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Augmenting PME

Why Partnering with Civilian Institutions Enables Additive Resources

 

Lt. Col. Kyle M. Johnston, US Army
Lt. Col. Shane Praiswater, PhD, US Air Force

 

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The Office of the Secretary of Defense established the Strategic Thinkers Program (STP) in 2019, partnering with Johns Hopkins University and historian Dan Marston to create a new professional military education (PME) option.¹ The program uses a civilian-led format as an enclave (STP historians only teach PME officers, not traditional students) within the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies to develop officers who can think strategically and adapt to the unpredictable demands of modern warfare. STP immerses participants in a rigorous study of history, strategy, and policy, encouraging them to challenge assumptions and engage with diverse perspectives. This approach ensures graduates possess the intellectual agility and critical thinking needed to lead effectively in today’s rapidly evolving security landscape.

STP does not aim to replace traditional PME, as it serves a distinct purpose by focusing on strategic thinking and historical analysis rather than comprehensive doctrinal training. However, STP exists within a larger PME construct facing significant challenges. This piece examines PME issues through the lens of a “time problem” and a “capability problem” before exploring potential solutions. We theorize that most officers with the maximum level of PME are nearing retirement eligibility, leaving the military with precious little time to utilize its most educated officers. Therefore, focusing on a diversity of thought within the officer corps will increase the overall effectiveness of the senior leader corps, as those who remain in service will be less likely to have the same educational background. We also theorize that while traditional PME serves essential functions, it generally does not address the realities of bottom-up or reciprocal strategic processes. The root cause of officer-knowledge shortfalls is that PME cannot teach everything, and even strategy-focused programs cannot avoid a broader approach. Because programs like STP are so difficult to scale, part of the solution to improving PME should be encouraging limited partnerships with civilian institutions, along with mandatory cross-talk and diversification of thought.

The Time Problem

An underappreciated aspect of PME concerns the realities of when a fully educated officer is eligible for a twenty-year retirement.² While the Blended Retirement System may affect this guidepost, initial data suggests that whether an officer persists past twenty years remains a helpful indicator for post-PME retention.³

Generally, officers first set themselves apart from their peers by attending an in-person PME approximately ten to thirteen years into their service (see figure 1). This schooling represents the officer’s initial transition from tactical to higher-level operations and typically precedes a staff tour.⁴ At the end of four or five years of PME and staff, officers enter squadron/battalion-level command tours around the fifteen-to-eighteen-year mark, leaving them with approximately two years (or less) of commitment (after two years of command) before being eligible for retirement at twenty years.⁵ An additional one-year senior PME is routine for postcommand officers, but it brings a renewed commitment. Anecdotally, some military communities report acceptance rates of less than 50 percent for senior PME schools that offer opportunities for advancement to O-6 and higher.

This time problem is newly acute for the US Air Force, which has discarded its below-promotion-zone (BPZ) promotion system to give future leaders more time to develop before assuming command.⁶ The US Marines function in a similar manner: BPZ technically exists, but officers do not promote early.⁷ Regardless, except for those in the US Army and Navy who might command earlier than approximately fifteen years, the US military gets precious little time to prepare its leaders for staff, command, and, ideally, senior advancement. Officers are often considering retirement by the time they have a chance to internalize five to seven years of school, staff, and command.

We do not presume to recommend whether BPZ should exist. Still, when it comes to PME, the services must adopt a pragmatic approach to this retention reality: many officers with years of dedicated PME will decline to pursue even the rank of colonel, much less general. We also do not believe that a different PME style can increase retention, nor do we propose retention-focused reforms. Those are laudable goals, but the military should pursue various forms of PME so that, ideally, those who remain in service will not all be of the same educational mold. Perhaps more realistically, since most in-residence PME graduates will have only one—or maybe two—staff tours due to retention, the military should be very deliberate about how to utilize best the fleeting skills they have so heavily invested in. Effective militaries must embrace diversity of thought, education, and experience if they are to adapt to future conflicts.

