The first week of January was my first visit to Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, home of the Air University, where I attended a meeting of war college presidents from all the services. The interesting thing was how differently each of the services approaches officer development, as well as education.
As with all trips and meetings of this nature, there is always something to learn -- the main thing I learned was that there are some very dedicated professionals trying to ensure our military institutions of higher learning are turning out highly educated, critical thinkers. And, we're all trying to be good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars in a tough fiscal environment.
What we're teaching in Newport is not rocket science. No, it's actually harder than rocket science. War is the most complex of human undertakings, part science and technology but also a good deal of art. It is a lesson that we seem to re-learn and re-learn. War is not formulaic. It cannot be reduced to an algorithm or template.
Clausewitz called it "more than a true chameleon" (1: On War, Book one, Chapter one, P89, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, ed., Princeton University Press, 1984). Fighting a war requires understanding of very complex situations, and it takes education. Churchill wrote of the Royal Navy during the period 1911-1915 "at the outset of the conflict we had more captains of ships than captains of war" (2: Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, 1931, Free Press, NY, NY. p 93.). Stephen Luce, the first Naval War College president, in the early days, didn't even think war could be "taught," saying simply that we all learn the unchanging principles together at the war college. He signed up and took the course, even as president.
Education of our future leaders is a long term issue with very little immediate return on investment that you can touch, see, or feel - at least in the short term, and this becomes a factor in tough economic times. And yet during our nation's toughest economic times for example, between World War I and World War II, the great depression, some of our best naval thinking occurred, some outlined in books like "Military Innovation in the Interwar Period" (Williamson Murray, Alan Millett, eds. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), "Plan Orange" (Edward Miller, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1991) or "Agents of Innovation" (John Kuehn, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2008). I guess I would consider the war colleges like Warren Buffet-style investing - instead of investing based simply on the latest quarterly earnings report.
As an example, one of our senior army commanders, a Naval War College graduate in the 1990s, told me it took him ten years to realize the importance of the education he received in Newport. Did the Army know then he would become a four-star wartime commander? Developing a good commander and strategic thinker represents not only a lifetime of work, but represents a good deal of personal effort, both in terms of experience as well as education.
If you read my President's Forum in the
autumn 2009 edition of the Naval War College Review (p 10.) the people responsible for executive education of a well known Fortune 500 company told me they had never been asked to justify the return on investment for educating their future leaders; it was simply understood. And yet, it is fairly clear that the institutions responsible for this function will be subjected to tighter and tighter budgets along with our services. Our nation's universities generally have been subjected to significant cuts over the past two years.
Frankly, the Naval War College has actually been spared by comparison, but it's clear this may change as the overall DoD and Navy Budgets are reduced. Which tells me that the need for help from the Naval War College Foundation will become greater not less, and it will fall to me to help articulate our needs to the Navy, then to make sure the NWC Foundation members are kept informed as we navigate these difficult waters ahead.
The irony, however, is that despite some recent criticisms behind pundits of the war colleges generally as institutions, from where I sit, THE NEED FOR THIS SCHOOL HAS NEVER BEEN GREATER.
One of the major reasons I am convinced of this is an increasingly rapid pace of change -- both technologically and internationally, a concern voiced by Admiral Mike Mullen Friday, January 8, 2010, right here in Newport (
http://www.jcs.mil/speech.aspx?id=13124). Add to this the thorny and ambiguous nature of problems we are facing as a Navy and a nation -- a concern which requires not only tough critical thinking, but the ability to frame and describe complex situations in a logical and well thought out language. This actually goes to the very heart of education.
The question then becomes, are we at the Naval War College adaptable enough?
I think the answer is yes.
A few days ago, I sat in with some of our faculty members as they reviewed how to prepare themselves to teach and talk about the current conflict, and as I sat and listened to this mix of serving officers and distinguished civilian academics discuss and vigorously debate the nature of the war we're in and struggle to come to grips with its complexity -- many serving officers here know from being on the ground -- and even the friction of our own internal bureaucratic processes.
It was a super discussion against the backdrop of history, with the years of faculty experience, their in-depth knowledge of case studies -- I was reminded that thirty years ago we didn't think we could discuss Vietnam in the classroom, it was that sensitive. And yet, here we were having just such a discussion -- and knowing this business is not over yet, the outcomes not pre-determined.
In fact, one of our major functions in Newport is to help the Navy leadership anticipate what's next. That is in fact a question many here in Newport are attacking right now. What should happen after Iraq and Afghanistan?
What indeed.
The agony of Haiti speaks volumes here -- it really is the Navy as a force for good. But what other factors are going to be in play as we move forward? Energy? (which the Secretary of the Navy is making a priority), the environment (including the Arctic), natural disasters? global economics? food security? pandemic?
Before the holidays, we were fortunate enough to host a pretty interesting group of leading scientific experts, editor of
www.theoildrum.com, historians, a fiction writer, and members of our own faculty, all together, and we had just such a discussion about the future. In fact, this is something the Naval War College is absolutely chartered to do -- look out ahead and help figure out what might be asked of our Navy in the future. To help the Navy Leadership get a sense of things on or even over the horizon, and as a result, to determine what this Navy should look like, and how it can best help the nation -- and we've been doing this in Newport, and gaming futures, for over a hundred years.