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i 

51–661 2010

[H.A.S.C. No. 111–67] 

ANOTHER CROSSROADS? PROFESSIONAL 

MILITARY EDUCATION TWENTY YEARS 

AFTER THE GOLDWATER-NICHOLS ACT 

AND THE SKELTON PANEL 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

MAY 20, 2009 
(II) 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman 

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

GLENN NYE, Virginia 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

ROB WITTMAN, Virginia 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

LORRY FENNER, Professional Staff Member 

JOHN KRUSE, Professional Staff Member 

TREY HOWARD, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2009 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, May 20, 2009, Another Crossroads? Professional Military Education Twenty Years After the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the Skelton 

Panel ..................................................................................................................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 ....................................................................................... 37 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2009 

ANOTHER CROSSROADS? PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION 

TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE GOLDWATER-NICHOLS ACT AND THE 

SKELTON PANEL 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman, Oversight 

and Investigations Subcommittee ....................................................................... 1 

Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 2 

WITNESSES 

Breslin-Smith, Dr. Janet, Retired Professor and Department Head, National 

War College .......................................................................................................... 5 

Carafano, Dr. James Jay, Assistant Director, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom 

Davis Institute for International Studies, Heritage Foundation ..................... 10 

Cochran, Dr. Alexander S., Historical Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the 

Army, U.S. Army .................................................................................................. 8 

Kohn, Dr. Richard H., Professor of History, and Peace, War, and Defense, 

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ..................................................... 12 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Breslin-Smith, Dr. Janet .................................................................................. 48 

Carafano, Dr. James Jay ................................................................................. 63 

Cochran, Dr. Alexander S. ............................................................................... 59 

Kohn, Dr. Richard H. ....................................................................................... 69 

Snyder, Hon. Vic ............................................................................................... 41 

Wittman, Hon. Rob ........................................................................................... 44 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Dr. Snyder ......................................................................................................... 91 

(1) 

ANOTHER CROSSROADS? PROFESSIONAL MILITARY 

EDUCATION TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE GOLDWATERNICHOLS ACT AND THE SKELTON PANEL 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Wednesday, May 20, 2009. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:06 p.m., in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder (chairman 

of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Dr. SNYDER. The hearing will come to order. Good afternoon, and 

welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations’ first 

formal hearing on professional military education (PME). 

It is just over 20 years since the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act that reformed our military by institutionalizing what we 

call ‘‘Jointness.’’ It is exactly 20 years after the Skelton panel reviewed professional military education to make sure that the military changed its culture to education to make sure that jointness 

would stick. 

Today, we are starting a series of hearings to last over the next 

three or four months following on background work we have been 

doing for the last three months. Although there are many variations on PME, including distance learning and courses for enlisted 

service members and civilians, the scope of this project is limited 

to in-residence officer PME from the service academies to the company-grade and intermediate levels up through the war colleges, as 

well as the flag officer’s course called Capstone. 

Mr. Ike Skelton, our chairman, who was involved in that work 

over 20 years ago, recalls that militaries usually don’t change 

things when they are successful. Instead, the reforms of the 1980s 

came on the heels of failures in Grenada and in attempting to rescue our hostages in Iran. In fact, Mr. Skelton reminded us often 

that, even with these failures, it was not easy to convince the services that they had to change. He knew then what we know now: 

that the way to change cultures is through education. 

The issue before us as we embark on an investigation goes to the 

very existence of military schools. The famous, or perhaps for some 

of you infamous, journalist Tom Ricks questioned just last month 

whether there was even a need for our academies and war colleges. 

He reminds us that, from time to time, we should assess what our 

professional military schools are meant to do for the Nation. We 
2 

are also going to ask if they are doing what the Nation needs now 

and if they are doing it in the best way. 

Finally, we are going to try to get to explore whether they are 

doing it successfully and, if not, what needs to change. 

Our study seems to be timely. Several other related efforts are 

underway. The Defense Science Board has started a study of PME 

that they will complete next spring. In addition, the Center for 

Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Center for a 

New America Security are both just beginning studies on the larger 

issue of joint officer management that will also include a look at 

PME. CSIS intends to complete their study by the end of the year. 

In order to conduct our study, we will be asking about the mission of the PME system and of each of the schools and what makes 

them unique, one to the other, as well as different from civilian 

schools. We will also be asking about the rigor with which they go 

about their business. And because education is necessarily a 

human business, we want to learn more about the quality and 

qualifications of the senior leadership, faculty, and students at 

these institutions. 

We will also be asking about the organization and resources the 

department and services afford these schools. And finally, we will 

explore their curricula. They each have their accrediting bodies for 

both the professional military education and their academic degrees, but we want to look broadly at the question of balance—balance between the enduring and the new, and the new challenges. 

And, as each school tries to balance enduring and new, how they 

incorporate lessons learned and other important subject matter 

into their curricula on a continuing basis. We specifically want to 

know what they do with areas such as strategy and military history, irregular warfare, language skills, regional expertise and cultural competency, and, beyond jointness, inter-agency and multinational integration. 

While in later hearings we will seek to hear from the commandants to the schools, and even the combatant commanders who 

employ the graduates of these institutions, our panel of witnesses 

is uniquely situated to get us started on the broader questions, and 

I am confident that you all will help us frame our investigation. 

I will now yield to Mr. Wittman for an opening statement, and 

then we will see if Chairman Skelton would like to share some 

thoughts with us. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the Appendix on page 41.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, Chairman Skelton, Dr. 

Breslin-Smith, Dr. Cochran, Dr. Carafano, Dr. Kohn. Welcome here 

today. Thank you for taking your time to join us. This is, I think, 

a very, very important effort as we go forth with trying to make 

sure we know what the PME system needs to provide and the 

JPME system needs to provide to our men and women in uniform. 

And to begin, you must truly be experts to be asked to testify at 

our opening hearing on professional military education, because 
3 

our committee expert and the person responsible for initiating this 

study is none other than our distinguished chairman, Ike Skelton. 

And because he cares deeply about professional military education, 

our chairman has exerted profound positive influence on the system over the past two decades. 

This hearing begins a timely review of that system. And I would 

like to take a moment to frame the issue for the record. Any study 

must have limited, achievable objectives to avoid becoming 

swamped in unmanageable data, a caution well applied to congressional studies. 

As I understand it, we will examine in-residence officer professional military education as a whole, starting with the military 

academies and continuing through the general officer Capstone 

course. Consequently, this review will not cover the military services’ extensive and growing distance learning programs, non-commissioned officer education programs, nor Reserve Officer Training 

Corps, or ROTC programs, on college campuses. 

Furthermore, within the in-residence officer PME system, we will 

concentrate our efforts on the joint professional military education 

(JPME) system at the intermediate and senior levels. And I truly 

applaud this approach as we are concentrating on the area that 

was rejuvenated by the Skelton panel recommendations and continues to get the most attention today. 

Indeed, officers must show that they have completed JPME levels I and II to advance in their careers to the flag or general officer 

level. No schooling, no promotion. Hence, JPME credit is important 

to individual officers. 

Joint PME is challenging to manage for several reasons. For 

starters, this training and education system is operated from the 

office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Admiral Mullen owns the National Defense University (NDU), 

and his staff sets the JPME standards that NDU and the military 

service war colleges must follow. Ordinarily, military education systems are managed by the military departments, but JPME is an 

exception, forcing the joint chief to function like a military service—excuse me, the joint staff to function like a military service, 

an unaccustomed role for the joint staff. 

The service chiefs oversee their own institutions, like the eminent Marine Corps University at Quantico, Virginia, which is in 

my district, and provides for resources in hiring faculty. Finally, 

the military services select the students who attend all the PME 

institutions and make selections for promotion. 

Given today’s operational tempo, there is tremendous pressure 

on the military services to ensure their officers attain JPME credit 

as efficiently as possible. Somehow, this complex mosaic seems to 

work as our Nation is blessed with fine flag officers in all branches 

of the service. Nonetheless, the system is due for a re-look in this 

time of change in extraordinarily busy operational tempo. 

Our military officers, including our junior officers, are conducting 

not just joint military operations, but inter-agency and international operations, as well. Are our officers prepared for these real 

challenges of today? Not only at the tactical and operational level, 

but are we developing a cadre of grand strategists able to navigate 

the uncertain waters for tomorrow’s geopolitical struggles? We 
4 

must ensure that our military’s developing leaders today who will 

be effective in any situation. 

This is a very exciting topic, which will generate much debate 

and much discussion about the direction we need to be doing. I look 

forward to this discussion today and the months to come. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the Appendix on page 44.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. 

Chairman Skelton, would you like to say a few words? 

The CHAIRMAN. That is the definition of introducing a politician, 

would you like to say a few words. The answer to your questions—— 

Dr. SNYDER. You could read your book to it, ‘‘Whispers of Warriors: Essays on the New Joint Era,’’ by Ike Skelton. 

The CHAIRMAN. We don’t have time. 

To answer your question, Mr. Wittman, are we developing those 

strategic thinkers, not long ago, I had the opportunity to visit with 

the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter 

Pace. And I asked him, of the average graduate class of the National War College, how many could actually sit down and have a 

serious discussion with George C. Marshall. His answer was, 

‘‘Three or four.’’ That is not bad. That is really pretty good. 

Everyone in the class will understand strategic thought, but how 

many would be creative enough to offer a serious discussion with 

the likes of George C. Marshall? 

So we ask ourselves the question, what do you want out of professional military education? Well, being a product of law school 

and the agonies of studying the case work for some three years, 

what you really want is someone who is grounded, (A) in knowledge and (B) in the ability to think, whether it be on the tactical 

level or the operational level or the strategic level. And any questions whether our institutions of learning equip these young people 

to think that way with enough knowledge to do something about 

it. 

It is good, and I compliment the chairman, Dr. Snyder, and the 

entire subcommittee on what you are doing here, taking a good, 

hard look. We did yeoman’s work way back yonder. 

It is interesting. Prior to our effort, there were a good number 

of studies on professional military education that went on the shelf, 

and actually we were able to actually do something with it. And 

I hope you will take it several steps further, because we need those 

thinkers out there. 

