21st-Century Challenges of Command: A View from the Field

STRATEGIC LEADER DEVELOPMENT FOR A 21ST CENTURY ARMY by MAJOR James M. Hardaway, U.S. Army, 43 pages. As the nature of warfare evolves, the Army must produce leaders who comfortably interact with diverse populations and embrace complexity. This emerging truth dictates a need for change in how Army officers are trained and selected to lead at the highest levels in order to regain the initiative in managing today's fluid operational environment. The concept of strategic leadership, therefore, must be examined closely in Army doctrine. Social, cultural, and complex problem-solving skills are becoming a priority and must be developed in young officers to provide enough knowledge for senior leaders to leverage later in their careers. Rarely does the typical Army career prepare someone to succeed in the strategic arena where the non-military elements of national power carry greater effects than large numbers of troops and equipment.

2016

The United States Army War College educates and develops leaders for service at the strategic level while advancing knowledge in the global application of Landpower. The purpose of the United States Army War College is to produce graduates who are skilled critical thinkers and complex problem solvers. Concurrently, it is our duty to the U.S. Army to also act as a "think factory" for commanders and civilian leaders at the strategic level worldwide and routinely engage in discourse and debate concerning the role of ground forces in achieving national security objectives. The Strategic Studies Institute publishes national security and strategic research and analysis to influence policy debate and bridge the gap between military and academia. The Center for Strategic Leadership contributes to the education of world class senior leaders, develops expert knowledge, and provides solutions to strategic Army issues affecting the national security community. The Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute provides subject matter expertise, technical review, and writing expertise to agencies that develop stability operations concepts and doctrines. The School of Strategic Landpower develops strategic leaders by providing a strong foundation of wisdom grounded in mastery of the profession of arms, and by serving as a crucible for educating future leaders in the analysis, evaluation, and refinement of professional expertise in war, strategy, operations, national security, resource management, and responsible command.

Strategic Studies Institute Monograph, Advancing Strategic Thought series, 2019

Journal of Peace and War Studies, 2021

In this special edition, authors provide unique insights regarding how to educate future military leaders facing a variety of security challenges derived from growing great power competition, climate change, pandemics, rapid social and cultural changes, cutting-edge technological advancement such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and so on.

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1992

Military strategy was long described as atheoretical-an art that could only be fully comprehended by military genius. This contention is no longer held, as military staffs, comprised of experts and specialists, are able to formulate strategy aided by minitheories of strategy and a process that takes advantage of collective wisdom rather than singular genius. But the mini-theories of strategy remain underdeveloped and an overarching theory of military strategy does not yet exist. In this dissertation I build a grand theory of military strategy, consisting of a simple two-pole, physical and psychologically oriented framework, mini-theories of military strategy, and additionally, concepts of employment that describe conceptual actions that can be employed by military means to achieve military objectives. Mini-theories of military strategy, consisting of the five basic military strategies of extermination, exhaustion, annihilation, intimidation and subversion, are woven together into a coherent military strategy theoretical framework. Additionally, I expose the principles of war as a myth, instead proffering concepts of employment as the actionable elements of strategy, which are used in the conceptual direction of military means to achieve military objectives in support and amplification of the five basic military strategies. The strategies offered are the result of a comprehensive meta-data analysis, hermeneutical analysis, and comparative metaanalysis of the works of past strategy theorists, rather than the case study methodology employed in most military strategy scholarship. This dissertation provides a baseline theory from which further military strategy hypotheses can be generated and tested in order to advance our understanding of military strategy.

The natural tendency of people to view problems from the perspective of their home organization is widely acknowledged in Washington. The corrosive effect this has on unity of intent and unity of effort is also acknowledged, documented, and lamented. As long as the stakes are small, the costs of such parochialism are apparently endurable. Our recent frustrations in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have elevated the problem of so-called “stove-piping” to a high profile. The proposed remedy to stove-piping is the “whole of government” approach to complex problems. Also known as the “comprehensive approach,” the putative advantage of whole of government approaches is that they lift the level of analysis to a higher altitude, providing a better view of the full extent and complexity of the problem in question. The inevitable decrease in resolution, or granularity, should be more than balanced by an improved strategic perspective. Regrettably, however, the discipline of the whole of government approach has not been consistently applied, as bureaucratic inertia pushes back against proposed new practices.