[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-67]
ANOTHER CROSSROADS? PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION TWENTY YEARS AFTER
THE GOLDWATER-NICHOLS ACT AND THE SKELTON PANEL
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MAY 20, 2009
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OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
JIM COOPER, Tennessee CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
GLENN NYE, Virginia DUNCAN HUNTER, California
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
Lorry Fenner, Professional Staff Member
John Kruse, Professional Staff Member
Trey Howard, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2009
Page
Hearing:
Wednesday, May 20, 2009, Another Crossroads? Professional
Military Education Twenty Years After the Goldwater-Nichols Act
and the Skelton Panel.......................................... 1
Appendix:
Wednesday, May 20, 2009.......................................... 37
----------
WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2009
ANOTHER CROSSROADS? PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION TWENTY YEARS AFTER
THE GOLDWATER-NICHOLS ACT AND THE SKELTON PANEL
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee...................... 1
Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking
Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.............. 2
WITNESSES
Breslin-Smith, Dr. Janet, Retired Professor and Department Head,
National War College........................................... 5
Carafano, Dr. James Jay, Assistant Director, Kathryn and Shelby
Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, Heritage
Foundation..................................................... 10
Cochran, Dr. Alexander S., Historical Advisor to the Chief of
Staff of the Army, U.S. Army................................... 8
Kohn, Dr. Richard H., Professor of History, and Peace, War, and
Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill........... 12
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Breslin-Smith, Dr. Janet..................................... 48
Carafano, Dr. James Jay...................................... 63
Cochran, Dr. Alexander S..................................... 59
Kohn, Dr. Richard H.......................................... 69
Snyder, Hon. Vic............................................. 41
Wittman, Hon. Rob............................................ 44
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Dr. Snyder................................................... 91
ANOTHER CROSSROADS? PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION TWENTY YEARS AFTER
THE GOLDWATER-NICHOLS ACT AND THE SKELTON PANEL
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, May 20, 2009.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:06 p.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Dr. Snyder. The hearing will come to order. Good afternoon,
and welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations' first formal hearing on professional military
education (PME).
It is just over 20 years since the passage of the
Goldwater-Nichols Act that reformed our military by
institutionalizing what we call ``Jointness.'' It is exactly 20
years after the Skelton panel reviewed professional military
education to make sure that the military changed its culture to
education to make sure that jointness would stick.
Today, we are starting a series of hearings to last over
the next three or four months following on background work we
have been doing for the last three months. Although there are
many variations on PME, including distance learning and courses
for enlisted service members and civilians, the scope of this
project is limited to in-residence officer PME from the service
academies to the company-grade and intermediate levels up
through the war colleges, as well as the flag officer's course
called Capstone.
Mr. Ike Skelton, our chairman, who was involved in that
work over 20 years ago, recalls that militaries usually don't
change things when they are successful. Instead, the reforms of
the 1980s came on the heels of failures in Grenada and in
attempting to rescue our hostages in Iran. In fact, Mr. Skelton
reminded us often that, even with these failures, it was not
easy to convince the services that they had to change. He knew
then what we know now: that the way to change cultures is
through education.
The issue before us as we embark on an investigation goes
to the very existence of military schools. The famous, or
perhaps for some of you infamous, journalist Tom Ricks
questioned just last month whether there was even a need for
our academies and war colleges. He reminds us that, from time
to time, we should assess what our professional military
schools are meant to do for the Nation. We are also going to
ask if they are doing what the Nation needs now and if they are
doing it in the best way.
Finally, we are going to try to get to explore whether they
are doing it successfully and, if not, what needs to change.
Our study seems to be timely. Several other related efforts
are underway. The Defense Science Board has started a study of
PME that they will complete next spring. In addition, the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the
Center for a New America Security are both just beginning
studies on the larger issue of joint officer management that
will also include a look at PME. CSIS intends to complete their
study by the end of the year.
In order to conduct our study, we will be asking about the
mission of the PME system and of each of the schools and what
makes them unique, one to the other, as well as different from
civilian schools. We will also be asking about the rigor with
which they go about their business. And because education is
necessarily a human business, we want to learn more about the
quality and qualifications of the senior leadership, faculty,
and students at these institutions.
We will also be asking about the organization and resources
the department and services afford these schools. And finally,
we will explore their curricula. They each have their
accrediting bodies for both the professional military education
and their academic degrees, but we want to look broadly at the
question of balance--balance between the enduring and the new,
and the new challenges.
And, as each school tries to balance enduring and new, how
they incorporate lessons learned and other important subject
matter into their curricula on a continuing basis. We
specifically want to know what they do with areas such as
strategy and military history, irregular warfare, language
skills, regional expertise and cultural competency, and, beyond
jointness, inter-agency and multinational integration.
While in later hearings we will seek to hear from the
commandants to the schools, and even the combatant commanders
who employ the graduates of these institutions, our panel of
witnesses is uniquely situated to get us started on the broader
questions, and I am confident that you all will help us frame
our investigation.
I will now yield to Mr. Wittman for an opening statement,
and then we will see if Chairman Skelton would like to share
some thoughts with us.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the
Appendix on page 41.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA,
RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you, Chairman Skelton, Dr.
Breslin-Smith, Dr. Cochran, Dr. Carafano, Dr. Kohn. Welcome
here today. Thank you for taking your time to join us. This is,
I think, a very, very important effort as we go forth with
trying to make sure we know what the PME system needs to
provide and the JPME system needs to provide to our men and
women in uniform.
And to begin, you must truly be experts to be asked to
testify at our opening hearing on professional military
education, because our committee expert and the person
responsible for initiating this study is none other than our
distinguished chairman, Ike Skelton. And because he cares
deeply about professional military education, our chairman has
exerted profound positive influence on the system over the past
two decades.
This hearing begins a timely review of that system. And I
would like to take a moment to frame the issue for the record.
Any study must have limited, achievable objectives to avoid
becoming swamped in unmanageable data, a caution well applied
to congressional studies.
As I understand it, we will examine in-residence officer
professional military education as a whole, starting with the
military academies and continuing through the general officer
Capstone course. Consequently, this review will not cover the
military services' extensive and growing distance learning
programs, non-commissioned officer education programs, nor
Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC programs, on college
campuses.
Furthermore, within the in-residence officer PME system, we
will concentrate our efforts on the joint professional military
education (JPME) system at the intermediate and senior levels.
And I truly applaud this approach as we are concentrating on
the area that was rejuvenated by the Skelton panel
recommendations and continues to get the most attention today.
Indeed, officers must show that they have completed JPME
levels I and II to advance in their careers to the flag or
general officer level. No schooling, no promotion. Hence, JPME
credit is important to individual officers.
Joint PME is challenging to manage for several reasons. For
starters, this training and education system is operated from
the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Admiral Mullen owns the National Defense University (NDU),
and his staff sets the JPME standards that NDU and the military
service war colleges must follow. Ordinarily, military
education systems are managed by the military departments, but
JPME is an exception, forcing the joint chief to function like
a military service--excuse me, the joint staff to function like
a military service, an unaccustomed role for the joint staff.
The service chiefs oversee their own institutions, like the
eminent Marine Corps University at Quantico, Virginia, which is
in my district, and provides for resources in hiring faculty.
Finally, the military services select the students who attend
all the PME institutions and make selections for promotion.
Given today's operational tempo, there is tremendous
pressure on the military services to ensure their officers
attain JPME credit as efficiently as possible. Somehow, this
complex mosaic seems to work as our Nation is blessed with fine
flag officers in all branches of the service. Nonetheless, the
system is due for a re-look in this time of change in
extraordinarily busy operational tempo.
Our military officers, including our junior officers, are
conducting not just joint military operations, but inter-agency
and international operations, as well. Are our officers
prepared for these real challenges of today? Not only at the
tactical and operational level, but are we developing a cadre
of grand strategists able to navigate the uncertain waters for
tomorrow's geopolitical struggles? We must ensure that our
military's developing leaders today who will be effective in
any situation.
This is a very exciting topic, which will generate much
debate and much discussion about the direction we need to be
doing. I look forward to this discussion today and the months
to come.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
Appendix on page 44.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
Chairman Skelton, would you like to say a few words?
The Chairman. That is the definition of introducing a
politician, would you like to say a few words. The answer to
your questions----
Dr. Snyder. You could read your book to it, ``Whispers of
Warriors: Essays on the New Joint Era,'' by Ike Skelton.
The Chairman. We don't have time.
To answer your question, Mr. Wittman, are we developing
those strategic thinkers, not long ago, I had the opportunity
to visit with the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General Peter Pace. And I asked him, of the average
graduate class of the National War College, how many could
actually sit down and have a serious discussion with George C.
Marshall. His answer was, ``Three or four.'' That is not bad.
That is really pretty good.
Everyone in the class will understand strategic thought,
but how many would be creative enough to offer a serious
discussion with the likes of George C. Marshall?
So we ask ourselves the question, what do you want out of
professional military education? Well, being a product of law
school and the agonies of studying the case work for some three
years, what you really want is someone who is grounded, (A) in
knowledge and (B) in the ability to think, whether it be on the
tactical level or the operational level or the strategic level.
And any questions whether our institutions of learning equip
these young people to think that way with enough knowledge to
do something about it.
It is good, and I compliment the chairman, Dr. Snyder, and
the entire subcommittee on what you are doing here, taking a
good, hard look. We did yeoman's work way back yonder.
It is interesting. Prior to our effort, there were a good
number of studies on professional military education that went
on the shelf, and actually we were able to actually do
something with it. And I hope you will take it several steps
further, because we need those thinkers out there.
And seeing my friend, Dr. Kohn, here, who is one of
America's truly outstanding historians, I guess I have a phobia
that every military officer should be a historian. That is not
necessarily something that can happen, because I was talking
with a friend of mine, a professor of mine--a number of years
ago. He said that some people have a sense of history like some
people have a sense of mathematics, which means we are not
going to make historians out of all of them, but at least they
would have an appreciation and understanding of it.
And if you are one of those that is gifted and you are
wearing the uniform, you have a sense of history. You ought to
have the capability of being a strategic thinker, or an
operational thinker or a tactical thinker, depending upon your
rank and where you are in the hierarchy or the scheme of
things.
So I compliment you on this hearing, and I wish you well.
Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We have also been joined--can enjoy the presence of
Congressman Mac Thornberry from Texas, who I would say is also
one of the real thinkers in the Congress.
Our witnesses today are Dr. Janet Breslin-Smith, former
professor and department head at the National War College; Dr.
Alexander ``Sandy'' Cochran, a private scholar who, in fact,
has taught at every one of the service war colleges; Dr. James
Carafano, the assistant director of the Kathryn and Shelby
Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at the
Heritage Foundation; and Dr. Richard Kohn, Professor of History
and of Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North
Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Dr. Breslin-Smith, we will begin with you. We will put on
our five-minute clock, if it works properly. When you see the
red light go off, it is a signal five minutes has gone by. If
you haven't finished saying everything you want to say, feel
free to continue. But I think we have votes coming up at 1:45.
It would be nice to have your all statements done by then. Your
written statements will be made a part of the committee record.
So, Dr. Breslin-Smith.
STATEMENT OF DR. JANET BRESLIN-SMITH, RETIRED PROFESSOR AND
DEPARTMENT HEAD, NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Thank you. Chairman Skelton, it is
lovely to see you here.
Chairman Snyder, Ranking Member Wittman, and members of the
subcommittee, it is a privilege to be here and an honor,
honestly, both the chairman's work 20 years ago, having the
panel on PME education, professional education for military
officers, as well as what you are doing right now. The most
important congressional activity beyond voting is oversight,
and so I congratulate this subcommittee.
And I have to tell you, for the first half of my career, I
sat on the other side of the witness table because I was
legislative director for Senator Leahy for many years, doing
agriculture issues in addition to defense and foreign policy.
But for the second part of my career, I had the privilege
of teaching at the National War College. And it is on the basis
of that experience and a history that I am just completing
right now about the War College that I offer my observations to
you about that unique school in and of itself, and also some
recommendations for the subcommittee to consider in general.
As I said before, you are honoring really the work that was
done in 1989 in the first really comprehensive, I think, study
that the Congress took about professional military education.
And now, here you are, looking at this issue 20 years later in
a different strategic environment, and one certainly that my
students at the War College confronted, where they weren't just
seeing nation-states with threatening armies on the horizon. We
were having our students and joining with them in dealing with
a movement of people where the ideology wasn't necessarily an
economic ideology, but basically a theology, and how does a
military officer prepare him or herself for that type of new
strategic environment.
That type of question about preparing a military officer
really intrigued me as I began my research about the War
College, and I want to just take you for a moment back to that
era, back in 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, when General Eisenhower,
General Arnold, other leaders in the military, in the midst of
World War II, came to the conclusion--and I would say, Chairman
Skelton, it is a remarkable event that they considered this in
the midst of war--what they needed to do for professional
military education for officers.
And they worked on some things in the midst of war. And
then, right as the war ended, they took action to try an
experiment, and this experiment was to say not only would this
new school for senior officers be joint--in other words, all
four services would send students to this school--but it also
would have representation from the State Department and the
intelligence agencies.
It had the support from everyone, basically, Forrestal, the
Navy, the War Department, came together to say yes, we needed
to do this experiment. And what is, I think, instructive about
it in a sense of Eisenhower's own personal power, he took the
beautiful building that had been the Army War College and made
a new creation in this building.
And basically, the Army War College closed for a number of
years and reformed itself up in Carlisle later on, but he took
this beautiful building, prime real estate in Washington, and
made it this new institution. And as I said before, from its
inception, it was joint, and it was inter-agency. His vision
back in 1946 was the vision, honestly, that Secretary Gates
talks about now. So I want to honor both Eisenhower's initial
vision and the fact that we are both looking at this issue
again right now.
Not only was this school inter-agency and joint, but it had
a focus intentionally on strategy. And again, to take you back
at that time and how remarkable it was to think about this in
this current era, in 1946, 1947, our first deputy commandant
was George Kennan, the author of Containment Policy. And he
wrote his famous articles, anonymously signed X in Foreign
Affairs, while he was on the faculty. He formulated and wrote
that article during that period of time.
He established a pattern that we still follow, which is he
wanted an in-depth look at the strategic challenge facing the
Nation then. And so he had lectures at the beginning of the
year on who Stalin was, Russian history, the sources of Soviet
conduct. After these lectures--and I should tell you, President
Truman himself came to lectures--people would adjourn to the
commandant's house. Members of Congress would come. The
secretary of defense came--the new secretary of defense,
secretary of war at the time--would come, and it was an
intellectual refuge in Washington for people of both parties
with the executive branch to talk with educated people about
Russia in that era, and to form a bipartisan consensus for a
strategy that endured for generations. It was a remarkable
time, and it is a remarkable institution.
And I have to say, in my years teaching, and even now going
back every once in a while and just coming into a seminar, and
I would urge you, if you could, to do this. On any day, in any
seminar room, you are going to hear combat veterans and
seasoned diplomats struggle over policy issues. You are going
to see and hear academic specialists and intelligence officers
in deep discussion over strategy.
You are going to hear them debate tribal issues in
Afghanistan. You are going to hear them debate space issues.
You are going to have people who had Provincial Reconstruction
Team (PRT) experience, and I know this subcommittee has done
work on this. You are going to have students from the State
Department, from U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), and Marines and Army officers compare notes on combat.
It is still a special place.
Now, of course, we know that all institutions change over
time. This has been over 60 years that we have been in
business. And I think this subcommittee is doing the country a
service right now by reflecting on all of our institutions for
PME. And let me say, in my reflection in doing this history, my
first recommendation of something for the committee to consider
actually goes back to what Chairman Skelton's original study
also found. In fact, a number of things I am going to say today
are in his report, this report from 1989.
But the first one, and this is especially true for the
National War College and also for the Industrial College of the
Armed Forces (ICAF), the Industrial College, which is our
sister college next to us, I believe that the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs has to reclaim ownership of our colleges. And I am
just going to talk really basically about the War College, but
everything I am saying applies ICAF.
Both the chairman and the Joint Chiefs need to clarify the
college's mission, enhance our leadership, establish criteria
for appropriate faculty and student selections, and reassert
the focus of our curricula, which is grand strategy.
