Putting "War" Back In Our War Colleges

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It's about time. Myself and many others have been saying the same for years:


Putting the “War” Back in War Colleges
Our nation’s senior-officer educational institutions no longer teach warfighting—and that must change.

Thomas BruscinoMitchell G. Klingenberg
September 2, 2021

We must reckon with the hard truth that the United States has lost another war. Though errors made by policymakers certainly played a part, our military lost in Afghanistan because it no longer knows how to fight and win wars. This wasn’t because our military professionals lack will or effort but because they have forgotten the real purpose for which militaries exist. Nowhere is this truer than in America’s war colleges—the schools our nation established to teach officers how to fight and win wars. The plain fact is that these schools no longer teach warfighting. This may sound incredible—even unbelievable—but it is true.

In May 2020, the Joint Chiefs of Staff published guidance for the education of future senior military leaders that repeatedly emphasized the need for all senior officers to learn how to fight wars and campaigns as a joint force. The various services are specialized to fight and win battles on land, at sea, and in the air, but campaigns and wars require building, supporting, and commanding formations that fight in all three environments simultaneously, often far from the United States. The Joint Chiefs issued their guidance because our senior-officer education system does not prepare its students for joint warfighting, which is enormously complicated.

At the war colleges, this cry for help has gone missing in a maze of bureaucracy and jargon. Educational standards take the form of vague word salads: “Senior leaders who lead complex organizations and think strategically and skillfully as adaptive and collaborative problem solvers to develop strategies to achieve national security outcomes.” Such “standards” are neither measurable nor focused on winning wars, yet educators congratulate themselves for meeting them, while graduates leave not even knowing what they don’t know.

Here is what we know: the only standard that matters is whether our military officers can prevail in war. As recent events in Afghanistan have demonstrated, we don’t meet that standard. How did we get here?

In 1967, the commandant of the U.S. Army War College wrote that developments since World War II made the old, warfare-focused curriculum “outdated.” As the American military flailed away aimlessly in Vietnam, he argued that “today’s military professional, while first and always a soldier, must also be a diplomat, an economist, a scientist, a historian, and a lawyer.”

The remainder of article here:

https://www.city-journal.org/puttin...eges?wallit_nosession=1#.YTEJ-FYVp3o.linkedin

The author:

Thomas Bruscino, Ph.D., is a military historian and an associate professor in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the U.S. Army War College. Mitchell G. Klingenberg, Ph.D., is a military historian and a postdoctoral fellow and instructor in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the U.S. Army War College. The views and opinions presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.
 
We lost a war that never was a war.

The problem isn't our military or its colleges. The problem is that our leadership is relying on our military to do something other than fight wars. Humanitarian missions require less military and more humanitarian efforts. Nation building requires diplomacy. Our military wasn't built for that.

China doesn't have the best military...but it also doesn't use it as.much.
 
Here is what we know: the only standard that matters is whether our military officers can prevail in war. As recent events in Afghanistan have demonstrated, we don’t meet that standard. How did we get here?

I'm a graduate of one of these senior war colleges, and, no, this wasn't all that mattered in the curriculum then and isn't now, either, I don't think. These institutions were training folks to go into the general ranks, with department management stints in Washington. There are lower-level service institutions and a whole lot of emphasis on war making strategy going on before someone gets to the senior war college level. The primary purpose of the senior war colleges is to see how someone is going to be able to fit in with working with others in government at the senior level to get their programs through. By the time someone gets to the senior war college level, they (and their families) are being vetted for the Washington political world of getting plans accomplished.

If in a WWII type of military environment, sending someone to a senior war college for a year isn't appropriate. If you are in war and they are talented enough to be considered to rise to the general level, you need to send them to the battlefield. They haven't just walked out of a hat box. They've been into the war planning mode for a long time already. They don't need to sit around a conference table with those they are vying for position with and talking theory.
 
The primary purpose of the senior war colleges is to see how someone is going to be able to fit in with working with others in government at the senior level to get their programs through. By the time someone gets to the senior war college level, they (and their families) are being vetted for the Washington political world of getting plans accomplished.

That makes a war college sound like something the DoD should not be allowed to have. A political training-school for perpetuation of the MIC.
 
That makes a war college sound like something the DoD should not be allowed to have. A political training-school for perpetuation of the MIC.

That was my exact thought reading his post and the exact reason we need to put War back on the menu.
 
I'm a graduate of one of these senior war colleges, and, no, this wasn't all that mattered in the curriculum then and isn't now, either, I don't think.

