The Reform of Military Education:
Twenty-Five Years Later
by Joan Johnson-Freese
Joan Johnson-Freese is a Professor and former Chair of National Security Affairs at the Naval
War College, Newport, Rhode Island. This article draws from and expands on points made in
two earlier articles: ‘‘Teach Tough, Think Tough: Why Military Education Must Change,’’ AOL
Defense online, June 15, 2011 and ‘‘Teach Tough, Think Tough: Three Ways to Fix the War
Colleges,’’ AOL Defense online, July 23, 2011. The views expressed in this article are the author’s
alone and do not represent the official position of the Department of the Navy, the Department
of Defense, or the U.S. government.
Abstract: When considering how to make the war colleges more effective, it
should be remembered that first and foremost, the job of the war colleges is to
educate students to make them better defenders of the United States of America
and its interests and its allies around the world. However, the author gives many
recommendations on how these colleges can better educate, rather than train.
I
t has been 25 years since the landmark 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act
reformed U.S. national defense. Part of that important legislation speci-
fically mandated guidelines for military education, with intent to open the
military culture and to encourage intellectual integration with civilians and
among the services themselves. This was followed by the ‘‘Skelton Panel,’’
chaired by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO). The idea behind both was simple,
reflecting the classic wisdom that ‘‘the society that separates its scholars from
its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by
fools.
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‘‘Over a decade earlier, Admiral Stansfield Turner had similarly
reformed the Naval War College (NWC), warning that if military officers could
not hold their own with the best civilian strategists, the military would end up
‘‘abdicating control over its profession.’’
In 2010 the House Armed Service Committee issued a report titled
Another Crossroads? Professional Military Education Twenty Years After the
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United States House of Representatives, Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed
Services, ‘‘Another Crossroads? Professional Military Education Twenty Years After the Gold-
water-Nichols Act and the Skelton Panel,’’ H.A.S.C. publication No. 111-67, May 20, 2009. The
quote about ‘‘fighting done by fools’’ is widely misattributed to Thucydides (as it is in the HASC
report) but was actually penned by W.F. Butler in 1889.
# 2011 Published by Elsevier Limited on behalf of Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Winter 2012
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