The Capability Problem

Many writers, leaders, and politicians have covered the alleged faults associated with PME. While we are mildly sympathetic to some of these complaints, the time problems mentioned in the previous section are unlikely to be solvable; even if the services could radically change syllabi, the retention issues would remain. We are much more concerned with how PME teaches strategy and whether those lessons reflect the reality of strategy in practice. To be clear, if all current PME programs were to focus on strategy and history instead of doctrinal warfighting, much else would be lost. That is why we propose augmenting PME efficiently rather than drastically changing it.

Of course, given the preponderance of the word “strategy” in PME curricula, it might sound provocative to reference a capability problem regarding the term. However, the following observations do not constitute a critique of current PME as much as an acknowledgement of the limitations inherent to cramming maximum knowledge into a compressed PME schedule. We propose three under-researched topics that deserve further examination: first, despite the stated “future leader” goals of selective PME programs focused on strategy, it is unclear whether these schools have greater credibility with the forces than prestigious tactical schools. Second, PME programs do not just teach strategy; they generally embrace a wide scope that focuses on a “broad body of professional knowledge and developing the habits of mind central to the profession.”⁸ Third, while valuable, these types of curricula cannot focus on what should arguably be the root controversy in military education: how strategy works in practice.

Do the services value strategy-focused schools as much as tactical expertise? For example, the Air Force has one of the most prestigious PME programs: the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS), which is available only to the most highly ranked midcareer officers who have already attended competitive PME in person. In theory, it creates a cadre of the “Air Force’s most influential airpower strategists and future leaders.”⁹ The Army has a similar school through the School of Advanced Military Studies Program, the Navy has the Marine Advanced Warfighting School, and the Marines have the School of Advanced Warfighting.¹⁰

The Air Force is a useful PME case study because, according to the RAND Corporation, it places greater emphasis on education than other services.¹¹ However, the same survey, when considering which officers become general officers, equates SAASS with the Weapons School (an intense tactical warfighting program for captains) in terms of qualifications.¹² This assessment aligns with anecdotal data: SAASS is a highly respected program, but Weapons School graduates who attend PME in-residence often pass on the opportunity to participate in SAASS, as it is not necessary for higher command or because competitive joint staff positions are immediately available.

In other words, while the Weapons School and SAASS have completely different focuses—on the tactical and strategic levels, respectively—officers treat them as an “either/or” prerequisite for higher command. There are specific jobs “coded” only for SAASS or service-equivalent graduates, but there are not enough graduates to fill every billet. When confronted with complex problems, general officers are as likely to reach for a Weapons School officer as a SAASS graduate.

Is this an indictment of SAASS? Emphatically, no. SAASS has graduated numerous outstanding officers, as have its sister-service equivalents. The school’s alleged focus on strategy for midcareer officers en route to critical staff positions is undoubtedly a benefit for the force.¹³ However, such a curriculum requires a relatively small class size; therefore, the program is not scalable. Small class sizes, combined with the perception that it is unnecessary for high-achieving officers and retention realities, result in a force where officers explicitly educated in strategy are not prevalent. Officers also discuss strategy at higher levels of PME but, as previously mentioned, many turn down those opportunities and retire instead.

Does strategy-based PME focus on strategy? Critically, as the curriculum and descriptions of SAASS and its sister service schools make clear, strategy is not the focus of these schools.¹⁴ Perhaps in line with the limited time available to produce the best possible officers, these courses condense several complex topics into a limited timeframe. The cycle repeats itself at senior-level PME for those who do not retire: one of the Army’s senior schools, for example, “provides a comprehensive, multifaceted education focused at the theater-strategic level across the spectrum of joint and service operations during peace, crisis, and war.”¹⁵

In short, accounting for subtle differences between services, strategy-based PME is not necessarily more respected than tactical expertise and is not actually strategy-based.

