Small Wars Journal

What's Wrong and What's Right With the War Colleges

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Wed, 07/06/2011 - 8:16am
What's Wrong and What's Right With the War Colleges by Dr. George E. Reed, Defense Policy. Introduction: "A cascade of withering criticism has recently been leveled at the war colleges -- those venerable institutions that represent the pinnacle of the hierarchy of professional military education. Each service maintains a war college or equivalent designed to prepare lieutenant colonels and colonels for the highest levels of responsibility, and while they have different cultures in many respects they also share some common attributes and challenges. It seems that there is some "piling on" in progress or perhaps there is some emerging consensus about what's wrong with the war colleges, even if there isn't that much agreement as to what should be done about it."

Comments

Chris Paparone (not verified)

Sat, 07/09/2011 - 9:32am

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George,

I understand that senior service colleges (SSCs) probably have some value. My complaint, with some exceptions, is that they tend to be ideological in their development of curricula.

The closed-mindedness, for example, of the realist perspective that drives the methods of framing issues. Particularly the rational-analytic design of "strategy" (to me "strategy" is a construct of realism). Can you think of one SSC (or staff college for that matter) that uses anything but the rational-analytic method to making prospective sense of military interventions?

So my beef is with the singular, institutionalized lens that the SSCs provide the students. It is nothing short of an ideology.

Vitesse et Puissance

Wed, 07/06/2011 - 1:18pm

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It seems to me that the war colleges could make good use of visiting professors. There are a good many professionals in the research community and also within the government who could and would benefit from a "short tour" - really a kind of sabbatical - where they could recapitulate their career experiences and accomplishments, and pass them on to others.