And seeing my friend, Dr. Kohn, here, who is one of America’s 

truly outstanding historians, I guess I have a phobia that every 

military officer should be a historian. That is not necessarily something that can happen, because I was talking with a friend of mine, 

a professor of mine—a number of years ago. He said that some people have a sense of history like some people have a sense of mathematics, which means we are not going to make historians out of all 

of them, but at least they would have an appreciation and understanding of it. 

And if you are one of those that is gifted and you are wearing 

the uniform, you have a sense of history. You ought to have the ca-
5 

pability of being a strategic thinker, or an operational thinker or 

a tactical thinker, depending upon your rank and where you are in 

the hierarchy or the scheme of things. 

So I compliment you on this hearing, and I wish you well. Thank 

you. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

We have also been joined—can enjoy the presence of Congressman Mac Thornberry from Texas, who I would say is also one of 

the real thinkers in the Congress. 

Our witnesses today are Dr. Janet Breslin-Smith, former professor and department head at the National War College; Dr. Alexander ‘‘Sandy’’ Cochran, a private scholar who, in fact, has taught 

at every one of the service war colleges; Dr. James Carafano, the 

assistant director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at the Heritage Foundation; and Dr. 

Richard Kohn, Professor of History and of Peace, War, and Defense 

at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. 

Dr. Breslin-Smith, we will begin with you. We will put on our 

five-minute clock, if it works properly. When you see the red light 

go off, it is a signal five minutes has gone by. If you haven’t finished saying everything you want to say, feel free to continue. But 

I think we have votes coming up at 1:45. It would be nice to have 

your all statements done by then. Your written statements will be 

made a part of the committee record. 

So, Dr. Breslin-Smith. 

STATEMENT OF DR. JANET BRESLIN-SMITH, RETIRED PROFESSOR AND DEPARTMENT HEAD, NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Thank you. Chairman Skelton, it is lovely to 

see you here. 

Chairman Snyder, Ranking Member Wittman, and members of 

the subcommittee, it is a privilege to be here and an honor, honestly, both the chairman’s work 20 years ago, having the panel on 

PME education, professional education for military officers, as well 

as what you are doing right now. The most important congressional 

activity beyond voting is oversight, and so I congratulate this subcommittee. 

And I have to tell you, for the first half of my career, I sat on 

the other side of the witness table because I was legislative director 

for Senator Leahy for many years, doing agriculture issues in addition to defense and foreign policy. 

But for the second part of my career, I had the privilege of teaching at the National War College. And it is on the basis of that experience and a history that I am just completing right now about the 

War College that I offer my observations to you about that unique 

school in and of itself, and also some recommendations for the subcommittee to consider in general. 

As I said before, you are honoring really the work that was done 

in 1989 in the first really comprehensive, I think, study that the 

Congress took about professional military education. And now, here 

you are, looking at this issue 20 years later in a different strategic 

environment, and one certainly that my students at the War College confronted, where they weren’t just seeing nation-states with 

threatening armies on the horizon. We were having our students 
6 

and joining with them in dealing with a movement of people where 

the ideology wasn’t necessarily an economic ideology, but basically 

a theology, and how does a military officer prepare him or herself 

for that type of new strategic environment. 

That type of question about preparing a military officer really intrigued me as I began my research about the War College, and I 

want to just take you for a moment back to that era, back in 1944, 

1945, 1946, 1947, when General Eisenhower, General Arnold, other 

leaders in the military, in the midst of World War II, came to the 

conclusion—and I would say, Chairman Skelton, it is a remarkable 

event that they considered this in the midst of war—what they 

needed to do for professional military education for officers. 

And they worked on some things in the midst of war. And then, 

right as the war ended, they took action to try an experiment, and 

this experiment was to say not only would this new school for senior officers be joint—in other words, all four services would send 

students to this school—but it also would have representation from 

the State Department and the intelligence agencies. 

It had the support from everyone, basically, Forrestal, the Navy, 

the War Department, came together to say yes, we needed to do 

this experiment. And what is, I think, instructive about it in a 

sense of Eisenhower’s own personal power, he took the beautiful 

building that had been the Army War College and made a new creation in this building. 

And basically, the Army War College closed for a number of 

years and reformed itself up in Carlisle later on, but he took this 

beautiful building, prime real estate in Washington, and made it 

this new institution. And as I said before, from its inception, it was 

joint, and it was inter-agency. His vision back in 1946 was the vision, honestly, that Secretary Gates talks about now. So I want to 

honor both Eisenhower’s initial vision and the fact that we are both 

looking at this issue again right now. 

Not only was this school inter-agency and joint, but it had a 

focus intentionally on strategy. And again, to take you back at that 

time and how remarkable it was to think about this in this current 

era, in 1946, 1947, our first deputy commandant was George Kennan, the author of Containment Policy. And he wrote his famous 

articles, anonymously signed X in Foreign Affairs, while he was on 

the faculty. He formulated and wrote that article during that period of time. 

He established a pattern that we still follow, which is he wanted 

an in-depth look at the strategic challenge facing the Nation then. 

And so he had lectures at the beginning of the year on who Stalin 

was, Russian history, the sources of Soviet conduct. After these lectures—and I should tell you, President Truman himself came to 

lectures—people would adjourn to the commandant’s house. Members of Congress would come. The secretary of defense came—the 

new secretary of defense, secretary of war at the time—would 

come, and it was an intellectual refuge in Washington for people 

of both parties with the executive branch to talk with educated people about Russia in that era, and to form a bipartisan consensus 

for a strategy that endured for generations. It was a remarkable 

time, and it is a remarkable institution. 
7 

And I have to say, in my years teaching, and even now going 

back every once in a while and just coming into a seminar, and I 

would urge you, if you could, to do this. On any day, in any seminar room, you are going to hear combat veterans and seasoned 

diplomats struggle over policy issues. You are going to see and hear 

academic specialists and intelligence officers in deep discussion 

over strategy. 

You are going to hear them debate tribal issues in Afghanistan. 

You are going to hear them debate space issues. You are going to 

have people who had Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) experience, and I know this subcommittee has done work on this. You are 

going to have students from the State Department, from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Marines and Army 

officers compare notes on combat. It is still a special place. 

Now, of course, we know that all institutions change over time. 

This has been over 60 years that we have been in business. And 

I think this subcommittee is doing the country a service right now 

by reflecting on all of our institutions for PME. And let me say, in 

my reflection in doing this history, my first recommendation of 

something for the committee to consider actually goes back to what 

Chairman Skelton’s original study also found. In fact, a number of 

things I am going to say today are in his report, this report from 

1989. 

But the first one, and this is especially true for the National War 

College and also for the Industrial College of the Armed Forces 

(ICAF), the Industrial College, which is our sister college next to 

us, I believe that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has to reclaim 

ownership of our colleges. And I am just going to talk really basically about the War College, but everything I am saying applies 

ICAF. 

Both the chairman and the Joint Chiefs need to clarify the college’s mission, enhance our leadership, establish criteria for appropriate faculty and student selections, and reassert the focus of our 

curricula, which is grand strategy. 

These are his schools, but there is a sense that the college—both 

colleges—have become orphans, and that the chairman and the 

joint staff are detached from this school. And I have to say, naturally, it is a totally understandable phenomena that all the service 

chiefs would automatically give preference and give more attention 

to their own service schools, without question. And that is why it 

is even more important that the chairman establish ownership of 

National War College. 

I specifically think he needs to strengthen our leadership and the 

criteria for leadership. As a faculty member, I know the value of 

a good dean of faculty, and certainly we have a good tradition at 

the War College, and strong faculty. And I will get to faculty in a 

minute. I am out of time already. 

Let me just say quickly, I think that the commandant should 

have a longer term of office and should come committed to leadership of this institution. I believe the commandant should teach. 

I also believe we need to revive a board of consultants. The War 

College had that for 30 years. I think we need the oversight of an 

outside board specifically addressed to our program. 
8 

My comments about the faculty, both military, civilian and agency, are in my remarks. I do believe that the student body itself, the 

selection needs to be carefully undertaken by the services to make 

sure they get the best use out of this education. 

I think our program is appropriately focused on strategy. And I 

have copies here of our syllabuses if you would like to look at how 

we address this issue. 

Finally, I want to say a word about our experience in Iraq and 

the comments that have been made in the press about the failure 

of generalship. Since many of the general officers in both of these 

wars are war college graduates, I think it is a careful issue for us 

to consider, and I go into this at length in my testimony about how 

we approach this issue. 

I also want to say that I think both in terms of preparation for 

these types of strategic questions as well as civil-military relations, 

they are both issues that the college is confronting directly. 

Finally, I want to make a last comment about just the interagency aspects and going back into history. As I mentioned before, 

General Eisenhower was vitally involved in our formation. And at 

the time, his original idea, and among others at the time, the postwar period, was to have five colleges. 

The original proposal was to have a consortium of schools—the 

War College, which did happen, the Industrial College, which was 

reformed and structured then. There was to be an Administration 

College, an Intelligence College, and a State Department college. 

I think this subcommittee might look, maybe even with your sister committee, foreign affairs, at the idea of reviving this idea and 

having a College of Diplomacy and Development as a sister school 

for us again so that we could work together and that they could 

form the intellectual foundation that Chairman Skelton was looking for when he did this review panel 20 years ago. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Breslin-Smith can be found in 

the Appendix on page 48.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Breslin-Smith. 

Dr. Cochran. 

STATEMENT OF DR. ALEXANDER S. COCHRAN, HISTORICAL 

ADVISOR TO THE CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE ARMY, U.S. ARMY 

Dr. COCHRAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the honor of testifying at this distinguished subcommittee. 

My comments deal with the service war colleges and are based 

on my 15 years of teaching experience at all of these institutions. 

On a recent study that I completed while at the Wilson Center 

about these institutions, in my written statement I offer some observations based upon my teaching and some suggestions from my 

reflections. 

In the interest of time, I would like to focus my suggestions in 

these comments here on three, four fields: faculty, students, governance, and curriculum. I add that these represent my own opinions and certainly not the Department of Defense. 

