Graduate School for the Generals
Mylander, Maureen
Graduate School for the Generals by Maureen Mylander College directories do not list it. and m&t taxpayers do not know about it. But there is a highly respected college in this country...
...Graduates stand close to a 50-50 chance of becoming some of the most powerful men in the world...
...Critics have accused the war colleges of weighting guest speaker lists with conservative spokesmen...
...In some of the strongest language of its 875-page report, the board, headed by then-Lt...
...They’re just interested in becoming generals...
...They know they will soon be reassigned...
...Then, the next day, students peruse Western Political Heritage from the Greek city-states to modern times, including the major contributions of each principal era...
...Consider for a moment the structure that makes war colleges inaccessible to all but the exalted...
...The reason for this failure may lie in that exemplar of military thought, the briefing...
...But the modern major generals felt they had been treated badly by the Whiz Kids, and in many cases their performance was not impressive...
...In terms of schools, Ivy League degrees rank highest in prestige, and an officer with a Harvard diploma holds a passport to Nirvana...
...It suggests a paucity of ’ advance strategic and tactical thinking about Vietnam and a possibility that some mistakes could have been made on paper at the war colleges instead of in blood on the battlefield...
...General Earle Wheeler’s briefing skill reportedly so impressed Pprroespiedle ntth eK egnenneedrayl itnhtaot tihte hAelrpmeyd Chief of Staffs iob...
...But even if one grants, for the sake of argument, that the war colleges, like the European Grand Tour, need only be a broadening influence, how well do they succeed in preparing future generals for high military command...
...He later noted that while 18.4 million physically fit men could be tapped for military service in 1970, this would leave a deficit of six million in the labor force...
...The school opened in 1946 at Ft...
...Air War College students were busy writing justifications of strategic air power...
...A strategist predicting the crises of the future could do no better than examine the overlooked topics of today...
...The figures tell the story: each class wrote from 150 to 200 papers, approximately one per student...
...On the wall at each side of the stage, signs light up to indicate the security classification of material under discussion...
...I’d like to 4 hear them sing that poof-and’poof song...
...While qualification levels are rising and most instructors now hold master’s degrees-many of them from war college degree mills-there are few Ph.D.s...
...The briefing is both symbol and symptom of what is wrong with the war colleges: preoccupation with form over content...
...The rising degree levels reflect a feeling, conscious or not, that officers had better catch up with their egghead civilian colleagues, and that the best place to do this is at civilian universities, not war colleges...
...The schools permit their charges to range over vast expanses of subject matter but keep the herd moving so fast that there is scant time for intellectual grazing...
...Noting that many officers who have written about strategy are products of civilian graduate schooling, still other critics shake a finger at the war colleges for developing supporting casts rather than star strategists...
...These schools-the Army Infantry School at Ft...
...Yet in trying to generate an atmosphere conducive to creative, original thinking, the war colleges have failed...
...The academic...
...The war colieges offer students the facilities and opportunities to hone this instrument of persuasion to perfection...
...In the early 195Os, when the current top brass were matriculating, the bi-polar conflict finally came into its own in the war college curriculum...
...The falures and the misplaced emphasis cast shadows not only on the war colleges, but on military leadership...
...Would Socrates Like the War College...
...This attitude prompted one general to ask: “What were the university de’ gr ees of Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, Matthew Ridgway, and Maxwell Taylor...
...Elsewhere in the Army, a general writing in 1964 said then-current Army tactics differed little from those of World War 11...
...An Industrial College official once commented that it is only a short step from the world of simulation to the real world of decision-making...
...In April, for example, National War College students fan out in Air Force planes to Europe, Central and South America, the Mideast, Far East, and Africa...
...When they arrived, only about 65 per cent of commissioned officers held college degrees...
...Whether from distrust of wrong-thinking outsiders, or from a wish to keep their curricula “pure,” the war colleges have shut their doors to civilian instructors and have relied instead on the guest lecturers for the appearance of intellectual fire power...
...The ambiance is relaxed, at times resort-like...
...theses written by its graduates bound in gold leaf covers...