The services, therefore, need to find a way to efficiently increase the number of strategically educated officers, ideally with diverse thought processes. The perfect solution would not be for every colonel to attend SAASS; it would be for every colonel to have attended different schools with varying levels of strategic focus. Such diversity might help address the third underappreciated issue with PME: strategic processes routinely do not function as doctrine dictates.

Do the strategy-focused classes debate how strategy occurs in practice? So far, we have skirted a core issue: it is challenging for any PME program to claim it teaches strategy when the most respected historians continue to debate its definition.¹⁶ Even the authors of this piece differ: one believes strategy is a wartime process that cannot begin until violence breaks out, which is hardly a widely accepted concept.¹⁷ However, for this article, the definition of strategy is less important than whether PME graduates have examined the reciprocal nature in which strategy realistically flows. Each conflict has its context and contributing factors, but to understand the potential gulf between how PME generally teaches strategy and how it works in practice, consider one provocative example: the making of “policy by concept of operations (CONOP).”

Policy by CONOP is not a doctrinal phrase and for good reason: it is not how things are supposed to work, according to notional PME norms. “The objectives strategy seeks to achieve should be determined by policy,” but policy by CONOP is a bottom-up approach in which tactical-level operators, in practice, redefine national policy objectives.¹⁸ Not surprisingly, it is often viewed as antithetical to the formal joint planning process.

The dismissive perspective on policy by CONOP is reminiscent of the traditional “normal” theory of civil-military relations, which posits a top-down dissemination of policy directives that military actors execute without substantive feedback or iteration.¹⁹ However, this model diverges considerably from the realities of contemporary strategy execution, especially when conceptualizing strategy beyond the narrow context of violent interstate conflict.²⁰

Empirical observations from current operational environments illustrate this divergence. Doctrinally, “strategy” or strategic guidance flows through documents produced by the president (National Security Strategy), secretary of war (National Defense Strategy), and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (National Military Strategy), joint strategic planning system documents, and global campaign plans, among others, to geographic combatant commanders (GCC) via campaign plans, force allocations, and standing execution orders.²¹ The combatant commands provide feedback on how they can achieve these goals with the forces allocated, identify risk in the Lykke model of misaligned ends and means (see figure 2), and develop their own supporting campaign plans and execution orders for their apportioned and assigned forces.²²

However, senior staff at multistar commands lack the nuanced understanding of local operational environments necessary to identify emergent opportunities that align with strategic objectives. Thus, commanders at the tactical level must locate these opportunities and recommend actionable solutions through bottom-up submissions such as CONOPs. The experience of US special operations forces (SOF) is illustrative in this domain.

A specific example is the implementation of 10 U.S.C. § 127e, Support of Special Operations to Combat Terrorism. This law authorizes the secretary of war “with the concurrence of the relevant Chief of Mission, [to] expend up to $100 million a year to support foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating authorized ongoing military operations by United States special operations forces to combat terrorism.”²³ Section 127e is a fiscal authority granted to the secretary of war to support his strategic objectives, but it provides no direction on how the secretary must implement it.

The challenge is that under this authority, the Department of War (DoW) senior leadership doesn’t know what means it has to deploy in support of its ends. How does the secretary of war, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or commandant commander know what foreign and irregular forces are suitable or capable of achieving their objectives? They require strategic reconnaissance capabilities, such as those of the SOF, to deploy to remote locations and identify partner forces capable of advancing US strategic interests. If SOF identifies partners with the capability and capacity to advance US interests in ways not anticipated by central planners, they develop and submit CONOPs requesting additional fiscal and operational authorities, as well as changes to US policy objectives. Once staffed through the joint staff and the Office of the Secretary of War, these CONOPs effectively establish new policy frameworks, enabling partnerships and activities that political or risk considerations previously constrained. Although colloquially labeled “Policy by CONOP,” this process arguably embodies the appropriate mode of strategic execution or the DoW’s support of statecraft in specific peacetime contexts.²⁴

