. Prior to teaching at NPS, Dr. Simons was an assistant and then associate professor of anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, as well as chair of the Masters in African Area Studies Program. At NPS, she teaches courses in the anthropology of conflict, military advising, low intensity conflict in Africa, and political anthropology. Dr. Simons is the author of Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone and The Company They Keep: Life Inside the U.S. Army Special Forces. She is co-author of The Sovereignty Solution: A Commonsense Approach to Global Security. She has written extensively about intervention, conflict, and the military from an anthropological perspective for a wide range of publications, such as The American Interest, The National Interest, Orbis, Third World Quarterly, and Parameters. Dr. Simons holds an A.B. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University.

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