Ender’s World

I was a relative latecomer to Ender’s Game. It’s not that I didn’t know about the book. It’s not even that I hadn’t had it recommended to me. Only a bunch of times by people I trusted. I remember visiting my old Air Force Academy mentor, Colonel Jim Heald, and his family in Florida when I was attending Squadron Officer School in Alabama in 1993. Jim’s oldest son, Mike, was telling me that I really needed to read this book. I said, “Okay,” and never did. I think I finally went to Ender’s Game when I was mature enough to read the books that people I trusted recommended to me, regardless of genre or what phase of life I was in. And bully for me. All I’d done by delaying was deny myself eight years of good thinking. But it was more than good thinking I denied myself. Had I read the book earlier in my career, I could have benefitted from Ender’s experiences by applying them to my own as a rising Air Force officer, one who endured and battled through much of the head-scratchingly unbelievable bureaucratic mess that nattered Ender.

When I finally did read Ender’s Game, I was a major in the Air Force with a line number to lieutenant colonel, waiting for the day of my promotion to roll around. I was also a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky, studying political science and focusing on morality in warfare. Living in the university environment rather than on or near a base, it was most interesting for me to see how similar some of the sociological issues of the university were to those of the Air Force.

I was also interested in how un-bridgeable a chasm it was. The two societies (one academic and the other martial), despite their tremendous natural commonalities, didn’t know anything about each other, and were too leery of each other to want to find common ground. But inside each was an organizational model that you could have stepped right into without knowing anything other than what you learned from Ender’s Game. Although they ought to be natural allies, the Academy and the military often fight each other as if they were mortal enemies. But within each world there are also parallel battles—battles for ideological supremacy and battles for leadership over those they ostensibly lead. When I read Ender’s Game I was stunned at how precisely the book painted both worlds I was in at the time. I was stunned as well at what I had been missing all those years in not reading the book. And after earning my degree, I soon learned firsthand even more about those ideological battles, not in the book, but through it.

By the time I was senior enough to influence an organization, I was a senior faculty member at the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College, a premier graduate school where the top tier of Air Force majors attend a yearlong resident program of graduate study in international relations, history, and strategic studies. While there, I made reading Ender’s Game a mandatory part of the curriculum. I then experienced some of the same issues, such as resistance to longstanding paradigms, that Ender slogged through during his service.

Many of my colleagues, civilian and military, historian and political scientist, questioned my inclusion of Ender’s Game in the curriculum at the Staff College. What can we learn, some vociferously and indignantly asked, from a science fiction book about something that will never happen? Some had never been challenged to defend their core beliefs about how we know what we know. Others hadn’t yet learned to trust their colleagues’ recommendations about something as important as their time. Most didn’t understand that the only place in which they could explore the sociology of a situation that has not yet happened is in fiction. And they certainly didn’t know that science fiction is not about robots and alien invasions and long space journeys. Those things are only vehicles for exploring social situations and human nature, for thought games in which they could ask, How would people interact if this happened? or, Would the societal structure stand up to this stress?

I think the lessons military leaders can learn from Ender’s Game are numerous and simple. And that nearly guarantees that most won’t bother trying. It is ironic that Ender is perhaps best known by a segment of society that will never serve in uniform: those sci-fi fans who understand that the genre is about sociology and thinking about what might happen. (That same hypothetical elegance is what has made Ender’s Game so appealing to Hollywood. But could any screenwriter truly present Ender as he is without neutering him into something a producer thinks that a kid ought to be? If ignoring Ender is bad, then rendering him hapless, lucky, or a puppet is a crime against his [fictional] being.)

So for both military leaders that seek to better themselves and for civilians unsure of how realistic the story is, let us consider some military leadership truths of Ender’s Game. Ender was no dupe. He didn’t just ride a wave of subordinate success. He was not the accidental hero. Ender was for real. Just like so many military leaders throughout history and living today are for real. We’ll consider Ender’s leadership strengths and then explore the battle he was forced to fight against his own leadership while preparing to fight the formics.

Ender learned very early on that skill and excellence are at once both one’s means to promotion and a threat to peers and immediate superiors. So it is in the military today and so it has been in the military throughout history. One must perform well in order to be recognized. But such performance also marks a stud performer for retribution. Ender is the youngest kid ever in Battle School (at least until Bean comes along). When placed in his first army, he does exactly what his idiot boss tells him to do, and when it backfires on the idiot boss, the boss takes his anger out on Ender instead of either praising the kid for following directions or keeping his mouth shut and pondering the lesson from the Battle Room. The toon leaders Ender encounters when he first arrives at Battle School were all pretty much equally mediocre to average, and that’s fine with them. It’s more important not to rock the boat and be one of the guys than to try to excel and get ahead of one’s peers.