On the faculty, let there be no debate: faculties make or break 

an institution. The Skelton reforms of the past 20 years signifi-
9 

cantly enhance that faculty expertise, particularly with respect to 

the civilian faculty. 

It is as a department chair and a faculty member I experienced 

an unintended consequence that needs, I think, your attention— 

that is the aligning of two different camps, each with their own 

professional standards, military versus civilians, kind of a ‘‘we’’ 

versus ‘‘they.’’ 

And a new category, unanticipated I think at that time, of retired 

military faculty; all too often, officers that lack the academic credentials of their civilian counterparts. I believe, personally, this can 

be easily corrected if the war colleges reclassify their faculty as either field experts or academic specialists. 

Secondly, the war colleges’ delivery of curriculum as mandated 

by Mr. Skelton’s reforms is that of seminar, the most demanding 

of the teaching profession. Teaching at war college is tough, with 

little time for outside research and writing. 

The problem is compounded, in my experience, with the practice 

in the war colleges of all students receiving the same seminar experience at the same time by all members of the department, something I think that few civilian institutions would try. Solutions 

here, I think, are innovative scheduling, the possible increase of 

faculty size, or creating more curriculum contact time, a point that 

I will mention shortly. 

On students, in my view, it is a matter of quality, not quantity. 

Though the size of our services have been significantly reduced 

over the past 20 years, the same number of officers attend. My experience has taught me that a significant number of these students 

really don’t want to be there, either that or they are not academically prepared. 

I believe this can be corrected by instituting an application process. Students, by making individual applications with the appropriate credentials to separate war colleges rather than the current 

practice of being selected by the personnel system based on their 

past service, and the colleges would have to accept them. 

On the other end, my experience indicates that up to one-third 

of the graduates will leave the service after one tour. I believe that 

graduates should incur a service obligation of at least five years, 

or two subsequent assignments, so the services and the taxpayers 

can gain maximum return with this outstanding block of instruction rather than the current two years. 

With respect to governance, two comments, and part of these— 

I think Dr. Smith has raised that of leadership and organization. 

Each war college president, or each war college has a president, a 

commandant or a commander. 

During my teaching experience, the average tenure of that position was about two and a half years. This is simply not enough 

time to make a difference, as one needs at least one year to become 

familiar with the process, and then one year to make the changes. 

War college presidents, in my view, should remain in position for 

a minimum of 5 years, a maximum of 10, with the same ‘‘tombstone’’ promotion model used at many of the service academies of 

a promotion to one grade higher upon retirement. 

On organization, while each war college does some things better 

than the others, they simply don’t seem to talk to each other. Each 
10 

has fashioned its own unique mission statement with varied departmental alignments and bureaucratic arrangements. 

At the senior level, there is the so-called MECC, Military Education Coordination Council. Yet, its title speaks rhetorically to its 

advisory role. I would argue what is needed is an office that fosters, indeed mandates just more than talk, such as the chancellors 

that you find at large state university systems. Here I would envision an Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) chancellor of war 

colleges, or chancellor of higher education, with not only fiscal, but 

some kind of statutory authority. 

Lastly, curriculum, thought to be the most essential, and Ike 

Skelton’s charge here, vigorous, vigor. My experience is that, given 

a quality faculty, a receptive student body and enlightened leadership, vigor in the curriculum will take care of itself. 

Each war college delivers a common curriculum, with minor differences—field trips, electives, and what have you. The common aspect of all is they try to do too much in too short a time, resulting 

in a mile-wide, inch-deep approach. I would suggest what is needed 

is focus. I would suggest doubling the in-residence time from the 

current 9 months to 18 months. This would permit hard decisions 

on that most common curriculum quandary, what not to teach. 

To build this focus, each war college needs to be designated as 

a particular center of excellence to itself. The Army War College for 

leaders, people who are going to go on to strategic leadership positions, such as wings, ships, brigades. National War College for positions involving the formulation and execution of national security 

strategy. 

Industrial College of the Armed Forces to deal with resource implications. The Naval War College to deal with theory. The Air War 

College at Maxwell to deal with technology, thus allowing each student to major in a particular area which would be important in his 

or her application. Service competence can simply be taught 

through electives. 

In conclusion, all war colleges are justifiably proud of their programs, yet this pride, in my view, has created intense protectiveness. And I would suggest, as was done 20 years ago, Congress can 

probably step in to give them some help. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Cochran can be found in the Appendix on page 59.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Cochran. 

Dr. Carafano. 

STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES JAY CARAFANO, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, KATHRYN AND SHELBY CULLOM DAVIS INSTITUTE 

FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, HERITAGE FOUNDATION 

Dr. CARAFANO. Honored is not the right word. I am flabbergasted 

to be here. There are few issues that I am more passionate about 

than this. Twenty-five years in the Army, I am a product of the 

PME system and every level up through the war college. And in 

my Army career and since then, I certainly worked with, lectured 

at, or been involved with all of the Army schools and all of the staff 

colleges and all the war colleges. 
11 

I have four ideas I want to put on the table. I think they are 

more than out of the box. I think they are out of the closet, so you 

may just want to dismiss them. But I just want to put the four out 

there. 

And as a preface, I just want to say I think you are exactly right 

in saying that you start with understanding officer PME and you 

grow from there, and that that is the touchstone of all. And that 

you start at the finish, that you start with understanding senior 

professional military education, and then you work backwards from 

there. So I think the focus of this committee is absolutely spot-on. 

So the four ideas I would propose very quickly, is—the first is I 

think the war college comes simply too late in an officer’s career. 

The senior professional military education ought to come at the 10- 

year mark, and I would be happy to go into the logic behind that. 

But it ought to happen somewhere between the 5 and 10, 12-year 

mark, and it ought to be universal. It is the one thing that Goldwater-Nichols got wrong, which is tying JPME to promotion. Every 

officer needs JPME-like skills, and they need them very early on 

in their career. 

The second point is I think we should move to a model that looks 

much more like the ROTC model, where the colleges, the formal 

war colleges remain as the touchstone of the ethic and the focus 

of the professionalism of the services and the military, but that 

senior professional military education be expanded throughout the 

entire civilian architecture, and that we do PME as well at civilian 

institutions. 

The third point I would make I think is really, really vital. We 

are suffering from PME inflation. We are layering on more and 

more and more things, and today everybody has got to be Lawrence 

of Arabia, and who knows what tomorrow is going to be? 

And we ought to be going in exactly the opposite direction. We 

need to much, much more narrowly focus what PME, senior PME 

is, and we ought to have a really rigorous and tough debate on exactly what that is. 

And the fourth point I would make is JPME is not inter-agency 

education. Inter-agency is all the vogue now, whole-of-government. 

I think that is right. I think we need a professional development 

system for the inter-agency community. 

But obviously, the military is way out ahead in professional development, but what we have seen in recent years is people say, 

‘‘Well, we can just take JPME and we can bring in some State Department folks, and we can make this inter-agency,’’ or other people can learn from us, and that is simply wrong. You cannot start 

building an inter-agency curriculum—and it is an inter-agency professional development program—on the back of JPME. It is wrongheaded. 

JPME is a component of that, needs to interface with that, but 

we need to build the inter-agency professional development program on its own merits. And I think there is a great place for a 

dialogue, and this committee could play a great role in doing that. 

That is really the four things I have come to say. And I think 

that these reforms are absolutely fundamental. I don’t disagree 

with many of the things that Sandy and Dr. Smith have said. But 

again, I think it is too late in the officer’s career. 
12 

I think everybody needs it. I think we are too narrowly focused 

in just using the war colleges to deliver this education. And I think 

it is a piece. But again, inter-agency education and professional development are something else. We ought to have those discussions 

in tandem, not think that we can just expand that from JPME. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Carafano can be found in the Appendix on page 63.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Carafano, no college lecturer finishes the lecture 

before the end of class. 

Dr. CARAFANO. Well, I do have one other—— 

Dr. SNYDER. There you go. I knew it. You are off and running—— 

Dr. CARAFANO [continuing]. And that is calling it a ‘‘tombstone’’ 

promotion may not be the best marketing tool. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Kohn. 

STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD H. KOHN, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, AND PEACE, WAR, AND DEFENSE, UNIVERSITY OF 

NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL 

Dr. KOHN. Chairman Skelton and Chairman Snyder and Ranking Member Wittman, thanks for the opportunity and the honor of 

testifying on this subject this afternoon. 

I have been associated with the subject in one way or another for 

over 40 years, and I believe Mr. Skelton’s 1989 report is still the 

best discussion of the potential and the deficiencies of PME and of 

the solutions that has ever been written. Most of those problems 

remain, although there has been some marked improvement. The 

mission of the schools remains as it has always been—to educate 

officers in the waging of war. 

At every level, PME has yet to reach the level of our better colleges and professionals schools in rigor or quality. Faculties are 

still less trained and distinguished, the academic workload is far 

less, and the focus and curricula sometimes stray from the mission. 

At the academies, too much engineering crowds out the social 

sciences. The Air Force Academy in the last 25 years has gone from 

four to two required courses in history, and there is no American 

history, which means that Air Force officers don’t learn fundamental things about the client. 

At Carlisle, the Department of Command Leadership and Management teaches leadership without any historical study. None of 

the schools use the case study method to any extent like civilian 

professional schools in law, business, and medicine. 

Senior staff schools, as I agree with my colleagues, still don’t sufficiently emphasize strategy. Indeed, the Army War College was, a 

few years ago, moved under training and doctrine command, which 

does not have the term ‘‘education’’ in its title. 

I think the common problems, to me, are structural, organizational, and cultural; structural in the way students are selected, 

graded and worked, resulting often in a low common denominator 

and poor motivation; the way faculty are selected and used, resulting in tensions of a mixed civilian and military faculty; in the difficulty of finding active duty officers with the proper experience, 

academic training, and military background; and in the leadership, 
13 

putting in command flag officers who are often inexperienced and 

unprepared for leadership in education. 

Organizational, in that PME falls under personnel systems that 

slavishly force officers into proscribed careers; focus on staffing the 

operating forces, and privilege the operational, resulting in PME 

becoming for many officers a square filler, a relaxed break from demanding operational tours; and discouraging officers from faculty 

duty because the graduate education and time teaching almost always harms them for promotion. 