These are his schools, but there is a sense that the
college--both colleges--have become orphans, and that the
chairman and the joint staff are detached from this school. And
I have to say, naturally, it is a totally understandable
phenomena that all the service chiefs would automatically give
preference and give more attention to their own service
schools, without question. And that is why it is even more
important that the chairman establish ownership of National War
College.
I specifically think he needs to strengthen our leadership
and the criteria for leadership. As a faculty member, I know
the value of a good dean of faculty, and certainly we have a
good tradition at the War College, and strong faculty. And I
will get to faculty in a minute. I am out of time already.
Let me just say quickly, I think that the commandant should
have a longer term of office and should come committed to
leadership of this institution. I believe the commandant should
teach.
I also believe we need to revive a board of consultants.
The War College had that for 30 years. I think we need the
oversight of an outside board specifically addressed to our
program.
My comments about the faculty, both military, civilian and
agency, are in my remarks. I do believe that the student body
itself, the selection needs to be carefully undertaken by the
services to make sure they get the best use out of this
education.
I think our program is appropriately focused on strategy.
And I have copies here of our syllabuses if you would like to
look at how we address this issue.
Finally, I want to say a word about our experience in Iraq
and the comments that have been made in the press about the
failure of generalship. Since many of the general officers in
both of these wars are war college graduates, I think it is a
careful issue for us to consider, and I go into this at length
in my testimony about how we approach this issue.
I also want to say that I think both in terms of
preparation for these types of strategic questions as well as
civil-military relations, they are both issues that the college
is confronting directly.
Finally, I want to make a last comment about just the
inter-agency aspects and going back into history. As I
mentioned before, General Eisenhower was vitally involved in
our formation. And at the time, his original idea, and among
others at the time, the post-war period, was to have five
colleges.
The original proposal was to have a consortium of schools--
the War College, which did happen, the Industrial College,
which was reformed and structured then. There was to be an
Administration College, an Intelligence College, and a State
Department college.
I think this subcommittee might look, maybe even with your
sister committee, foreign affairs, at the idea of reviving this
idea and having a College of Diplomacy and Development as a
sister school for us again so that we could work together and
that they could form the intellectual foundation that Chairman
Skelton was looking for when he did this review panel 20 years
ago.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Breslin-Smith can be found
in the Appendix on page 48.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. Breslin-Smith.
Dr. Cochran.
STATEMENT OF DR. ALEXANDER S. COCHRAN, HISTORICAL ADVISOR TO
THE CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE ARMY, U.S. ARMY
Dr. Cochran. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the honor of
testifying at this distinguished subcommittee.
My comments deal with the service war colleges and are
based on my 15 years of teaching experience at all of these
institutions. On a recent study that I completed while at the
Wilson Center about these institutions, in my written statement
I offer some observations based upon my teaching and some
suggestions from my reflections.
In the interest of time, I would like to focus my
suggestions in these comments here on three, four fields:
faculty, students, governance, and curriculum. I add that these
represent my own opinions and certainly not the Department of
Defense.
On the faculty, let there be no debate: faculties make or
break an institution. The Skelton reforms of the past 20 years
significantly enhance that faculty expertise, particularly with
respect to the civilian faculty.
It is as a department chair and a faculty member I
experienced an unintended consequence that needs, I think, your
attention--that is the aligning of two different camps, each
with their own professional standards, military versus
civilians, kind of a ``we'' versus ``they.''
And a new category, unanticipated I think at that time, of
retired military faculty; all too often, officers that lack the
academic credentials of their civilian counterparts. I believe,
personally, this can be easily corrected if the war colleges
reclassify their faculty as either field experts or academic
specialists.
Secondly, the war colleges' delivery of curriculum as
mandated by Mr. Skelton's reforms is that of seminar, the most
demanding of the teaching profession. Teaching at war college
is tough, with little time for outside research and writing.
The problem is compounded, in my experience, with the
practice in the war colleges of all students receiving the same
seminar experience at the same time by all members of the
department, something I think that few civilian institutions
would try. Solutions here, I think, are innovative scheduling,
the possible increase of faculty size, or creating more
curriculum contact time, a point that I will mention shortly.
On students, in my view, it is a matter of quality, not
quantity. Though the size of our services have been
significantly reduced over the past 20 years, the same number
of officers attend. My experience has taught me that a
significant number of these students really don't want to be
there, either that or they are not academically prepared.
I believe this can be corrected by instituting an
application process. Students, by making individual
applications with the appropriate credentials to separate war
colleges rather than the current practice of being selected by
the personnel system based on their past service, and the
colleges would have to accept them.
On the other end, my experience indicates that up to one-
third of the graduates will leave the service after one tour. I
believe that graduates should incur a service obligation of at
least five years, or two subsequent assignments, so the
services and the taxpayers can gain maximum return with this
outstanding block of instruction rather than the current two
years.
With respect to governance, two comments, and part of
these--I think Dr. Smith has raised that of leadership and
organization. Each war college president, or each war college
has a president, a commandant or a commander.
During my teaching experience, the average tenure of that
position was about two and a half years. This is simply not
enough time to make a difference, as one needs at least one
year to become familiar with the process, and then one year to
make the changes. War college presidents, in my view, should
remain in position for a minimum of 5 years, a maximum of 10,
with the same ``tombstone'' promotion model used at many of the
service academies of a promotion to one grade higher upon
retirement.
On organization, while each war college does some things
better than the others, they simply don't seem to talk to each
other. Each has fashioned its own unique mission statement with
varied departmental alignments and bureaucratic arrangements.
At the senior level, there is the so-called MECC, Military
Education Coordination Council. Yet, its title speaks
rhetorically to its advisory role. I would argue what is needed
is an office that fosters, indeed mandates just more than talk,
such as the chancellors that you find at large state university
systems. Here I would envision an Office of the Secretary of
Defense (OSD) chancellor of war colleges, or chancellor of
higher education, with not only fiscal, but some kind of
statutory authority.
Lastly, curriculum, thought to be the most essential, and
Ike Skelton's charge here, vigorous, vigor. My experience is
that, given a quality faculty, a receptive student body and
enlightened leadership, vigor in the curriculum will take care
of itself.
Each war college delivers a common curriculum, with minor
differences--field trips, electives, and what have you. The
common aspect of all is they try to do too much in too short a
time, resulting in a mile-wide, inch-deep approach. I would
suggest what is needed is focus. I would suggest doubling the
in-residence time from the current 9 months to 18 months. This
would permit hard decisions on that most common curriculum
quandary, what not to teach.
To build this focus, each war college needs to be
designated as a particular center of excellence to itself. The
Army War College for leaders, people who are going to go on to
strategic leadership positions, such as wings, ships, brigades.
National War College for positions involving the formulation
and execution of national security strategy.
Industrial College of the Armed Forces to deal with
resource implications. The Naval War College to deal with
theory. The Air War College at Maxwell to deal with technology,
thus allowing each student to major in a particular area which
would be important in his or her application. Service
competence can simply be taught through electives.
In conclusion, all war colleges are justifiably proud of
their programs, yet this pride, in my view, has created intense
protectiveness. And I would suggest, as was done 20 years ago,
Congress can probably step in to give them some help.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Cochran can be found in the
Appendix on page 59.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. Cochran.
Dr. Carafano.
STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES JAY CARAFANO, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
KATHRYN AND SHELBY CULLOM DAVIS INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL
STUDIES, HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Dr. Carafano. Honored is not the right word. I am
flabbergasted to be here. There are few issues that I am more
passionate about than this. Twenty-five years in the Army, I am
a product of the PME system and every level up through the war
college. And in my Army career and since then, I certainly
worked with, lectured at, or been involved with all of the Army
schools and all of the staff colleges and all the war colleges.
I have four ideas I want to put on the table. I think they
are more than out of the box. I think they are out of the
closet, so you may just want to dismiss them. But I just want
to put the four out there.
And as a preface, I just want to say I think you are
exactly right in saying that you start with understanding
officer PME and you grow from there, and that that is the
touchstone of all. And that you start at the finish, that you
start with understanding senior professional military
education, and then you work backwards from there. So I think
the focus of this committee is absolutely spot-on.
So the four ideas I would propose very quickly, is--the
first is I think the war college comes simply too late in an
officer's career. The senior professional military education
ought to come at the 10-year mark, and I would be happy to go
into the logic behind that.
But it ought to happen somewhere between the 5 and 10, 12-
year mark, and it ought to be universal. It is the one thing
that Goldwater-Nichols got wrong, which is tying JPME to
promotion. Every officer needs JPME-like skills, and they need
them very early on in their career.
The second point is I think we should move to a model that
looks much more like the ROTC model, where the colleges, the
formal war colleges remain as the touchstone of the ethic and
the focus of the professionalism of the services and the
military, but that senior professional military education be
expanded throughout the entire civilian architecture, and that
we do PME as well at civilian institutions.
The third point I would make I think is really, really
vital. We are suffering from PME inflation. We are layering on
more and more and more things, and today everybody has got to
be Lawrence of Arabia, and who knows what tomorrow is going to
be?
And we ought to be going in exactly the opposite direction.
We need to much, much more narrowly focus what PME, senior PME
is, and we ought to have a really rigorous and tough debate on
exactly what that is.
And the fourth point I would make is JPME is not inter-
agency education. Inter-agency is all the vogue now, whole-of-
government. I think that is right. I think we need a
professional development system for the inter-agency community.
But obviously, the military is way out ahead in
professional development, but what we have seen in recent years
is people say, ``Well, we can just take JPME and we can bring
in some State Department folks, and we can make this inter-
agency,'' or other people can learn from us, and that is simply
wrong. You cannot start building an inter-agency curriculum--
and it is an inter-agency professional development program--on
the back of JPME. It is wrong-headed.
JPME is a component of that, needs to interface with that,
but we need to build the inter-agency professional development
program on its own merits. And I think there is a great place
for a dialogue, and this committee could play a great role in
doing that.
That is really the four things I have come to say. And I
think that these reforms are absolutely fundamental. I don't
disagree with many of the things that Sandy and Dr. Smith have
said. But again, I think it is too late in the officer's
career.
I think everybody needs it. I think we are too narrowly
focused in just using the war colleges to deliver this
education. And I think it is a piece. But again, inter-agency
education and professional development are something else. We
ought to have those discussions in tandem, not think that we
can just expand that from JPME.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Carafano can be found in the
Appendix on page 63.]
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Carafano, no college lecturer finishes the
lecture before the end of class.
Dr. Carafano. Well, I do have one other----
Dr. Snyder. There you go. I knew it. You are off and
running----
Dr. Carafano [continuing]. And that is calling it a
``tombstone'' promotion may not be the best marketing tool.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Kohn.
STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD H. KOHN, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, AND
PEACE, WAR, AND DEFENSE, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL
HILL
Dr. Kohn. Chairman Skelton and Chairman Snyder and Ranking
Member Wittman, thanks for the opportunity and the honor of
testifying on this subject this afternoon.
I have been associated with the subject in one way or
another for over 40 years, and I believe Mr. Skelton's 1989
report is still the best discussion of the potential and the
deficiencies of PME and of the solutions that has ever been
written. Most of those problems remain, although there has been
some marked improvement. The mission of the schools remains as
it has always been--to educate officers in the waging of war.
At every level, PME has yet to reach the level of our
better colleges and professionals schools in rigor or quality.
Faculties are still less trained and distinguished, the
academic workload is far less, and the focus and curricula
sometimes stray from the mission.
At the academies, too much engineering crowds out the
social sciences. The Air Force Academy in the last 25 years has
gone from four to two required courses in history, and there is
no American history, which means that Air Force officers don't
learn fundamental things about the client.
At Carlisle, the Department of Command Leadership and
Management teaches leadership without any historical study.
None of the schools use the case study method to any extent
like civilian professional schools in law, business, and
medicine.
Senior staff schools, as I agree with my colleagues, still
don't sufficiently emphasize strategy. Indeed, the Army War
College was, a few years ago, moved under training and doctrine
command, which does not have the term ``education'' in its
title.
I think the common problems, to me, are structural,
organizational, and cultural; structural in the way students
are selected, graded and worked, resulting often in a low
common denominator and poor motivation; the way faculty are
selected and used, resulting in tensions of a mixed civilian
and military faculty; in the difficulty of finding active duty
officers with the proper experience, academic training, and
military background; and in the leadership, putting in command
flag officers who are often inexperienced and unprepared for
leadership in education.
Organizational, in that PME falls under personnel systems
that slavishly force officers into proscribed careers; focus on
staffing the operating forces, and privilege the operational,
resulting in PME becoming for many officers a square filler, a
relaxed break from demanding operational tours; and
discouraging officers from faculty duty because the graduate
education and time teaching almost always harms them for
promotion.
Cultural in the sense that PME is shaped by the careerism
in the military profession and, to some degree, the anti-
intellectualism of the officer corps. The norms and attitudes
and thinking that confuse education with training and disparage
learning and reading and schooling and favor experienced
command, physical prowess, and fraternal compatibility, and I
think is suspicious of academe and academic work because it is
viewed through a caricature partly derived from popular culture
in the United States.
In the end, two things have influenced PME in the last 20
years in a positive direction. First, the efforts of Mr.
Skelton and his colleagues, his careful investigation and wise
thinking, and I must say his relentlessness of focus; and
second, the drive to give master's degrees at the staff and war
colleges, which forced an upgrading of the faculties at those
institutions in order to qualify for accreditation, although at
a significant, and in my judgment, dangerous cost.
Let me close by talking of George Marshall, the preeminent
soldier of the 20th century, who spent three years at
Leavenworth and taught at two other Army PME institutions.
He remembered his first year as, ``The hardest work I ever
did in my life. My reading, of course, was pretty helpful,'' he
noted, ``as was my study of past operations. I learned how to
digest them. My habits of thought were being trained. While I
learned little I could use, I learned how to learn.'' I think
few of today's officers would say the same about their PME.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Kohn can be found in the
Appendix on page 69.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. Kohn.
Chairman Skelton, would you like to have some questions?
The Chairman. We have to leave at, what, 6:00 this evening?
Dr. Snyder. Chapter one.
The Chairman. Well, I think this is fantastic, and I
appreciate each one of you testifying, your testimony and your
excellent thinking.
I hearken back to a hearing that we had at Ft. Leavenworth
some 20 years ago when I made the then major general in charge
of the Fort Leavenworth Command and General Staff College--his
last name was Sullivan--answer the question about the caliber
of his instructors, because we had just run into a group of
lieutenant colonels who were teaching earlier that day who were
complaining they did not make the cut to go there as majors,
and yet they were there teaching. And I elicited, over a great
deal of prodding, the fact that his faculty was less than what
he had desired.
I note your comments about the caliber of the faculty and
faculties today. All of us can hearken back. I guess I do, back
to law school. The toughest instructors at the time, they were
not very popular, but I will never forget. After I took the Bar
examination, I said one thing I am going to do, I am going back
and see Dean McCleary and thank him for teaching me torts,
because if there is any part of the Bar examination I know I
passed, I know I passed that.
And it is that type of instructor that you would like to
attract and keep, and it is a bit concerning when I hear that
all the instructors are not of that caliber. I compliment you
for your efforts today, and I hope we can take away from this
some lessons for tomorrow.
We don't want other people to out-think us. And hearken
back to law school again, Mr. Chairman. There were not many
cases that I handled, and I did a great deal of trial work for
20 years, there were not many cases I handled that were exactly
like what I studied in law school. But as a result, I had to
think about things, and I was able to handle them, some of them
successfully. And that is what you are looking for here.
Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will put
ourselves--Mr. Wittman and I will put ourselves on a five-
minute clock, and we will probably have time for him and I to
ask questions--go ahead and start that, Lorry--and then we will
come back after break.
When we started this, it was in the--and it still is in the
spirit of revisiting it, what kind of improvements can be made,
what things can Congress do, what kind of recommendations we
might make to the services or the Pentagon. But I think we kind
of stumbled into, and perhaps should have gone in with our eyes
open, more existential questions. The Tom Ricks piece called
for the closure of the academies and the war colleges, and he
was a big believer in ROTC. Dr. Kohn, I think you recommended
the closure of ROTC. I am not sure where everybody is going to
go, or what is distinctive about it.
But I would like you all to talk about, maybe very briefly
in a minute each, just existentially what this means, what
would you recommend this subcommittee recommend to Chairman
Skelton that flat-out gets closed?
