Military Senior Service Colleges Require Reform, But There Sure Are Some Bad Ideas Out There

Calls to reform America's senior service colleges are proposing a narrow focus on tactical warfighting, a move some experts warn is misguided. The real challenge for the modern military is not a lack of combat skill, but rather the difficulty in connecting tactical actions to the achievement of strategic objectives. To succeed, senior military leaders require a broad education that includes diplomacy, politics, and economics, which is fundamentally different from tactical training. Removing civilian faculty and interagency students from these colleges would only worsen the military's ability to think strategically and operate within the complex national security landscape.