The multidimensional complexity with which national leaders must contend is a necessary condition for effective strategic decision-making. On many occasions, it requires that those leaders ignore, or even act in contravention of, the advice of the professional echelon.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 767..
14 March '18..
Link:
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/leaders-advisors/
Perhaps the oddest of the many leaks about the looming charges against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is the reported accusation by former-confidant-turned-state’s-witness Nir Hefetz that the prime minister recently ignored the professional echelon’s recommendations when making an important security decision.
Netanyahu’s personal conduct notwithstanding, the leak raises two important questions about the nature of strategic decision-making. One concerns the role of national leaders and the extent to which they are obligated to follow their advisers’ recommendations. The second relates to the extent to which close, or even intimate, advisers are fully apprised of their leaders’ inner thoughts, motives, and considerations as they grapple with hard decisions.
In essence, the two questions are interrelated. If one expects national leaders to make important decisions in a manner befitting heads of expert committees, then the deliberations, as a matter of professional procedure, must be transparent and must openly address all considerations. This in turn means that whoever has taken part in such deliberations does indeed know, and can testify about, what took place during them. In real life, however, no high level decision-making process – let alone one at the national level – can be conducted entirely out in the open.
When decision-making defies experts’ recommendations
So long as decisions do not involve situations that are without precedent, we can put our fate in the hands of skilled managers. A country’s railroad system, for example, can be overseen by professional experts. But not everything in the life of society and the state runs along neat railroad tracks. Leadership as a unique trait is required precisely when there are no familiar causeways and no continuity between what has occurred before and what is occurring now.
In an emergency situation, which, by its very nature, falls outside any prior framework, the authority of experts meets its limit. It was just such a situation that Winston Churchill, as dramatically portrayed in the recent movie
The Darkest Hour, had to confront. In the face of the German Blitzkrieg, the British generals – with all their professionalism – turned out to be helpless. At the fateful hour in Dunkirk it was Churchill’s leadership that enabled the heroic rescue of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were trapped on the beach.
The leadership of David Ben-Gurion manifested a similar understanding, throughout his political career, of the limitations of expert knowledge. An especially well known case is his insistence, during the War of Independence, on concentrating the main war effort on Jerusalem against the view of the General Staff. The deliberations of the “committee of five” that he headed were notable for Ben-Gurion’s courageous openness to criticism. Amidst heated controversy in the wake of the Battle of Latrun, Gen. Yigal Yadin, head of the Operations Directorate, had harsh words for Ben-Gurion’s role:
The only brigade that was available for the battle was the 7th Brigade…Here Ben-Gurion carried out his most blatant intervention, which in my opinion ran counter to all his powers as someone who saw himself as authorized to give orders to the army. All the soldiers were new recruits and needed another seven or eight days before they could be sent into battle; to do otherwise was suicide…I tried to explain that it was impossible from a technical standpoint, but all my words were in vain. Ben-Gurion demanded that I summon the brigade commander, as he wanted to hear what he had to say… I am sharply critical of the brigade commander for carrying out the order… In light of all the military considerations, such an operation could not be permitted, and it ended in a terrible catastrophe.
Ben-Gurion responded without mincing words: “In my opinion [it ended] in a big victory, though not a cheap one.”
The Battle of Latrun was indeed a complete failure from a tactical standpoint, and yet it was an important victory at the systemic level. And while one can ponder the wisdom of the decision in hindsight, there is no doubt that it was not only completely legitimate but also an exemplary case of a national leader’s resolute decision-making of a kind that is indispensable when defying the prescriptions of experts.
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