Military Agility: Ensuring Rapid and Effective Transition from Peace to War. Meir Finkel. Translated by Moshe Tlamim. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2020.
Meir Finkel’s Military Agility is concerned with the narrow time frame of an army’s transition from peacetime to wartime. More specifically, his work focuses on how armies can develop a mindset to move effectively from a peacetime perspective (or from engaging in a low-intensity conflict) to engaging in conventional, high-intensity war.[1] Finkel argues this process is affected by four factors: lack of adequate training with new weapons and equipment, the important transition in mentality from low-intensity conflict/regional security operations to a conventional conflict, the challenge of unresolved doctrinal debates when war is begun, and the mental transition from peace to war.[2] Military history attests to nations’ struggle to transition from a peacetime footing to a wartime posture, but Military Agility draws solely from Israel’s modern experiences. While Finkel explores an overlooked concept, focusing analysis through the lens of Israel’s experiences since 1948 imposes methodological limits upon the work. This review examines his argument and then assesses its effectiveness.
To Finkel, the key to understanding the move from peace to war must include an army’s “cognitive and mental flexibility” in that transition, which means this process is not simply a matter of material readiness, although it is not neglected.[3] This short work focuses on the four factors Finkel argues most affect the agility with which a military moves from a peacetime mindset to a war mentality. The first factor he explores is how a nation amasses resources for war once it understands it is coming. He uses the arms buildup before conflicts in 1956, 1967, and 1973 as examples. Before these conflicts, Israel upgraded existing weapons systems, but also relied on foreign weapons that required integration into the Israeli Defense Force. A reliance upon foreign suppliers caused supply problems with systems that were not entirely integrated when war began. Finkel concludes that assimilating new systems before or during a war presents challenges, and their effectiveness “is generally minimal.”[4] Further, introducing complex weapons systems, like new fighter aircraft, posed special problems, because the required training was not always possible before war began.[5] In contrast, upgrading existing systems often occurred more efficiently and effectively, thus creating fewer challenges.[6]
The second major challenge in the transition from peace to war discussed in the book is “routine security operations” that dull an army’s edge in service of peacetime political objectives. In Israel’s case, routine security operations include border defense, detentions, and reprisal raids in Israeli-controlled and occupied territories.[7] Finkel warns that an army’s emphasis on routine security operations leads to increased risk-aversion and a casualty-sensitive mindset, decreased mission-command mentality, micro-management by senior commanders, and less initiative by officers.[8] In short, routine security operations distract an army from focusing on or preparing for a conventional conflict and fostering the mindset necessary for high-intensity conventional conflicts. He describes Israel’s difficulties replacing a peacetime, routine security mindset with a wartime mentality before the 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon. That transition was worsened because the focus on routine security missions had decreased combined-arms training.[9] To Finkel, the solution to degraded readiness as a result of routine security operations is to focus intentionally on conventional wartime readiness even when conducting routine security operations and to create units specially designed for routine security operations missions so that the rest of the military does not become so distracted and degraded.[10]
Finkle writes about how the third major challenge to armies’ transition from peace to war is changes made just before, or as, a war begins. Here, he describes how debates on the defense of the Suez Canal—whether to employ a static defense of the region’s fortifications or use a mobile defense—were not resolved before the 1973 Yom Kippur War and caused confusion over whether those units should defend those locations or fall back to other positions. Israel’s decision to go to war against Lebanon in 2006 occurred amidst major doctrinal change not yet wholly incorporated into the army. This oversight caused strategic, command and control, and operational confusion. For most conceptual changes, Finkel suggests that a service should conduct all testing and data-gathering in order to present as complete a system as possible so that the service can change fully and rapidly. But, he writes, if the “changes are too deep to be assimilated quickly,” then the service should instead consider slower changes so as to be less disruptive.[11]
