Thread by @RadioFreeTom

A couple of comments on this important piece by Flounoy, from a military education perspective. And remember, I don't speak for the war college or DoD or anyone but me. I don't disagree with anything here, but I want to amplify a point about personnel and education. /1

https://twitter.com/ForeignAffairs/status/1388601687674339328

Every time we realize that our thinking is too hidebound, we get all kinds of trendy demands from the DoD: Do stuff in Chinese! Or Arabic! More high-tech education! Learn about technology! And culture! And it's a lot of band-aids that say: "Teach engineers to be strategic." /2

The problem is that when educators say: "Not only should our guys read 'The Thucydides Trap,' they maybe should read, you know, Thucydides first," the answer is: "No, not that old dusty crap, something relevant and hip! About technology and stuff!" It's a constant pressure. /3

American officers are taught to excel at the operational level. So that's where they want to focus. The ability to be intellectually agile, to think about strategy and culture, is like sneaking fiber and vegetables on the plate. /4

There will be people who will tell you this isn't true, but I've watched it happen in cycles in PME, every 3-4 years or so, for 30 years. "Dump that old stuff! Do RMAs! Do counterinsurgency! Do CIST! Also, nail shut all those barn doors, and ignore the galloping horses." /5

The U.S. officer corps has been firmly rooted in an operational mindset and resists anything that looks like "liberal arts." It truly wrestles with the difference between "training" and "education" and mostly wants trainable metrics. Like US business, it's short-termism. /6

You want to have officers with vision, who can have flashes of real inspiration about the future, but when professional educators say "here's how to create that officer of 2035 today," we get pushback from people who have no background in education and who want more training. /7

Flournoy calls for more wargaming and that's good. But again, if the officers in the wargames are stuck in a 2010 operational mentality, then it doesn't matter how good the wargamers helping them are, they're not *seeing* the future. They're trying to solve puzzles. /8

I am not a navalist, but I have seen this in trying to talk over many years with some officers about nuclear issues. It's like having a conversation with 1982 over an over again, except with words like "hypersonic" thrown in now and then. /9

The point is that if you want innovative solutions for 2025, you needed to be educating those officers in 2010, and we've done our best with that, but it's always into a headwind of "solve whatever is obsessing us in DC right now." Education doesn't work like that. /10

The Chinese threat is here, but the officers who will make decisions about it for the next 15 years are still in development. They should read Thucydides and Allison and (ugh, yes) Clausewitz. Their education cannot be "know these factoids about China by next week." /11

To summarize, a story from one of my now-retired colleagues, who gave a lecture on the Peloponnesian War, and a Marine major said to him: "Sir, that was the best lecture I ever heard on anything, but it tells me squat about how to take that hill." /12

I heard similar comments. "How does this all help me kill terrorists?" was a big one for years. "It doesn't," I would say. "That's what training and intel briefs are for. This is to help you advise civilians, participate as strategists, and help strengthen national security." /12

Unless we produce thoughtful, *educated* officers - and educated policymakers, but that's above my pay grade - all the games and briefs and high-tech solutions in the world aren't going to help us. Operational excellence isn't strategic success.
(Ask Japan in 1941-42.) /13