Cultural in the sense that PME is shaped by the careerism in the 

military profession and, to some degree, the anti-intellectualism of 

the officer corps. The norms and attitudes and thinking that confuse education with training and disparage learning and reading 

and schooling and favor experienced command, physical prowess, 

and fraternal compatibility, and I think is suspicious of academe 

and academic work because it is viewed through a caricature partly 

derived from popular culture in the United States. 

In the end, two things have influenced PME in the last 20 years 

in a positive direction. First, the efforts of Mr. Skelton and his colleagues, his careful investigation and wise thinking, and I must say 

his relentlessness of focus; and second, the drive to give master’s 

degrees at the staff and war colleges, which forced an upgrading 

of the faculties at those institutions in order to qualify for accreditation, although at a significant, and in my judgment, dangerous 

cost. 

Let me close by talking of George Marshall, the preeminent soldier of the 20th century, who spent three years at Leavenworth 

and taught at two other Army PME institutions. 

He remembered his first year as, ‘‘The hardest work I ever did 

in my life. My reading, of course, was pretty helpful,’’ he noted, ‘‘as 

was my study of past operations. I learned how to digest them. My 

habits of thought were being trained. While I learned little I could 

use, I learned how to learn.’’ I think few of today’s officers would 

say the same about their PME. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Kohn can be found in the Appendix on page 69.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Kohn. 

Chairman Skelton, would you like to have some questions? 

The CHAIRMAN. We have to leave at, what, 6:00 this evening? 

Dr. SNYDER. Chapter one. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I think this is fantastic, and I appreciate 

each one of you testifying, your testimony and your excellent thinking. 

I hearken back to a hearing that we had at Ft. Leavenworth 

some 20 years ago when I made the then major general in charge 

of the Fort Leavenworth Command and General Staff College—his 

last name was Sullivan—answer the question about the caliber of 

his instructors, because we had just run into a group of lieutenant 

colonels who were teaching earlier that day who were complaining 

they did not make the cut to go there as majors, and yet they were 

there teaching. And I elicited, over a great deal of prodding, the 

fact that his faculty was less than what he had desired. 
14 

I note your comments about the caliber of the faculty and faculties today. All of us can hearken back. I guess I do, back to law 

school. The toughest instructors at the time, they were not very 

popular, but I will never forget. After I took the Bar examination, 

I said one thing I am going to do, I am going back and see Dean 

McCleary and thank him for teaching me torts, because if there is 

any part of the Bar examination I know I passed, I know I passed 

that. 

And it is that type of instructor that you would like to attract 

and keep, and it is a bit concerning when I hear that all the instructors are not of that caliber. I compliment you for your efforts 

today, and I hope we can take away from this some lessons for tomorrow. 

We don’t want other people to out-think us. And hearken back 

to law school again, Mr. Chairman. There were not many cases 

that I handled, and I did a great deal of trial work for 20 years, 

there were not many cases I handled that were exactly like what 

I studied in law school. But as a result, I had to think about things, 

and I was able to handle them, some of them successfully. And that 

is what you are looking for here. 

Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will put ourselves— 

Mr. Wittman and I will put ourselves on a five-minute clock, and 

we will probably have time for him and I to ask questions—go 

ahead and start that, Lorry—and then we will come back after 

break. 

When we started this, it was in the—and it still is in the spirit 

of revisiting it, what kind of improvements can be made, what 

things can Congress do, what kind of recommendations we might 

make to the services or the Pentagon. But I think we kind of stumbled into, and perhaps should have gone in with our eyes open, 

more existential questions. The Tom Ricks piece called for the closure of the academies and the war colleges, and he was a big believer in ROTC. Dr. Kohn, I think you recommended the closure of 

ROTC. I am not sure where everybody is going to go, or what is 

distinctive about it. 

But I would like you all to talk about, maybe very briefly in a 

minute each, just existentially what this means, what would you 

recommend this subcommittee recommend to Chairman Skelton 

that flat-out gets closed? 

Dr. Breslin-Smith. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Well, I guess I don’t agree. 

Dr. SNYDER. I didn’t think you did. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. And I have taught in both situations. I have 

taught at universities. I have taught at Syracuse and the University of California at Berkeley, and I know the type of excellent education they provide. 

But at least in the case of the War College, and I think a number 

of the other schools here, the type of interaction that happens in 

the classroom—again, going back to Eisenhower’s image of this— 

is exactly what we talk about these days. How do we get a total 

national security team, USAID, State and military officers, to be 

able to work together, understand each other’s culture, before they 

are in the field together? 
15 

So the type of education that goes on wouldn’t be accomplished 

if you have everybody going to a university taking political science 

or international relations classes. I take issue with this question, 

even in terms of Dick’s [Kohn] statement that people who come out 

of PME did not get anything out of it. 

I have been tracking my students who graduated in the class of 

2005, which was the first class coming after taking down the statue 

in Baghdad. And as I watched the growth and development of their 

thought—and I hope to do a retrospective analysis of them, because 

they are all making one-star right now—that experience in terms 

of the type of questions to ask, and hearing the types of questions 

the State Department person asks compared to what a Marine 

would ask I think is part of the educational process of the War College. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Cochran. 

Dr. COCHRAN. I would close one of them, and I would close the 

Basic Course. I have spent a total of 30 years as an active duty and 

a Reserve officer, and I went through all levels. And I am trying 

to think. That is a hard question. 

I would close the Basic Course, because I think when you go on 

active duty as a young officer, you turn yourself over to a non-commissioned officer (NCO), and the NCO’s first job is to train you, not 

educate you, train you. So if I had to save time and close one, I 

would go to the Basic Course. 

Dr. SNYDER. I am not saying you have to close anything. 

Dr. Carafano. 

Dr. CARAFANO. Yes. 

Well, first of all, I think Tom’s article couldn’t have been more 

ignorant. I mean, we have had this debate. We have had it over 

and over again. It is him rediscovering this stupid debate. 

And he fails because he fundamentally does what they all do, is 

they say, ‘‘Well, it costs this to educate somebody here, and it costs 

somebody to educate their own products,’’ he is saying. 

So first of all, he misses the big picture, which is the academies 

and the war colleges, they have numerous products, and the students they produce are only one of them. Yes, they produce students, but they also produce faculty. 

And that faculty goes on, whether in the service or other places, 

to significantly influence military developments. If you look at who 

did the surge in Iraq, virtually from Petraeus on down, it is littered 

with former faculty from the military academy. 

And then, the third product is institution itself. It does research. 

It produces conferences. See, you have got to look at all those products. It is not just what is student cost analysis. It is a student 

cost-benefit comparison. 

And the reason why you have academies is simple. It is the same 

reason why you have a gold bar that measures a foot or an atomic 

clock that measures a second. 

Somewhere you need an institution, which is the touchstone of 

the professional ethic, that talks about what it means to be an 

Army officer, what it means to be a professional, what it means to 

be ethical. And you want to control that in-house. You don’t want 

to outsource that, just like you shouldn’t outsource lots of things. 
16 

You don’t want to outsource the ethic. And the academies and 

the war colleges, they are the touchstone, the ethic, the professional touchstone of the military, so you never want to give that 

up. 

There are schools that we need to close. I mean, if you accept the 

notion that young men and women between the ages of 25 and 30 

can assimilate senior professional level education at the graduate 

level of the highest caliber, right, and you want to do that early 

in their career, well, we have got too many schools between zero 

and 10, so something has got to go. 

And I think we could have a good discussion on that. I don’t 

think necessarily it is the staff college level, but I think that somewhere between the basic and the advanced course, there is some 

stuff that can be put out so we can let guys have a better balance 

between operational time and school time. But we have got too 

many schools. It is true. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Kohn. 

Dr. KOHN. Dr. Snyder, I think that trying to close these institutions or to radically transform them would be extremely difficult. 

And I think that is in your political world. I can’t address that. 

But I think what the committee can do is to insist upon levels 

of quality up to the standard of American higher education, which, 

after all, leads the world. And you can do that, I think, by certain 

stipulations having to do with faculty, by reviewing the way in 

which PME exists in the personnel systems, by looking at the selection of students, as has been recommended here and as I talk 

about in my statement, by looking at the selection and tenure of 

the leadership of these institutions, and by trying to institute some 

outcomes-based studies of the research I think that the committee 

might undertake, for example. 

What is the retention rate of the academies compared to ROTC 

at the 10-year mark, which I think is a good place? What is the 

average tenure on active duty of war college graduates in the sense 

of the taxpayers and the services getting the cost-benefit? How do 

these institutions fit into the culture of the armed services, and 

how are they viewed? 

There are all kinds of modifications that can be made on the 

margins, but I think the most important thing the committee can 

do is to insist on the excellence that the services themselves and 

the chairmen set for themselves in every other walk of—or characteristic of their armed services, and the standards are there. 

Dr. SNYDER. Before we go to Mr. Wittman, I want to be sure I 

understand what you are saying, Dr. Kohn. On page 17, you have 

a section where you say, ‘‘Other considerations underlying, abolishing the academies and ROTC.’’ Are you saying you are not recommending we abolish the academies and ROTC? 

Dr. KOHN. Well, what I am saying is that you could do that with 

a system of national scholarships in which you go to the American 

people and allow them to take a scholarship to the school or university or college of their choice, and you could do away with the 

academies or convert them to one-year courses for graduates of colleges. 

Dr. SNYDER. So you are presenting that as an option, not as a 

recommendation? 
17 

Dr. KOHN. That is an option. But I think that, from a practical 

standpoint, the idea—these institutions have spiritual value, as 

Jim has implied. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Wittman, you want to get your prepared questions now? 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

You all make some very, very interesting, divergent, and 

thoughtful recommendations. And we know our PME institutions 

have evolved, but they are still based on a structure that was put 

in place before the placement of the Department of Defense. 

So kind of taking the reverse look at this, if we were to start 

today from scratch, what are your thoughts about what PME 

should be today, the institutional structure, what incentives we 

ought to have there to attract students, what incentives we ought 

to have to have officers there? Just those sort of things. 

So if we were to start to scratch today, what should our PME 

system look like? 