...In 1963 counterinsurgency became a distinct part of the Army War College curriculum, but still there were few papers about Vietnam either from the tactical or strategic standpoint...
...The writer cautioned that the use of nuclear weapons should “provide for reasonable safety of the peoples who would ally themselves with the United States...
...Another thesis from the OS, “ 1970-Enough Workers and Soldiers...
...alIfn tthhee Regular officers and a handful of Reservists ever attend...
...According to Hanson Baldwin of The New York Times, Page’s removal stemmed from his criticism, during a 1966 seminar for reserve officers, of bomb shortages in Vietnam...
...First-rate leadership in the military calls not only for good tacticians or technical experts but also for intelligent strategists or thinkers to take a long-range view of developments and operations...
...Knox, Kentucky, the Field Artillery School at Ft...
...Meanwhile, larger questions of strategy have gone unanswered...
...Briefs in the ‘Bedroom’ The war colleges seem to have all the advantages as they prepare generalselect for future political and military roles: famous graduates, impressive physical facilities, cohesive student bodies, illustrious lecturers, excellent libraries, in teres ting field trips, and even “cooperative graduate 4 degree” programs, under which civilian universities such as Georgetown and George Washington grant partial credit toward a master’s degree for war college work...
...Soon after the U. S. entered the war, officers were not only conducting military operations on an unprecedented scale, but also administering occupied territories, and even framing constitutions and “spreading democracy...
...Efforts were undertaken to raise overall educational levels and to keep trained officers in the service...
...When a team of briefers appears on stage, spotlights dim, brighten, and play back and forth upon alternating speakers, according to pre-arranged instructions...
...In 1968 when studies of Vietnam finally became modish, the titles did not reassure: “The War In Vietnam: What Do We Do Now...
...On the basis of selection rates since World War 11, the National War College, with an annual enrollment of 140 students, leads in prestige...
...If the only object is to transform specialists into generalists (no pun d intended) and to expose them, however briefly, to the complicated range of factors affecting top-level decisions, the war colleges do a good job...
...Graduates emerged believing that they were qualified to wield quasi-political and military power, to serve as assistant to the Henry Kissinger of the day...
...yet we have failed to utilize this resource in our schools...
...Although officer graduates began taking graduate courses with an eye toward postretirement jobs, there remained within the services a vague distrust of intellectualism, a feeling that it was not necessary for high military command...
...During ensuing weeks the officers plow through studies of management, economics, industry and labor, science and technology, human and material resources, and U. S. defense programs abroad...
...Despite the impressive array of imported talent, students rarely have more than an hour to question a speaker before he sits down to a glass of sherry and a pleasant lunch and then is whisked off to the airport...
...Such fields require threeor four-year “utilization” tours, which, officers feel, remove them from the competitive mainstream for too long...
...ceaselessly with their curricula...
...With blind faith a virtue, free inquiry becomes secondary, whether by accident or design...
...The chosen few-mostly lieutenant colonels in their early forties with 19 years of service-have about five years to wait for the first star...
...An Air University publication of the era asked, “How Could the U. S. S. R.’s Heartland Be Smashed...
...In the true show-biz tradition, briefers at the Army War College frequently rehearse and even have understudies...
...The negligible military contribution to strategic thought is difficult to explain...
...A military board reviewing Army officer education in 1966 found that the Army was vastly overstocked with nuclear weapons specialists-“prefix5” qualified officers in military parlance...
...As one illustration of the taboos against controversy, in January 1967, Air Force Major General Jerry D. Page was relieved as Commandant of the Air War College and was transferred to Okinawa...
...In selecting war college students each year, the Army claims it starts with a pool of more than 7,000 eligible officers-in reality the pool is much smaller, since only the 1,000 Leavenworth graduates receive serious consideration...
...As one graduate said, “These men aren’t really interested in learning anything at the war colleges...
...The Haines board found a that most Army officers attending both courses had little need to know the information presented, and it recommended cutting Army quotas for both in half...
...Even in 1967 and 1968, with the war going full blast, some officers attend- 4 ing the Army War College said it taught little or nothing about Vietnam...
