Don'T Know Much About Strategy

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT STRATEGY

Is the military shortchanging its war colleges - and its future?

Author(s): Laura Peterson Date: July 9, 2006 Page: E4 Section: Ideas

LAST SEPTEMBER, in a speech commemorating the 60th anniversary of the National War College in Washington, D.C., alumnus and former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned students that they would graduate into a world facing radically different threats, and ideas about how to fight them, than when he entered the school 30 years ago, at the height of the Cold War. Yet teaching military officers how to negotiate such changes is what the institution was established to do, Powell reminded them. It was at the National War College that he learned to think beyond the boundaries of his infantry training, to understand "the role of diplomacy" and "nasty, dirty, noisy politics."

Powell embodies, for many, the thoughtful warrior-the soldier able to think critically about his country's actions and draw lessons for the future from a historical context wider than the last war. He has also seen his fair share of nasty politics. Today, with the US military embroiled in political battles both at home and abroad and American military strategy in flux, the mission of the nation's war colleges-to turn officers into statesmen who can handle the roles of strategist, adviser, and diplomat with equal facility-is more relevant than ever, many civilian and military leaders say.

But caught between the budgetary pressures of a downsized military and the demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to the wider war on terror, some military bureaucrats want to cut back the time officers spend at the colleges-the Army War College in Pennsylvania, the Naval War College in Rhode Island, and the Air War College in Alabama, as well as the National War College-or even close them down temporarily. A report released last December by the Leadership in Conflict Initiative, a program for military, business, and political leaders based at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., not far from the Army War College, warned that such moves would shortchange the armed forces' future.

"If we are not careful, we could forgo the principal goal of these institutions, which is to develop those who can advise civilian authority on the measured application of violence-the next George Marshalls or Colin Powells," says Jeffrey McCausland, a retired Colonel and former dean of the Army War College who directs the Leadership Initiative at Dickinson. "This administration in particular would be much more comfortable with obedient technocrats."

Founded early in the century to educate officers in big-picture strategic thinking, the war colleges were closed during World War I to free up soldiers for the battlefield. But the institutions played a pivotal role during the interwar period, teaching lessons from the First World War that would be applied in the second.

After World War II, the war colleges fell on hard times, as Cold War strategic studies were outsourced to civilian think tanks such as the Rand Corporation. But the war colleges were overhauled in the 1980s thanks to the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which standardized curriculums and required periodic reviews, and a study commissioned by Missouri Representative Ike Skelton that lambasted the colleges for lacking rigor, mandating them to acquire civilian accreditation for conferring master's degrees.

The challenges facing today's military demand intellectual as well as tactical adjustments. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose goal of "transforming" the military emphasizes new technologies and weapons over large troop deployments, admitted in a 2002 article that such developments wouldn't change the military "unless we change the way we think." Advocates say this is exactly where the war colleges should come in. McCausland writes in the Leadership Initiative report that Rumsfeld's transformation will "fail absent a vigorous senior officer corps possessing the intellectual tools to both lead and manage change."

McCausland isn't alone. At a conference titled "Rebuilding America's Intellectual Arsenal," convened last March by New York Congressman Steve Israel, panelists such as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Gail McGinn advocated a "cognitive transformation" that included greater emphasis on training in foreign languages and cultural awareness. Studies published over the past decade by groups such as Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Strategic and International Studies also attest to the importance