Dr. Breslin-Smith.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Well, I guess I don't agree.
Dr. Snyder. I didn't think you did.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. And I have taught in both situations. I
have taught at universities. I have taught at Syracuse and the
University of California at Berkeley, and I know the type of
excellent education they provide.
But at least in the case of the War College, and I think a
number of the other schools here, the type of interaction that
happens in the classroom--again, going back to Eisenhower's
image of this--is exactly what we talk about these days. How do
we get a total national security team, USAID, State and
military officers, to be able to work together, understand each
other's culture, before they are in the field together?
So the type of education that goes on wouldn't be
accomplished if you have everybody going to a university taking
political science or international relations classes. I take
issue with this question, even in terms of Dick's [Kohn]
statement that people who come out of PME did not get anything
out of it.
I have been tracking my students who graduated in the class
of 2005, which was the first class coming after taking down the
statue in Baghdad. And as I watched the growth and development
of their thought--and I hope to do a retrospective analysis of
them, because they are all making one-star right now--that
experience in terms of the type of questions to ask, and
hearing the types of questions the State Department person asks
compared to what a Marine would ask I think is part of the
educational process of the War College.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Cochran.
Dr. Cochran. I would close one of them, and I would close
the Basic Course. I have spent a total of 30 years as an active
duty and a Reserve officer, and I went through all levels. And
I am trying to think. That is a hard question.
I would close the Basic Course, because I think when you go
on active duty as a young officer, you turn yourself over to a
non-commissioned officer (NCO), and the NCO's first job is to
train you, not educate you, train you. So if I had to save time
and close one, I would go to the Basic Course.
Dr. Snyder. I am not saying you have to close anything.
Dr. Carafano.
Dr. Carafano. Yes.
Well, first of all, I think Tom's article couldn't have
been more ignorant. I mean, we have had this debate. We have
had it over and over again. It is him rediscovering this stupid
debate.
And he fails because he fundamentally does what they all
do, is they say, ``Well, it costs this to educate somebody
here, and it costs somebody to educate their own products,'' he
is saying.
So first of all, he misses the big picture, which is the
academies and the war colleges, they have numerous products,
and the students they produce are only one of them. Yes, they
produce students, but they also produce faculty.
And that faculty goes on, whether in the service or other
places, to significantly influence military developments. If
you look at who did the surge in Iraq, virtually from Petraeus
on down, it is littered with former faculty from the military
academy.
And then, the third product is institution itself. It does
research. It produces conferences. See, you have got to look at
all those products. It is not just what is student cost
analysis. It is a student cost-benefit comparison.
And the reason why you have academies is simple. It is the
same reason why you have a gold bar that measures a foot or an
atomic clock that measures a second.
Somewhere you need an institution, which is the touchstone
of the professional ethic, that talks about what it means to be
an Army officer, what it means to be a professional, what it
means to be ethical. And you want to control that in-house. You
don't want to outsource that, just like you shouldn't outsource
lots of things.
You don't want to outsource the ethic. And the academies
and the war colleges, they are the touchstone, the ethic, the
professional touchstone of the military, so you never want to
give that up.
There are schools that we need to close. I mean, if you
accept the notion that young men and women between the ages of
25 and 30 can assimilate senior professional level education at
the graduate level of the highest caliber, right, and you want
to do that early in their career, well, we have got too many
schools between zero and 10, so something has got to go.
And I think we could have a good discussion on that. I
don't think necessarily it is the staff college level, but I
think that somewhere between the basic and the advanced course,
there is some stuff that can be put out so we can let guys have
a better balance between operational time and school time. But
we have got too many schools. It is true.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Kohn.
Dr. Kohn. Dr. Snyder, I think that trying to close these
institutions or to radically transform them would be extremely
difficult. And I think that is in your political world. I can't
address that.
But I think what the committee can do is to insist upon
levels of quality up to the standard of American higher
education, which, after all, leads the world. And you can do
that, I think, by certain stipulations having to do with
faculty, by reviewing the way in which PME exists in the
personnel systems, by looking at the selection of students, as
has been recommended here and as I talk about in my statement,
by looking at the selection and tenure of the leadership of
these institutions, and by trying to institute some outcomes-
based studies of the research I think that the committee might
undertake, for example.
What is the retention rate of the academies compared to
ROTC at the 10-year mark, which I think is a good place? What
is the average tenure on active duty of war college graduates
in the sense of the taxpayers and the services getting the
cost-benefit? How do these institutions fit into the culture of
the armed services, and how are they viewed?
There are all kinds of modifications that can be made on
the margins, but I think the most important thing the committee
can do is to insist on the excellence that the services
themselves and the chairmen set for themselves in every other
walk of--or characteristic of their armed services, and the
standards are there.
Dr. Snyder. Before we go to Mr. Wittman, I want to be sure
I understand what you are saying, Dr. Kohn. On page 17, you
have a section where you say, ``Other considerations
underlying, abolishing the academies and ROTC.'' Are you saying
you are not recommending we abolish the academies and ROTC?
Dr. Kohn. Well, what I am saying is that you could do that
with a system of national scholarships in which you go to the
American people and allow them to take a scholarship to the
school or university or college of their choice, and you could
do away with the academies or convert them to one-year courses
for graduates of colleges.
Dr. Snyder. So you are presenting that as an option, not as
a recommendation?
Dr. Kohn. That is an option. But I think that, from a
practical standpoint, the idea--these institutions have
spiritual value, as Jim has implied.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman, you want to get your prepared
questions now?
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You all make some very, very interesting, divergent, and
thoughtful recommendations. And we know our PME institutions
have evolved, but they are still based on a structure that was
put in place before the placement of the Department of Defense.
So kind of taking the reverse look at this, if we were to
start today from scratch, what are your thoughts about what PME
should be today, the institutional structure, what incentives
we ought to have there to attract students, what incentives we
ought to have to have officers there? Just those sort of
things.
So if we were to start to scratch today, what should our
PME system look like?
Dr. Smith.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. I have to say I would still go back to
my original observation.
And the recommendation is I think that type of discussion
would be really profitable to have with the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs in general, in that what is their vision of the
role of education for officers, regardless of how it is
established or provided, because usually when I am talking to
somebody at the Pentagon, I will get this response.
When I make the plea to have more involvement, they will
say, ``Janet, we are fighting two wars. All these things are
going on.'' And PME is at the end of that list of things to do.
So I think that is the first challenge to take on.
Mr. Wittman. Dr. Cochran.
Dr. Cochran. Sir, I think I would rethink very hard service
parochial approach. And when you go back in our history, we had
an Army that stood alone, a Navy that stood alone and developed
its own system. Then, in the Second World War, you bring the
Air Force on. And each service kind of shaped that.
We are at a crux point now where service--we have gotten
through jointness. Our next challenge--and I think the next
challenge for you is to confront the inter-agency. How do we
handle that?
And if I had a license to re-think, I would start with
that. Okay, we are now inter-agency. Jointness is accepted,
service parochiality. What are we--based on that, where do we
go? That is the approach I would take.
Dr. Carafano. If I was going to make three points, I would
make these points.
And the first is, again, I would have the senior
professional military education take place between, say,
somewhere between 10 and 15, and there are 4 reasons for that.
First of all, it is because you can do it. I mean, we know for
a fact that people between, say, 25 and 30 can accept--have the
brains and the experience to adapt and--of the most
sophisticated professional educations we can hand out.
The second is, when you do that, you establish somebody for
a lifetime of learning. What made Dick a world-class historian
was not where he went to grad school. It was the practice of
historian's craft after that. But he couldn't have done that
without that.
So when you give somebody that at 10 as opposed to 20, 25
or 30, they have 15 years to practice that lifetime of
learning, and so they are going to be that much smarter.
The third point is they are going to be a better mentor,
because they are going to have those senior professional skills
earlier on, so they will be a better mentor throughout their
career.
And the fourth point is they are going to be better leaders
because they are going to have better, more sophisticated
skills much earlier in their career.
So why universal? Well, two reasons. First of all, I mean,
we have seen this over and over again in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and we see this in business every day, where people at very
junior levels have to exercise very senior levels of critical
thinking and very senior levels of professional skill. So
everybody needs these skills, and they can't wait until the war
college to get them.
And then, the second point is I don't know who the next
George Marshall is, right? And what we do now is we wait until
the very end to try to pick him out, right? And what we ought
to be doing is we ought to be putting more bets on the table.
If we educate people with this super charged education, which
allows them to become a Dick Kohn or a George Marshall, right,
early on we will have a bigger body of people to choose from.
And we will have leaders who we may not think we meet 10 or 15
years from now, and 10 or 15 years from now we will discover,
``Oh, my God, that is the guy or the woman I really need.''
So that is why universal. And just the third point, very
quickly, is why spread this to civilian universities? And three
points.
First of all, competition. The best way to make the war
colleges better is to make them compete for the best students
with civilian universities. One of the arguments for ROTC is it
bridges the civilian-military divide, that we have officers who
were trained in civilian universities, that they understand the
civilian side. They bring that in.
You can make that same argument for the war college
experience, our military officers getting their senior
education. That would bridge that civil-military divide.
And the third is diversity, more colleges, more
experiences, more geography, more languages. That is going to
enrich the breadth of experience that these different officers
bring back into the military.
Dr. Snyder. We need to run for our votes, so why don't we
recess now? And then, when we come back, Mr. Wittman will hear
from Dr. Kohn. And then, if Mrs. Davis comes back, we will go
to her.
[Recess.]
Dr. Snyder. Let us resume. I am not sure what the schedule
is for the rest of the day, do we know, on votes. We do not
know, so we are--have an open mind here this afternoon.
Mr. Wittman was finishing up there. Take as long as you
want.
Dr. Kohn. Mr. Wittman, thanks for the question. It is a
good one.
And at the risk of confusing Chairman Snyder, I want to say
that what I meant in that provision was that you could replace
the academies and ROTC with a system of national scholarships.
So in response to your question of what I would do if I could
design the system whole cloth from the beginning is, at this
point in time, I don't see a need for a separate educational
system at the pre-commissioning level because we have such an
outstanding and comprehensive system of higher education in the
United States at the collegiate level.
My concern about the academies today is that they cram so
much into so little time, and I wonder whether they are really
providing an adequate college education for a lifetime of
learning and development in the military profession. So from
the beginning, I would have the system of national
scholarships, but I would have these youngsters serving in the
Reserves as enlisted people while they were in college so that
they would learn what it is to be led as well as what military
service is about.
At the intermediate level, I would focus on the operational
as I think the intermediate service schools did, or at least
the Army did, in the first four decades of the 20th century, as
well as teaching some other materials that they might need to
use as mid-grade and field-grade officers. In both cases,
though, I would advocate the mixing or jointness.
For example, if you retain the system of academies that we
have here now, there is no reason why youngsters could not have
a junior year abroad. Even if they play football, it might be
good for a Naval Academy midshipman who is a star football
player to have to play for the Army in his junior year. It
might indeed provoke some feeling of ecumenicism in response to
the very powerful service-specific culture that students learn
at the academies.
At the senior level, I think at senior service school, I
would have one National Defense University. If you really want
to teach jointness, and I have thought of this many years ago,
you would have one war college where the students are mixed and
where they learn strategy and they learn political-military
affairs, and where you could have an equal number of students
from the civilian agencies of government.
If my colleague, Jim Carafano, is right, you could cut down
the numbers so that you wouldn't have to have so many officers.
But if you still had a National Defense University with a 1-
year, and in some cases a 2-year course for those who are
identified as needing 2 years for a particular specialty,
particularly to be strategists, and you had 2,000 to 3,000
officers at the National Defense University, that would be
fine.
But I would add one more thing to this, and that is that I
would try to identify early on, on the basis of their academic
accomplishments in college and immediately afterwards, who were
those officers who could pursue a career of outstanding
operational accomplishments and academic accomplishment. One of
the fears that I have with the teaching of strategy is that the
armed services will delegate strategy to a core of specialists.
I think the Army is doing this with their basic and advanced
strategic art program at Carlisle.
Flag officers need to know strategy because they are the
ones who have to make the choices. They are the ones who don't
just apply strategy. They are the ones who recognize what are
the best strategies, recognize the original strategy.
So to me, every officer who has the potential to go into
the flag ranks and may be in command at some point needs to
have familiarity with strategic thinking. And the best way to
do that, in my judgment, at intermediate and senior service
school is through the case study method, and not theory, and
not theoretical or hypothetical case studies, but historical
case studies. How about studying the reality of past warfare?
I once--with a very distinguished officer who was then
later the dean at the National War College designed a whole
curriculum for Air Command and Staff College and Air War
College that consisted completely of historical case study.
When the Chief of Staff saw it, he smirked and said, ``I see
the historian has been in charge of this exercise.'' And I
said, ``Chief, this is not a history curriculum. This is just
case studies according to the way the best professional schools
teach their subject.''
Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis for five minutes.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for being here. And it has been interesting
to listen to all four of you.
I think one of my question was just, if there is something
that you heard from one of the panelists, any of you, that you
either intensely disagree with or think that is really
important--you have talked a little bit about ROTC and the role
that ROTC should play, and I know there is a difference of
opinion there. I am just wondering if there is something that
really stands out. Those of us were trying to listen to all of
you, and what----
Dr. Breslin-Smith. I have got something to say, but I don't
want to go first.
Dr. Kohn. I will start.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Yes, you can start at that end.
Mrs. Davis. You are all--have very good, strong points of
opinion, and I am just trying to sort them out a little bit in
terms of----
Dr. Kohn. Well, I would start.
I don't agree that the strategic level and the national
political military levels, particularly civil-military
relations, which has been my scholarly and, to some degree,
teaching specialty all my career, should be imposed upon
officers at the 10- or 12-year mark.
I think that one of the disagreements I have with the
personnel systems of the armed services, and I have many with
those, is that we are the most wasteful military in the world.
We throw away these officers in the up-or-out system at the
height of their powers, and nowadays people are much more
active and much more vital at a much older age. And I think we
ought to be keeping officers longer, and we ought to modify up-
or-out.
And for this reason, I think that you could, and should,
have a system of professional military education that is
appropriate to the level at which officers will serve. And I
wouldn't cram it all into the early or the first 15 years when
officers are really focused on command and on competency in
their form of warfare and learning staff and the operations.
And I wouldn't abolish ROTC unless I could replace it with
something. Again, I would emphasize that this committee could
act in innovative ways to strengthen what we have rather than
having a knock-down-drag-out Armageddon-type fight with the
services over abolishing or consolidating.
Dr. Carafano. Yes. I guess Dick and I actually completely
disagree on this, which is great, because that is what we do.
And I think the one thing I would be most disappointed is if
fundamentally we came back with the exact same model which we
have now, which is basically just-in-time education.
If you look at the PME system, it is designed to provide
the officer the educational experience needed, and then go
forth in an operational assignment and apply that, right? And
that is great in an industrial age world where everything is
programmed and knowable, which is why the system endured so
well during the course of the Cold War, because life was
incredibly predictable.
We knew where we were going to be assigned. We knew what we
were going to do. We knew what captains did. We knew what
majors do.
Not to digress for a second, but I will anyway, and Dick
may correct me if I am wrong. But I think one of the most
inspirational periods in officer professional development was
the inter-war years between the 1920s and the 1940s.
And the reason why I believe that is because nobody ever
got promoted, but also nobody ever got fired. And what was
great about that was, in those formative years in their 30s,
officers could basically do whatever they wanted to. If they
wanted to play polo, they did. If they wanted to sit in their
library and read, they did.
And the result of that? We had an officer corps which I
think was unprecedented in terms of its breadth of experience
and knowledge and skill sets and attributes it brought to the
table. And when you went to World War II, we had totally
unpredictable environment, in a sense. You could look in the
bag, and there was a Stovall for China. There was a Marshall
for Washington. There was an Eisenhower.
And I guess in my heart of hearts, I want to get back to
that, and I want to give officers, early on in their life, the
deep toolkit for a lifetime of learning and critical thinking,
and then I want them to go forth and prosper. Now, I am not
opposed to formal educational experiences at the 20-, 30-, 40-
year mark. We have similar things in other professions in terms
of post-doc opportunities or continuing education
opportunities, like they have for judges and other
professionals.
