The Learning Process of #Humans - The Bridge
This post is another in the series titled, “The #Human Project: Professional Views on the Army’s Human Dimension White Paper.” It was provided by Trevor Strandh. The views expressed here are the author’s alone.
The Human Dimension White Paper has continued a much needed discussion about how the military should respond to its experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. While our military has learned a great deal in more than a decade of fighting, we must understand that “lessons learned” take us only so far, unless we are willing to improve the learning process itself. Politically and militarily we have learned many lessons that should improve our political decision-making (e.g. pre-war planning and reconstruction efforts) and our military effectiveness (e.g. conducting COIN operations). But the military cannot subsist on learning its lessons piece-meal, from one conflict and strategy to the next — this is a fool’s way of preparing to win at war. This may sound counterintuitive given the criticism leveled at the military for not integrating its COIN experience from Vietnam, but this White Paper addresses — with which I agree –the idea that learning can no longer focus on the specifics of countering a weapon system, fighting a given enemy or ideology, or operating in a known environment. Learning must instead focus on deriving understanding of how the military can effectively adapt itself to new threats and battlefields on the spot…