This paradigm bears significant implications for PME and its relationship to civilian institutional understanding. Traditional PME curricula emphasize the joint planning process as a linear, top-down mechanism, devoid of substantive bottom-up feedback loops that could inform policy evolution.²⁵ While annual planning assessments ostensibly provide review mechanisms, they tend to prioritize risk mitigation from the combatant commander’s perspective—specifically, a misalignment of ends and means—rather than fostering iterative evaluations of strategic implementation. Consequently, promising low-cost initiatives often face resistance within theater special operations commands and GCCs, who view bottom-up strategy and policy formulation as incompatible with established joint planning protocols. This resistance impedes the necessary dialogue between policymakers and operational executors and undermines statutory authorities granted by Congress through programs such as section 127e, “Support of Special Operations to Combat Terrorism.”²⁶

This resistance to bottom-up planning appears rooted in a conceptual misunderstanding of civil-military relations and policy development, and in a pedagogical emphasis on procedural mechanics over the substantive processes of strategy formation and execution. PME tends to present the joint planning process as a means to produce static planning documents for resource allocation rather than as a dynamic mechanism that fosters iterative dialogue between senior leadership and deployed units operating under GCC authority.²⁷ A more holistic educational approach would incorporate a critical examination of the reciprocity between war and strategy, challenging the assumptions embedded in the “normal” theory of civil-military relations.

This pedagogical shift, exemplified by STP’s curriculum (more on this shortly), compels officers to engage with the complexities and ambiguities inherent in strategic execution, a challenging but necessary endeavor across all levels of PME.

Ironically, PME currently fails to adequately prepare officers, particularly those at the O-4 level and above, to understand the permissions and authorities delegated to them: thus undercutting a fundamental requirement for mission success. Discussions with O-5 and O-6 officers at higher commands reveal a concerning gap in awareness regarding specific delegated tasks and authorities cited in their orders and base documents. Addressing this gap is crucial to enhancing the fidelity of strategic execution and bridging the disconnect between policy formulation and operational practice.

The lessons from the SOF perspective should sound familiar to any officer who has worked at the operational level of war, either in peacetime or war. Strategy in practice demands a much more nuanced and complicated process than Samuel Huntington’s dream of an unmolested military meeting political ends in a linear fashion.²⁸ Military leaders must anticipate, respond to, and collaborate with civilian and political leaders to achieve evolving objectives.²⁹ The most current event at the time of this article’s drafting is the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a historical moment where the public might never know who the driving force behind the mission was, even as the president approved the final plan.³⁰ History suggests that who drives policy largely depends on the personalities involved rather than a rigid doctrinal recommendation.³¹

Again, this is not an indictment of current PME. The military needs doctrinal experts and officers with a broad perspective, but it also requires historians, sociologists, technical specialists, and political analysts within its officer corps, not to mention doctrinal warfighting experts. The time and capability problems compound: officers learn in programs that cannot scale, with precious little time to utilize those skills before the lure of retirement, in environments PME cannot necessarily predict.

A Partial Solution: Civilian-Enabled PME that Creates an Additive Cadre

These examples clarify what other critiques of PME might not readily acknowledge: a single PME program must sacrifice specific expertise if it takes a broad approach rather than a limited, time-constrained schedule. Additionally, programs that focus more on doctrine and how services hope a conflict will work are essential, but as historian Timothy Snyder pointed out, history implies the following:

1. Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true.
2. Whatever they say, the people who start wars are often thinking chiefly about domestic politics.
3. The rationale given for war will change over time, such that actual success or failure in achieving a named objective is less relevant than one might think.
4. Wars are unpredictable.
5. Wars are easy to start and hard to stop.³²

STP adopts this mindset, focusing not on doctrine or a specific service but on examining war in width, depth, and context.³³ STP paradigms encompass understanding the distinctions between “war” and “warfighting,” “strategy in theory” versus “strategy in practice,” and eschewing “military history” in favor of a comprehensive history.³⁴ STP graduates generally find the Huntington model of civil-military relations problematic, and some even argue that strategy cannot begin until violence is present in a wartime environment.³⁵ Above all, STP continuously focuses on strategy; students might discuss concepts such as international relations but only in the context of whether they apply to strategic realities.³⁶