So I am not opposed to that, but I guess I fundamentally
disagree with Dick. I think just-in-time education is a very
bad--it is a great model for getting toilet paper into Wal-
Mart. It is a horrible model when you can't know the future and
when the future can become incredibly different in terms of the
requirement and the needs in a very short amount of time, and
you need an officer corps that is agile and mentally able to
adapt to that. And I just want to give them those tools as
quickly as I think they can possibly take them on.
I know where I disagree with everybody on this panel. It is
implicit, but this whole business of awarding a master's
degree. Its time has been served thanks to Mr. Skelton and
pressuring the services, particularly war colleges, into
awarding a master's degree. That is fine. But the degree itself
has become worthless. Everybody who goes gets a master's
degree, and they don't even apply. It is abused.
You ask people in the business of higher education, if you
have a master's degree at one of these war colleges, will that
be accepted at a university for entrance into their Ph.D.
program? No, it will not. It is a meaningless degree in a lot
of ways.
And I don't want to demean it. It is tough to administer
when you have faculty that don't have a Ph.D. to administer the
exams involved with a master's degree.
A large number of the students particularly at the war
college level, particularly in the Air Force, arrive already
with a master's degree, and you are going to tell them, ``You
are going to get a master's degree here, and we are going to
work you hard for it,'' and the answer is, ``I already have one
of those.''
Also, all of the intermediate schools--check me on this. I
am not sure on this--all of the intermediate schools have--
School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) program have a
legitimate two-year master's degree program, which is a
legitimate program.
So I just think the usefulness of that master's degree has
passed. It is time we just forget about it and drive on. And I
know everybody at this table will disagree with me.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. No. I agree with you.
Dr. Cochran. You do?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. I think----
Dr. Snyder. Let's see, I have got--just for the sake of our
poor transcriptionist here, Dr. Carafano, you said, what, you--
--
Dr. Carafano. Well, yes. I mean, I agree with the point
that a master's degree that isn't really a master's degree
doesn't have a whole lot of utility.
Dr. Snyder. And then, Dr. Breslin-Smith?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. I think it--yes, for a specific reason I
will get to, but yes.
Dr. Snyder. Go ahead. What is your specific reason?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Well, I think the type of education we
provide----
Dr. Cochran [continuing]. One thing. That is what causes
this dysfunctional ``we and they'' military and civilian issue
at war college faculties. Who are you to administer this
degree?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. And I can actually----
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Breslin--get back to Dr. Kohn.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Later on, after this is over, I can give
you the history of why this came to be, why, during the Johnson
Administration during Vietnam, we got into this pattern of the
military responding to McNamara. That is how we got started
doing the master's degree issue.
Again, to me, the value in what we do is seen every day in
the seminar room, and it would happen with or without master's
degree. The institution itself, war college--was not set up.
He could have set up a research university. Honestly, he
could have done anything in 1946. He did not. He did not choose
to do that. This is a professional school.
And I want to make one other comment about our sister
school, ICAF. I also believe ICAF needs to go back to its
roots. This should be its day in the sun. We are facing an
economic crisis. The industrial base is under severe pressure.
We are losing the transportation industry. We are facing this
crisis. That is what they were set up to do, to evaluate,
assess, and study mobilization of the industrial base.
Over the years, they have--just like all institutions, they
have evolved and developed and expanded. I think now is their
time to come back and embrace what they were established to
do--help the military. Help us even over at the War College get
a picture, get an image of what does all this mean for
strategy, this contraction. So I would advocate, again, a
strong interest on the part of the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, but I would advocate ICAF going back to its roots.
Dr. Snyder. I wanted to ask--when somebody asked me what is
elementary school like today, I think back to the 1950s when I
was in elementary school. I can still remember what the halls
smelled like from the cafeteria, and I have visited schools
since then.
But I can't tell, from what you all are telling me, what
the conclusions that you have reached, what it is based on. I
think it is more than just anecdotally, ``Well, I was at that
school for a while, or at this school for a while. I talked to
these students.'' I don't see any firm study that has been
done.
So my question is, I presented the scenario, if we have
three or four or five people that just sit down and talk to
General Marshall, that he thought that was pretty good. That
may be one criteria. That is not acceptable. We could probably
save a lot of money by finding the top 100 people, and we would
find our 3 or 4 probably in that top 100.
What is the criteria by which we judge how we are doing? Is
it going to be--one of you mentioned--yes, you, Dr. Carafano,
about the number of people involved in the surge and where they
had come from. And we have heard discussions about Tom Ricks
talks about, well, the people that helped General Petraeus
write the counterterrorism manual were actually not from these
colleges. But that seems like the kind of anecdotal evidence.
What are we going to base our conclusion on about this
school is performing well, whether it does case studies or not,
whether it offers master's degrees or not? How do we judge the
quality of leadership that is coming out of these schools,
which we think makes us safer? Maybe we will start with Dr.
Kohn and go backwards.
Dr. Kohn. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think you can set standards
on the basis of American higher education, and you can do the
accreditation from the Pentagon with oversight from the
Congress. As to the quality of the faculty, as to the relevance
of the curriculum to whatever level of education is
appropriate, pre-commissioning, intermediate, senior service
school, or general officer and admiral level, and you can
investigate what you think is needed, and you can discuss this
at great length I think with senior officers and retired
officers.
Anecdotal evidence I think is useful--I say this as a
historian--when it is ubiquitous and consistent over time.
Something is usually there. And in my case, it is talking to
faculty members at these schools for 30-plus years, sending
graduate students to teach there, accepting graduate students
from the academies, lecturing in the last 15 years probably
five or six dozen times at most war college.
Dr. Snyder. Well, I will interrupt you there. Didn't you
say over the last 30 years, but there was a dramatic change, we
think, 20 years ago, and then we have had changes, we think,
over the last 8 years since September 11th.
I mean, so when you mention experience, I want to know what
we base our judgment on that the officers that are going to
Iraq and Afghanistan today at the highest levels of leadership,
that they--how do we judge whether they--it is not on whether
they have a good master's degree program. I mean, where did
General Grant rank in his leadership class?
Dr. Kohn. Well, in my judgment, the strategic failures of
the United States in both Iraq and in Afghanistan seem to me to
be indicative, and in the first Gulf War. I don't want to name
names here. I don't think that would be useful.
But the United States has not succeeded strategically in
much of its military operations and its wars at the military
level in the last 30 years. When I think of General Petraeus,
one of my graduate students was picked off by him.
He indeed cherry-picked the very best minds that he knew,
since he had been the commander at Leavenworth, and he is
attuned to these officers with Ph.Ds. He likes to run with
them. He knows, and he knew how to find these people, but he
had to draw them from all over the place.
And so I think that it may be unfair and it may be a very
gross measure, but if you look at American military success
from the strategic level since the beginning of the Vietnam
War, there are questions to be raised.
Dr. Snyder. That is right. Well, I will let the rest of you
comment here.
Dr. Carafano. I am going to make three points.
The first point I would make is I think what Dick and Sandy
both said is exactly right. I mean, we can tell you what a good
education is because we have got lots of experience at what
good professional graduate level education is in this country.
The war colleges don't meet that standard. And if you want to
say--that is the standard you would use, is you would look at
the breadth of what other professionals are capable of doing in
terms of graduate level education.
And again, my argument for why you would push this earlier
is you can find lots of people between the ages of 25 and 35
who are capable of the most sophisticated level of intellectual
activity possible, and they go through graduate programs and do
that all the time. So the measure of what is a good graduate
level education, regardless of the content, I think Dick and
Sandy are right. You use the state of the art that we have now.
In terms of how do I measure the competency of the
graduate, well; this is a problem that we simply can't solve
now because we have very poor predictors of cognitive
development and future capabilities. It just doesn't work.
Part of the reason why I think the problem that we got into
at the end of the Gulf War and the post-Gulf period is--it is
bigger than PME, is if you actually look at the military
professional promotion system, basically what you had is, for
30 years, ``like promoted like,'' right? I promoted the people
that looked like me, sounded like me, acted like me.
And that was fine, because you were in a very predictable
operational environment. You know, it was Fulda Gap today. It
is Fulda Gap tomorrow.
But the problem is the gene pool, if you will. The
leadership pool was very, very good in a very, very narrow
margin, and so we get to the post-Cold War, and we are all over
the place, in different requirements, different strategic
environments, and the pool is just not wide enough. There are a
few outliers, like Dave Petraeus. But generally, we didn't have
an officer corps like we did at the beginning of World War II
that had a vast breadth and depth of experience and knowledge
and skill sets to apply to these different strategic settings.
And I think it is a fool's errand to say, ``Tell me how I
am going to evaluate the quality of my graduates,'' because
right now, history is the only thing that is going to tell you
whether you have good graduates or not, when it presents
itself, and then you would have to deal with those challenges.
But this would lead to a third point I would make----
Dr. Snyder. I have got to interrupt you when you say it is
a fool's errand, but you just gave an example, or you did,
where General Petraeus found those people, found people that he
thought were top-notch, so that is not a fool's errand. You
just said he was successful at doing that.
Dr. Carafano. He did that, but the system didn't do that
for him, right? He had to go out and find them.
Dr. Snyder. Well, but my question wasn't how is the system
doing. I was asking how do we judge it, and you just gave me an
example. You got a top-notch guy who looked for top-notch
people, but you are saying we can't set up a system to do that,
apparently. It is a fool's errand.
Dr. Carafano. But 10 years ago, Dave Petraeus may not have
come to your mind as the obvious four-star that was going to
pull us out in Iraq. I mean, people would say he is a great
officer. He is really bright, but he doesn't kind of look like
the rest of us.
I mean, this is just not in the professional military
field. I mean, you can look at the sport field, and you have
got all these athletes. They have all similar attributes and
everything. Why is one--other than steroids--why is one an
incredible deliverer and the other guy not?
And there are cognitive things going on in the brain. Why
do you have a 60 percent drop-out rate at SEAL school when all
the guys and women--or I guess it is just guys--all the guys go
in, and they can all run 2 miles in 30 seconds flat. Well,
there is something going on in the brain that we just don't
quite understand, and so we have to kind of go back to the old
tried-and-true model is we will know great leaders when we see
them, right, because they will perform and they will achieve
great results.
And that is why my argument is put as many bets on the
table as you can. Have as many officers you can who have skills
and knowledge and various attributes, and you will have a
deeper pool to draw from when the crisis arrives.
But I did want to get to this point, which is not in my
testimony and which I do think is important, is 99 percent of
what we do is--what we do here is we focus on when you get
educated, what is in the curriculum. What we don't talk about
is the incredible developments that are going on in
neuroscience and social sciences in terms of understanding
cognitive ability and evaluating human performance and the
potential for human performance. And we are not quite at yet
where we can say, after somebody takes the test, ``Well, that
is the next Dave Petraeus,'' but we are making enormous
advances.
Well, if you actually look at the traditional education
models in this country, when we learn something in the sciences
of how brains work and how to educate people, by the time that
transport over into the actual process of educating, it can
take years, and decades, in some cases, and it winds up going
through lots of political filters before--it doesn't get
applied right.
So we should think seriously, and this committee should
think seriously about how do we track the cutting-edge
developments in neuroscience and social sciences in
understanding cognitive ability and our ability to learn, and
the ability to judge human performance, and how do we make sure
we capture those lessons and get them into the system as soon
as possible, in the most efficacious manner as possible, rather
than waiting for them to kind of fall out over 20 or 30 years
later.
Dr. Snyder. I am going to make a comment and then go to
you, Dr. Cochran.
About 10 years ago or so, I was talking with a school
superintendent. I am sure he is retired by now. He struck me as
being a very wise man. He said that after, like--he had been
doing it for 40 years. He said the hardest job for him that he
still wasn't any good at was taking those new college graduates
and figuring out which one he was going to hire that would turn
out to be the best teacher. He said he just still struggled
with that and was not right as often as he would have liked.
Dr. Cochran.
Dr. Cochran. Sir, the problem about going further in the
line, you get all these times to kind of think and structure
your argument, then somebody says something and you forget what
you were going to say.
I had two points. I think, one, I speak this as a
historian. And I think this is a subjective measure. You just
have to trust your instincts, or if it is gray beards or if it
is somebody, get together some people who are just really
intelligent, really grasp, you can measure how well we are
doing, how well the system in it. As you were saying with the
school superintendent, it defies an objective judgment. And I
am comfortable with that, but I am a historian.
The second point, I think the standard I would look for is
what I would call mental agility in your profession, and this
is what I think the PME system does a wonderful job at doing,
bringing people in. And think of what other profession brings
people in at after 4 or 5 years and gives them a chance to
think about what they have done, 10 years, then 15 years and 20
years. And the unfortunate thing is then you max out at 25
years.
This is a marvelous system when you have a chance to
examine your profession, whether it is at the tactical level,
where you put your weapons, or at the higher level, whether you
view the diplomatic or the economic quiver or thing that you
could use to solve that problem. And what comes out of that
experience is the ability to change your mind, to say, ``Wow, I
have been thinking about this, and I have got this wrong,'' and
in the environment also with your contemporaries to share that
in a non-threat experience.
And that is an agility of mind and a willingness to
rethink. That is what I would look for in a subjective manner,
does the system produce people that have that.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Smith.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. I used to think about this question, and
I would say, ``Well, okay, what are we trying to do, the War
College?'' And my conclusion the most simple way is I want to
have wise decision-makers. I want to impart wisdom.
But I kept going back to your question about how do you
measure this. How do I know? And toward the end of my
testimony--I don't know if you have got my written testimony,
but I lay out a chart, like the second to last page, or second
or maybe the third page before the end of my testimony.
Dr. Snyder. It is your chart about how to analyze a
situation? Yes.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Yes. What we do at the War College is,
twice a year, we have in-depth oral exams. And what we do is we
give the students a hypothetical scenario, crisis. And what we
are looking for, not that they know the answers to those
questions, but that they can raise those questions. What were
the kind of questions they would need to know as a commander to
have a strategic grasp of the problem they are confronting.
We want to know, do they think, in some disciplined,
structured way, about everything they would need to know and to
resist the impulse to act first, ask later.
As I look at it, I think we can actually tell, in the
students' response to this type of hypothetical question, are
they prepared or not. Now, in all honesty, and I raise this
issue in my testimony, I was taken aback when I read Paul
Yingling's article about the failure of generalship.
And even at a more deep level as a civilian, having the
opportunity to sit in military campaign planning classes at the
War College and really come to respect the discipline in
planning that Army--let's say the Army or the Marine Corps
learned in terms of what does military campaign planning mean,
it is a disciplined structure--courses of actions, branches,
and sequels. It prepares you for both challenging your
assumptions and acting on new realities.
When I hear students who came back in that period 2005,
2006, and even the run-up to the war, I didn't see that basic
level of campaign planning, military planning taking place. And
as I said in my testimony, as far as I know, I certainly know
that nobody resigned over this issue, but I am not aware of a
great movement of military officers saying this is not
adequate.
That has led me to conclude that, while we offer a
wonderful elective that really takes a student and makes them
struggle with this issue of what is a professional
responsibility of a military officer. We read ``Soldier and
State'' by Huntington, and we read that book almost page by
page together.
And it puts the students--and it put me--I took the class--
it put me in a vice that I couldn't get out of. I couldn't have
an easy answer of what I would do. And it makes you struggle
with that question of how do you resist political pressure to
act, and how do you learn the proper response. Dick Kohn has
gone into this much more than I have in terms of aspects of
proper response.
But I have to say those two issues, discipline of thought
and analysis in terms of the questions we ask in orals, and
then confronting head-on your capability of performing your
responsibilities professionally as an officer--and I would add
this is true for State, as well--and giving advice when it is
asked for.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman, we have gotten kind of
lackadaisical on our clock here, but we are dealing with
college professors, so we let them go. No, it just seems like
the conversation needs to go on.
So, Mr. Wittman for as much time as you need.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, it seems like as we look at these existing
military education initiatives, we see in some instances where
the service branch chiefs place a lot of attention and
resources there, like the Marine Corps University, and those
places really prosper. But then, it seems like you see others
where the senior military officer maybe doesn't quite have that
in his sights, or it is not there at that level of emphasis.
And it seems that those kind of are out there adrift a
little bit, and it seems like to me, for our senior War
Colleges, if they are not seen as centers for intellectual
thought by the senior military officer within that service
branch, it seems like to me that that is an awful, awful waste.