The students knew that humanity had survived two attacks by the formics and that a third attack was imminent. But it is a sad reality of our human nature that so many will keep doing the same old thing day after day, even when failure is imminent or some catastrophic danger is looming. That truth applies to current as well as past militaries. In Baghdad during the autumn of 2004, I remember being stunned by the number of senior military leaders who said that all we needed to do to “win the war” was more, better, longer. More forces. Better execution of (unarguably bad) plans. Staying there longer. Just like the toon leaders Ender encounters upon reaching Battle School. Ender, on the other hand, doesn’t accept the status quo, because it means only one thing: certain annihilation.

Ender accepts the situation as it is and not as he wishes it would be. He does the same when it comes to his soldiers. He knows he doesn’t have the best subordinate talent. He realizes that the leaders at Battle School are giving him kids who are young and inexperienced, just like he was when he first arrived. Ender feels like every day they are stacking the deck against him, and they are. But he doesn’t dwell on what he doesn’t have.

He never complains about his army’s lack of sleep, rest, or continuity; he learns from the moment he takes command that pandering to his people doesn’t make them better. When he discusses the situation with the Battle School leadership and they explain to him that he’s not training to fight older kids but the formics, he merely accepts the answer and gets back to training.

Ender consistently seeks out and finds whatever each other kid is able to contribute and makes use of that contribution toward achieving his army’s goals. Furthermore, he always makes clear the significance of each person’s contribution. Yet he never dwells on his own.

Ender is a deeply human character in the midst of a system designed specifically to eat away at his humanity and turn him into a tool. A thinking and learning tool, true, but a tool nonetheless. Ender fights to keep his humanity as much as he learns to defend humankind. His kiss of peace from Alai; his deep love for Valentine; his fear of becoming Peter; his deep resolve to fight back against the leadership and to preserve Christmas as a holiday—these are not mere literary tools of an overly humanistic author. Today, our military is filled with senior officers who truly believe that to show a human or, worse yet, a loving character is somehow weak and dangerous for the country they serve.

Consider the following words, which were actually sent in a directive to US forces from all services assigned to the Personnel Directorate staff in Afghanistan prior to Christmas 2011:

Christmas Parties are an obstacle to productivity. 25 December is when we will get the most work done because everyone else is wasting energy on things like trees and fat strangers in red suits. We at USFOR-A J1 will maximize this artificial lull in the battle to re-enforce our defensive positions and prepare to go on the offensive to close out the year. Clean weapons and efficient work processes will be all the gifts this year.

The saddest truth is not that this organization’s leader sincerely meant what he wrote, but that this directive is indicative of countless others sent by military leaders around the world. Like Ender and his mates, military members find ways to slow down, give gifts, and reassert their humanity.

Part of being human is figuring out how to control what you can and know when you can’t. Ender never assumed or acted as if he was a good leader or in complete control. He never ruled by fear and intimidation like other toon leaders (and so many generals in human history). Over the last twenty years, a disturbing trend has emerged that was once a joke but is now a sad reality. Whenever US Army officers gather in any room or formation, they immediately determine who has the most senior date of rank. It is the only way they know who is in charge, even when there is no need for anyone to be in charge. From that point on, younger officers grudgingly submit to the most senior person, even if they are the same rank. They eye him angrily and he plots how to annoy them all within the bounds of regulations and propriety. They call him a blockhead and all manner of other names, but they do what he says.

In Ender’s case, he is incessantly put upon by students who are senior to him, regardless of how well he performs, simply because they are more senior. It is not until he has beaten every other army, and then multiple armies at one time with their own castoffs, that he earns respect and gains admiration from his more senior peers (but only some of them). Unlike those who intimidate their fellow trainees, Ender’s actions earn him respect and neither he nor his subordinates ever doubt his command.

