I know it is counterintuitive write a rebuttal to your own article, but based on feedback and upon re-reading the article, I felt that a very important point was left unsaid. Many of the readers who commented seemed to take away that my suggestion was to not pursue this revolution or renaissance in education because there is no empirical evidence that makes us better warfighters. I most vehemently disagree with that assessment—history is rich with examples where education carried the day in military action. I would like to give a few examples from my own (albeit limited) experience and just list some names for further study. Below is an attempt to categorize the benefits of a broad education beyond the boundaries of military tactics and strategy. There are certainly other ways to sort them but here is a summary of my thoughts on three reasons a broad education is so critical to warfighting readiness:
- What do you learn. Learning French and German through the Navy broadened my horizons in many ways. I can read a magazine in Europe and immediately understand their viewpoint of world affairs and of our nation. On deployment, being able to converse with the NATO admiral in his native language had benefits for our conversation at the time but also promotes a positive view of our nation. My graduate studies explored areas such as human performance, statistical analysis, and physiology, which led to a lifelong study of Navy crew endurance and how they contributed to warfighting readiness. Faced with a mission-critical casualty on deployment while in command of a cruiser, an understanding of physics and chemistry helped us apply Poisson’s ratio to get a substitute glass approved for a departure from specifications for the helo control tower that allowed the ship to continue flight operations. A course in project management and risk management helped in building a nuclear reactor plant in a precommissioning aircraft carrier. The list goes on of things leaned in school that directly contributed to warfighting capability.
- How you learn. At the Naval Academy and Nuclear Power School I pretty much had to memorize everything that was on the chalkboard and regurgitate it to earn a “B.” Even the Naval War College has a sarcastic saying that “it’s only a lot of reading if you do it,” and I have to admit that I sometimes succumbed to the allure of the yacht races in Newport over an analysis of Clausewitz, having convinced myself that a “B” was good enough. It was in my civilian masters and doctorate programs where I learned the value and methodology of doing thorough research and finding, organizing, and analyzing a broad range of opinions about a particular topic in an organized fashion. We want our leaders to learn “critical thinking“ and, quite frankly, in addition to the world class instruction at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Naval War College, there is a huge domain of knowledge outside of Navy lifelines that is worth the effort to explore, and engagement in this rich environment can change the way one looks at learning.
- Who you learn from. There are some fantastic professors at the Naval War College and the Naval Postgraduate School. However, at outside institutions of higher education and in commercial fellowships, naval officers be exposed to a host of iconic and unique professors and academic leaders, mingle with student with different backgrounds and experiences, and realize that the rather insulated military view of the world is not the only one. It is important that military leaders understand the range other views—and how much they matter to us in our role as military members and as citizens.
So what is the point? It is all about balance. I still contend that the concerns listed in the previous article are valid. In fact several active duty officers gave the article a preview read and commented that it was dead on. I myself had two stretches of almost ten years at sea during my 30-year career that did not afford me time for a joint tour, a Pentagon tour, or an outside higher education degree—none of those were compatible with the milestones required to select for the next level of command at sea. In my final 06 tour, when my boss try to advocate for me to compete for a promotion, I was told quite bluntly by the detailer, “The problem is, you have spent way too much time at sea.” In the end it was a fair trade, but given what I have experienced since retiring, I have to wonder if the insertion of a dedicated period to attend graduate school without impacting my career milestones would have made me a better contributor to the upper levels of the Navy. I think it is awesome that Mr. Kroger and the Navy want to increase the way the service values a broad education—I just hope they create space for it in a career path instead of shoving it into an already crowded career pipeline, or at least allow the evaluation block that assesses this area to be marked “N/A” for those on sea duty.
The concept of the citizen soldier is just as important as that of the professional warfighter. Do not just take my word for it. Look up some of our most successful military leaders and their educational background: Colin Powell, James Stavridis, “Mad Dog” Mattis to name a few. Read their educational biographies. If our military leaders do not develop a global view and a philosophical outlook that encompasses a broader spectrum of the color of critical thinking than haze gray, blue and green, we will not only lose the next war, we will lose the soul of our democracy. The key, to quote General Mattis, is “to engage your brain—before you engage your weapon.”