Is there something that Congress can do, you think, to
elevate that whole effort to make sure that it is keenly in the
sights and at the highest level of priority for our service
branch chiefs? And I will go down the panel and ask your
thoughts on that.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Well, again, as I mentioned before, it
is particularly a problem for us because we are joint, and we
are orphaned, often. Our fate depends on the interest of the
chairman solely. We don't have a service responding to us.
But in more specific to you, there is nothing more powerful
to a chief or the chairman than to have a Congressman ask him
that question. Asking about their interest in education and
their perception of the role of education is a powerful signal
to them to be attentive.
Dr. Cochran. Sir, I served for two years as the Horner
Chair at Marine Corps University, and my boss at that time was
a one-star by the name of Jim Conway, who several years later
we now know as the commandant. And actually, what I keep in the
back of my mind, I think if there is a service that does seem
to value education more in the production, it is the Marine
Corps.
And I asked myself why, and I think I learned that while I
was there. It is just a small service. Everybody knows
everybody. And they have that ability to turn quickly on a
dime. And I have often held out the Marine Corps University as
a model for what other services could do.
I think, along with my colleague here, what could Congress
do is, as a service chief that comes through, is ask him or her
where did you go to senior service school, or what did you do.
And there is a caveat here, too, I would offer, and there I
think I will be in the minority.
I think fellowships are fine. Sending somebody off for a
year at Georgetown or Harvard or something like that, but they
miss that interchange with their fellow students, particularly
at a place like the National War College, where you have one
quarter, one quarter, one quarter--and one quarter are
civilians.
So I am not an advocate of sending somebody off for a
fellowship. I think they ought to go to a War College. And ask
that question.
Dr. Carafano. This is easy. One, you have to legislate that
the service school belongs to the chief or the commandant or
the chairman, period. So the Army delegating the Army War
College Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), that is a
travesty. So I would legislate that out. It is your college.
You have to keep it.
The other point Sandy already made. It is ridiculous to
have commandants rotating through the colleges and then
thinking that they are going to go on to some--this is just
some stop on their way to their next career. I mean, if they
don't serve between 5 and 10 years, I mean, it is ridiculous.
So I would mandate that the term of service be somewhere
between 5 and 10 years. I think it needs to be better named,
``gravestone'' promotion, is the right answer. And I would
legislate that, by law, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) or
the Commandant or the Chairman has to run their war college or
their college, period.
Dr. Kohn. Mr. Wittman, I would agree with that, but I would
also look to the model of the great research universities of
this country. And I would mix teaching and research. The
faculties have to do both teaching and research, and these
faculties need to be consolidated. Why we have a separate
faculty at the National War College and ICAF is beyond my
comprehension other than by tradition. The same goes for Air
University.
And I would put the think tanks of the services at those
colleges, like the Army has Strategic Studies Institute (SSI)
at Carlisle, like the joint staff has Institute for National
Strategic Studies (INSS) at NDU, but I would then also
encourage--and perhaps you can do this with appropriations. You
are not funding think tanks at a distance elsewhere in the
armed services--encourage the service staffs, the COCOMs, the
combatant commanders and the joint staff to use these
institutions as centers for research and thinking. And by
having the faculty involved in research, insisting that the
faculty does research, because the best faculty in this country
is doing research, even at some liberal arts colleges.
And I think if you create that kind of model, then there
would be ownership and there would be buy-in. That would be my
recommendation.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Carafano, I understand you have a flight
date. We will miss you. Thank you for being here. We don't want
you to miss your flight. Thank you for being here.
Dr. Carafano. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.
Dr. Snyder. And I will tell the other folks, too, but you
should feel free to submit any written materials, Dr. Carafano,
you want to.
Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to just turn to the inter-agency piece for a second.
And I think Dr. Cochran, or maybe Dr. Carafano, talking about
having a broader net of trying to bring in more individuals, be
they civilian, be they people in the Reserve, what have you,
who could make a greater contribution if encouraged at
different levels to participate in a different way.
I know that we have--when we started talking about inter-
agency a few years ago, and it was clear that State Department
didn't have a deep bench, they weren't able to bring people to
seminars, it was really only the military that could
participate in their activities, same with USAID and others.
And what would you like to share with us about--is there
something? You talked about a National War College. I guess I
would call it a National Security University, something like
that, that would be focused not just on people who need command
and control skills in the services, but also in homeland
security, in conflict resolution, whatever that is that they
are thrust into a situation, as our military has been in Iraq
and Afghanistan, without the diplomatic skills, without the
ability to do some of that work, and maybe even whether it is
Agriculture (Ag) or finance or whatever.
Is that a need, to try and do that? And it is not
replacing, certainly, the military academies, but we don't
really have that. And it has always been of interest to me that
we probably sort of isolate those people, as you have
mentioned, who choose the military as opposed to other walks of
life that could also contribute that, but they are somehow--
they are not anti-military. It is just not where they would go,
and so they would need this broader net to be caught in to be
part of the debate, the discussions.
How do we do that? I mean, is that something we should be
doing? And are we doing it already and we just don't quite see
where it is?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Well, it is a great question, and there
are a couple of things just to note about it.
Again, as I said before, this was the original idea in
1946. State should have had its own college, and they couldn't
get the money for it. And that responds to what you are saying.
They couldn't get the money then, and they can't get the money
now.
I would throw it back to you, all of you, in that this
issue of funding civilian activities in international security
is a challenge for the Congress, because it involves voting for
appropriations for foreign aid in the State Department. And
that is the first issue.
The other issue is the culture at State. The Foreign
Service generally has an approach to education that they are
highly qualified. They take the Foreign Service test. And once
they pass, that is it. They don't need to get an advanced
degree. They don't need to have any further education. They
come in highly educated.
I have to say, when students come to the War College, they
do say, ``Hey, we should actually--this is a good experience.''
And so part of the proposal I am suggesting for this
subcommittee to consider, the Foreign Service Institute is an
institution. It primarily is focused on language training and
small, short courses. It is a large, physical place. They, I
think, could transform themselves into an intermediate school.
In other words, at the 10-year level, you could have that
beginning engagement with the inter-agency there at the Foreign
Service Institute.
And then, my suggestion is is that you have a College of
Diplomacy and Development. There is space available on our
campus for that kind of activity. And it wouldn't just be an
educational function in and of itself, but it would provide the
foundation of knowledge that we really don't have in the State
Department or USAID to remember things.
Mrs. Davis. Yes. Maybe going back to not necessarily 10 or
15 years out, I mean, should there be civilian academies that--
--
Dr. Breslin-Smith. For diplomats, you mean at the
undergraduate level?
Mrs. Davis. Not necessarily for diplomats. I mean, one of
the things that is so compelling in terms of young people that
choose to go into the military academies is that they are
nominated by a member of Congress. I mean, there is a different
level. Should there be something like that for----
Dr. Breslin-Smith. It is a good question.
Mrs. Davis. So--as well who----
Dr. Breslin-Smith. What you are reflecting is the military
always has this notion they would represent society, and you
could be from a farm or from a city and get an appointment to
the academy and come. The tradition of the State Department was
it was the eastern establishment elite initially, all Harvard
graduates, and they were a very small group of people.
Over time, obviously there has been an expansion in the
Foreign Service. I think you raise a good question.
Traditionally, State folks go to college, do well, take the
Foreign Service exam and then go in, and that is it. I think it
is a legitimate question to say other countries have academies
in a broader national security area, in the area of diplomacy.
I am involved in some reform efforts for State right now in
trying to work with Foreign Service officers, either retired or
current, to say what can we do to revitalize that profession.
It is a good question.
Dr. Cochran. Three quick comments. We are dealing with
trying to change a culture, as I am sure that--I mean, the
military has had this culture of education is considered part
of your career, and then they build in the float so that you
can peel people off for six months or a year. That is going to
take a sea change, a culture change for the other agencies to
accept that. It will take time.
Being older, I get impatient. Don't tell me why you can't
do something. Tell me how you are going to do it. So I have
heard the reasons why agencies cannot peel people off for six
months.
Or if you are really good, or if you are tasked to send
somebody, are you going to send your really key guy or key gal,
or are you going to send some kind of person that you can live
without? And you know what normally happens. To me, that is
unacceptable.
I find when I deal with the inter-agency concept, the issue
there is we don't have a Chief of Staff of the Army or the Air
Force. We don't have a Chief of Staff of the inter-agency that
we can go to and say, ``You have got to make this work.'' And I
think you need to address that.
And again, I think persistence on the part of Congress is
so key here, because it is going to take--this is a sea change.
This is a cultural change that has simply got to happen.
The last point I would make is I wouldn't waste my time at
the entry ROTC or that kind of young person level. I think the
important thing is at the mid-level and at the senior-level,
that there is a mix of people from the other agencies, and that
is where I would concentrate.
We already have a pretty good system at the senior level
war colleges, particularly the National Defense University,
where one-quarter of their student body are real civilians. It
is lesser when you get to the service school, but that has
already been established. You are trying very hard at the mid-
level to do it, but boy, it is nickel and dime.
But I would concentrate on that area. And it is so
essential, so essential. You put your finger right on it, in my
mind.
Dr. Kohn. I would agree with Sandy, Mrs. Davis. I think
that to have academies would be, again, for the government to
duplicate institutions that we may have in society that are of
very high quality.
But that said, we do have a terrible recruiting problem at
the civil service of getting the best youngsters. I have so
many students who want to do public service, who want to have
careers in government, that don't find a way to get in, and it
is really very difficult.
I would distinguish the inter-agency process as a body of
knowledge to be taught how it works, what it does, with the
education of people for inter-agency cooperation and working
together. I think that the military leads the government in
professional education past the undergraduate level, and
probably leads society among professions.
You have this infrastructure, this large infrastructure in
the military. I would make use of it, and make use of it by
adding large numbers of civilians, again the best from other
agencies, and that probably can be done on a funding basis and
an encouragement basis. It is a cabinet-level issue for any
administration. It requires a push from the top and funding
from this side of the Potomac.
The problem is stovepipes. To add academies or even post-
graduate institutions to the civilian agencies, it seems to me,
would just perpetuate the stovepiping.
But that said, I think it has to be a cultural change
within the military, also, because up until war college, most
military officers are focused on working with other military
officers first in their service, then in the other services,
with allied military services, and there is very little
tradition of cooperative activity in the history of American
foreign operations in other countries between military and
civilian.
I once asked a very senior British officer if--retired--if
in his career as a young officer, he would ever take orders
from a foreign service officer or a civilian in his government.
He said, ``Well of course. We do that all the time at the mid-
levels.''
And I thought to myself, ``Would an American officer, a
major, a lieutenant colonel, learn to take orders from a
civilian and feel comfortable with that? Would his or her
commanders, all the way up to the four-star level, be
comfortable with that?'' The answer is really, no. And so I
think there is a cultural change that has to take place on both
sides.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Except I just have to say that is,
though, the experiment in this is what is happening in the PRTs
now. At the captain, major, and lieutenant colonel level, they
are coming to us with that experience and struggling with this
question.
Dr. Kohn. I would also----
Mrs. Davis. And they are great ones to capture a lot of
that experience.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. You bet.
Mrs. Davis. I mean, I think we can build some things around
that.
Dr. Kohn. I think that General Caldwell at Leavenworth,
where I visited two months ago, is actually addressing this
problem by inviting civilian agencies. I think he is even
offering to send Army officers in exchange to get much more
civilian attendance at the Command and General Staff College
and the other courses at the Combined Arms Center.
And so there may be the kernel of an idea and a process
there. It seemed very promising.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. And I would say there are lessons-
learned materials there on the PRT experience is really worth
reading. It is very revealing.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. I have one final question, and we will see if
Mr. Wittman or Mrs. Davis have anything more.
If you could institute three or four or five changes, given
the institutions we have today the way they are, to increase
the quality of the faculty, what would those things be?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. For the military faculty, again, what we
have all said I think is have the services take education more
seriously so their placement is effective. The same thing is
true for agencies. I would actually work with State, AID,
Treasury, the other people we get faculty from earlier in their
careers saying--highlight when you are older, would you want to
come to War College and teach, think about that now. So I would
recruit younger.
And with civilian faculty, we need to have more
opportunities to do research, to have some time off. I like the
idea of us going back and forth between the executive branch
and coming back to the War College, so we have practitioners
who work at OSD or work at State for a while and come back. So
more flexibility with our civilian faculty.
We have increased our civilian faculty a lot since the era
of the Skelton Commission, so I don't really have any
complaints about it, but I think we need more flexibility.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Cochran.
Dr. Cochran. Two things, sir.
First of all, I would urge you all to re-examine the notion
of tenure and under----
Dr. Snyder [continuing]. On your statement----
Dr. Cochran [continuing]. Mr. Skelton. And I was a Title X
import. I came in under his initial things, and I ran the
tenure gap, and I got there and it was marvelous. And it is, as
I understand, at all PME institutions, tenure is no longer
valid.
And I honestly feel that that is a worthy goal. I would
also pursue within that the notion of tenure for military
faculty themselves while they are still on active duty, similar
to what they do at the service academy. I would have to think
this through a little bit more, but that sparks me. I mean, you
need to get good people that are good at what they do and stay
there, and not with the threat of some kind, somebody coming in
and changing the curriculum.
The second thing, I would seriously address this notion of
somehow coming up with a differentiation between uniform
faculty and civilian faculty. And I am not so sure what the
answer is, but it does work at the inner--within a department,
because each specialty has something they are really good at,
and they don't cross over. If you are an Air Force professor,
you are pretty good at flying an airplane. If you are a
civilian professor, you are pretty good at researching
something.
What do I want to do? Do I want to learn to fly that
airplane to get ahead and--, so I think someone needs to really
think that one through, and I think that would improve the
quality of the faculty.
And the last thing here, I differ with my colleague, Dick
Kohn. Teaching at a PME institution is all about teaching. It
really is. And if you want to go research and write, you are in
the wrong place. You really are. You have got to go there as a
teacher. And what I think of in my own experience with higher
education, there are certain colleges, as opposed to
universities, where the teaching experience is the one that is
valued. That is most important. And I think that needs to be
emphasized.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Kohn.
Dr. Kohn. Well, I won't take the bait from my friend Sandy,
but the history of American higher education contradicts what
he says.
I would make five points, Mr. Chairman. First, I would have
the committee and the Congress mandate certain conditions,
backgrounds, and tenures for the leadership of these
institutions so that they have the experience of being on the
faculty, understanding faculty, and will take on as their
responsibility the making certain of having the highest quality
faculty in their institutions.
Now, the second thing I would do is I would look at the
personnel systems of the armed services to make sure that they
are encouraging their best officers to get higher education in
the civilian world and to become faculty members. One of the
great points that the Skelton Report made was that many very
senior and very successful leaders in World War II had served
on the faculties of War Colleges and the staff colleges.
The third thing, and I don't know how this could be done
from the Congress, but the recruiting of civilian faculty needs
some kind of oversight, because it seems to me that the
civilian faculty often--if you have a Ph.D., you have a Ph.D.
And Ph.D.s are differing in quality and substance across
American higher education just as law degrees are, medical
degrees and others are.
And so, I think that the service schools are isolated from
American academe. They don't have the personal contacts in the
best training institutions. Because I had experience in the
Department of Defense and elsewhere and was known to the Air
Force, they would send very good students, and to the Army,
very good students to me for graduate training.
But you can get great graduate training at many other
places, and I think they are disconnected there.
A fourth thing I would do is I would prohibit--I don't know
how to do this, either--prohibit the number of retired officers
who are hired onto these faculties, sometimes with quite good
credentials, but oftentimes because of the compatibility
factor. He or she understands us, knows the culture, won't make
waves, won't rock the boat, et cetera, et cetera. There is a
bit of sinecurism going on here, at some schools more than at
others, and sometimes almost none at some schools.
And then, last of all, I heartily endorse the issue of
tenure. I addressed that in my written testimony to say that
tenure is what creates outstanding faculties because it forces
an up-or-out decision on the people after a period of probation
in which they have to demonstrate not only their accomplishment
and their worth, but their promise for the future as faculty
members.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman, anything further.
Mr. Wittman. All done.
Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Can I just ask, are very many denied tenure?