Some of these concepts overlap with other PME programs but many do not. Neither is right nor wrong, and this article does not argue that all PME instructors should embrace the STP mindset. However, by partnering with civilian institutions, STP is an example of how the military can (1) efficiently expand the number of officers that receive a strategy-based education and (2) diversify the modes of thinking within its retained officer corps. STP graduates do not replace SAASS officers; they are additive and offer a different perspective. Whether war unfolds as planned, adheres to doctrine, or, more realistically, proceeds according to policy through CONOPs and under various senior leader directions, a force composed of traditional PME and STP graduates will be more flexible and adaptable.

While this article does not aim to “solve PME” or even suggest that current programs require serious modifications, just as STP graduates are required to complete traditional doctrinal training, major PME programs should consider allocating a portion of their syllabus toward examining how STP differs. If the DoW embraced STP and pursued other civilian relationships for expanded strategic thinking programs, the reciprocal exchange of ideas between traditional PME and STP-like programs could be enormously beneficial. STP cannot be done at scale any more than SAASS or other in-depth strategic courses, but that should not stop the DoW from adding similar programs. More programs with specific purposes, rather than general academic programs, would be a healthy addition.

The concept of a singular purpose for PME also underscores the additive nature of STP and other potential programs. Historian Dan Marston created STP in 2019 with the explicit goal of producing strategists capable of staffing generals and flag officers.³⁷ Speaking about SAASS and higher-level programs, retired Brig. Gen. Paula Thornhill identified this problem in 2018, writing,

Almost all graduate-level professional military education curricula, for example, require overview courses in strategy and policy, the international system, and key domestic actors in the national security arena. These courses are essential, but only tangentially prepare officers for future responsibilities as senior commanders and strategists. Moreover, officers who attend both intermediate and senior-level schools learn many of the same things twice. Curricula do include some service-specific courses on doctrine and operational approaches.³⁸

What is lost is deep historical understanding and a healthy skepticism of any proposed solution.

STP, in response, focuses mainly on deep historical understandings, but other civilian partnership programs could have different focuses. STP provides augmenting forces to programs already developing strategic advisors and future generals, but where is the partnership focused on innovation or bureaucratic reform? Perhaps militaries could further augment their forces by enabling business school-led programs to develop officers capable of thinking differently about acquisition reform, or by a science-focused program designed to spur technological innovation. Services do partner with these schools for various fellowships, but as Thornhill points out above, they lack a singular focus like STP.

Conclusion

Controversies over PME are unlikely to subside, and retention will always be a concern for the military. Unless services make the (probably unwise) decision to move PME earlier to an officer’s career, the time between course completion and retirement will inevitably be fleeting for most. Additionally, even if retention rates for in-residence PME graduates were 100 percent, few officers would argue that traditional military education programs can cover everything a future advisor, staff officer, or leader needs to know.

To achieve an increased diversity of thought within the officer corps capable of tackling the unknowable and adjusting when doctrine or service dogmas cannot provide a solution, the DoW should strongly consider programs like STP that have a singular focus and, via partnerships with civilian institutions, ensure their graduates can approach problems differently and prevent groupthink within the officer corps. If more of these programs exist, it is more likely that the precious few officers who do resist retirement and continue to the rank of colonel and beyond will have competing ideas that produce more optimal solutions.

Finally, just as STP embraces a reciprocal understanding of strategy and allows for the historical examination of bottom-up, policy-by-CONOP realities, other potential civilian partnerships with singular approaches could produce unique officers explicitly equipped to tackle unique problem sets. However many of these programs ultimately exist, or whether STP remains the only variant, traditional PME should consider examining these approaches without completely disrupting their own evolving curricula. Introducing PME students to such an approach would not revolutionize traditional programs. Still, it might be a practical adjustment that encourages students to refine their thinking rather than the unrealistic revamping some PME critics endorse.

