Korean War Mission Command Essay

Assuming command of any Army organization presents a number of challenges a commander must be prepared to confront. Leaders must be cognizant of the “mental shift” required when moving into the position, and how he may execute the principles of mission command. Furthermore, commanders must fully appreciate the need to accurately assess the organization he’s been charged to lead. It so happens, history provides numerous examples of senior officers succeeding and failing in these endeavors. A critical analysis of LTG Matthew Ridgway’s command of the Eight Army and their success during the Korean War highlights these two concepts. The mental shift commanders must undergo early in their post is directly linked to the principles of mission
Essentially, these environments represent all the challenges associated with a normal command, only compounded with factors related to communication difficulties, potential pre-conceived biases, and cultural misunderstandings. Therefore, it is critical for leaders to leverage shared values, proper cultural understanding, and commitment-focused influence, as opposed to compliance, to achieve mission success. A critical analysis of LTG William Slim’s command of the Fourteenth Army in 1943 represents each of these concepts’ application. The following will further explore each idea as executed by LTG Slim in
Specifically, how did military planners allow themselves to believe the Chinese would not intervene on the behalf of the North Koreans. Here is a good example of how past experiences can influence intuition. Macarthur and planners grounded the majority of their assumptions, not on a study of Chinese past success, but rather American success against the Japanese. As mentioned earlier, their intuition was based upon past experiences, and these experiences were developed with biases. This mistake manifested itself as overconfidence, poor assumptions, and eventually led to numerous physiological