The Foreign Service Journal, January 2012

J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 5 A recent article titled “Masks of War,” by Frank Hoff- man, a former Marine who is now a senior fellow at the Insti- tute for National Strategic Studies at the National De- fense University and director of the NDU Press, strikes me as relevant to the Foreign Service. Hoffman uses as his point of depar- ture The Masks of War: American Mil- itary Styles in Strategy and Analysis by the late Carl Builder, an acclaimed de- fense intellectual who analyzed the or- ganizational structure of the institutions that make up America’s armed services. Builder excluded the Marine Corps from the study because, in his view, it lacked a significant voice in strategy or force planning. Hoffman notes that in the two decades since Builder’s book was pub- lished, theMarines have achieved a sig- nificant voice in national security affairs. Despite their small size and modest budget (7 percent of the Pen- tagon budget), they “bat well above their weight” and “deliver combat ca- pability well out of proportion to their cost.” He goes on to rectify the omis- sion of the Marine Corps from Builder’s analysis of the “distinctive per- sonality or institutional DNA of each of our armed services” and to tie its posi- tion as the world’s premier crisis re- sponse force to today’s principal secur- ity challenges. The five elements of Build- er’s analytical framework for understanding the organiza- tional cultures of the branches of our armed services are: the altars for worship (guiding principles of each service); self-measurement (how each measures itself and its institutional health); toys vs. the human dimension (technology and science vs. art); in- traservice distinctions (among branches of each service); and degree of insecu- rity about legitimacy and relevancy (“paranoia”). Hoffman applies this framework to theMarine Corps, but AFSAmembers might find it illuminating and useful to use it to explore the personality or in- stitutional DNA of our own institution. After all, the Foreign Service is also a small but cost-effective institution made up of several “branches” (State, USAID, FCS, FAS, and IBB) more or less permanently deployed around the world. Applying these categories to the Marines, Hoffman says “the altars are teamwork, the subordination of the in- dividual to the common good of the unit, shunning of first-person pro- nouns, combat readiness — physically, mentally and morally.” “Once a Ma- rine, always aMarine” is a form of pride in the service and recognition of the ar- duous process of becoming a member of the Corps. Another altar, he says, is “an expeditionary ethos” and prepared- ness for immediate employment in every “clime and place.” He suggests that the Marines meas- ure themselves by “results in the field, not inputs like funding levels or force size.” Of all the services, he says, Marines most emphasize the human di- mension and art of war over science (e.g., technology). The Marine Corps invests the largest portion of its budget in personnel and invests more per capita on selection, initial training and development than any other branch. It makes less distinction between its inter- nal branches than the others and con- siders every member part of the team. He finds the Marines to be the mil- itary branch most concerned with de- fending their legitimacy because they do not “own” a distinctive domain of the operating battlespace. But they need not worry, Hoffman concludes, because their “expeditionary ethos and devotion to readiness are highly rele- vant for today’s uncertain age and re- source-constrained situation.” Inspired by Hoffman’s article, I would like to hear from anyone inter- ested in studying and describing the or- ganizational culture or institutional personality of the Foreign Service, for the purpose of strengthening its voice in national security affairs and helping us better explain who we are and what we do. Please contact me at John son@afsa.org. P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS Marine Corps Culture and Institutional Success: Lessons for the FS? B Y S USAN R. J OHNSON