Though a bit difficult to follow in places, I’d recommend a quick read of Paul Barnes’s article over at the Modern Warfare Institute, Everything Old is New Again: Flawed Thinking About the Future of War.

With all the talk about where the Commandant of the Marine Corp wants to take his service and the ongoing desire to find the magic mix of words and ideas to help us “leap generations” – the topic of his post could not be more timely.

Here’s the meaty bits;

Paradoxically, while militaries are wedded to concepts and doctrines with which they are comfortable, they are also attracted to the shiny and new. Presentism, the belief that current circumstances are unique and unprecedented, infects almost every aspect of postmodern military thinking, albeit to a greater or lesser degree across national boundaries. In recent years, would-be military philosophers have dined-out on the supposed changing nature of warfare and an expansion in the number of domains of war. The truth is, however, far less prosaic; war’s nature remains political and its effects are only felt where humans live.

The effect of presentism has not just been felt in high concepts. At the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, apparent novelties such as information maneuver, cyber warfare, and gray-zone operations have used up considerable intellectual oxygen. To be sure, these observations are important, but are in fact little more than a repackaging of timeless artifacts of political maneuver—sabotage, espionage, and propaganda with a microchip inserted. As such these novel concepts are essential parts of all warfare, not its replacement.

In conclusion, the twin menaces of intellectual conservatism and neophilia, both of which have dogged militaries for centuries, are alive and well today. There is ample evidence that the character of warfare is changing, but this must be seen against a backdrop of history, a history that has seen many changes in warfare across the millennia; success in future war lies not in the pursuit of disconnected novelties, but with interpreted evidence divorced from service culture. If militaries can divest themselves of a preference for outmoded ideas of how they should behave, they can be molded to fight the wars of the twenty-first century independent of the fashions of the nineteenth.

As we try to decipher the buzzword of the week, perhaps we can also strive to be the change we desire by refusing to play the game. Pick whatever all the cool kids seem to be using today and simply don’t use it.

Use normal language, look at the evidence, and think. Not only will your thinking be better, but it will age better too.