...The continuing threat of a blacklist is powerful leverage: in fiscal year 1969 the services spent over $70 million to send 4,200 officers to graduate school...
...In 196 1 only two specifically concerned Vietnam...
...Harvard was Hebert’s number one target because it was collecting half a million dollarsin fees each year for the 160 officers in attendance...
...Ignoring the Past By civilian standards, it would be charitable to call the war colleges even second-rate academic institutions...
...The Army fretted about its role in space, atomic battlefields, and the proper management of a military career...
...Although the services had sponsored civilian graduate education for officers, particularly engineers, since 1867, advanced degrees usually guaranteed little more than specialized assignments and eventual retirement as a colonel...
...But if anything is to be done about improving the level of military thought, a good place to begin is at the war colleges...
...One way or another, for most officers the command and staff schools are the end of the educational, and career, line...
...Faculty members at the war colleges come under much the same constraints as their commandants...
...Dwight Eisenhower rose to defend the Industrial College on such an occasion, telling a Senate committee that, to...
...Instead, they prefer the war college degree programs, which entail no such tours...
...Those who hope to rise higher must attend a war college...
...Yet who would say they were not superbly educated men...
...At the base are dozens of schools where men learn fundamental skills of their military branch or specialty, be it maneuvering tanks, firing mortars, or pushing buttons...
...But too often they have taught the wrong things at the wrong time...
...Egos badly gored, the officers reacted in proper soldierly fashion...
...The schools have improved their teaching staff, made administrative changes, and tinkered...
...Although the Air Force and Navy consider attendance less important, nearly all Army generals have graduated from one of these institutions...
...The Industrial College of the Armed Forces also sets a fast pace...
...The danger of this approach is that it creates an unjustified sensation of expertise...
...Student theses, which had to be approved by the school, reveal many topics of interest to the Army, plus one that was not-Vietnam...
...the contrary, even Democrats like Dean Acheson had been invited to speak...
...Moreover, they are primarily administrators and discussion leaders with scant knowledge of subjects they “teach...
...The Army calls the writings a prolific source of original thought, but, understandably, does not disseminate them widely...
...In 1946 the newly formed Air Force established still another war college at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and in 1950 the Army reopened its school, which had closed during World War 11, in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania...
...There is a veritable fetish for the latest “top secret” data and job-oriented information, with scant regard for phlosophical underpinnings, historical precedent, or any elusive, untidy concept...
...The mailbox is also stuffed with reprints of lectures, copies of journal and magazine articles, chapters and excerpts from books...
...Benning, Georgia, the Armor School at Ft...
...In 1964 the number dropped to five, then escalated to eight in 1965, the ’ year that heavy U. S. involvement in Vietnam began...
...The degrees themselves are less important than the low incentive for any genuine teaching effort...
...The Army officer education system is a pyramid...
...In the afternoon students work on research papers, meet with faculty advisors, or play golf...
...Immediately, Helm’s recorded voice boomed back, while his picture appeared on the screen...
...The Navy had operated a war college in Newport, Rhode Island, since 1884, and the Army’s had existed since 1901...
...He gleaned the information for his paper from ten references, including the World Almanac and President Eisenhower’s second inaugural address...
...Status degrees include political science, international relations, behavioral sciences, and other fields which enhance promotability...
...Army officers following the promotion returns were quick to notice that 77 per cent of the new brigadier generals in 1971 had a master’s, doctoral, or professional degree...
...In contrast to the low- and middlelevel schools, where competition becomes a disease, at the war colleges there are no grades, no rankings, and apart from the papers, no required output...
...when a guest lecturer addresses the class...
...As a result, students claim they learn more from one another than from lecturers...
...But frustrated faculty members need not follow Socrates’ example...
...The generals-to-be continued to doze at their desks until 1968, when about 65 papers on the subject emerged from a total of 455...
...The program, moreover, is expanding...
...Recently a Blue Ribbon Defense Panel reported that between 1956 and 1967, the proportion of college graduates among commissioned officers in all the services rose from 55 to 73 per cent...