Dr. Smith. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. I have to say I would still go back to my 

original observation. 

And the recommendation is I think that type of discussion would 

be really profitable to have with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 

in general, in that what is their vision of the role of education for 

officers, regardless of how it is established or provided, because 

usually when I am talking to somebody at the Pentagon, I will get 

this response. 

When I make the plea to have more involvement, they will say, 

‘‘Janet, we are fighting two wars. All these things are going on.’’ 

And PME is at the end of that list of things to do. So I think that 

is the first challenge to take on. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Dr. Cochran. 

Dr. COCHRAN. Sir, I think I would rethink very hard service parochial approach. And when you go back in our history, we had an 

Army that stood alone, a Navy that stood alone and developed its 

own system. Then, in the Second World War, you bring the Air 

Force on. And each service kind of shaped that. 

We are at a crux point now where service—we have gotten 

through jointness. Our next challenge—and I think the next challenge for you is to confront the inter-agency. How do we handle 

that? 

And if I had a license to re-think, I would start with that. Okay, 

we are now inter-agency. Jointness is accepted, service 

parochiality. What are we—based on that, where do we go? That 

is the approach I would take. 

Dr. CARAFANO. If I was going to make three points, I would make 

these points. 

And the first is, again, I would have the senior professional military education take place between, say, somewhere between 10 and 

15, and there are 4 reasons for that. First of all, it is because you 

can do it. I mean, we know for a fact that people between, say, 25 

and 30 can accept—have the brains and the experience to adapt 

and—of the most sophisticated professional educations we can 

hand out. 
18 

The second is, when you do that, you establish somebody for a 

lifetime of learning. What made Dick a world-class historian was 

not where he went to grad school. It was the practice of historian’s 

craft after that. But he couldn’t have done that without that. 

So when you give somebody that at 10 as opposed to 20, 25 or 

30, they have 15 years to practice that lifetime of learning, and so 

they are going to be that much smarter. 

The third point is they are going to be a better mentor, because 

they are going to have those senior professional skills earlier on, 

so they will be a better mentor throughout their career. 

And the fourth point is they are going to be better leaders because they are going to have better, more sophisticated skills much 

earlier in their career. 

So why universal? Well, two reasons. First of all, I mean, we 

have seen this over and over again in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 

we see this in business every day, where people at very junior levels have to exercise very senior levels of critical thinking and very 

senior levels of professional skill. So everybody needs these skills, 

and they can’t wait until the war college to get them. 

And then, the second point is I don’t know who the next George 

Marshall is, right? And what we do now is we wait until the very 

end to try to pick him out, right? And what we ought to be doing 

is we ought to be putting more bets on the table. If we educate people with this super charged education, which allows them to become a Dick Kohn or a George Marshall, right, early on we will 

have a bigger body of people to choose from. And we will have leaders who we may not think we meet 10 or 15 years from now, and 

10 or 15 years from now we will discover, ‘‘Oh, my God, that is the 

guy or the woman I really need.’’ 

So that is why universal. And just the third point, very quickly, 

is why spread this to civilian universities? And three points. 

First of all, competition. The best way to make the war colleges 

better is to make them compete for the best students with civilian 

universities. One of the arguments for ROTC is it bridges the civilian-military divide, that we have officers who were trained in civilian universities, that they understand the civilian side. They bring 

that in. 

You can make that same argument for the war college experience, our military officers getting their senior education. That 

would bridge that civil-military divide. 

And the third is diversity, more colleges, more experiences, more 

geography, more languages. That is going to enrich the breadth of 

experience that these different officers bring back into the military. 

Dr. SNYDER. We need to run for our votes, so why don’t we recess 

now? And then, when we come back, Mr. Wittman will hear from 

Dr. Kohn. And then, if Mrs. Davis comes back, we will go to her. 

[Recess.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Let us resume. I am not sure what the schedule is 

for the rest of the day, do we know, on votes. We do not know, so 

we are—have an open mind here this afternoon. 

Mr. Wittman was finishing up there. Take as long as you want. 

Dr. KOHN. Mr. Wittman, thanks for the question. It is a good 

one. 
19 

And at the risk of confusing Chairman Snyder, I want to say that 

what I meant in that provision was that you could replace the 

academies and ROTC with a system of national scholarships. So in 

response to your question of what I would do if I could design the 

system whole cloth from the beginning is, at this point in time, I 

don’t see a need for a separate educational system at the pre-commissioning level because we have such an outstanding and comprehensive system of higher education in the United States at the 

collegiate level. 

My concern about the academies today is that they cram so much 

into so little time, and I wonder whether they are really providing 

an adequate college education for a lifetime of learning and development in the military profession. So from the beginning, I would 

have the system of national scholarships, but I would have these 

youngsters serving in the Reserves as enlisted people while they 

were in college so that they would learn what it is to be led as well 

as what military service is about. 

At the intermediate level, I would focus on the operational as I 

think the intermediate service schools did, or at least the Army 

did, in the first four decades of the 20th century, as well as teaching some other materials that they might need to use as mid-grade 

and field-grade officers. In both cases, though, I would advocate the 

mixing or jointness. 

For example, if you retain the system of academies that we have 

here now, there is no reason why youngsters could not have a junior year abroad. Even if they play football, it might be good for a 

Naval Academy midshipman who is a star football player to have 

to play for the Army in his junior year. It might indeed provoke 

some feeling of ecumenicism in response to the very powerful service-specific culture that students learn at the academies. 

At the senior level, I think at senior service school, I would have 

one National Defense University. If you really want to teach 

jointness, and I have thought of this many years ago, you would 

have one war college where the students are mixed and where they 

learn strategy and they learn political-military affairs, and where 

you could have an equal number of students from the civilian agencies of government. 

If my colleague, Jim Carafano, is right, you could cut down the 

numbers so that you wouldn’t have to have so many officers. But 

if you still had a National Defense University with a 1-year, and 

in some cases a 2-year course for those who are identified as needing 2 years for a particular specialty, particularly to be strategists, 

and you had 2,000 to 3,000 officers at the National Defense University, that would be fine. 

But I would add one more thing to this, and that is that I would 

try to identify early on, on the basis of their academic accomplishments in college and immediately afterwards, who were those officers who could pursue a career of outstanding operational accomplishments and academic accomplishment. One of the fears that I 

have with the teaching of strategy is that the armed services will 

delegate strategy to a core of specialists. I think the Army is doing 

this with their basic and advanced strategic art program at Carlisle. 
20 

Flag officers need to know strategy because they are the ones 

who have to make the choices. They are the ones who don’t just 

apply strategy. They are the ones who recognize what are the best 

strategies, recognize the original strategy. 

So to me, every officer who has the potential to go into the flag 

ranks and may be in command at some point needs to have familiarity with strategic thinking. And the best way to do that, in my 

judgment, at intermediate and senior service school is through the 

case study method, and not theory, and not theoretical or hypothetical case studies, but historical case studies. How about studying the reality of past warfare? 

I once—with a very distinguished officer who was then later the 

dean at the National War College designed a whole curriculum for 

Air Command and Staff College and Air War College that consisted 

completely of historical case study. When the Chief of Staff saw it, 

he smirked and said, ‘‘I see the historian has been in charge of this 

exercise.’’ And I said, ‘‘Chief, this is not a history curriculum. This 

is just case studies according to the way the best professional 

schools teach their subject.’’ 

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis for five minutes. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you all for being here. And it has been interesting to listen to all four of you. 

I think one of my question was just, if there is something that 

you heard from one of the panelists, any of you, that you either intensely disagree with or think that is really important—you have 

talked a little bit about ROTC and the role that ROTC should play, 

and I know there is a difference of opinion there. I am just wondering if there is something that really stands out. Those of us 

were trying to listen to all of you, and what—— 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. I have got something to say, but I don’t want 

to go first. 

Dr. KOHN. I will start. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Yes, you can start at that end. 

Mrs. DAVIS. You are all—have very good, strong points of opinion, and I am just trying to sort them out a little bit in terms 

of—— 

Dr. KOHN. Well, I would start. 

I don’t agree that the strategic level and the national political 

military levels, particularly civil-military relations, which has been 

my scholarly and, to some degree, teaching specialty all my career, 

should be imposed upon officers at the 10- or 12-year mark. 

I think that one of the disagreements I have with the personnel 

systems of the armed services, and I have many with those, is that 

we are the most wasteful military in the world. We throw away 

these officers in the up-or-out system at the height of their powers, 

and nowadays people are much more active and much more vital 

at a much older age. And I think we ought to be keeping officers 

longer, and we ought to modify up-or-out. 

And for this reason, I think that you could, and should, have a 

system of professional military education that is appropriate to the 

level at which officers will serve. And I wouldn’t cram it all into 

the early or the first 15 years when officers are really focused on 
21 

command and on competency in their form of warfare and learning 

staff and the operations. 

And I wouldn’t abolish ROTC unless I could replace it with something. Again, I would emphasize that this committee could act in 

innovative ways to strengthen what we have rather than having a 

knock-down-drag-out Armageddon-type fight with the services over 

abolishing or consolidating. 

Dr. CARAFANO. Yes. I guess Dick and I actually completely disagree on this, which is great, because that is what we do. And I 

think the one thing I would be most disappointed is if fundamentally we came back with the exact same model which we have now, 

which is basically just-in-time education. 

If you look at the PME system, it is designed to provide the officer the educational experience needed, and then go forth in an 

operational assignment and apply that, right? And that is great in 

an industrial age world where everything is programmed and 

knowable, which is why the system endured so well during the 

course of the Cold War, because life was incredibly predictable. 

We knew where we were going to be assigned. We knew what we 

were going to do. We knew what captains did. We knew what majors do. 

Not to digress for a second, but I will anyway, and Dick may correct me if I am wrong. But I think one of the most inspirational 

periods in officer professional development was the inter-war years 

between the 1920s and the 1940s. 

And the reason why I believe that is because nobody ever got 

promoted, but also nobody ever got fired. And what was great 

about that was, in those formative years in their 30s, officers could 

basically do whatever they wanted to. If they wanted to play polo, 

they did. If they wanted to sit in their library and read, they did. 