Ender knows he is far from perfect, yet he never dwells on that fact. Rather, he is the consummate lifelong learner. He is driven to get better. Not one minute of his day is wasted. He lies in bed at night reflecting on every encounter of the day, every action of every battle, every quirk of every fellow student. He reflects on his actions, and although he is hard on himself, he is truly objective and seeks his own betterment and that of his team. Ender studies other teams and their tactics, takes the good and incorporates those lessons into his own tactics, and even explains the mistakes to the vanquished…if they are smart enough to ask. He spends additional time practicing with Petra and realizes that, as brilliant as she is, her breaking point is lower than that of the other kids. He incessantly watches videos of previous formic battles and comes not only to learn their tactics but also to see how the videos were edited by the military to present a particular narrative and not the full reality. These two things, Ender’s desire for betterment and his ability to accurately assess his performance (witness his self-reflection after his first command practice session), are his greatest leadership skills. Leading journals and researchers today cite the inability to assess one’s own performance as the top flaw among senior leaders in all professions.

There comes a time for every person climbing the leadership ladder when he becomes aware that he is doing something right and thus is either being promoted or being groomed for promotion. That person has a choice to make: revel in his own perceived worthiness for promotion or realize that this promotion comes with new responsibility and new opportunity.

At first it is difficult for Ender to see the obligation that responsibility carries. He is getting berated every day by his commander. He is the youngest kid in any army. And when he is called in and told he has been promoted and given his own army, he is incredulous. He doesn’t believe they would promote him early. All he can think about is how unprepared he is. Later, once he starts training his army and winning battles, it is readily apparent to him that he has a large measure of respect from everyone around him. But Ender never lets that go to his head.

Contrast Ender’s attitude with that of leaders throughout history who let their successes turn into power trips and narcissistic self-aggrandizement. Picture the bombastic and often self-absorbed Patton and Montgomery, who often raced to parade in front of liberated towns first during World War II, and then contrast their inflated self-images with the humility of Washington, Lee, or Eisenhower. Ender falls in the latter category hands down. As a leader, he focuses on making his subordinates, peers, and superiors better instead of soaking in their adulation. While the other “boys” are laughing in the commanders’ mess, Ender is in the Battle Room running nightly practice sessions above and beyond what the school requires.

I once had a close friend at an Air Force fighter wing who was crass, often on the verge of being in trouble, always under the watchful eye of the group commander, and often accused by some other pilots of putting himself above the squadron and wing. But the truth was far more subtle. You knew he never put himself first when the youngest and most inexperienced lieutenants all wanted to be on his wing during the toughest missions. He could devise the most complex strategy for a particular mission deep into heavily defended enemy territory, but if he thought that a single pilot in the entire force package couldn’t execute the plan, he’d scrap it for one that was simpler, or one that was perhaps more dangerous to the whole, but that would ensure he’d get every man home. Likewise, “above all [his soldiers] trusted Ender to prepare them for anything and everything that might happen.”

Bad leaders in Ender’s Game and throughout history are consistently threatened by other people’s competence. They luck into victory. They intimidate rather than motivate. Ender, on the other hand, seeks out intelligent subordinates and is confident enough not to have to be the best or smartest. He knows his abilities and the strengths and weaknesses of his team and seeks victory over adulation. In this sense, Ender is like one of the best bosses I ever had. This colonel knew his strengths and weaknesses. He sought out and hired the best officers to work for him instead of being threatened by them. He once told me that in every leadership position he’s been in, he tried to hire people who were smarter than he was, and in every case it made his organization stand out from the rest.

It is a quirky truth that the leader who realizes that he is not the smartest and who seeks out the smartest to fill his ranks is in the end far wiser than the smart leader who can’t stomach the thought of rising stars outshining him. During practice sessions, Ender often observes other commanders using “the hook” to move at will, but only during regularly scheduled practices. By using the hook, commanders ensure superiority of movement over their army members. This recognition gives Ender insight into the other commanders’ rationale for only practicing on schedule: they need to be able to do something the other students can’t do in order to maintain control.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Ender is humble. No matter how great his victory, no matter how thoroughly he vanquishes his opponents, he never gloats. He also never feels sorry for himself. Even when he stands up to Colonel Graff, it’s not because he feels sorry for himself. He stands up to Graff to complain about injustice. When he is told plainly and directly that there is no justice in a survival fight, he accepts this as the truth and simply moves on to the next task. He learns quickly that the game is always on. Even before he discovers that the game is actually real combat, he knows that his fight against his own leadership is a continual game. That realization helps Ender accept that what he thought was a game was real war. The struggle against his commanders at Battle School is a game hidden within a broader game.