...Here is the rub, the cause for red faces in the highest reaches of the military establishment: it has produced no strategic thinker of any note since Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, c. 1890...
...It is a far cry from the days when the prevailing Air Force attitude was: “If we need a Ph.D., we can always fly one in...
...When a member of the audience has a question, he pushes a button which lights up a control panel at the moderator’s podium...
...The historical rate is somewhat lower at the Army and Air War Colleges and at the Industrial College, and lowest of all at the Naval War College...
...They are not even expected to try...
...It would perhaps be utopian to expect pure academic freedom at an advanced military school, but the incident does raise obvious questions about the possibility of free inquiry in the colleges...
...This description fits the National War College, one of five schools for future generals and admirals...
...Looking ahead, one paper asked, “What Happens After Vietnam...
...If Socrates himself were on a war college faculty, he would be told not to teach, but to draw up some reading lists and a tentative outline for next year’s course, and escort a guest speaker around the quad...
...And when the public is served its daily diet of mismanagement, cost overruns, weapons that do not work, scandals and waste, tactical errors, body counts, massacres, cover-ups of massacres, mutinies and desertions, the shadows lengthen...
...Air Force Chief of Staff General John P. McConnell, said Page was relieved be cause of dissatisfaction with some of the forums he conducted, though not with that one in particular...
...The war colleges awakened slowly to the dawn of the nuclear age, and failed to anticipate strategy debates on deterrence and limited war...
...In military circles the ultimate measure of status of an institution or assignment is whether it moves an officer another step forward on the road to the general’s stars...
...If a student has a related question, he holds up his hand and makes an “0’ symbol with thumb and forefinger so that he will be called upon next...
...In a 1972 study of Army officer education, Major General Frank W. Norris called inadequate exploitation of history a major weakness : We have fought three major wars in the last 30 years (excluding the Dominican Republic) and these wars are the most accurately and comprehensively documented actions in military history...
...A symbol of the “new learning” reposes in the Air Force Acad- . emy library, which houses in its special collections room Ph.D...
...They do so primarily in quest of advancement, not knowledge...
...By the end of the first week, the class, in addition to the above, has disposed of the American Scene Today, the Social Environment of Governments, and the Theory of Power...
...Both displayed some interest in counterinsurgency, particularly after President Kennedy’s order in 1961 to expand the Special Forces by 150 per cent, over loud Army objections...
...The services expressed dismay about restrictions, and Hebert said, “I’m concerned too...
...The pool is slowly reduced to about 300 lucky winners...
...War colleges do indeed say they prepare officers to deal with “the complex situations of the future...
...Still, the briefing“executive summary’’ in civilian circles-is a thing of beauty in the hands of its ablest practitioners and an indispensable aid to making it in the armed forces...
...year begins with a look at the current world situtation...
...Rarely does the school assign an entire book, although it urges students to read in their “spare time...
...Ralph E. Haines, complained that the Army had trained three-and-a-half times as many specialists as were needed...
...From 1O:OO until 10:30 students question the speaker, then small groups of a dozen officers discuss the topic of the day...
...At the same time, there is a collective reluctance to study chemistry, physics, biological sciences, and engineering...
...A typical day at the National War College begins at 9 a.m...
...In one year at the National War College this amounts to about 5,000 pages of text...
...If a visitor wandered down its halls, nearly one out of every two students he bumped into would be a future general or admiral...
...The answer eliminated land invasion, carrier-based aircraft, and pilotless aircraft, and concluded that only “nuclear-armed, land-based, long-range aircraft” could do the job...
...Today, for example, West Point cadets leave the academy bearing promises that they can spend more time in postgraduate study than the average Doctor of Philosophy...
...The general made a good point, for he judged these men on their military performance and on self-education, a ’cherished custom in the pre-war service...
...But there is a highly respected college in this country where tuition is free, the faculty does not teach, students do not protest, and no one fails the course...
...While many of their faults also exist in the civilian educational world, the defects seldom occur in such great concentration...
