The Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs [Hardcover]

Donald Vandergriff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2002

Army gadfly Donald Vandergriff argues that what is needed is a true revolution in military affairs. In this book, Vandergriff warms to the task as he takes on the army's personnel system with a clarion call for a revolution in human affairs.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Donald Vandergriff is an active duty army officer currently serving as deputy director of army ROTC at Georgetown University. He is the author of Spirit, Blood and Treasure.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Presidio Press (April 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891417664
• ISBN-13: 978-0891417668
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,515,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Crusade for Common Sense, July 16, 2002

By 

Ralph H. Peters (Washington, D.C. area) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs (Hardcover)

Donald Vandergriff is one of those rare men who live their beliefs. Now, he has written a fine, clear-thinking, heartfelt book detailing the deep flaws in the Army's (and our military's) personnel system. But the book is much broader than that. Although he does not use quite these terms, the text constitutes a demand for a sensible post-modern personnel system that rewards the core military virtues, in place of our current, long-outdated, poorly-performing industrial-age system, a legacy of both Henry Ford's assembly line mentality, in which all parts, even the human ones, are interchangeable, and a bizarre, inchoate conviction within the Army that, really, it's still 1944 and the draft will supply the needed talent to replace that which is squandered. Even now, in 2002, there is a bizarre belief among the Army's hierarchy that every officer (and soldier) is easily replaceable, if not perfectly interchangeable. Well, tell that to corporate America, or the scientific community, or to the arts community. America has achieved its paramount position because we recognize and reward the unique talents of the individual--but our military resists excellence whenever it can (what passes for excellence is a polished conformity to superficial forms). Our broken-down, morally-bankrupt personnel system may be well-suited for the ten-million-man military with which we ended WWII, but it is a travesty when it comes to developing the right Army for the 21st century. Critics may respond that the military is not about individual excellence, but about teamwork--but teamwork based upon excellence is far more impressive than group-think and timid acquiescence based upon lowest-common-denominator professional values. There is not inherent tension between building a team and rewarding talent honestly employed; on the contrary, men and women crave leaders who earn their respect through performance, rather than through currying favor (or simply being born a general's son, the surest path there is to a general's stars). At the very least, we should recognize that a post-modern military does have some different demands placed upon it--a greater requirement for individual initiative and battlefield autonomy--than did our earlier armies of massed infantry divisions. We still need courage and clarity, but the recognition and exploitation of the unique worth of the individual officer may be our greatest potential combat multiplier.
Of course, it is easy to be too pessimistic. We still have the finest Army--and military--in the world. Not all dissent is suppressed, fine ideas, such as Major Vandergriff's, still emerge, despite institutional resistance (more a matter of defensiveness and mental sloth than of maliciousness), and not every officer promoted is a shallow careerist (indeed, in some military specialties the trends are encouraging). In the end, it is not that we are doing so badly, but that we could do far better. For all our might and virtues, our personnel system remains less than the sum of its often remarkable parts. Major Vandergriff has laid out a worthy road map for building the Army of the future, instead of clinging to the Army of the past. We may not wish to drive down every lane he recommends, but he certainly has signposted the main highway with accuracy and clarity.
In my own military career, I slowly came to the realization that, if I could control the personnel system, I could change any organization, but that if I controlled everything but the personnel system, all meaningful change could still by stymied by the bureaucracy (and our military is, above all, a vast bureaucracy). Donald Vandergriff understands this profoundly. This is a worthy, even heroic book by an officer genuinely dedicated to selfless service. We Americans should be proud that such men remain committed to serving our country in uniform.
I strongly recommend this book to military men and women, but also to policy-makers and to the business community, for which it has especially relevant lessons in these days of Worldcom, Enron and Put-on.
This is the work of an officer with whom any soldier would be honored to serve.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for the 21st Century military professional, January 10, 2003

By 

David A. Appling "polkovnik" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs (Hardcover)

This work is a tour de force, perhaps best shown by Secretary of the Army Tom White's enthusiastic adoption of its ideas. Vandergriff ably identifies the Army's longest-lasting and most serious systemic problem -- human resources mismanagement as it affects training, deployment, cohesion, and effectiveness in battle. Based on extremely extensive research (meticulously documented), he ably describes the evolution of the problem and presents the promised "path to victory."

Despite the effectiveness and timeliness of this book, it does have a couple of significant (and related) weaknesses. First, despite the meticulous endnoting, it is difficult to sort out which ideas are Vandergriff's own and which derive from his multitude of sources. The sorting can be done, but, if done thoroughly, would require the reader actually to construct an "idea matrix" from the endnotes as he goes along.

Second, this is a work with 796 (!) endnotes -- but with no bibliography at all. All in all, Presidio Press has made the book quite difficult -- unnecessarily difficult -- to use as a reference. This does detract somewhat from its value as a synthesis of ideas and guide for follow-on work. Fortunately, these weaknesses detract very little from the overall message.

Highly recommended. (But if there's a second edition, could we please have a good solid bibliography?)

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the read, January 9, 2005

By 

AnAverageJoe (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs (Hardcover)

While I have a great many disagreements with the author over the specifics of how the personnel management system of the army should be rebuilt, I still recommend this book highly. I have been greatly concerned with the lack of professional developement and professionalism in the US army officer corps ever since I joined the Army in early 1997. This book goes far inexpleining th situation, and then proposes some radical solutions.

The first part of the book, detailing how the army developed its current unprofessional officer corps is insightful and useful, if a tad repetitive. Anyone who wants to understand how the current system developed needs look no further.

Vandergriff's subsequent arguments about fixing it are where I disagree. They are based around building a far more effective "heavy" army designed to defeat other armies in high intensity conflict. For the most part he does an excellent job of this, but he falls into the normal Army trap of assuming that the high-intensity portion of war needs to be the primary focus of the Active Componant (AC), and that the Guard (NG) and Reserve (AR) can carry the burden of the "constabulatory" and peacekeeping missions. Unfortunately, the modern threat environment is composed of mostly low-intensity and transitional intensity conflict potential (a major land war against China is unlikely, and all the other scenarios seem even less plausable).

Additionally, Vandergriff makes the normal Armor officer mistake of trying to keep the heavy forces in the AC and making the NG and AR "light". This has three flaws:
1) it results in the AR and NG bearing the brunt of deployments, since most call for light or medium (at most) forces.
2) More importantly, it fails to take into account the fact that light forces are almost impossible to maintain at high levels of readiness in the NG and AR. The type of continual day-in and day-out training that only the AC can carry out is precisely what makes light forces viable. Tankers and Mech on the other hand can maintain their skills better in an AC and NG environment than lighter forces.
3) It fails to take into account that any future conflict that requires a large amount of heavy forces will have to involve a large buildup period a la Desert Storm. That build-up time can be used to refresh the training of AR and NG units. Deployement s for light and medium forces are far mor likely to be "be there tomorrow" missions, requiring troops that are ready yesterday, not next month.

I still highly recommend this book despite my differences with it. It is refreshing enough to see a US Army officer exmine how the existing officer corps got into its present prediciment, and then propose some radical solutions. It is only through academic debate by military professionals that the problems will be fixed, and this book is a big step in the right direction.