Dr. Cochran. When I was at the Air War College, yes, there
were. I would say at that time, and this was early 1990s, we
actually had--it was 50 percent were denied tenure. And some
people left because of that.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. And I don't agree with that, with the
tenure question. I support it at a normal university. I like
the idea, at National at least, of having this vitality of
bringing professionals in for a while, having a retired foreign
service officer or somebody from cabinet level who is with us
for a while, because we are so focused on Washington decision-
making, that is the vitality of people coming together.
Dr. Kohn. Then your tenure track only goes for your
academic side, not for your special----
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Yes. We have it almost essentially--we
have three-year renewable contracts. We have people who have
been on our faculty for a long time. It kind of works out.
Mrs. Davis. Obviously started something here. I didn't mean
to do that.
Dr. Cochran. Well, in my observation of some of these
schools, the lack of tenure in process is no deterrent to
keeping people on for lifetime appointments, because, ``Oh,
well, we will just continue so-and-so on for another,'' or, ``I
don't want to go through the problem of letting them go.''
You can have a dual-track faculty, professors of the
practice, as we have in some professional schools, and then
tenured academic people. So I think that can work.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you all for being here. I think our
question today, we hit mostly broad themes of this. All of your
written statements, I think had a wealth of some very specific
things for us to look at, and we will. I think this is a good
kick-off for us, and I appreciate you all being here.
Let me repeat very formally, if you have anything written,
modifications, addendums you want to submit, we will make it
part of our record and deliberations here and share it with the
other members on the subcommittee. And we are certainly going
to feel free to grab you again should we have other questions.
Thank you all for being here. We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:35 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
May 20, 2009
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?
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
May 20, 2009
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER
Dr. Snyder. 1. What should be the focus in our study? What
questions should we ask the commandants and deans of the various
schools? What should we ask the combatant commanders? What should we
ask the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman? What should we ask the
secretaries of the Services and their uniformed heads?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. At heart, the key question for the study and
indeed for our military leadership is simple: how important to this
nation is professional military education? If the military is to
overcome the perennial ``anti-intellectual'' charge against its
officers, will the leadership, both civilian and uniformed, embrace and
support PME? Will serious attention be paid to student selection,
military faculty assignment and leadership recruitment? I would ask the
Secretary, the Chairman, the Service Secretaries and the Chiefs and
Combatant Commanders what they want in our war colleges, what they want
from the National War College. I would ask what expect from graduates
of the colleges--what skills, depth of understanding, regional
preparation. Do they want our graduates to understand the distinct
bureaucratic and service cultures?
Dr. Snyder. 2. What should be the role of ethical discussions and
education in PME beyond ``just war'' theory?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. On ethics education. Over my 12 years at the War
College, I saw frequent requirements for ethics or leadership
education. When offered suggestions for these topics, we received vague
and general topics that did not address the tough questions that
officers face when forced to choose between career and professional
military advice. If an officer has observed over time that certain
types of individuals are promoted for ``going along'' then no amount of
ethics training will overcome that lesson. So my first challenge for
each Service is to evaluate the promotion criteria, does it include the
naysayers, the questioners? Are officers who respond to ``those below
as well as those above'' promoted?
I did observe one type of course that provided a unique opportunity
for officers to consider their professional responsibilities. The
National War College has an elective on civil-military relations which
requires a slow and most careful analysis of Huntington's The Solider
and the State. This course exposes the students personally to the
tension between career ambition and professional responsibility--with
slowly increasing pressure and logical discipline. No student can shirk
or dismiss Huntington's profound questions. I would advocate this
approach at all the War Colleges.
Dr. Snyder. 3. What specifically attracts top notch civilian
academics to faculty, particularly if the programs are not accredited
for master's degrees?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. The type of civilian academic we wanted at the
War College was not the typical graduate school professor. We found
that those attracted to this school came because it is a policy
professional school, not an academic research institution. We do best
with a mix of practitioners, former Ambassadors, governmental
officials, Congressional staff, as well as civilians with specific
academic specializations. The National War College attracted ``top
notch'' civilians--from Harvard, Yale, Princeton--even before we went
to the master's degree. I believe the War College needs thoughtful
``policy academics'' who are comfortable in a mixed professional
environment, and who want to teach.
Dr. Snyder. 4. Is the only way to achieve the Skelton Panel's
recommended joint (and now increasingly interagency) acculturation
through long (at least 10 months) in-residence education?
a. Are the faculty and student mixes dictated for the various
institutions still appropriate? If so, was it appropriate for Congress
to allow the Service senior schools to award JMPE II credite (NDAA
FY2005) despite their lower ratios and lack of a requirement to send
any graduate to joint assignments? Do you see unintended consequences
to that?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. I do believe that the National War College
program, which is interagency and joint BY INTENTION, must be in
residence. It is the very interaction of the students and the faculty,
the ongoing contact that brings together diverse bureaucratic cultures
that Eisenhower, Arnold, Marshall and Forestall had in mind when they
established the College. This is not a training program that can be
done through distributed computer based learning, although that can be
useful in other settings. This is a policy based educational experience
that prepares officers for the real life interagency and inter-service
tensions they will face on graduation.
Dr. Snyder. 5. What constitutes rigor in an educational program?
Does this require letter grades? Does this require written exams? Does
this require the writing of research or analytical papers, and if so,
of what length? Does this require increased contact time and less
``white space''?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. On the question of Rigor. I have observed that
``letter grade'' standard results in overall student A-/B+ grades. I
would have you evaluate the experience at ICAF in this regard. I do
believe that the Colleges need to work with students on their writing
quality, but I am not convinced that writing a research paper is a
definitive evaluation technique. To me, the most important evaluative
measure, either in oral examination or in written examination, is the
challenge of scenario analysis. As I mentioned in my testimony, I
believe that National War College can demonstrate rigor and superior
preparation of its students, through the use of strategic analysis
along the lines of the framework series of questions that various
professors have developed over the years. If a student can analyze the
components of a given scenario, its strategic implications, and
thoroughly respond to the in depth questions prompted by the discipline
of the framework, we can assess the rigor of the student's thought and
preparation.
Dr. Snyder. 6. Should performance at PME matter for onward
assignments? Does which school one attends matter for later
assignments?
a. Does the requirement that the National Defense University send
50% (plus one) graduates to joint assignments and the Service senior
schools have no such requirement matter even though now all award JPME
II credit (since 2005)?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. On the issue of onward assignments and student
performance. It would be useful to track the career paths of DG
graduates from the Colleges, versus the career paths of students with
strong ``sponsors'' or mentors. The dynamic of the sponsor also impacts
the selection of senior college. Logically, the Joint Staff and the
Services should send students to ICAF for in depth economic/
acquisition/industrial analysis, to National for strategy, and to the
Service colleges for senior service specific education. I do not
understand how the Service Colleges came to award JMPE II credit.
Dr. Snyder. 7. How does one measure the quality of the people in
the PME environment?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. To measure the quality of the people in the PME
environment, see my answer to #5. The purpose of the National War
College is to educate officers in the field of strategy, in depth
critical analysis. As our first Commandant mused, the measure of the
College's success is our ability to make the student's ``ponder.'' As a
professor, I encouraged students to take advantage of a year when they
can try on other opinions, experiment with other views, dive into the
study bureaucratic and international cultures, develop critical
thinking skills.
Dr. Snyder. 8. Does gender and ethnic diversity matter in the
assignment of senior leaders and the search for qualified faculty? How
should PME institutions increase the diversity of their leadership and
faculty?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Years ago, I served on the diversity panel for
the National Defense University. The panel recommended a number of
steps to increase racial and gender diversity, beginning with earlier
recruitment of military officers for advanced degrees and eventual
assignment to NDU. We suggested that the services consider that
advanced students at the command and staff level schools be contacted
for possible future assignment to the War College. But more than gender
or racial diversity, the military needs to foster more respect for
officer advanced education and teaching.
Dr. Snyder. 9. How should PME commanders, commandants, and
presidents be chosen? What background(s) should the Chairman and
uniformed heads of the Services be looking for when they nominate
individuals for these positions? Should the focus be on operational
leadership or academic background?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. As obvious as this may sound, a key criterion
for selection for PME commandants must be an officer's intellectual
engagement with senior officer education. While it would be useful for
an officer to have had past academic or administrative experience in
higher education, I believe that the key factor in success is a passion
for the mission of the National War College, and a desire to teach.
(One would not expect an Air Force fighter squadron to be commanded by
officer who does not fly. Why do we not aspire to have a senior service
school led by an officer engaged in the educational mission of the
school?)
To assist in the Commandant Selection process, I recommend that the
National War College revive its past advisory board, formally called
the Board of Consultants. This Board could be active in identifying
appropriate candidates and could do the initial screening interviews
before recommending a slate to the Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. 10. How should PME institutions attract top-tier
faculty away from the Harvards and Stanfords of the academic world?
What are the elements that would attract the highest quality of
faculty--tenure, copyright, resources, pay, ability to keep their
government retirements, research and administrative assistance?
a. Please define academic freedom in general and discuss what its
role should be in a PME setting.
Dr. Breslin-Smith. Again, my view is that the National War College
is not designed to be a Research University. I believe the ``top tier''
faculty members are attracted to the War College because of their
access to and impact on the future leaders of our country, the setting
of the College in Washington and their proximity to the policy
community. As I mentioned above, we have had outstanding civilian
faculty over the years without tenure, copyright, and research
assistance. That is not to say that these are not important factors to
keep the MIX of faculty that is so important. I support the current
system of a few ``tenured'' faculty, more research support for those
who want to do research, a more flexible sabbatical program to allow
faculty to enter the policy process.
On academic freedom. Aside from DOD rules in article publication,
which did not seem burdensome, there is a larger issue concerning the
atmosphere of academic freedom. When a leader in an academic
institution suggests that certain speakers should not be invited, that
administration policy should not be questioned, that certain schools
focus too much on history and policy criticism, great harm is done to
military officers. In my mind, the goal of senior officer education is
critical analysis and strategic thought . . . to be prepared to answer
the question, ``now what do we do?'' Faculty and students need to be
free to question, to reconsider, to challenge. It is the ultimate gift
of a war college education.
Dr. Snyder. 11. What should be the role of history in PME?
Dr. Breslin-Smith. The role of history. For a nation that spends so
little time considering the past, it is all the more important to
expose its military leadership to both diplomatic and military history,
as well as deeper understanding of the world's political cultures. The
benefit of the American generally positive focus on the future obscures
the weakness of our analysis and strategic thought when we ignore the
practices and experience of the past. The recent past, the after action
analysis of the period leading up to the terrorist attacks and the
subsequent wars must be studied before the complexity of the current
blur of international and domestic issues numbs analysis.
Dr. Snyder. 3. What specifically attracts top notch civilian
academics to faculty, particularly if the programs are not accredited
for master's degree?
Dr. Cochran. In my view, this question misses the point,
particularly the notion that civilian academic are attracted by master
programs. None of the service academies nor community colleges and many
smaller academic colleges--all of which lack master degree programs--
have problems with attracting quality civilian faculty. Rather, the
issue is the lack of mobility for faculty between civilian and military
PME institutions. Once any civilian academic makes a commitment to a
PME faculty situation, few if any can expect to return to the civilian
academic world. There is an inherent mistrust amongst civilian faculty
towards military PME institutions [one of the purposes of the
``visiting professor'' positions at PME schools is to counter this] and
the attitude towards academics who take the PME route are treated as if
they sold their soul to the devil. Acknowledgement of this by PME
officials, as well as members of Congress, would be helpful (see my
response below for further on attraction of civilian faculty).\1\
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\1\ These views represent Dr. Cochran's based upon his PME
experience and do not represent that of the US Army or Department of
Defense.
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Dr. Snyder. 5. What constitutes rigor in an educational program?
Does it require letter grades? Does this require written examinations?
Does this require the writing of research and analytical papers, and,
if so, what length? Does this require increased contact time and less
``white space''?
Dr. Cochran. As I stated in my oral testimony, rigor in any PME
program will result in the synergy between a qualified civilian and
military faculty teaching in their areas of expertise and a motivated
student body that really wants to learn. From this will flow a rigorous
curriculum. To think that ``rigor'' should drive is putting the cart
before the horse. If the inherent curriculum is weak, a solid faculty
with innovative leadership will fix that--responding to the demands of
a student body.
The type of grade given is irrelevant as very few, if any, PME
schools ``flunk'' students, certainly when compared to civilian
institutions.
Written examinations are only as valuable if a qualified faculty is
prepared to spend as much in the evaluation as the students did in the
study and writing. More valuable are oral examinations that cut across
academic departments--thus being truly integrated--as are conducted by
the National War College faculty. Research papers are only as useful as
the contribution of qualified faculty with requisite expertise who
direct them; all too often ``papers'' at PME institutions are ``check
the block.''
On contact time, my experience has always been less is better, thus
forcing hard decisions on what to and not to teach as opposed to
filling time. The whole notion of ``white space'' is meaningless
outside of PME; indeed it would be embarrassing to explain this to
civilian academics?
Dr. Snyder. 6. Should performance at PME matter for onward
assignments? Does which school one attends matter for later
assignments?
Dr. Cochran. How well students perform at PME should be a requisite
for future assignment. However, the factors such as a 100 percent pass
rate and the lack of weight given to ``academic evaluation reports''
inhibits competition. Such a system would require some innovation in
the personnel system.
With regard to school attendance mattering for specific
assignments, here various PME schools need to coordinate (particularly
across services) on what is the focus of each institution--even create
``centers of excellence'' on inter-service matters such as Army schools
on leadership, Air Force schools on technology, NDU schools on
strategy. Another factor is the elimination of ``waivers'' prior to
assignment that all too often become accredited after assignment.
Dr. Snyder. 9. How should PME commanders, commandants, and
presidents be chosen? What background(s) should the Chairman and
uniformed heads of the Services be looking for when they nominate
individuals for these positions? Should the focus be upon operational
leadership skills or academic backgrounds?
Dr. Cochran. The military ``heads'' of the various PME institutions
should be chosen on the basis of demonstrated leadership in the
expertise and at the level of the applicable school. The more senior
the school, the more essential this leadership category is. S/he should
be assigned to that position for a minimum of three years (five for
staff and war colleges) to plan, execute, and assess the programs,
curriculum and changes. ``Touch and go'' or ``holding pattern''
assignments demean the seriousness of PME. The academic ``dean'' for
each school should be chosen for academic background in field of the
institution and kept in those positions for at least twice that of the
``head'' tenure to ensure overlap. As the ``head'' should be a military
person, the dean should be civilian.
Dr. Snyder. 10. How should PME institutions attract top-tier
civilian faculty away from the Harvards and Stanfords of the academic
world? What are the elements that would attract the highest quality of
faculty--tenure, copyright, resources, pay, ability to keep their
government retirements, research and administrative assistance?
Dr. Cochran. Similar to the first question above, this question
misses the point. Most of the ``elements'' or perks for civilian PME
faculty exceed those of comparable positions on civilian campuses with
the MAJOR EXCEPTION OF TENURE. Matters of pay, funds for research and
travel, access to resources, and assistance, particularly for younger
scholars at prestigious ``Harvards'' and ``Stanfords'' as well as
established scholars in the academic world, simply cannot be matched by
civilian institutions. The issue is not so much ``attraction'' rather
than ``retention.'' Here senior leadership needs to be innovative.
Addressing the failure of PME institutions to implement a system of
Title X tenure as outlined 20 years ago would be a positive step in
that direction, for both younger scholars and established academics.
Dr. Snyder. 10.a. Please define academic freedom in general and
discuss what its role should be in a PME setting.
Dr. Cochran. In my view, it is not so much the definition of
academic freedom in PME as it is abuse in the civilian world--and the
lack of understanding by both military and civilian communities. The
expectation (indeed the obligation) within the military culture to
offer alternative views, particularly in the decision making process,
is strong. A penchant to ``hold on'' to minority positions for long
periods of time works at cross purposes with the orderly conduct of
business is accepted within by most in academia. Helpful here is the
notion that PME is for the military, about the military, and by the
military. If one has a problem with that, then they should avoid
becoming associated with PME.
Dr. Snyder. 11. What is the role of history in PME?
