“The right men or women, no matter how few, will
find the right hinge in a given situation to change
history.” Journalist Robert Kaplan penned those words in
the Atlantic Monthly soon after 9/11, calling on the
American military to focus on developing a particular kind of
officer—one who could thrive not just on clear orders and
simple directives but on the ambiguities and complexities of
foreign cultures and far-flung command posts. Kaplan's lesson
seems all the more clear after two years in Iraq: Uncle Sam
desperately needs individuals who can think on their feet, be
both forceful and diplomatic as necessary, and respond to the
local environment—be it the Sunni Triangle, southern
Kabul, or southwest Colombia—with some measure of real
autonomy. And today, a year after soldiers “following
orders” in a Baghdad prison managed to dramatically lower
America's reputation in the Arab world, the need for officers
who can handle themselves amid the contradictions of a complex
global society is more urgent than ever.
Enter Colonel George B. Forsythe, West Point Military
Academy's Vice Dean of Education. As the nation's oldest
military college, West Point has long groomed the future
leaders—generals, diplomats, and even presidents—of
the United States. (“Much of the history we teach is made
by the people we taught” is a favorite expression at the
school.) And Forsythe is the primary officer in charge of making
sure that the thousands of dollars that go into developing each
one of those leaders is money well spent. He knows that the
character of the soldiers who filter out of the school after
four rigorous years will go a long way toward determining the
fundamental character of this nation's army. And he has some
novel insights into why some soldiers do the right thing in
tough situations and why others, as in Abu Ghraib, do such
terrible wrongs.
“The tendency is always to say, 'Well, they are bad
people,' or 'They have no character,'” he explains.
“But it may simply be that developmentally, these soldiers
found themselves in a situation in which they were in over their
heads.” That may not sound like the kind of tough,
no-excuses talk we're used to hearing from army brass, but then
again, Forsythe is not your usual officer. Working within a
culture that prizes regimen and conformity, he's thinking
outside the box. He has introduced into this venerable
institution a cutting-edge theory of human evolution: the
psychological development theory of Harvard professor Robert
Kegan, author of The Evolving Self. Inspired by such
psychological luminaries as Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg,
Carol Gilligan, and others, Kegan has been working for years on
what still amounts to a controversial proposition in the halls
of academia, much less the military: that human beings go
through established hierarchical stages of psychological
development; that each stage transcends and includes the lower
ones; that this evolution continues throughout human life; and
perhaps most radical of all, that as a culture, we are still
evolving into higher and higher stages of development.
So, what do stages of development have to do with soldiers
fighting the good fight in the sands of Iraq? The answer to
that, Forsythe explains cryptically, lies in two sets of
numbers: two-three and three-four. These are numerical
references to the stages in Kegan's model and to the transitions
between them. For example, did you ever know someone who went
off to join the army and came back a more respectable, more
honorable, and more socialized young man or woman? Likely, what
you were seeing was the result of a stage transition, from stage
two to stage three. What that means is that your friend left
behind the impulses of a more adolescent phase and began to
identify with and internalize the values of their chosen tribe,
society, or culture, subordinating their own desires and needs
to the values and ideals of a larger group. This is often what
we mean when we say that an individual has “grown
up.”
“Our data suggests,” says Forsythe, “that
the story of four years at West Point is the story of the
two-to-three transition. [It's about] subordinating your needs
to the larger good, becoming a team player.”
While those are admirable goals, the nation today may simply
need more than that from those who walk out of West Point's
hallowed halls ready to fight the war on terror.
“Professional officers who find themselves in ambiguous
situations where the guidance and the external answers are not
clear,” explains Forsythe, “need to be able to
adjudicate those conflicts with an internalized set of values
and standards that helps them to regulate themselves.”
Simply put, they need to be able to think for themselves and
come to their own independent conclusions, to follow orders
perhaps, but for the right reasons. And that's where the
transition from stage three to stage four becomes very
attractive, because stage four in Kegan's model is all about
personal autonomy. It is in this transition, developmental
experts tell us, that individuals begin to acquire their own
deeply rooted values, values that give them the moral and
psychological footing to dynamically interpret and respond to
the world around them. Stage four is the land not of the rebel
or loner but of the true individual, and Kegan has found that
most adults are in fact struggling to negotiate the transition
from stage three to stage four.
To respond to this developmental need, Forsythe and his
colleagues at West Point have created the Cadet Leadership
Development Program. Its goals are simple and practical, even as
they are revolutionary. He is trying to encourage this esteemed
institution, built on camaraderie, collectivity, and teamwork,
to cross that great Rubicon of personal autonomy: to make the
delicate transition beyond the values of the group, the team,
the nation, and the tribe into the difficult and dangerous
psychological territory of what Kegan calls stage four, or the
“self-authoring mind.”
“The argument is that a stage-four perspective is more
adaptive to the kinds of operational circumstances we're finding
ourselves in—different cultures and multiple ways of
thinking about military expertise and what the role of the
military is,” Forsythe says. “So the development of
a stage-four perspective is increasingly critical.” But
how do you change a culture as deeply rooted as the nation's
military, where subordinating personal values to the larger
cause is almost a religion? And how do you encourage such a
change without undermining the very important and effective work
done at West Point to inculcate self-sacrifice and crucial
team-oriented values in young officers? Forsythe doesn't have
all the answers yet, but after twenty years of research, he is
more confident than ever that he is on the right track. And he
has the ear of high-ranking people in our military, who are
trusting him to do the right thing by our would-be officers so
that when the time comes, they will, in turn, be prepared to do
the right thing by all of us.
So the next time you shake your head at some senseless,
unfortunate act by a soldier halfway around the world who has
fallen prey to his own worst impulses amid the moral chaos of a
confusing and complex global society, take heart. Somewhere in
our nation's vast military complex, a few good men are pushing
soldiers further up the evolutionary ladder of human
consciousness—trying, in their own small way, to change
the world one officer at a time.
–Carter Phipps