Sorry, I don't believe you. There is a reason why I posted the bona fides of the author, who has up to date, first hand knowledge, of the philosophical realities inside these institutions. The very last sentence in the article I posted is the problem. Including all that created it as policy and the resulting quagmire of policy that emanates from it. I have studied this issue in detail for years as a matter of interest and know the opinions held by the author are widespread in the military and elsewhere.
 
Your agenda-based choice not to believe me (both of you) has no effect on the reality of my life. It also has no effect on the reality that the key purpose of the senior war colleges is not (and should not be) to devise war strategy (a capability military students should be grounded in before getting there) but to steel the service students to be able to function in the political environment of the Washington bureaucracy. I wasn't there as a member of the military. I was there, along with student representatives of the senior services of other foreign service departments in the government, to help rising general candidates learn to work effectively with other agencies of the federal government.

Both you two and the article cited don't understand what the major, needed purpose of senior war colleges is.

Graduate, in the late 1980s, of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, under commandant Lieutenant General H.D. Graves.
 
Your agenda-based choice not to believe me (both of you) has no effect on the reality of my life. It also has no effect on the reality that the key purpose of the senior war colleges is not (and should not be) to devise war strategy (a capability military students should be grounded in before getting there) but to steel the service students to be able to function in the political environment of the Washington bureaucracy. I wasn't there as a member of the military. I was there, along with student representatives of the senior services of other foreign service departments in the government, to help rising general candidates learn to work effectively with other agencies of the federal government.

Both you two and the article cited don't understand what the major, needed purpose of senior war colleges is.

Graduate, in the late 1980s, of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, under commandant Lieutenant General H.D. Graves.


And this is why we haven't won a war against a serious foe in nearly 80 years.
 
Your agenda-based choice not to believe me (both of you) has no effect on the reality of my life. It also has no effect on the reality that the key purpose of the senior war colleges is not (and should not be) to devise war strategy (a capability military students should be grounded in before getting there) but to steel the service students to be able to function in the political environment of the Washington bureaucracy. I wasn't there as a member of the military. I was there, along with student representatives of the senior services of other foreign service departments in the government, to help rising general candidates learn to work effectively with other agencies of the federal government.

Both you two and the article cited don't understand what the major, needed purpose of senior war colleges is.

Graduate, in the late 1980s, of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, under commandant Lieutenant General H.D. Graves.

It's ironic that you are explaining yourself to two of the boards most disgraceful individuals when it comes to the military.

BoBo continues to suck the government teat after burning his uniform in a dumpster, and WhiteGuide continues to support the traitor in chief / draft dodger / Russian puppet.

You're better than that.

*nods*
 
Fine with me. It's irrelevant to the article cited or my comments on that, though. And I have no need to argue the point further.
 
America loses all the time because most of their troops are poor, low IQ morons with no other career options. I know it, you know it.
 
You're confusing politicians with the military.

Well, no, not really. Doing away with the draft lowered the IQ average in the services. Those who joined (other than those commissioned through service schools or college ROTC programs) were mainly the poor for whom that was a step up into a better career than roaming the streets and selling drugs. Just the way it is. I'm glad that avenue is open to them.
 
The reason we have not won a war in 80 years is we never learned our lesson from WWII. The Japanese were experts in tunneling just like the North Koreans and the North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese also used women, girls and babies with bombs fastened to them to kill our troops. Until we start practicing a "scorched earth" policy will will never win another war. We are just too civilized while our enemies fight to win any way they can.
 
Well, no, not really.

Yes, really.... that's why we won every single battle in a landslide victory, but lost the war.

Doing away with the draft lowered the IQ average in the services.

Again, wrong..... lowering standards is what lowered the GT average (military doesn't use IQ).

Those who joined (other than those commissioned through service schools or college ROTC programs) were mainly the poor for whom that was a step up into a better career than roaming the streets and selling drugs. Just the way it is. I'm glad that avenue is open to them.

That doesn't make losing the wars the fighting men and women of our forces the cause of our losses. You know, the point phil was making to shit on our troops and you're trying to support.... not at all shockingly.

We lost the war because the politicians want to try and look good by meddling in a war they don't understand and have no desire to win.
 
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Boebert and greene are another story all together.

They're the new face of the GOP, get used to it.

The reason we have not won a war in 80 years is we never learned our lesson from WWII. The Japanese were experts in tunneling just like the North Koreans and the North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese also used women, girls and babies with bombs fastened to them to kill our troops. Until we start practicing a "scorched earth" policy will will never win another war. We are just too civilized while our enemies fight to win any way they can.

Comrade Tigersman, the commies of commies on the board is right.....we didn't play to win, so we didn't.
 
who writes gay stories but is heterosexual and married with kids. Right

An insult with a bit of background knowledge, but not enough so it falls flat and reflects the insulters lack of background knowledge. I’m amused. :)
 
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