And so it is in America’s military today. Let’s consider the following passage:

They were career military, all of them. Proven officers with real ability. But in the military you don’t get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you think you should look like. You have to think in ways that they are comfortable with.

The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked good in uniform and talked right and did well enough not to embarrass themselves, while the really good ones quietly did all the serious work and bailed out their superiors and got blamed for the errors they had advised against until they eventually got out.

These teachers were all the kind of people who thrived in that environment. And they were selecting their favorite students based on precisely that same screwed-up sense of priorities.

Over the last ten to fifteen years, passages like this one have filled the pages of journals and magazines about America’s military. From the slowly building revolt at Fort Leavenworth against Army leadership, best espoused by then-Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling’s “A Failure of Generalship,” to articles on developing strategists and anti-intellectualism in the armed forces, this passage is spot on. Yet it was not written about America’s military but about Ender’s own leadership, in Ender’s Shadow.

Once officers understand this truth, then they have the responsibility to do something about it. A Pentagon leader recently directed one of his key colonels to figure out how to fundamentally change the culture of his service. But doing so would require an insurgency, a true fight against the service’s own leadership for control over the service’s direction. It is the same fight that Ender had to fight. Again, not some literary device, but a real insurgency.

And how is that fight turning out? We don’t know yet, but it is not looking good. The members of any club determine its future membership. That means that to be promoted to general officer rank and have any meaningful impact on a population broader than a local unit, an officer must be selected by the generals above him for promotion. And human nature dictates that they select someone who is like them, someone who did the same things on the ladder of promotion. To select anyone else, anyone not like them, can only be seen as a self-repudiation, and that can never be allowed.

One officer recently selected for promotion to colonel told a retiring general that the service was in a mess and asked how it got that way. The general told him frankly that his own generation did not seize the opportunity given them to create change when the previous generation handed over the reins. The colonel asked what would happen next, and the general said that this new generation can and ought to effect a change, but in all likelihood they would take the more certain and easier road of doing nothing.

Ender sees this at the Battle School and afterwards. He recognizes the fundamental nature of humanity and knows that for every good intention, there is an evil one countering it. He does the best he can given what he has. He doesn’t dwell on good or bad, right or wrong, when his life and humanity are on the line. Yet he knows that the betterment and survival of humanity is ultimately the greatest good and he goes about securing that the best way he can. His lessons ought to be taught and learned by not only science fiction readers but by the military as a whole and society in general.

Tom Ruby is a strategist, mentor, international speaker, and author. A retired Air Force colonel, he served in fighter wings, wrote Air Force doctrine, was the Associate Dean at the Air Command and Staff College, served twice on the Air Staff in the Pentagon, and deployed to combat assignments in the Middle East three times. He has spoken on leadership, critical thinking, and operational planning in England, France, Germany, and Poland as well as around the US.

Q. Knowing that Mazer Rackham stopped the second formic invasion by, basically, luck, why would IF want him to teach the more genius Ender?

A. Mazer Rackham did not rely on luck. He did not randomly fire a missile and happen to hit the right ship. He knew it was the right ship before he fired it.

He knew it was the right ship because he had the grand strategic vision to allow him to understand how the enemy was viewing her own forces and then discover the vantage point from which the enemy was seeing it all.

That ability to understand the enemy’s mind is absolutely vital to successful command in war. Insane as he was, as long as Hitler understood his enemies and adapted his behavior accordingly, he was astonishingly successful against them; only when he did not comprehend them, as with the English and the Russian people, did he begin his march toward failure. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and the other great warriors usually (though not always) shared this ability to accurately put themselves inside the enemy’s mind, not consistently, but often enough to prevail.

This was why Mazer Rackham—and no one else—was fit to be Ender’s teacher in the end. Graff could teach him how to create and use his own forces, which is how ender ended up with his superb jeesh, but only Mazer rackham could teach him (or at least not interfere with his innate ability) to empathize with the opponent and thereby find a path to victory.

—OSC

Q. Why did the IF choose the same asteroid for IF Command that the formics chose for their base?

A. It was sheer practicality. The iF needed to be away from earth in order to lure enemy attackers away from the home planet, to allow clarity of observation and communication without interference from an atmosphere, and to allow much coming-and-going of vehicles without the huge expense of overcoming planetary gravity. The formics had already turned eros into an airtight, fully equipped installation; all the iF had to do was remodel a little, and then install their equipment. The formics had saved the iF years of work and billions of dollars. To the victor go the spoils.

—OSC