Dr. Cochran. As noted above, the focus of Professional Military
Education is the profession of the military; at its essence, it is
about war--preparation for, conduct of, and assessment after. Hence it
is ``war studies''--past, present and future. In the past decades,
civilian institutions have adopted exceptional war studies programs--an
essential part of which is the study of history, along with that of
political science, economic, behavioral studies, anthropology, and
other established academic disciplines. History is a part of this but
does not dictate or dominate. As war studies is multidisciplinary, the
role of history in PME should be the same. While one cannot quantify
just how much, it should be respectively complimentary.
Dr. Snyder. 1. What should be the focus in our study? What
questions should we ask the commandants and deans of the various
schools? What should we ask the combatant commanders? What should we
ask the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman? What should we ask the
secretaries of the Services and their uniformed heads?
Dr. Carafano. As I stated in my testimony, ``[t]he centerpiece of
the reform discussion should be on senior-level professional military
officer education. The reason for that is simple. The skills,
knowledge, and attributes of strategic leaders are the most important
product of the military's professional development program.'' The war
colleges are the pivotal professional military development experience.
If clear vision for what they do can be established, it is much easier
to work in either direction to identify the other key assignment,
education, and training milestones that support the war college
experience. Likewise, understanding the requirements for officer
professional military education is the backbone for then determining
what needs to be done for enlisted personnel, warrant officers, and
civilian employees.
In questioning senior military and civilian leaders I think it will
be important to force them out of the ``here and now.'' Fundamental
changes in the professional military educations won't solve short-term
problems. Furthermore, these changes will likely influence the
character of the military for many decades. Thus, each should be asked
to envision officer duties; the skills, knowledge and attributes;
education and training requirements; and operational assignments--
thirty years in the future.
Dr. Snyder. 2. What should be the role of ethical discussions and
education in PME beyond ``just war'' theory?
Dr. Carafano. As I stated in my testimony, ``[m]oral and political
issues are part of war, not a separate sphere that military leaders can
ignore. Officers will have to engage in the struggle of ideas against
terrorism and other ideologies that may emerge in the 21st century.
They will have to understand the political dimensions of war and the
complexities of civil-military relations.'' Thus, ethical
considerations must transcend traditional discussions of just war
theory and include topics such as social justice, economics, and the
environment.
In many ways, this curriculum will reflect what is often called a
``classical liberal'' education.
Dr. Snyder. 3. What specifically attracts top notch civilian
academics to faculty, particularly if the programs are not accredited
for master's degrees?
Dr. Carafano. Top notch research facilities and opportunities are
always a powerful draw. Likewise, faculty is attracted by the
opportunity to work with a talented student body. Finally, the
opportunity to work in a truly ``multi-disciplinary'' environment with
a minimum of distractions from administration.
Dr. Snyder. 4. Is the only way to achieve the Skelton Panel's
recommended joint (and now increasingly interagency) acculturation
through long (at least 10 months) in-residence education?
Dr. Carafano. No, but this must be the core component and a
touchstone for the educational experience. The gold standard by which
alternative educational models are measured. I would make the senior
PME experience universal and not tied to assignment or promotion. My
argument here is simple. You can never predict with clear certainty how
officers will respond over the long-term and which will have the
essential skills, knowledge, and attributes necessary for future
conflicts. The more officers through the pipeline the better the odds
you will have the right leaders when you need them. This may not be the
most efficient process, but my guess is we are still decades away from
solid predictors of cognitive performance and there won't be any useful
``metrics'' to determine whether you are producing the right leaders
other than how they perform in over the long-term.
Dr. Snyder. 5. What constitutes rigor in an educational program?
Does this require letter grades? Does this require written exams? Does
this require the writing of research or analytical papers, and if so,
of what length? Does this require increased contact time and less
``white space''?
Dr. Carafano. Rigor comes from developing critical thinking skills.
Probably the most important variable here is the quality of the faculty
rather than the specific requirements and time allocation in the
course. In general, however, I would advocate for more depth-less
breath. As I stated in my testimony, ``Joint Professional Military
Education requirements have become overly prescriptive. They are also
growing. Quality is becoming a victim quantity. The current vogue of
emphasizing ``cultural'' studies is a case in point. Reform proposals
call for everything from Arabic-language training to negotiating skills
to increased engineering and scientific training. These calls ignore
reality. Operational requirements are leaving less, not more, time for
professional education. Likewise, the Pentagon cannot be expected to
foresee exactly which kinds of leaders, language skills, and geographic
or operational orientations will be needed for future missions. The
future is too unpredictable.''
Dr. Snyder. 6. Should performance at PME matter for onward
assignments? Does which school one attends matter for later
assignments?
Dr. Carafano. See answer to question 4.
Dr. Snyder. 7. How does one measure the quality of the staff,
faculty, and students in the PME environment?
Dr. Carafano. See answer to question 4. Metrics are a recipe for
disaster for disaster. Increasing social science is finding that the
over reliance on quantitative measures can actually drive down
performance. Long-term performance is the only adequate measure.
Dr. Snyder. 8. Does gender and ethnic diversity matter in the
assignment of senior leaders and the search for qualified faculty? How
should PME institutions increase the diversity of their leadership and
faculty?
Dr. Carafano. Diversity obviously matters. We live in diverse
world. That is where men and women have to fight. That is the world
they need to understand. There are ways to achieve an appreciation for
diversity without imbedding it the make-up of the students and faculty.
The quality of the faculty is the number one variable in the quality of
the education. That should never be sacrificed. The best means to
ensure a diverse, quality faculty and student body for senior PME is
establish opportunities for career of service to diverse population and
build professional development programs that qualify them to teach and
learn at senior PME institutions.
Dr. Snyder. 9. How should PME commanders, commandants, and
presidents be chosen? What background(s) should the Chairman and
uniformed heads of the Services be looking for when they nominate
individuals for these positions? Should the focus be on operational
leadership or academic background?
Dr. Carafano. They should be chosen by an independent board. They
should serve a term of ten years and have to retire afterwards and
receive post-retirement promotions. The leaders that should be chosen
are the ones best qualified to implement the vision for the institution
regardless of their operational or educational background.
Dr. Snyder. 10. How should PME institutions attract top-tier
civilian faculty? What are the elements that would attract the highest
quality of faculty--tenure, copyright, resources, pay, ability to keep
their government retirements, research and administrative assistance?
Dr. Carafano. See answer to question 3. I think existing practices
for academic freedom in the military education institutions is
adequate.
Dr. Snyder. 11. What should be the role of history in PME?
Dr. Carafano. Critical thinking is the most vital skill. History is
a great instrument for teaching the practice of critical thinking. It
is an essential, but not a sufficient component. Twenty-first century
leaders must be ``multi-disciplinary'' and understand a variety of
methods of analysis to solve modern complex problems.
Dr. Snyder. 1. What should be the focus in our study? What
questions should we ask the commandants and deans of the various
schools? What should we ask the combatant commanders? What should we
ask the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman? What should we ask the
secretaries of the Services and their uniformed heads?
Dr. Kohn. The focus should be on the extent to which the various
schools accomplish their overall mission of education for the waging of
war. Special attention should be paid to the obstacles or impediments
PME faces, ones that could be overcome through different policies,
procedures, and personnel. The mission at the pre-commissioning level
is the education of potential officers and their basic preparation for
company grade service; at the intermediate level, education in the
waging of war and leadership/command at the operational level; and at
the senior level, education in the formulation of strategy and
leadership/command at the division, fleet, and major, unified, and
specified command levels and higher.
Commandants and deans at the various schools (and in ROTC and OCS/
OTS) should be asked what those impediments/obstacles exist to
increasing the quality of their institutions: resources, quality/nature
of the students, quality/nature of the faculty and particularly support
from their leadership (civilian and military). Attempt to differentiate
what might be changed with different policies or behaviors from the
leadership: could chiefs, service secretaries, and OSD do anything
differently to enhance the schools' mission success? Explore with them
the exogenous factors that are more difficult to compensate for: ops
tempo, personnel policies of the services (selection and follow-on
assignment of students in particular); support from COCOMS and
commanders at lower levels; and curricular requirements of the
services, joint staff, and civilian accreditation authorities. (I
suspect that jointness and interagency issues have quite likely come to
crowd out other important subjects in ISS and SSS.) Then see if they
think there is anything in their power that can strengthen their
schools. The differentiation is critical.
Academy deans and superintendents should be asked about the balance
between military training/education and more basic civilian education:
do they give their cadets/midshipmen enough time, and enough
encouragement, to pursue the intellectual experience of college, and
develop both the respect for, interest in, and commitment to lifelong
learning? To what extent do they rely on honor codes to teach
professional ethics, as opposed to specific, targeted issues that they
will face as junior officers? Do the academies (and ROTC) require
enough foreign language fluency to be of value to the military
establishment in the future, enough civics/government/political science
to understand the character of American government and how it differs
from other forms of government, and enough American history to
appreciate the development of the United States's current economy,
society, politics, and role in the world? Ask specifically whether the
amount of science and engineering could be reduced, as vestigial
holdovers from a distant past, in favor of less technical information
that might prepare them for a lifetime of military service. Last,
academy superintendents should be asked to explain why such a large
percentage of their graduates leave the service after their minimum
obligation, and at the ten year mark--and whether, if the chief reasons
lay outside academy walls, whether they might during the four years
better prepare officers to accept the challenges and remain committed
to the profession of arms for lifetime careers. The combatant
commanders should be asked if the graduates of ISS are adequately
prepared to do the campaign planning needed by the command, and the
graduates of SSS to formulate effective military strategy needed by
their commands. Second, ask what in their judgment they could do
personally or institutionally to make PME stronger; would they support
alterations in the personnel policies of the services to improve PME?
Do they think officers are adequately prepared for staff and war
college? Do they think the educational experience is demanding enough?
Do they think it was as demanding as their civilian graduate education,
and if not, why not?
The Secretary of Defense, Chairman, service secretaries, and
service Chiefs could be asked the same set of questions. First, on the
selection of school presidents and commandants, should not prior
experience as a faculty member be required for leadership of a PME
institution? Second, inquire what these senior leaders see as the
primary or most important mission of the various levels of PME, and
what in their judgment might be done to improve the accomplishment of
these missions. Third, ask for their judgment as to the comparative
importance of PME as opposed to civilian graduate school for the
professional development of officers, and if they believe both to be
necessary, whether their personnel systems make sufficient space in
assignment patterns for the most promising officers to pursue both and
still compete for flag rank. Each should also be asked whether they
believe assignment to a PME institution faculty is as valuable for
officer development as operational assignments, indeed even command.
Dr. Snyder. 2. What should be the role of ethical discussions and
education in PME beyond ``just war'' theory?
Dr. Kohn. Ethics should be central to education at every PME level,
as part of the study of the broader subject of the profession of arms.
At every level of education, the different stresses and dilemmas of
core professional ethics need to be explored in depth. Officers need to
be taught how to exercise their command power responsibly; what their
obligations are to their soldiers, colleagues, and commanders; how to
combine mission accomplishment and with personal ambition; what
institutional pressures they will face in the course of a career; and
many other professional dilemmas, pressures, and difficulties that
arise in every profession at every level. There should be case studies
and role playing, along with biographical studies. Ethics should be
integral to the study of leadership and command, tactics, law, civil-
military relations, public affairs, joint and combined operations,
organization, and more. Professional ethics should be compared to, and
sometimes differentiated from, personal ethics and morality, religion,
social norms, and the like. The assertion of norms, values, and ethics
needs to be supplemented with an investigation of them in depth in
various situations. PME should play a central role in defining
professional ethics, teaching them, and nurturing an understanding from
their application in tactics at the beginning of officers' careers all
the way through advising the president of the United States during
wartime.
Dr. Snyder. 3. What specifically attracts top notch civilian
academics to faculty, particularly if the programs are not accredited
for master's degrees?
Dr. Kohn. Two things attract civilian faculty: the opportunity to
teach their specialties to outstanding students, and to pursue their
own contributions to their fields through research, writing,
consulting, and publishing. This means specifically the freedom to
choose (to some degree) what they teach and how (including the types
and amounts of assignments), and research time and support, including
travel and hours away from the office either in libraries, archives,
interviewing, field work, or other venues. Like other professionals in
other fields, scholars wish to be able to practice their profession at
the highest level of accomplishment and excellence to which they are
capable. They are particularly sensitive to whether the conditions of
service support, rather than hamper, the pursuit of excellence and the
opportunity to make their work known to colleagues in their field.
Issues of compensation, provided that is at a living wage level and
adjusted for a twelve month as opposed to nine month appointment, are
secondary. See also question 10.
Dr. Snyder. 4. Is the only way to achieve the Skelton Panel's
recommended joint (and now increasingly interagency) acculturation
through long (at least 10 months) in-residence education?
Dr. Kohn. No. In fact, jointness cannot be left to ISS and SSS, but
needs to be instilled from the very beginning of careers. Indeed much
jointness training and education aims to undo service indoctrination,
education, and cultural practice--down to the very humor officers of
the various services use to needle each other and the intense
competition engendered by service academy football and competing roles,
missions, and budgets. ROTC units should be housed, train, and
socialize together; induction and commissioning ceremonies should be
joint; the academies should require a semester in residence at each of
the other two academies; all pre-commissioning education should teach
loyalty first to country, second to the profession of arms, and third
to the service, while at the same time orienting and teaching cadets/
midshipmen about the missions, purposes, character, culture,
accomplishments, and mentality of the other services--and about the
achievements of interservice cooperation historically, as well as the
harmful effects of interservice rivalry and competition in the 20th
century. These subjects should be expanded at more advanced levels in
ISS. In my judgment, interagency issues should gradually displace
jointness at ISS and SSS--if jointness still needs to be indoctrinated
to any significant degree (as opposed to described or studied) at war
colleges, it means earlier efforts have failed. The same education in
other agencies' roles, functions, accomplishments, and purposes should
be taught at every level of PME, with attendant respect for the way
civilians and civilian institutions contribute to national security.
Dr. Snyder. 4.a. Are the faculty and student mixes dictated for the
various institutions still appropriate? If so, was it appropriate for
Congress to allow the Service senior schools to award JMPE II credit
(NDAA FY2005) despite their lower ratios and lack of a requirement to
send any graduate to joint assignments? Do you see unintended
consequences to that?
Dr. Kohn. The mix of students and faculty seems reasonable and
functional, and as long as a portion of the curricula address joint
issues, JPME II credit seems appropriate. Dictating from Congress
assignment patterns of this kind will constrict the assignment of
officers at a time when the services strain to meet operational and
infrastructure personnel requirements, so I would recommend against
levying the NDU requirement on the service war colleges.
In the last twenty-five years, jointness has become something of an
obsession. It is not and never was either the root of our military
difficulties or the solution to our military deficiencies. It may be
displacing other, more important, subjects in PME curricula at the war
college level, or forcing excessive time in class meetings and group
exercises at the expense of individual student reading, research, and
reflection. Jointness and interagency are not in my judgment the most
important issues the HASC should address in PME.
Dr. Snyder. 5. What constitutes rigor in an educational program.
Does this require letter grades? Does this require written exams? Does
this require the writing of research or analytical papers, and if so,
of what length? Does this require increased contact time and less
``white space''?
Dr. Kohn. Rigor rests on challenging students to expand their
knowledge, skills, abilities, and understanding; and to raise their
standards, or the quality, of their research, writing, thinking, and
discourse. Most important, faculty must insist on rigor and precision
in analysis and interpretation in written work and oral discourse.
While grades, exams (written or oral), briefings, group projects, and
writing are all indispensable--and the grading of them the only way to
hold students accountable for their performance--what is most important
is that the faculty press rigor in every classroom meeting and every
student exercise and requirement. Vague, sloppy, superficial, poorly
researched or conceived work or participation of every kind needs to be
brought to students' attention in a direct but supportive and
encouraging way. And the higher the level, the more direct and explicit
should be the feedback.
Unless students--each individual alone--write analytical papers
based on in-depth and comprehensive research, addressing the most
complex, ambiguous issues facing the United States in national defense,
they will not be capable of high-quality staff work nor will they be
able to recognize it. If they lack these skills, they cannot supervise
subordinates in the preparation of quality staff work nor later, as
commanders, will they be able to recognize shoddy thinking, writing,
and advice.