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Notes

1. Paula Thornhill, “More Military Education Should Be Like the ‘Strategic Thinkers Program,’” Defense One, 2 June 2022, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/06/more-military-education-should-be-strategic-thinkers-program/367599/.
2. Tamir Libel, “Professional Military Education as an Institution: A Short (Historical) Institutionalist Survey,” Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies 4, no. 1 (2021): 121–31, https://doi.org/10.31374/sjms.79; Beth J. Asch et al., The Blended Retirement System: Retention Effects and Continuation Pay Cost Estimates for the Armed Services (RAND Corporation, 2017), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1887.html.
3. Hope Seck, “Is Blended Retirement Making a Difference?,” Air & Space Forces Magazine, 31 March 2023, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/is-blended-retirement-making-a-difference/. Even though the Blended Retirement System gives some retirement benefits for those who leave the military before twenty years, there are still significant incentives for staying two decades. Whether that incentive is as strong as the traditional system, in which which those who stay past twenty years earn 50 percent retirement, remains to be seen.
4. Charles A. Goldman et al., Intellectual Firepower: A Review of Professional Military Education in the U.S. Department of Defense (RAND Corporation, 2024), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1694-1.html.
5. Lawrence M. Hanser et al., Air Force Professional Military Education: Considerations for Change (RAND Corporation, 2021), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA401-1.html.
6. Stephen Losey, “Air Force to Drop Below-the-Zone Promotions for Officers,” Air Force Times, 9 December 2019, https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/12/09/air-force-to-drop-below-the-zone-promotions-for-officers/.
7. “Promotion Timing, Zones, and Opportunity,” RAND Project Air Force, accessed 25 February 2026, https://www.rand.org/paf/projects/dopma-ropma/promotion-and-appointments/promotion-timing-zones-and-opportunity.html.
8. Pauline Shanks Kaurin, “Professional Military Education: What Is It Good For?,” The Strategy Bridge, 22 June 2017, https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/6/22/professional-military-education-what-is-it-good-for.
9. “The History of SAASS,” Air University, accessed 25 February 2026, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/SAASS/About/.
10. Barry M Stentiford, “Advanced Strategic Leadership Studies Program,” Military Review 102, no. 2 (March-April 2022): 116–22, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/March-April-2022/Stentiford/; “Maritime Advanced Warfighting School,” College of Naval Command and Staff, accessed 25 February 2026, https://usnwc.edu/college-of-naval-command-and-staff/Additional-Academic-Opportunities/Maritime-Advanced-Warfighting-School; “School of Advanced Warfighting,” Marine Corps University, accessed 25 February 2026, https://www.usmcu.edu/SAW/About-SAW/.
11. Kimberly Jackson et al., Raising the Flag: Implications of U.S. Military Approaches to General and Flag Officer Development (RAND Corporation, 2020), xix, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4347.html.
12. Jackson et al., Raising the Flag, 134.
13. Dave Lyle, “SAASS Opens Its Doors ... #Reviewing Strategy: Context and Adaptation from Archidamus to Airpower,” The Strategy Bridge, 31 August 2016, https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2016/8/31/saass-opens-its-doors-reviewing-strategycontext-and-adaptation-from-archidamus-to-airpower.
14. Stephen E. Olson, Iron Sharpens Iron: A Comparative Study of the Advanced Military Studies Program and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (School of Advanced Military Studies, 2012), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA606816.pdf; “Advanced Strategist Program,” College of Naval Command and Staff, accessed 25 February 2026, https://usnwc.don.edu/college-of-naval-command-and-staff/Additional-Academic-Opportunities/Advanced-Strategist-Program.
15. Stentiford, “Advanced Strategic Leadership Studies Program,” 116.
16. A sample from Sir Hew Strachan’s The Direction of War (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 33: “Strategy has lost its connection to policy, and without this connection, it is meaningless.” From Sir Lawrence Freedman’s Strategy: A History (Oxford University Press, 2013), xi: “Strategy is a story told in the face of uncertainty, conceived in the hope of influencing events that may or may not occur.”