And the result of that? We had an officer corps which I think was 

unprecedented in terms of its breadth of experience and knowledge 

and skill sets and attributes it brought to the table. And when you 

went to World War II, we had totally unpredictable environment, 

in a sense. You could look in the bag, and there was a Stovall for 

China. There was a Marshall for Washington. There was an Eisenhower. 

And I guess in my heart of hearts, I want to get back to that, 

and I want to give officers, early on in their life, the deep toolkit 

for a lifetime of learning and critical thinking, and then I want 

them to go forth and prosper. Now, I am not opposed to formal educational experiences at the 20-, 30-, 40-year mark. We have similar 

things in other professions in terms of post-doc opportunities or 

continuing education opportunities, like they have for judges and 

other professionals. 

So I am not opposed to that, but I guess I fundamentally disagree with Dick. I think just-in-time education is a very bad—it is 

a great model for getting toilet paper into Wal-Mart. It is a horrible 

model when you can’t know the future and when the future can become incredibly different in terms of the requirement and the 

needs in a very short amount of time, and you need an officer corps 

that is agile and mentally able to adapt to that. And I just want 

to give them those tools as quickly as I think they can possibly 

take them on. 
22 

I know where I disagree with everybody on this panel. It is implicit, but this whole business of awarding a master’s degree. Its 

time has been served thanks to Mr. Skelton and pressuring the 

services, particularly war colleges, into awarding a master’s degree. 

That is fine. But the degree itself has become worthless. Everybody 

who goes gets a master’s degree, and they don’t even apply. It is 

abused. 

You ask people in the business of higher education, if you have 

a master’s degree at one of these war colleges, will that be accepted 

at a university for entrance into their Ph.D. program? No, it will 

not. It is a meaningless degree in a lot of ways. 

And I don’t want to demean it. It is tough to administer when 

you have faculty that don’t have a Ph.D. to administer the exams 

involved with a master’s degree. 

A large number of the students particularly at the war college 

level, particularly in the Air Force, arrive already with a master’s 

degree, and you are going to tell them, ‘‘You are going to get a master’s degree here, and we are going to work you hard for it,’’ and 

the answer is, ‘‘I already have one of those.’’ 

Also, all of the intermediate schools—check me on this. I am not 

sure on this—all of the intermediate schools have—School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) program have a legitimate twoyear master’s degree program, which is a legitimate program. 

So I just think the usefulness of that master’s degree has passed. 

It is time we just forget about it and drive on. And I know everybody at this table will disagree with me. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. No. I agree with you. 

Dr. COCHRAN. You do? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. I think—— 

Dr. SNYDER. Let’s see, I have got—just for the sake of our poor 

transcriptionist here, Dr. Carafano, you said, what, you—— 

Dr. CARAFANO. Well, yes. I mean, I agree with the point that a 

master’s degree that isn’t really a master’s degree doesn’t have a 

whole lot of utility. 

Dr. SNYDER. And then, Dr. Breslin-Smith? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. I think it—yes, for a specific reason I will get 

to, but yes. 

Dr. SNYDER. Go ahead. What is your specific reason? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Well, I think the type of education we provide—— 

Dr. COCHRAN [continuing]. One thing. That is what causes this 

dysfunctional ‘‘we and they’’ military and civilian issue at war college faculties. Who are you to administer this degree? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. And I can actually—— 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Breslin—get back to Dr. Kohn. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Later on, after this is over, I can give you 

the history of why this came to be, why, during the Johnson Administration during Vietnam, we got into this pattern of the military responding to McNamara. That is how we got started doing 

the master’s degree issue. 

Again, to me, the value in what we do is seen every day in the 

seminar room, and it would happen with or without master’s degree. The institution itself, war college—was not set up. 
23 

He could have set up a research university. Honestly, he could 

have done anything in 1946. He did not. He did not choose to do 

that. This is a professional school. 

And I want to make one other comment about our sister school, 

ICAF. I also believe ICAF needs to go back to its roots. This should 

be its day in the sun. We are facing an economic crisis. The industrial base is under severe pressure. We are losing the transportation industry. We are facing this crisis. That is what they were 

set up to do, to evaluate, assess, and study mobilization of the industrial base. 

Over the years, they have—just like all institutions, they have 

evolved and developed and expanded. I think now is their time to 

come back and embrace what they were established to do—help the 

military. Help us even over at the War College get a picture, get 

an image of what does all this mean for strategy, this contraction. 

So I would advocate, again, a strong interest on the part of the 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but I would advocate ICAF going 

back to its roots. 

Dr. SNYDER. I wanted to ask—when somebody asked me what is 

elementary school like today, I think back to the 1950s when I was 

in elementary school. I can still remember what the halls smelled 

like from the cafeteria, and I have visited schools since then. 

But I can’t tell, from what you all are telling me, what the conclusions that you have reached, what it is based on. I think it is 

more than just anecdotally, ‘‘Well, I was at that school for a while, 

or at this school for a while. I talked to these students.’’ I don’t see 

any firm study that has been done. 

So my question is, I presented the scenario, if we have three or 

four or five people that just sit down and talk to General Marshall, 

that he thought that was pretty good. That may be one criteria. 

That is not acceptable. We could probably save a lot of money by 

finding the top 100 people, and we would find our 3 or 4 probably 

in that top 100. 

What is the criteria by which we judge how we are doing? Is it 

going to be—one of you mentioned—yes, you, Dr. Carafano, about 

the number of people involved in the surge and where they had 

come from. And we have heard discussions about Tom Ricks talks 

about, well, the people that helped General Petraeus write the 

counterterrorism manual were actually not from these colleges. But 

that seems like the kind of anecdotal evidence. 

What are we going to base our conclusion on about this school 

is performing well, whether it does case studies or not, whether it 

offers master’s degrees or not? How do we judge the quality of leadership that is coming out of these schools, which we think makes 

us safer? Maybe we will start with Dr. Kohn and go backwards. 

Dr. KOHN. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think you can set standards on 

the basis of American higher education, and you can do the accreditation from the Pentagon with oversight from the Congress. As to 

the quality of the faculty, as to the relevance of the curriculum to 

whatever level of education is appropriate, pre-commissioning, intermediate, senior service school, or general officer and admiral 

level, and you can investigate what you think is needed, and you 

can discuss this at great length I think with senior officers and retired officers. 
24 

Anecdotal evidence I think is useful—I say this as a historian— 

when it is ubiquitous and consistent over time. Something is usually there. And in my case, it is talking to faculty members at these 

schools for 30-plus years, sending graduate students to teach there, 

accepting graduate students from the academies, lecturing in the 

last 15 years probably five or six dozen times at most war college. 

Dr. SNYDER. Well, I will interrupt you there. Didn’t you say over 

the last 30 years, but there was a dramatic change, we think, 20 

years ago, and then we have had changes, we think, over the last 

8 years since September 11th. 

I mean, so when you mention experience, I want to know what 

we base our judgment on that the officers that are going to Iraq 

and Afghanistan today at the highest levels of leadership, that 

they—how do we judge whether they—it is not on whether they 

have a good master’s degree program. I mean, where did General 

Grant rank in his leadership class? 

Dr. KOHN. Well, in my judgment, the strategic failures of the 

United States in both Iraq and in Afghanistan seem to me to be 

indicative, and in the first Gulf War. I don’t want to name names 

here. I don’t think that would be useful. 

But the United States has not succeeded strategically in much of 

its military operations and its wars at the military level in the last 

30 years. When I think of General Petraeus, one of my graduate 

students was picked off by him. 

He indeed cherry-picked the very best minds that he knew, since 

he had been the commander at Leavenworth, and he is attuned to 

these officers with Ph.Ds. He likes to run with them. He knows, 

and he knew how to find these people, but he had to draw them 

from all over the place. 

And so I think that it may be unfair and it may be a very gross 

measure, but if you look at American military success from the 

strategic level since the beginning of the Vietnam War, there are 

questions to be raised. 

Dr. SNYDER. That is right. Well, I will let the rest of you comment here. 

Dr. CARAFANO. I am going to make three points. 

The first point I would make is I think what Dick and Sandy 

both said is exactly right. I mean, we can tell you what a good education is because we have got lots of experience at what good professional graduate level education is in this country. The war colleges don’t meet that standard. And if you want to say—that is the 

standard you would use, is you would look at the breadth of what 

other professionals are capable of doing in terms of graduate level 

education. 

And again, my argument for why you would push this earlier is 

you can find lots of people between the ages of 25 and 35 who are 

capable of the most sophisticated level of intellectual activity possible, and they go through graduate programs and do that all the 

time. So the measure of what is a good graduate level education, 

regardless of the content, I think Dick and Sandy are right. You 

use the state of the art that we have now. 

In terms of how do I measure the competency of the graduate, 

well; this is a problem that we simply can’t solve now because we 
25 

have very poor predictors of cognitive development and future capabilities. It just doesn’t work. 

Part of the reason why I think the problem that we got into at 

the end of the Gulf War and the post-Gulf period is—it is bigger 

than PME, is if you actually look at the military professional promotion system, basically what you had is, for 30 years, ‘‘like promoted like,’’ right? I promoted the people that looked like me, 

sounded like me, acted like me. 

And that was fine, because you were in a very predictable operational environment. You know, it was Fulda Gap today. It is 

Fulda Gap tomorrow. 

But the problem is the gene pool, if you will. The leadership pool 

was very, very good in a very, very narrow margin, and so we get 

to the post-Cold War, and we are all over the place, in different requirements, different strategic environments, and the pool is just 

not wide enough. There are a few outliers, like Dave Petraeus. But 

generally, we didn’t have an officer corps like we did at the beginning of World War II that had a vast breadth and depth of experience and knowledge and skill sets to apply to these different strategic settings. 

And I think it is a fool’s errand to say, ‘‘Tell me how I am going 

to evaluate the quality of my graduates,’’ because right now, history is the only thing that is going to tell you whether you have 

good graduates or not, when it presents itself, and then you would 

have to deal with those challenges. 

But this would lead to a third point I would make—— 

Dr. SNYDER. I have got to interrupt you when you say it is a 

fool’s errand, but you just gave an example, or you did, where General Petraeus found those people, found people that he thought 

were top-notch, so that is not a fool’s errand. You just said he was 

successful at doing that. 

