Charles Richard & Robert Peters
For upwardly mobile officers in America’s military, a year at a Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) institution to acquire a Master’s degree is very often necessary for promotion. These schools, located at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA, National Defense University in Washington, D.C. the Naval War College in Newport, RI, and elsewhere, are meant to prepare officers for the jump from tactics (commanding a battalion or a single ship) to the larger, operational levels of war, where they may command a brigade or a squadron of ships as part of a larger combat engagement.
Far too often, however, the JPME teaches topics in the wrong order. Very often, JPME overemphasizes the strategic level of war at the expense of the operational level of war. In this sense, they are asked to consider and ultimately understand the movement of entire armies and fleets as part of a broader conflict between nation states, often times before such considerations are required for their rank. An example would be a Navy Lieutenant enrolled in JPME I being asked to write a paper on the use of strategic ambiguity in the Indo-Pacific theater. A worthy topic this is—but perhaps not one for a Lieutenant.
The consequence of such a jump is that they do not receive the education they need to understand the role their brigade or naval squadron plays at the operational level of war and how they can best achieve operational effect with the forces assigned to them or a members of an operational staff.
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