17. Shane Praiswater, “Reconsidering the Relationship Between War and Strategy,” RUSI Journal 168, no. 5 (2023): 10–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/03071847.2023.2275031.
18. Martin Neill et al., Defense Governance and Management: Improving the Defense Management Capabilities of Foreign Defense Institutions, part 1, Defense Policy and Strategy (Institute for Defense Analyses, 2017), 2, https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep22899.4.
19. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State (Harvard University Press, 1987).
20. Douglas M. Gibler, “Combining Behavioral and Structural Predictors of Violent Civil Conflict: Getting Scholars and Policymakers to Talk to Each Other,” International Studies Quarterly 61, no. 1 (March 2017): 28–37, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqw030.
21. “Joint Publications Planning Series,” Joint Chiefs of Staff, accessed 25 February 2026, https://www.jcs.mil/Doctrine/Joint-Doctrine-Pubs/5-0-Planning-Series/.
22. Arthur F. Lykke Jr., “Toward an Understanding of Military Strategy,” in Military Strategy: Theory and Application (US Army War College, 1989).
23. 10 U.S.C. § 127e(a) (2025), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2016-title10/html/USCODE-2016-title10-subtitleA-partI-chap3-sec127e.htm.
24. Walter Haynes, “The Hidden Costs of Strategy by Special Operations,” War on the Rocks, 17 April 2019, https://warontherocks.com/2019/04/the-hidden-costs-of-strategy-by-special-operations/.
25. Joint Publication (JP) 5-0, Joint Planning (US Government Publishing Office, July 2025).
26. 10 U.S.C. § 127e.
27. JP 5-0, Joint Planning.
28. Risa Brooks, “Beyond Huntington: US Military Professionalism Today,” Parameters 51, no. 1 (2021): 65–77, https://doi.org/10.55540/0031-1723.3036.
29. Lawrence Freedman, “The Meaning of Strategy, Part 2: The Objectives,” Texas National Security Review 1, no. 2 (2018): 34–57, https://doi.org/10.15781/T20863P09.
30. Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary, “Hegseth Defers to General on Pentagon’s Plans for Iran,” Politico, 18 June 2025, https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/17/hegseth-erik-kurilla-iran-pentagon-response-00411007.
31. Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (Free Press, 2002).
32. Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder), “Five things to remember about war …,” X (formerly Twitter), 22 June 2025, https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1936642958989615307.
33. Thornhill, “More Military Education Should Be Like the ‘Strategic Thinkers Program.’”
34. H. R. McMaster, “On the Study of War and Warfare,” Modern War Institute, 24 February 2017, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/study-war-warfare/; Hew Strachan, “Strategy in Theory; Strategy in Practice,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42, no. 2 (2019): 171–90, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1559153; John Gooch, “History and the Nature of Strategy,” chap. 9 in The Past as Prologue, ed. Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (Cambridge University Press, 2006), https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511818943.009.
35. Peter D. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique; Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control,” Armed Forces and Society 23, no. 2 (1996): 149–78, https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X9602300203; Praiswater, “Reconsidering the Relationship Between War and Strategy.”
36. For a discussion of the issues that some historians have with international relations, see Shane Praiswater, “Perception, History, and Leadership,” in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Leadership and Organizational Change, ed. Satinder Dhiman (Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2025), 1–5, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390820671_Perception_History_and_Leadership.
37. Thornhill, “More Military Education Should Be Like the ‘Strategic Thinkers Program.’”
38. Paula Thornhill, “To Produce Strategists, Focus on Staffing Senior Leaders,” War on the Rocks, 20 July 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/07/to-produce-strategists-focus-on-staffing-senior-leaders/.

 

 

 

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