According to Finkel, the fourth major factor facing major militaries is the mental realization that the nation is no longer conducting a routine security operation but facing a full-scale war. Finkel uses the Yom Kippur War and Second Lebanon War to explore the process of identifying a changed reality in order to commit the nation’s military toward a new goal. He describes how various units understood in 1973 that they were not engaging in low-level border skirmishes but a war against Syria and Egypt. In describing the 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon, Finkel highlights how strategic leaders framed the invasion as a routine security operation and not a war. On the other hand, combat veterans in the 91st Division perceived the operation more clearly and worked to prepare their less-experienced comrades for war. He concludes that this mental process is crucial, because the realization of a state of war permits lower units to mobilize, plan, and act toward fighting a war and to abandon the mindset of a low-intensity routine security operation.[12]
Finally, Finkel applies his ideas to the U.S. to demonstrate how these same elements have occurred elsewhere. For example, he mentions the American infantry divisions learning about the bazooka anti-tank rocket in 1942 while on the way to landing in North Africa and the doctrinal disagreements within the U.S. Army during the War of 1812 as examples of technological and doctrinal change in wartime.[13] He highlights the peacetime debate in the 1970s over William Depuy’s Active Defense doctrine and notes that “if war had broken out in Europe at the end of the 1970s, the history books probably would have emphasized the role of the prewar doctrinal debate on the war’s outcome.”[14] In trying to connect his ideas to American history, he is not always successful, largely by not developing these ideas more fully. America struggled in the War of 1812 and early in its war against the German Wehrmacht for other reasons than those specified in this chapter.
While a solid work of analysis, there are some limitations to the study. This book assumes a dichotomy between either low-intensity, routine security operation-style, unconventional conflict or high-intensity conventional conflict. But other recent works—such as Rupert Smith’s The Utility of Force, Sean McFate’s The News Rules of War, and David Kilcullen’s The Dragons and Snakes—argue that low-intensity conflicts are not going away and will either replace conventional conflict or will operate alongside high-intensity, conventional conflict.[15] In this case, such a dichotomous view may not be a healthy way to understand how war begins, develops, and is conducted, especially as nations like Russia, Iran, and China advance their national interests in the ambiguous gray zone and challenge conventional Western norms. If war changes along these lines, militaries might need to maintain low-intensity, routine security operation capabilities.
This work also never accounts for uncertainty, specifically the uncertainty in decision-making. It is usually not certain when, or against whom, any nation will go to war. A nation may have to transition to war, but its house may not necessarily be in order. On the topic of uncertainty, Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates candidly observed America’s low accuracy when he told West Point cadets, “When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.”[16] To be fair, late in the book Finkel uses the (in)famous quote by the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that “you go to war with the Army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”[17] Finkel briefly notes that risk management should include assessment of geopolitical threats and that senior army leaders should be mindful of international politics so that they can speed up implementing technological or doctrinal changes.[18] In this sense, Finkel’s book on agility and his previous book on flexibility have a crucial overlap that he fails to explore.[19] Risk management in an uncertain world could be developed to a much greater extent rather than in a single paragraph in the book’s conclusion. Rumsfeld’s quote is an excellent reminder that armies need to be agile and flexible, but the Gates quote is a reminder that agility and flexibility occur within an uncertain world.
Decisions must be made, but they are all inherently risky endeavors. In his criticism of the U.S. Army’s debates on doctrine after the Vietnam War, he fails to consider that those occurred in peacetime. If there were a war, it could have been disastrous...but there was none. Was this debate unnecessary? Did the Army adapt Active Defense and AirLand Battle incorrectly, inefficiently, or ineffectively? Do these debates over doctrine and operating concepts relate to present-day debates on multi-domain battle or the adoption of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter? To be fair, Finkel does not completely ignore this uncertainty as he cautions that Russia’s gray zone warfare will complicate the identification that a state of war exists since these activities are meant to occur below the threshold of war.[20] Still, it is not inevitable that the United States will go to war with Russia.
