Here’s Andrew Bacevich, with a great presentation. He doesn’t think the US Army War College does strategy, and explains why.
Strategy at the War College?
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I don’t buy it because it is based on a false perspective on what a war college is supposed to be. This is the equivalent of castigating a medical, business or law school for not producing graduates who are well versed in medical, business or legal theory. It assumes that professional education is somehow inferior to “pure” education.
Hi Steve – so he’s right that grand strategy is largely off the agenda, but irrelevant because they should, in any case, be focusing on operational art?
That’s kind of a false dichotomy because there is a lot of stuff in between grand strategy and operational art.
While grand strategy isn’t off the agenda at the war colleges, something less than 5% of war college graduates will be involved in shaping grand strategy. That would suggest that they should understand it, but that it probably isn’t time well spent to have them master.
What you said-here and above.
Perhaps an analogy would be the teaching of the legislation process at law school. It might be useful for students at a law school to understand how laws are made, but it would not be useful to make them masters at it.
And, let me just add one more thing. The Army War College invites this type of criticism by offering a “master’s of strategic studies” degree. I think it would be better served by returning the focus to war–by making clear that it is about producing professionals adept at prosecuting and deterring war rather than strategists.
If they did that, they might have to change the name of the institution to something like the “Army War College”.
Very droll, Ed.
Steve, thanks for that. I agree it’s a false dichotomy. I have problems with the operational level anyway (it’s too much like a firebreak to keep those meddling politicians at bay for my liking). Strategy should reach down into the innards of conflict, I reckon, and that means the legions of Lt. Colonels should be strategic thinkers. So I lean towards Bacevich on that point – though not on his ideas for rethinking US strategy.
Plus, there’s the old chestnut of learning how to think, not what – and I reckon that studying strategy is a good school for that. Studying plenty of other subjects is too, but I happen to like strategy… in another life, I’ll do classics.
In the UK, many students choose to combine an MA with the staff course in a single year – and it’s a pretty stiff challenge. Staff work seems to require organisation under great pressure – hence plenty of multitasking and tough deadlines; an MA, if it’s done right, requires plenty of time in the books, reflecting and thinking critically. Personally, I don’t know how they manage to fit it all in – no sleep? I’d back the MA to make better commanders, and the PSC to make great staff officers. Of course, an army needs both.
Thanks.
The thing that I found most poignant in the original presentation is how deprecated “thinking” independently is. In the great clash of moral forces, doing the unexpected and original thing is going to be a great force multiplier. How much originality is required (or even allowed) in these military professional training courses?
I largely agree-much more comfortable ground with you Ed-at least for me! I would but sharpen your point “doing the unexpected and original thing is going to be a great force multiplier” with the caution that it also depends on precisely what that “thing” is as to whether it is a “force multiplier” for the innovator or his/her opponent.
Having contributed to a commensurate Australian institution, Prof. Bacevich does have a point. While the occasional student does reach out and seek to address strategic issues reasonably competently, it becomes quickly apparent most aren’t terribly well equipped. That’s hardly surprising given 20 odd years of focussing relentlessly on the tactical, and that few people are natural strategists, or feel comfortable addressing complex questions. And too often attempts are big scenarios fall quickly back on process, and the comfort/pressure of group think: we all think the same so we must be right!
Steve Metz draws an analogy with law and medicine: certainly the military are much more comfortable with vocational training and the promise of templates and order rather than education and open-ended inquiry from first principles. Pretending the first is the second doesn’t help.
I did not see this as an honest critique of the War College. I saw this as Bacevich griping about our strategy (or lack thereof) and how we are prosecuting current military operations, thinly veiled as a discussion about how the War College goes about its business. Bacevich is unhappy and people disagree with him, so the War College isn’t doing its job. Only at the very end does he get off that tangent. The first 7:30 could have been omitted and his statement would have been more convincing.
It is not a false dichotomy. Genuine education involves critical independent thought. That is difficult if not impossible to attain where fundamental questions of purpose are not open to examination, and where validity claims can not be challenged. However, it is not certain that the War Colleges are walled off from exploring these types of questions, although it appears doubtful that it is encouraged.
I’m not sure to what extent critical independent thought can be taught. I am more inclined to describe this ability as a property of the student, rather than of the institution. It is true that some institutions may not seek to promote such abilities, but if a student has such an ability, he will exercise it (in spite of the institution).
My view is that critical independent thinking is a skill and a faculty, which can respectively be taught, and developed by challenging it. Therefore anyone’s thinking can be upgraded. And while a lack of it is regrettably not a bar to senior military office, should it be? My view is yes.
Bacevich is right on the money. I can’t speak for the Army War College specifically, but it is intriguing that some folk believe strategy is marginal to the study of war. Military education is not there to train all officers to be advanced practitioners of strategy or grand strategy. But it is there to hone and develop their own professional judgment. Without a keen sense of the strategic context, the relationship between operations and politics, resources and commitments, understanding and judgement suffer. Strategy gives meaning to everything else they do, and ought to be given greater attention in the curriculum. And part of the civil-military relationship is fostering an officer corps capable of loyal dissent, articulating alternatives and thinking hard about how the national interest is advanced and defended. Politicians barely think in depth about these issues, as with civilians. If our military personnel don’t, the art is truly lost.
While perhaps not as theoretical or pedagogical as some would like, this recent piece in the Military Review, “Developing Creative and Critical Thinkers” (in the context of the US Army War College) may be of interest:
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20091231_art012.pdf
“And part of the civil-military relationship is fostering an officer corps capable of loyal dissent, articulating alternatives and thinking hard about how the national interest is advanced and defended.”
Very well said.
I also neglected to add that your statement “And part of the civil-military relationship is fostering an officer corps capable of loyal dissent, articulating alternatives and thinking hard about how the national interest is advanced and defended.” is right on the money and absolutely critical to any nation with a representative form of government such as the Constitutional republic in the US.
I also agree with Bacevich. Having worked with several PME (professional military education) institutions in North America and Europe, I believe his point about training vs education to be the most relevant.
This is not necessarily, as he himself says, a bad thing. USAWC (and its analogues) is for advanced training, not education. Training senior officers to master processes is a necessary and a good thing, but it is not education. Likewise, I would posit, law schools (at the LLB/JD level for sure, and also mostly at the LLM level), medical schools (at the MD level), and certainly business schools (at the MBA level) are not educating their students either: they are training them, preparing them to discharge their functions as Professionals.
I can remember marking a thesis/long essay for a professional master’s degree from a war college level institution. The paper was well researched and make a real contribution to the field of contemporary military and diplomatic history. I almost failed it, as it did not, in my opinion, meet the objectives of a professional master’s thesis in defence studies. The emphasis was supposed to be on the operational art and the operational planning process, and this thesis did not touch on these concepts at all.
Imagine the reverse: an MBA student submits a thesis developing a critique of Adam Smith’s fundamental premises about division of labour and the soundness of the market system, drawing on theorists such as Polanyi, Gramsci, and Marcuse. Advance to the C-suite and a 6 figure salary? No, probably a resounding fail.
Similarly, I have marked theses by serving officers looking to obtain MAs from civilian institutions. Some (by no means all) read like service papers, uncritically applying current doctrine as if it were received wisdom. I, too, have marked these down, because they are inappropriate for the venue to which they were submitted.
That is what I take from Bacevich’s presentation: be honest about what the requirements are and send the officers where they can best obtain the results you want. Not everyone needs to ‘generate knowledge’. Many need to be able to function at a certain level, in sync with current practices and their interlocutors.