...Few people outside of government and academic circles know much about these schools...
...The interest in prefix-5 courses stemmed largely from a belief that they hastened a man toward generalcy...
...Some blame the military bureaucracy for stifling strategic thought-by its nature often controversial-by forcing ideas to trickle upward through innumerable reviews, ad hoc committees, a p provals, and security classifications Others say there should be more professional military journals as outlets for strategic thought...
...Lecturers like Edward Teller, Henry Kissinger, and sometimes the President himself share the nation’s secrets to prepare the students to make national defense policy...
...William Westmoreland, for example, taught at the Army War College but never studied there...
...For years numerous critics, review boards, and students have pressed for more civilian academicians on war college faculties...
...Other schools threatened were Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Stanford...
...In one Army War College thesis from the late 195Os, the author, who later became a major general, devised a strategy for guaranteeing allies among the Soviet people: . . . at such time in the future as we might find it necessary to invade the U. S. S. R. It is urgent that the United States [prevent the] Kremlin from convincing the Soviet peoples that the United States is plotting their destruction...
...D wTheeres e ptaorut gho f ciMvilciaNna mtahrian’ks erps,l otw htoo control the Pen tagon through sys tems analysis and sheer brain power, were typified by Ivy League credentials, advanced professional degrees, and, too often, a contempt for those who lacked the same pedigrees...
...Leavenworth, Kansas, and similar Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps institutions...
...During the mid-1960s there was a veritable land rush to study under Henry Kissinger at Harvard...
...The next year there were four papers, the following year six...
...But the war college weaknesses, the embarrassments over strategy, the blind spots on Vietnam, the humiliating confrontations with the Whiz Kids, all indicate that the schools produce men whose faith outweighs their abilities, and whose professional military competence leaves much to be desired...
...Students may choose their own topics-subject to approval-but most rely upon school lists of subjects reflecting current and future military and national interests...
...But the schools at McNair were latecomers and could not supplant what already existed...
...This enables the moderator to call upon the questioner by name, since the audience sits in pre-assigned seats...
...The only measure of student output is the research paper...
...The trips give,students “a firsthand view of economic and industrial developments in other parts of the world...
...Joseph Stilwell objected vehemently, and successfully, to attending the school...
...Or they might visit Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, Cairo, Teheran, Tokyo, and other places of military importance...
...Each service has shown persistent preoccupation with its own point of view-the Army has proselytized for land warfare, the Navy...
...The accent is on problems presumed to be of immediate military importance...
...If the country was worth fighting about, it was worth writing an entire paper about...
...But what about the war colleges’ own standards...
...In leafing through these works, a reader encounters old friends like “all-out nuclear war” and “the threat of Communist domination” and “H-hour readiness...
...The nation’s taxpayers might expect that war colleges would at a minimum impart some ability to learn from the past and anticipate the future...
...and “VietnamWhere To From Here...
...Their affairs are Maureen Mylander is author of The Generals (Dial Press), from which this article is adapted...
...The National War College sets the tone for the others...
...Leslie J. McNair in Washington, D. C., after government leaders decided that the complexities of modern warfare required an interservice institution to teach officers the operations of the other services...
...In another field trip, Industrial College officers meet top executives of about 70 major U. S. corporations...
...They represented a large majority of the top brass in all the services...
...And there is a sound-proof, glassed-in room at the back of the auditorium for students who arrive late or who have colds and are likely to cough or sneeze...
...The Army War College, which throughout its history has maintained intimate liaison with the Army general staff, is a case in point...
...The more the generals bicker among themselves in interservice rivalries, and the more they are wedded to out-ofdate concepts, the more difficult it can be for the civilian leadership to exercise genuine control...
...Graduate School for the Generals by Maureen Mylander College directories do not list it...
...He proposed filling the gap by hiring the handicapped and putting women to work...
...The chairman flashes a green light-visible to the audience but not the speaker -whenever the former needs questions from the floor...
...Sill, Oklahoma, to name a few-also offer advanced and specialized schooling to all Regular and Reserve career officers...
...The springtime trips to Europe contribute mightily to that atmosphere...