Ultimately, the sole focus upon Israel limits Finkel’s analytical reach. Works such as his previous book on flexibility, Barry Posen’s The Sources of Military Doctrine, Stephen Peter Rosen’s Winning the Next War, Richard Hamilton and Holger Herwig’s Decisions for War, 1914-1917, and Williamson Murray’s Military Adaptation are more enduring in part because they examine different armies from different societies fighting different wars.[21] Finkel’s own On Flexibility includes case studies of World War II, Arab-Israeli Wars, and the Soviet-Afghan War. Posen examines the French, British, and German doctrines that developed during the 1920s and 1930s. Rosen examines a number of American and British innovations through the 1900s. Hamilton and Herwig describe the processes by which the nations of World War I decided to commit to war. Murray examines different armies’ adaptation in World War I, World War II, and the Yom Kippur War. These scholars examine a wider array of complexities across several nations’ armies and observe more general patterns that occur across space and time.
In contrast to those works, Military Agility does not separate what is uniquely Israeli from general patterns that also occur elsewhere. As such, Finkel overlooks how sociopolitical systems, whether a state is democratic or authoritarian, affects military agility. In making the mental transition from peace to war, do the experiences of Great Britain and France in 1939 (who had different degrees of force readiness) reveal similar patterns as Israel? Did the Soviet purges of 1937-1938 that executed the leading proponents of Soviet Deep Battle doctrine create a similar doctrinal confusion in the Red Army when Germany invaded it in 1941? Did the Japanese capture and occupation of Manchuria in 1931 limit its transition to war against China in 1937? Even when exploring the effects of routine security operations, he does not include other nations’ experiences. Given his examination of Israel’s routine security operations, did the U.S. Army’s nineteenth-century routine security operations overseeing American westward expansion, upholding treaties with Native American tribes, and suppressing Native American resistance likewise degrade readiness before the War of 1812, the Civil War, or the Spanish-American War?
As an exploration of how the Israeli Defense Forces have responded to the short space between peace and war, Meir Finkel’s Military Agility is a solid study, but it will take more time and effort to see if Israel’s experiences are specific to Israel and what can be applied more generally to the concept of military agility.
Jonathan Beall teaches history at the University of North Georgia’s Strategic and Security Studies Program.
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Header Image: An Israeli soldier tosses a grenade into a bunker during the 2006 Lebanon War (Wikimedia)
Notes:
[1] Meir Finkel, Military Agility: Ensuring Rapid and Effective Transition from Peace to War, trans. Moshe Tlamim (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020), 4.
[2] Finkel, Military Agility, 6.
[3] Finkel, Military Agility, 5.
[4] Finkel, Military Agility, 36.
[5] Finkel, Military Agility, 36.
[6] Finkel, Military Agility, 36.
[7] Finkel, Military Agility, 38, 94.
[8] Finkel, Military Agility, 38-39, 41-42, 55-56.
[9] Finkel, Military Agility, 55-56, 61.
[10] Finkel, Military Agility, 66.
[11] Finkel, Military Agility, 91-92.
[12] Finkel, Military Agility, 124-125.
[13] Finkel, Military Agility, 127, 130-131.
[14] Finkel, Military Agility, 133.
[15] Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 18-20, 27-28; Sean McFate, The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder (New York: William Morrow, 2019), 33-42, 59-82; David Kilcullen, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 254-255.
[16] “Text of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' Feb. 25, 2011, speech at West Point,” Stripes, transcript, November 27, 2011, https://www.stripes.com/news/text-of-secretary-of-defense-robert-gates-feb-25-2011-speech-at-west-point-1.136145
[17] Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/troops-question-secretary-of-defense-donald-rumsfeld-about-armor.
[18] Finkel, Military Agility, 149.
[19] Meir Finkel, On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield, trans. Moshe Tlamim (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).
[20] Finkel, Military Agility, 141-143.
[21] Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Richard Hamilton and Holger Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).