Dr. CARAFANO. He did that, but the system didn’t do that for 

him, right? He had to go out and find them. 

Dr. SNYDER. Well, but my question wasn’t how is the system 

doing. I was asking how do we judge it, and you just gave me an 

example. You got a top-notch guy who looked for top-notch people, 

but you are saying we can’t set up a system to do that, apparently. 

It is a fool’s errand. 

Dr. CARAFANO. But 10 years ago, Dave Petraeus may not have 

come to your mind as the obvious four-star that was going to pull 

us out in Iraq. I mean, people would say he is a great officer. He 

is really bright, but he doesn’t kind of look like the rest of us. 

I mean, this is just not in the professional military field. I mean, 

you can look at the sport field, and you have got all these athletes. 

They have all similar attributes and everything. Why is one—other 

than steroids—why is one an incredible deliverer and the other guy 

not? 

And there are cognitive things going on in the brain. Why do you 

have a 60 percent drop-out rate at SEAL school when all the guys 

and women—or I guess it is just guys—all the guys go in, and they 

can all run 2 miles in 30 seconds flat. Well, there is something 

going on in the brain that we just don’t quite understand, and so 

we have to kind of go back to the old tried-and-true model is we 
26 

will know great leaders when we see them, right, because they will 

perform and they will achieve great results. 

And that is why my argument is put as many bets on the table 

as you can. Have as many officers you can who have skills and 

knowledge and various attributes, and you will have a deeper pool 

to draw from when the crisis arrives. 

But I did want to get to this point, which is not in my testimony 

and which I do think is important, is 99 percent of what we do is— 

what we do here is we focus on when you get educated, what is in 

the curriculum. What we don’t talk about is the incredible developments that are going on in neuroscience and social sciences in 

terms of understanding cognitive ability and evaluating human 

performance and the potential for human performance. And we are 

not quite at yet where we can say, after somebody takes the test, 

‘‘Well, that is the next Dave Petraeus,’’ but we are making enormous advances. 

Well, if you actually look at the traditional education models in 

this country, when we learn something in the sciences of how 

brains work and how to educate people, by the time that transport 

over into the actual process of educating, it can take years, and 

decades, in some cases, and it winds up going through lots of political filters before—it doesn’t get applied right. 

So we should think seriously, and this committee should think 

seriously about how do we track the cutting-edge developments in 

neuroscience and social sciences in understanding cognitive ability 

and our ability to learn, and the ability to judge human performance, and how do we make sure we capture those lessons and get 

them into the system as soon as possible, in the most efficacious 

manner as possible, rather than waiting for them to kind of fall out 

over 20 or 30 years later. 

Dr. SNYDER. I am going to make a comment and then go to you, 

Dr. Cochran. 

About 10 years ago or so, I was talking with a school superintendent. I am sure he is retired by now. He struck me as being 

a very wise man. He said that after, like—he had been doing it for 

40 years. He said the hardest job for him that he still wasn’t any 

good at was taking those new college graduates and figuring out 

which one he was going to hire that would turn out to be the best 

teacher. He said he just still struggled with that and was not right 

as often as he would have liked. 

Dr. Cochran. 

Dr. COCHRAN. Sir, the problem about going further in the line, 

you get all these times to kind of think and structure your argument, then somebody says something and you forget what you were 

going to say. 

I had two points. I think, one, I speak this as a historian. And 

I think this is a subjective measure. You just have to trust your 

instincts, or if it is gray beards or if it is somebody, get together 

some people who are just really intelligent, really grasp, you can 

measure how well we are doing, how well the system in it. As you 

were saying with the school superintendent, it defies an objective 

judgment. And I am comfortable with that, but I am a historian. 

The second point, I think the standard I would look for is what 

I would call mental agility in your profession, and this is what I 
27 

think the PME system does a wonderful job at doing, bringing people in. And think of what other profession brings people in at after 

4 or 5 years and gives them a chance to think about what they 

have done, 10 years, then 15 years and 20 years. And the unfortunate thing is then you max out at 25 years. 

This is a marvelous system when you have a chance to examine 

your profession, whether it is at the tactical level, where you put 

your weapons, or at the higher level, whether you view the diplomatic or the economic quiver or thing that you could use to solve 

that problem. And what comes out of that experience is the ability 

to change your mind, to say, ‘‘Wow, I have been thinking about 

this, and I have got this wrong,’’ and in the environment also with 

your contemporaries to share that in a non-threat experience. 

And that is an agility of mind and a willingness to rethink. That 

is what I would look for in a subjective manner, does the system 

produce people that have that. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Smith. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. I used to think about this question, and I 

would say, ‘‘Well, okay, what are we trying to do, the War College?’’ 

And my conclusion the most simple way is I want to have wise decision-makers. I want to impart wisdom. 

But I kept going back to your question about how do you measure this. How do I know? And toward the end of my testimony— 

I don’t know if you have got my written testimony, but I lay out 

a chart, like the second to last page, or second or maybe the third 

page before the end of my testimony. 

Dr. SNYDER. It is your chart about how to analyze a situation? 

Yes. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Yes. What we do at the War College is, twice 

a year, we have in-depth oral exams. And what we do is we give 

the students a hypothetical scenario, crisis. And what we are looking for, not that they know the answers to those questions, but that 

they can raise those questions. What were the kind of questions 

they would need to know as a commander to have a strategic grasp 

of the problem they are confronting. 

We want to know, do they think, in some disciplined, structured 

way, about everything they would need to know and to resist the 

impulse to act first, ask later. 

As I look at it, I think we can actually tell, in the students’ response to this type of hypothetical question, are they prepared or 

not. Now, in all honesty, and I raise this issue in my testimony, 

I was taken aback when I read Paul Yingling’s article about the 

failure of generalship. 

And even at a more deep level as a civilian, having the opportunity to sit in military campaign planning classes at the War College and really come to respect the discipline in planning that 

Army—let’s say the Army or the Marine Corps learned in terms of 

what does military campaign planning mean, it is a disciplined 

structure—courses of actions, branches, and sequels. It prepares 

you for both challenging your assumptions and acting on new realities. 

When I hear students who came back in that period 2005, 2006, 

and even the run-up to the war, I didn’t see that basic level of campaign planning, military planning taking place. And as I said in my 
28 

testimony, as far as I know, I certainly know that nobody resigned 

over this issue, but I am not aware of a great movement of military 

officers saying this is not adequate. 

That has led me to conclude that, while we offer a wonderful 

elective that really takes a student and makes them struggle with 

this issue of what is a professional responsibility of a military officer. We read ‘‘Soldier and State’’ by Huntington, and we read that 

book almost page by page together. 

And it puts the students—and it put me—I took the class—it put 

me in a vice that I couldn’t get out of. I couldn’t have an easy answer of what I would do. And it makes you struggle with that question of how do you resist political pressure to act, and how do you 

learn the proper response. Dick Kohn has gone into this much 

more than I have in terms of aspects of proper response. 

But I have to say those two issues, discipline of thought and 

analysis in terms of the questions we ask in orals, and then confronting head-on your capability of performing your responsibilities 

professionally as an officer—and I would add this is true for State, 

as well—and giving advice when it is asked for. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Wittman, we have gotten kind of lackadaisical 

on our clock here, but we are dealing with college professors, so we 

let them go. No, it just seems like the conversation needs to go on. 

So, Mr. Wittman for as much time as you need. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

You know, it seems like as we look at these existing military 

education initiatives, we see in some instances where the service 

branch chiefs place a lot of attention and resources there, like the 

Marine Corps University, and those places really prosper. But 

then, it seems like you see others where the senior military officer 

maybe doesn’t quite have that in his sights, or it is not there at 

that level of emphasis. 

And it seems that those kind of are out there adrift a little bit, 

and it seems like to me, for our senior War Colleges, if they are 

not seen as centers for intellectual thought by the senior military 

officer within that service branch, it seems like to me that that is 

an awful, awful waste. 

Is there something that Congress can do, you think, to elevate 

that whole effort to make sure that it is keenly in the sights and 

at the highest level of priority for our service branch chiefs? And 

I will go down the panel and ask your thoughts on that. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Well, again, as I mentioned before, it is particularly a problem for us because we are joint, and we are orphaned, often. Our fate depends on the interest of the chairman 

solely. We don’t have a service responding to us. 

But in more specific to you, there is nothing more powerful to a 

chief or the chairman than to have a Congressman ask him that 

question. Asking about their interest in education and their perception of the role of education is a powerful signal to them to be attentive. 

Dr. COCHRAN. Sir, I served for two years as the Horner Chair at 

Marine Corps University, and my boss at that time was a one-star 

by the name of Jim Conway, who several years later we now know 

as the commandant. And actually, what I keep in the back of my 
29 

mind, I think if there is a service that does seem to value education 

more in the production, it is the Marine Corps. 

And I asked myself why, and I think I learned that while I was 

there. It is just a small service. Everybody knows everybody. And 

they have that ability to turn quickly on a dime. And I have often 

held out the Marine Corps University as a model for what other 

services could do. 

I think, along with my colleague here, what could Congress do 

is, as a service chief that comes through, is ask him or her where 

did you go to senior service school, or what did you do. And there 

is a caveat here, too, I would offer, and there I think I will be in 

the minority. 

I think fellowships are fine. Sending somebody off for a year at 

Georgetown or Harvard or something like that, but they miss that 

interchange with their fellow students, particularly at a place like 

the National War College, where you have one quarter, one quarter, one quarter—and one quarter are civilians. 

So I am not an advocate of sending somebody off for a fellowship. 

I think they ought to go to a War College. And ask that question. 

Dr. CARAFANO. This is easy. One, you have to legislate that the 

service school belongs to the chief or the commandant or the chairman, period. So the Army delegating the Army War College Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), that is a travesty. So I 

would legislate that out. It is your college. You have to keep it. 

The other point Sandy already made. It is ridiculous to have 

commandants rotating through the colleges and then thinking that 

they are going to go on to some—this is just some stop on their way 

to their next career. I mean, if they don’t serve between 5 and 10 

years, I mean, it is ridiculous. 

