Military Leadership and Decision Making

Military Leadership and decision makingIf there were no gap between “Theory” and “Practice” or between “Perception” and reality life would have been a bed of roses! Soldiers would not have read Clausewitz, Economists would not have read Keynes, Revolutionaries would not have read Marx Plekhanov or Mao! There would have been no great men since no one would have required any direction! Organisations would have been run on one-man one vote since no one would have been required to make decisions or assessments!Alas this was not so! This is what made a great philosopher say, “All thinking is indeed Art. Where the logician draws, where the premises stop which are the result of cognition —where judgement begins, there Art begins”! Politics and warfare are two spheres where intangibles override the tangible! In short Politics and Warfare require superior intellects in order to operate successfully since both cannot be mastered by mathematical formulae or theorems!Decision making in war, politics or business is no mean task as it is mistakenly assumed to be. Clausewitz was not wrong when he said “Bonaparte was right when he said that many of the questions which come before a General for a decision would make problems for a mathematical calculation not unworthy of the powers of Newton or Euler.In this brief article we will discuss the “Perception and Reality Gap” and those who bridged it! As a matter of fact the real test of greatness of a man lies in bridging the perception and reality gap! Every individual does so in life, however the great men who have made history bridge larger gaps while the vast multitude live their life by bridging relative much smaller gaps!“Some Examples of “Misperception” and of “How perceptions changed”It is hard to believe that of all people a man called Gandhi urged resident Indians to “think imperially and was instrumental in organizing a field ambulance training corps in London”!1 It is another thing that Gandhi soon had second thoughts and resigned from the ambulance training corps.Von Bernhardi a great German thinker, at least so it was thought before the First World War as early as 1911 wrote “Germany and the Pan Islamists and the revolutionaries of Bengal would shake the entire British position”!2 The Pan Islamists and the Bengalis gave the British a lot of problem in WW One but the British position was saved by a feigned composure of nonchalance and by divide and rule despite the fact that one point in time there were only 15,000 British troops in India!Mr Jinnah dismissed the “Pakistan Scheme” as a mad student’s scheme but later he fought for the Pakistan idea and became the first Governor General of Pakistan. In 1937 Mr Jinnah stated that the Punjab was a hopeless place and that he would never visit it again!3 Mr Jinnah visited Punjab many times after this statement and the famous Pakistan Resolution was moved in Punjab in 1940.A general dismissed the draft plan of another officer stating “The originator belonged to an insane asylum”!4 The originator in this case was one who was later known as one of the greatest military commanders of history i.e. Napoleon Bonaparte!