This requires not only short (less than ten pages) and intermediate
length (twelve to twenty-five pages) papers, but a thesis
(indeterminate length) based on original research, undertaken under the
supervision of a faculty member skilled and experienced in such
teaching, that addresses an important subject in national defense or
military affairs, and makes an original contribution to knowledge.
Finally, the term ``white space'' is misleading and offensive. It
implies emptiness, the absence of anything much less something of
substance. Rigor requires more time for individual student work:
reading, research, writing, preparation. The higher one ascends in
education, the less time is spent in the classroom listening or
reciting or otherwise interacting with faculty and peers. More time is
spent wrestling with complexity and uncertainly on one's own,
formulating problems or questions, pursuing research in depth and
breadth (always time-consuming), honing one's thinking, unraveling
inconsistency, filling in gaps in research or logic, and crafting a
finished product.
Dr. Snyder. 6. Should performance at PME matter for onward
assignments? Does which school one attends matter for later
assignments?
Dr. Kohn. Both should matter though I believe at present they
matter little. In other professions--law, health sciences, business,
the clergy, education, science, engineering, architecture, etc. etc.--
where a professional gets his or her education, how they perform (which
measures what they learned and the quality of their skills) largely
determines their first jobs and often subsequent career trajectories.
All professions value experience and accomplishment. Only the military
seems to ignore academic performance in professional advancement.
Such was not always the case. In the army at various times during
the first three-quarters of the 20th century, attendance at the Command
and General Staff College and one's rank in class had real effect on an
officer's career, and to some extent affected subsequent assignments
and advancement as indicative of an officer's professional ability.
Dr. Snyder. 6.a. Does the requirement that the National Defense
University send 50% (plus one) graduates to joint assignments and the
Service senior schools have no such requirement matter even though now
all award JPME II credit (since 2005)?
Dr. Kohn. Not in my judgment.
Dr. Snyder. 7. How does one measure the quality of the people in
the PME environment?
Dr. Kohn. People in PME should be measured first by their
qualifications and second by their performance.
Students, faculty, and school leadership can be measured on
qualifications the same way civilian professional schools measure their
people.
Students should be measured on the basis of their prior academic
performances and by examination of their aptitude and preparation, by
their interest and motivation for professional schooling as
demonstrated in an application and statement of interest and intent,
and by the extent to which their careers and accomplishments to date
indicate promise for success in the profession. Currently the service
personnel boards review only the last. The first two should be weighted
equally at least with the last. PME schools should assess the first
two, and admission committees, in consultation with service personnel
boards, should certify eligibility before those boards select the
students.
Faculty should be measured on the basis of their professional
education, experience, and accomplishments.
Civilian (or permanent) faculty should be assessed on their
performance in graduate school and the graduate education they
obtained, on the teaching ability they demonstrated or their potential
for teaching in a military PME environment, and on their ability and
expertise in their discipline and subject as measured by their
writings/publications. This assessment should be undertaken by search
committees staffed equally by civilian and military faculty; finalists
should be invited to campus for an interview; recommendations to deans
and commandants should explain in writing the reasons for selection.
Military (or rotating) faculty should be assessed the same way as
``professors of the practice'' are measured by civilian professional
schools: on the basis of experience, knowledge, and demonstrated
excellence in the practice of the profession in a particular subject
area. Search committees with an equal mix of civilian and military
faculty should review nominations from the services, interview them,
and make recommendations to the deans and commandants explaining in
writing the reasons for selection, beyond nomination by a service.
Commandants/presidents should be measured on the basis of their
education, experience, and interest in the position. At a minimum, they
should have faculty experience in PME, for if prior command,
familiarity with the function, and experience with the weapons system
or branch are required for operational and support commands, the same
should be true in PME. The truth is that faculty assignments and
terminal degrees from civilian educational institutions almost always
kill the chances for promotion to flag rank. However if too few flags
have the background, the personnel systems should be growing sufficient
flag officers to staff these institutions--if they are important
institutions/commands.
Students, faculty, and commandants/presidents should also be
measured on performance. Students can be evaluated by means of regular
assessments in the form of grades and upon graduation, rank order in
class just as is done in the academies. This will motivate officers to
work hard, take advantage of PME, excel, and thus improve their
professional capacities. Faculty should be measured just as are peers
in civilian institutions: on teaching performance (as measured by
occasional visits to their classrooms by senior peers and chairs, not
by student survey alone), service (committees, course development,
leadership, etc.), consulting, and writings/publications. A committee
of peers should exist in every department to review the performance of
each faculty member on a regular basis. Commandants/presidents should
be evaluated as in civilian academe: by their supervisors but with
input from students (including most recent alumnae/i), faculty,
administrators, commanders/stakeholders, and Boards of Visitors.
Dr. Snyder. 8. Does gender and ethnic diversity matter in the
assignment of senior leaders and the search for qualified faculty? How
should PME institutions increase the diversity of their leadership and
faculty?
Dr. Kohn. Diversity matters just as much in PME as in the most
prominent and desirable command and staff positions. Faculty are (or
should be) role models for students, respected professional experts of
accomplishment and reputation. They are very visible. An absence of
diversity sends a most negative message.
Diversity can be increased by active, targeted recruitment. However
the larger problem is that faculty duty for uniformed officers at ISS
and SSS is not career enhancing. That could be changed by the Secretary
of Defense, the Chairman, service secretaries, or chiefs of service--
and should be immediately. Recruiting minority and female civilian
faculty is part of the larger problem of recruiting outstanding faculty
from academe. See question 10.
My sense is that the academies and ROTC have been successful in
this respect.
Command of PME schools often functions a tombstone assignment for
flags either with the requisite qualifications (rarely) or for whom
other assignments don't materialize. That, too, could be altered by the
OSD, JCS, and service leadership.
Dr. Snyder. 9. How should PME commanders, commandants, and
presidents be chosen? What background(s) should the Chairman and
uniformed heads of the Services be looking for when they nominate
individuals for these positions? Should the focus be on operational
leadership or academic background?
Dr. Kohn. The Chairman and chiefs of the services should be chosen
just as other flag billets are filled, and with the active oversight,
input, and approval of the civilian leadership in OSD and the services.
The backgrounds sought should be outstanding academic performance in
PME, faculty experience, diversity of operational and staff experience,
outstanding performance in command, and personal interest in the
position.
Academic background and interest should be equal to or superior to
operational leadership skills, for leadership of a mixed service and
civilian faculty rarely equates with command of ground, air, or sea
operational units or forces, or the various support functions in each
of the services or in the joint/interagency/combined arenas.
If insufficient flags exist at present, retired flags with the
requisite background should be recruited or voluntarily recalled to
active duty until the service personnel systems grow an appropriate
number of flag candidates. Some years ago the army appointed a chief of
military history by instructing the O-7 selection board to choose from
the several outstanding colonels with PhDs in history--and thereby
filled the position for several years with some of the strongest
leadership the Center of Military History and army historical program
has ever had. The dean's positions at the Military and Air Force
Academies are similarly filled by promotion of a permanent professor
selected for the job. The same could be done with PME commandants,
commanders, and presidents.
However the need to fill these positions with academically
qualified officers must not be the occasion to derail outstanding flag
officers with PhDs into assignments that are career-harming. There
should be enough qualified flags to staff a variety of positions; if
the services wish to grow leadership that is as original and adept at
strategy, civil-military consultation, staff support, and specialized
command positions as in operations, they must alter the balance and mix
of their flag ranks more broadly.
Dr. Snyder. 10. How should PME institutions attract top-tier
faculty away from the Harvards and Stanfords of the academic world?
What are the elements that would attract the highest quality of
faculty--tenure, copyright, resources, pay, ability to keep their
government retirements, research and administrative assistance?
Dr. Kohn. PME cannot recruit tenured faculty from the top level of
civilian academe for permanent employment because military schools
cannot offer the freedom to teach what top scholars wish to teach, or
the research time to pursue cutting edge original work that will change
aspects of their field. There are too few senior scholars expert or
interested in the specialties desired by staff and war colleges. The
best that can be hoped is that PME institutions can attract an
occasional top faculty member from these institutions for a year or two
under the intergovernmental personnel act, or younger faculty attracted
for various reasons to teaching military officers and contributing the
national defense.
To attract the best teacher/scholars from civilian academe, the
academies, staff, and war colleges must offer tenure. Overwhelmingly
the top tier people will not risk their professional livelihood under
rotating military leadership that might not understand academic life,
adhere to the norms and values of civilian higher education (which do
differ in many respects from those of the military profession), or
permit the kind of freedom of inquiry and working conditions common to
research I universities. When in the summer of 1990 I asked Admiral
Stansfield Turner how he recruited Philip Crowl, the distinguished
naval historian, from the University of Nebraska, the Admiral replied
that he made him an offer he could not refuse, and that it included
tenure. Newport still possesses the most distinguished faculty of the
various staff and war colleges, and still operates with tenure.
In truth, all the PME institutions practice tenure without its
chief benefit: a rigorous, searching review of the accomplishments,
fitness, and promise of faculty members after a suitable probationary
period such that only the best are retained on a permanent basis. A
systematic study of civilian faculty at those PME schools that lack a
formal policy of tenure would reveal that few if any faculty have been
discharged in the last ten or even twenty years, and that the average
length of service probably approaches or exceeds ten years.
The argument that tenure undermines the currency of faculty and
their familiarity with contemporary issues and expertise lacks all
credibility. Currency resides both in the rotating military faculty and
in the permanent civilian faculty, who keep up in their field through
study, reflection, research, and continuous interchange with students,
alumnae/i, and friends in uniform. The publication and professional
activity record of the civilian faculty, so often praised in the
statements of the commandants/presidents to the Committee, demonstrates
the currency and excellence of long-serving faculty.
Other conditions of service would also be required: lower teaching
loads, nine-month appointments (or teaching for only part of the
academic year), the right to copyright their work and enjoy royalties
from writing and income from consulting even when done on government
time, dedicated secretary/administrative/research support, and more.
Faculty in research I universities exist not in hierarchical
organizations with an effective command or administrative structure but
in loose, entrepreneurial institutions that afford them the maximum
freedom to teach and research at the limit of their capabilities. They
are accountable to their disciplines, their colleagues, their students,
and their own ambitions. They work hard for long hours but on their own
schedules, and essentially without supervision. Staff and war colleges,
and even the academies, cannot duplicate this culture, and for the
foreseeable future, few of the top American academics would be
attracted to the military for professional careers because their
interests are not focused on national defense.
Dr. Snyder. 10.a. Please define academic freedom in general and
discuss what its role should be in a PME setting.
Dr. Kohn. I have seen no better description of academic freedom
than the 1940 statement by the American Association of University
Professors, available at http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/
contents/1940statement.htm:
Academic Freedom
1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the
publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of
their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should
be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.
2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing
their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their
teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their
subject.\1\ Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or
other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at
the time of the appointment.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The word ``teacher'' as used in this document is understood to
include the investigator who is attached to an academic institution
without teaching duties.
\2\ For a discussion of this question, see the ``Report of the
Special Committee on Academic Personnel Ineligible for Tenure,'' Policy
Documents and Reports, 9th ed. (Washington, D.C., 2001), 88-91.
3. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a
learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When
they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional
censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community
imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they
should remember that the public may judge their profession and their
institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be
accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect
for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate
that they are not speaking for the institution.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ For a more detailed statement on this question, see ``On
Crediting Prior Service Elsewhere as Part of the Probationary Period,''
Policy Documents and Reports, 10th ed. (Washington, D.C., 2006), 55-56.
Academic freedom is indispensable to all education but particularly
PME, where faculty and students must be encouraged to discuss (which
implies questioning and criticizing as well as describing, analyzing,
praising, etc.) policy, leadership (political as well as military),
past and present decisions, and everything else connected to military
and national security affairs. Without free inquiry, learning cannot
occur. Any subject, methodology, or thought that is off limits
immediately stymies the search for truth and understanding. War and
military affairs are complex, ambiguous, uncertain, and difficult
enough without erecting artificial boundaries on their study. We want
our military leadership to understand them as much as possible.
Furthermore, censorship in their education leads to censorship later in
their internal functioning and in their interaction with the political
leadership. The result would be disaster in war.
Commandants and presidents of PME schools, as ranking officers
functioning in highly hierarchal institutions operating under
authoritarian discipline, must affirm an unwavering commitment to
academic freedom upon taking command, and periodically throughout their
tenure--if nothing else to dispel the intimidation inherent in rank and
military culture.
Without academic freedom, top quality scholars in fields related to
national defense would avoid employment in PME schools simply because
of the limitation on their teaching and research.
Dr. Snyder. 11. What should be the role of history in PME?
Dr. Kohn. History is the foundation stone for PME: the accumulated
experience of war in all of its complexity and diversity, treasure on
which to draw for virtually any application in the present and future.
It has no specific ``lessons'' nor can it ``prove'' anything. What it
can do is arm soldiers with the range of possibilities to approach
almost any problem. History offers deeper and broader ways of looking
at military affairs, alerts commanders to the unanticipated and the
contingent inherent in command. History reminds its students that war
is neither science nor engineering nor art, but is above all a human
phenomenon with all of the uncertainties and unintended consequences
involved in human activity. In his speeches over the course of his
congressional career (most recently at the Naval War College on June
19, 2009), Chairman Skelton has made these points with some of the most
telling anecdotes and examples.
History can be used for case studies of virtually anything in
military affairs--even technology and technological change--a faculty
member wishes to teach. But it is especially useful to teaching the
formulation of strategy, planning, operations, leadership, and command.
History can be used to explain how the world came to be as it is,
in whole or in part, for one country or a region, for almost any issue
or topic of interest to military officers.
History can be used to inspire officers to excel, and to reassure
them that no matter how desperate the situation or difficult the
problem, their predecessors faced similar challenges and succeeded or
prevailed.
American officers are largely deficient in their knowledge and
appreciation of history, despite required courses at the undergraduate
level, history's increasing use in PME over the last generation, and
the continuing efforts of professional historians and advocates like
Chairman Skelton. In this the military reflects the larger ignorance
and neglect of history by the American public, which largely views
history as a primary and secondary educational exercise, as
entertainment, as ``gee whiz'' curiosities--all of this in spite of
billions devoted to museums, historic sites, required courses, and
continual use (and abuse) of history by the media and prominent people.
While it does not necessarily promise a remedy, my recommendation
would be to require in pre-commissioning education at least one
semester of American history, one of world or global history, and one
of military history: American history to educate officers about their
client and the development of its political system, economy, society,
and culture; global history to put the United States into context, and
to alert cadets/midshipmen to the diversity of the world and its
contingent development; and military history as an introduction to the
profession of arms, its evolution, the nature of war from the human
experience of combat to the high councils of government, the origins
and effects of war on states and societies, and a number of other
themes and issues. The military history should not be service specific
but should include land, sea, and air warfare in its political, social,
economic, and cultural context. And all of the historical instruction
should be foundational: that is, designed to teach students to think in
time, understand historical method, and learn to enjoy the reading of
history as a requirement of the profession of arms. Three one-semester
courses are certainly as important a professional foundation as three
one-semester courses in math, science, and engineering since war, to
repeat, is a human experience.
At ISS, history should be used as case studies to understand the
development of the service sponsor of the school, of modern war, of
planning and operations, and of leadership and command at the
operational level. Ethics and civil-military relations should be part
of this instructions, as well as joint and interagency issues. The case
studies should be chosen for their diversity and so that, strung
together, they impart a coherent sense of how war developed in the last
two-plus centuries. ISS should build on subjects raised in pre-
commissioning education and provide the basis for more advanced study
in SSS.
At SSS, historical study should concentrate at the strategic and
national and international levels: on the development of military
thought, the history of strategy and planning, and selected wars
campaigns that illustrate fundamental problems of grand and military
strategy, civil-military relations, joint and combined war fighting,
the marshaling and integration of various forms of national power, and
the challenge of command and leadership at the highest levels. Both
historical case studies and small, coherent historical courses or
fragments could be used.
At present, there appears to be considerable overlap and redundancy
in ISS and SSS. Both mix the study of national policy, strategy,
operations, leadership, and command with a focus more limited than
appropriate on the operational and strategic levels of war. There does
not appear to be much communication or consultation on the content of
curricula between the staff and war colleges, even within a single
service with the possible exception of the Naval War College, which has
the benefit of a single, unified faculty teaching both levels.
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