International Relations in Strategy

At Infinity Journal, there’s a nice collection of articles about incorporating international relations/global studies into professional mil education and making it fit a focus on strategy. I particularly recommend one of the articles, which tackles the issue of whether or not junior officers need to know about strategy and international politics. I present some paragraphs from the piece below:

For some, the notion of strategic thinking and action at junior officer levels is a controversial claim. The word “strategy” is often treated as though it begins and ends at the highest levels of policy making. The president, supported by senior civilian and military advisors, develops national-level political objectives, the conceptual ways to achieve these objectives, and then mobilizes and deploys the resources necessary for executing the strategy. Approached from this perspective, young Army officers are merely the instruments of strategy. They receive and execute orders that someone much higher in the chain of command has developed with, hopefully, a carefully calculated understanding of how these tactical operations will contribute to national strategic ends. What business does a Platoon Leader, or even a Company Commander at the grade of Captain have in thinking and acting “strategically”? In fact, it is not hard to find Battalion Commanders who bluntly assert that they do not want their junior leaders thinking strategically; they simply want them to execute their operational tasks with skill and determination.

This perspective on strategic thinking and action is reinforced by the structure of Professional Military Education in the U.S. Army. After commissioning, the next step for Second Lieutenants is the Basic Officer Leadership Course, which trains them in the tactical and small unit leadership skills they will need in the specific Army branch they have joined. Approximately four years later, young officers will attend the Captains Career Course, which provides branch specific tactical and technical knowledge needed to lead company-size units, while also providing skills necessary to analyze and solve military problems, communicate, and interact as members of a battalion or brigade staff. Strategy does not appear in formal education until the officer participates in the Intermediate Level Education (ILE) program when he or she reaches approximately ten years of commissioned service. But even in ILE the treatment of strategy is limited. Education on strategy is first treated deliberately if an officer attends a Senior Service College (SSC) in later years of a full career, but a relatively small numbers of officers in each year group is given this opportunity.

The objective of this article is not to challenge the formal structure of this system for educating Army officers across their careers. The goal is to argue for a broader conception of strategic thinking and action than the one offered above, to offer a way of understanding “strategic leadership” that is applicable to the education of officers before they are commissioned and that will be of value while they are still serving in the junior officer ranks.