...The National War College, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Army War College, Naval War College, and Air War College are where the services put the final polish on their brass...
...They retreated, regrouped, and returned to the fray waving new weapons: sheepskins...
...These war colleges each became a carbon copy of the National War College, and before long there were five schools, officially of equal status, where one or two would have sufficed...
...Their duties expanded in pace with foreign and military aid programs, mutual defense pacts, the nuclear age, and the cold A sense of high purpose prevails as war colleges prepare their charges for duties that have branched far afield of strictly military concerns...
...Holders of advanced degrees will, of course, comprise the elite...
...The Industrial College calls its three-week tours of Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Far East an essential part of the curriculum...
...Its purpose is to communicate, or not to communicate, depending upon the briefee...
...Its course on the U. S. political system includes a lecture analyzing American democratic institutions, political philosophies of the founding fathers and their relevance today, relationships between political theory and practice, and current trends...
...During the years when Vietnam was such a sleeper, what did command attention at the war colleges...
...First-rate military leadership is not a threat but a complement to civilian control of the armed forces...
...As an illustration of over-emphasis on nuclear training, the board cited a Nuclear Weapons Orientation advanced course, offered ten times yearly at Sandia Base, New Mexico, to a total of 1,000 senior officers and civilians...
...and ends with a national strategy seminar and 30-year projection of national security policy...
...On one occasion a visiting female briefer was even presented a bouquet of red roses at the end of her performance...
...They just sift out what interests them and ignore the rest...
...The fault, of course, lies more in the nature of the military man and the realities of gettingahead in the services than with any single culprit...
...In recent years the speakers have included Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Dean Rusk, Henry Cabot Lodge, Henry Kissinger, George ~ Kennan, Margaret Mead, Edward Teller, Willy Brandt, Barry Goldwater, and numerous industrial and military leaders...
...Vietnam appeared in some of the other theses, which covered a wide range of subjects including counterinsurgency, but the argument still holds...
...How do the students absorb all this...
...But they also realize that the important thing is not actually attending the college but being selected for it, and thereby outdistancing the vast majority of their peers...
...In 1971 the Army alone spent $10- 12 million on more than 1,400 officers who were earning advanced degrees...
...This has its advantages, but, more often than not, discussion descends to the level of lowest common denominator...
...These “junior war colleges” teach how to fight wars, and groom majors and lieutenant colonels or their Navy equivalents for higher command and staff jobs...
...90 Minutes With the Great War...
...Occasionally a few fireballs, marked for success from the start, by-pass the schools...
...When Omar Bradley applied, Stilwell asked, “Brad, why do you want to go to the War College to learn to do what you don’t want to do anyway...
...And an officer who attended the Command and General Staff College the same year learned not counterinsurgency operations, but how to maneuver armies across China...
...All of this might even be amusing were the consequences not so serious...
...In an international relations exercise, student teams pretend they are political leaders of various countries and make political, diplomatic, economic, and military policies...
...War college attendance is an essential punch on an Army officer’s career ticket...
...the masters’ theses are bound in silver...
...McNair and soon declared itself equal to its neighbor...
...There is also a philosophical undercurrent to briefings that invariably seeps into the war colleges: a belief that officers must, above all else, vigorously defend the service point of view to all comers, all questioners, all critics...
...At the National War College, students often spend more time consulting with the public speaking instructor and audio-visual department about the form of their presentations than with the faculty about the content...
...It has perfect acoustics and supersensitive microphones at every other chair...
...and another, “Korea, Our Next Vietnam...
...All have been voices in a bureaucratic wilderness...
...About 3,000 officers graduate annually from the interservice Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, the Army Command and General Staff College at Ft...
...During a presentation at the school’s National Strategy Seminar in 1972, a D bbryi efCeIrA r eDfeirrreecdto tro Rsoicmhea rrde mHaerlkms sm tawdoe days earlier...
...Meanwhile another, more technical school, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, set up operations at Ft...
...War colleges supplement their highgear courses with educational gadgetry including extensive closed-circuit TV networks, video-tape machines, and computer-assisted instruction...
...It and a smiliar course at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, which features a live demonstration of a lethal chemical attack, were traditional favorites of the brass...
...One can imagine, therefore, the chagrin when in 1971 Chairman F. Edward Hebert of the House Armed Services Committee tried unsuccessfully to stop the services from patronizing universities that had dropped ROTC...
...There is competition between the Army and Air Force to collect the greatest number of degrees...
...Some observers say it grows from preoccupation with weaponry itself and a corresponding neglect of theories about its use...
...In theory the National War College was to be the apex of the military school system...
...What have the armed forces traditionally expected of their schools for generals...
...But it was in the 1960s that this slowness to respond to the issues became most evident and most tragic...
...off the record”: classes are closed to the public and prkss...
...It suggests that politicians and the disagreeable, dr aft-card-burning public are not totally at fault for the early Vietnam victory that never materialized...
...proceeds to analyses of Communist and Free World states, developing nations, national resources, defense management and military strategy...
...for aircraft carriers, the Air Force for strategic air power...
...Still, war colleges are the best windows civilians have on the military mind, even if the panes are a bit steamed over...
...Modem officers share an ambivalence toward war college, recognizing that their year at the school will probably not compare in substance with what they might learn on a command job...
...The writer, who became a brigadier general, calculated this figure by projecting the proportion of military to total population at the peak of World War 11...
...Strategic writings and debates of the past 25 years, such as they have existed in military circles, have contained more description than analysis, more rancor and special pleading than systematic thought...
...A typical three-week itinerary might include Buenos Aires, Caracas, and points south...
...Backing up the thespian contingent are large-screen slides with magic wand overlays, props, and sound effects...
...Nearly all officers attend the basic career courses...
...An early catalog noted that graduates would “. . . exercise a great influence on the formulation of national and foreign policy in both peace and war...
...Next come five command and staff schools and, atop the pyramid, five war colleges...
...The Industrial College students play computer “games” or simulations of defense decisions on, say, procurement of a new weapons system...
...reasoned that the U. S. will need 18.4 million men in uniform in case of global war in 1970...
...A similar approach prevails at most of the other schools...
...This history of misplaced emphasis suggests that while generals fiddled with nuclear weapons, Vietnam burned...
...The officers who make up the faculty do little teaching and considerable paper-shuffling, while the students learn what they can from visiting speakers...
...For many years war c $:leges were the traditional training ground for generals...
...In 1972 the Army began requiring that all commissioned officers have bachelor’s degrees and that onefifth .earn advanced degrees...
...Socrates would probably resign or drink hemlock, thus contributing to the high turnover rate...
...The competition heats up at the B Acormmmy,a nfdo r anedx amstpaflef , scohnolyo lsh...
...Lengthening Shadows In the current sheepskin sweep stakes, officers are earning two, three, and even four master’s degrees...
...Every Monday morning an officer finds in his mailbox a detailed schedule of what the week will bring: lectures, afterlecture conferences, seminars, committee meetings, discussion groups, physical training, and occasional pep talks from the Commandant...
...Still, in 1966 students produced only 17 papers about Vietnam, out of 221 total (some officers wrote two theses that year), and about two dozen in 1967, out of 276...
...The Sheemkin Assault When Robert McNamara took the Pentagon by storm in 1961, he brought with him the “Whiz Kids...
...At a press briefing, for example, the purpose is often to keep the secrets in or to make a sales pitch...
...The war colleges reflect a military vastly different from that of preWorld War I1 days...
...As late as 1966, 20 per cent of Air Force generals and five per cent of Army generals and Navy admirals had not finished college...
...The school offers a free trip to Europe and Latin America each spring and a chance to earn a fast master’s degree from an accredited university...
...By 1969, 151 Army, 107 Air Force, and 30 Marine generals, 80 admirals, and 55 ambassadors on active duty were National War College graduates...
...Meanwhile, the audience sits in seats so comfortable that students have dubbed the auditorium “the big bedroom...
Vol. 6 • October 1974 • No. 8