So I would mandate that the term of service be somewhere between 5 and 10 years. I think it needs to be better named, ‘‘gravestone’’ promotion, is the right answer. And I would legislate that, 

by law, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) or the Commandant 

or the Chairman has to run their war college or their college, period. 

Dr. KOHN. Mr. Wittman, I would agree with that, but I would 

also look to the model of the great research universities of this 

country. And I would mix teaching and research. The faculties have 

to do both teaching and research, and these faculties need to be 

consolidated. Why we have a separate faculty at the National War 

College and ICAF is beyond my comprehension other than by tradition. The same goes for Air University. 

And I would put the think tanks of the services at those colleges, 

like the Army has Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) at Carlisle, like 

the joint staff has Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) 

at NDU, but I would then also encourage—and perhaps you can do 

this with appropriations. You are not funding think tanks at a distance elsewhere in the armed services—encourage the service 

staffs, the COCOMs, the combatant commanders and the joint staff 

to use these institutions as centers for research and thinking. And 

by having the faculty involved in research, insisting that the faculty does research, because the best faculty in this country is doing 

research, even at some liberal arts colleges. 
30 

And I think if you create that kind of model, then there would 

be ownership and there would be buy-in. That would be my recommendation. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Carafano, I understand you have a flight date. 

We will miss you. Thank you for being here. We don’t want you to 

miss your flight. Thank you for being here. 

Dr. CARAFANO. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. 

Dr. SNYDER. And I will tell the other folks, too, but you should 

feel free to submit any written materials, Dr. Carafano, you want 

to. 

Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to just turn to the inter-agency piece for a second. And 

I think Dr. Cochran, or maybe Dr. Carafano, talking about having 

a broader net of trying to bring in more individuals, be they civilian, be they people in the Reserve, what have you, who could make 

a greater contribution if encouraged at different levels to participate in a different way. 

I know that we have—when we started talking about inter-agency a few years ago, and it was clear that State Department didn’t 

have a deep bench, they weren’t able to bring people to seminars, 

it was really only the military that could participate in their activities, same with USAID and others. 

And what would you like to share with us about—is there something? You talked about a National War College. I guess I would 

call it a National Security University, something like that, that 

would be focused not just on people who need command and control 

skills in the services, but also in homeland security, in conflict resolution, whatever that is that they are thrust into a situation, as 

our military has been in Iraq and Afghanistan, without the diplomatic skills, without the ability to do some of that work, and 

maybe even whether it is Agriculture (Ag) or finance or whatever. 

Is that a need, to try and do that? And it is not replacing, certainly, the military academies, but we don’t really have that. And 

it has always been of interest to me that we probably sort of isolate 

those people, as you have mentioned, who choose the military as 

opposed to other walks of life that could also contribute that, but 

they are somehow—they are not anti-military. It is just not where 

they would go, and so they would need this broader net to be 

caught in to be part of the debate, the discussions. 

How do we do that? I mean, is that something we should be 

doing? And are we doing it already and we just don’t quite see 

where it is? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Well, it is a great question, and there are a 

couple of things just to note about it. 

Again, as I said before, this was the original idea in 1946. State 

should have had its own college, and they couldn’t get the money 

for it. And that responds to what you are saying. They couldn’t get 

the money then, and they can’t get the money now. 

I would throw it back to you, all of you, in that this issue of funding civilian activities in international security is a challenge for the 

Congress, because it involves voting for appropriations for foreign 

aid in the State Department. And that is the first issue. 
31 

The other issue is the culture at State. The Foreign Service generally has an approach to education that they are highly qualified. 

They take the Foreign Service test. And once they pass, that is it. 

They don’t need to get an advanced degree. They don’t need to have 

any further education. They come in highly educated. 

I have to say, when students come to the War College, they do 

say, ‘‘Hey, we should actually—this is a good experience.’’ And so 

part of the proposal I am suggesting for this subcommittee to consider, the Foreign Service Institute is an institution. It primarily 

is focused on language training and small, short courses. It is a 

large, physical place. They, I think, could transform themselves 

into an intermediate school. In other words, at the 10-year level, 

you could have that beginning engagement with the inter-agency 

there at the Foreign Service Institute. 

And then, my suggestion is is that you have a College of Diplomacy and Development. There is space available on our campus for 

that kind of activity. And it wouldn’t just be an educational function in and of itself, but it would provide the foundation of knowledge that we really don’t have in the State Department or USAID 

to remember things. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Yes. Maybe going back to not necessarily 10 or 15 

years out, I mean, should there be civilian academies that—— 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. For diplomats, you mean at the undergraduate level? 

Mrs. DAVIS. Not necessarily for diplomats. I mean, one of the 

things that is so compelling in terms of young people that choose 

to go into the military academies is that they are nominated by a 

member of Congress. I mean, there is a different level. Should 

there be something like that for—— 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. It is a good question. 

Mrs. DAVIS. So—as well who—— 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. What you are reflecting is the military always has this notion they would represent society, and you could 

be from a farm or from a city and get an appointment to the academy and come. The tradition of the State Department was it was 

the eastern establishment elite initially, all Harvard graduates, 

and they were a very small group of people. 

Over time, obviously there has been an expansion in the Foreign 

Service. I think you raise a good question. Traditionally, State folks 

go to college, do well, take the Foreign Service exam and then go 

in, and that is it. I think it is a legitimate question to say other 

countries have academies in a broader national security area, in 

the area of diplomacy. 

I am involved in some reform efforts for State right now in trying 

to work with Foreign Service officers, either retired or current, to 

say what can we do to revitalize that profession. It is a good question. 

Dr. COCHRAN. Three quick comments. We are dealing with trying 

to change a culture, as I am sure that—I mean, the military has 

had this culture of education is considered part of your career, and 

then they build in the float so that you can peel people off for six 

months or a year. That is going to take a sea change, a culture 

change for the other agencies to accept that. It will take time. 
32 

Being older, I get impatient. Don’t tell me why you can’t do 

something. Tell me how you are going to do it. So I have heard the 

reasons why agencies cannot peel people off for six months. 

Or if you are really good, or if you are tasked to send somebody, 

are you going to send your really key guy or key gal, or are you 

going to send some kind of person that you can live without? And 

you know what normally happens. To me, that is unacceptable. 

I find when I deal with the inter-agency concept, the issue there 

is we don’t have a Chief of Staff of the Army or the Air Force. We 

don’t have a Chief of Staff of the inter-agency that we can go to 

and say, ‘‘You have got to make this work.’’ And I think you need 

to address that. 

And again, I think persistence on the part of Congress is so key 

here, because it is going to take—this is a sea change. This is a 

cultural change that has simply got to happen. 

The last point I would make is I wouldn’t waste my time at the 

entry ROTC or that kind of young person level. I think the important thing is at the mid-level and at the senior-level, that there is 

a mix of people from the other agencies, and that is where I would 

concentrate. 

We already have a pretty good system at the senior level war colleges, particularly the National Defense University, where onequarter of their student body are real civilians. It is lesser when 

you get to the service school, but that has already been established. 

You are trying very hard at the mid-level to do it, but boy, it is 

nickel and dime. 

But I would concentrate on that area. And it is so essential, so 

essential. You put your finger right on it, in my mind. 

Dr. KOHN. I would agree with Sandy, Mrs. Davis. I think that 

to have academies would be, again, for the government to duplicate 

institutions that we may have in society that are of very high quality. 

But that said, we do have a terrible recruiting problem at the 

civil service of getting the best youngsters. I have so many students 

who want to do public service, who want to have careers in government, that don’t find a way to get in, and it is really very difficult. 

I would distinguish the inter-agency process as a body of knowledge to be taught how it works, what it does, with the education 

of people for inter-agency cooperation and working together. I think 

that the military leads the government in professional education 

past the undergraduate level, and probably leads society among 

professions. 

You have this infrastructure, this large infrastructure in the 

military. I would make use of it, and make use of it by adding large 

numbers of civilians, again the best from other agencies, and that 

probably can be done on a funding basis and an encouragement 

basis. It is a cabinet-level issue for any administration. It requires 

a push from the top and funding from this side of the Potomac. 

The problem is stovepipes. To add academies or even post-graduate institutions to the civilian agencies, it seems to me, would just 

perpetuate the stovepiping. 

But that said, I think it has to be a cultural change within the 

military, also, because up until war college, most military officers 

are focused on working with other military officers first in their 
33 

service, then in the other services, with allied military services, 

and there is very little tradition of cooperative activity in the history of American foreign operations in other countries between 

military and civilian. 

I once asked a very senior British officer if—retired—if in his career as a young officer, he would ever take orders from a foreign 

service officer or a civilian in his government. He said, ‘‘Well of 

course. We do that all the time at the mid-levels.’’ 

And I thought to myself, ‘‘Would an American officer, a major, 

a lieutenant colonel, learn to take orders from a civilian and feel 

comfortable with that? Would his or her commanders, all the way 

up to the four-star level, be comfortable with that?’’ The answer is 

really, no. And so I think there is a cultural change that has to 

take place on both sides. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Except I just have to say that is, though, the 

experiment in this is what is happening in the PRTs now. At the 

captain, major, and lieutenant colonel level, they are coming to us 

with that experience and struggling with this question. 

Dr. KOHN. I would also—— 

Mrs. DAVIS. And they are great ones to capture a lot of that experience. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. You bet. 

Mrs. DAVIS. I mean, I think we can build some things around 

that. 

Dr. KOHN. I think that General Caldwell at Leavenworth, where 

I visited two months ago, is actually addressing this problem by inviting civilian agencies. I think he is even offering to send Army 

officers in exchange to get much more civilian attendance at the 

Command and General Staff College and the other courses at the 

Combined Arms Center. 

And so there may be the kernel of an idea and a process there. 

It seemed very promising. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. And I would say there are lessons-learned 

materials there on the PRT experience is really worth reading. It 

is very revealing. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. I have one final question, and we will see if Mr. 

Wittman or Mrs. Davis have anything more. 

If you could institute three or four or five changes, given the institutions we have today the way they are, to increase the quality 

of the faculty, what would those things be? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. For the military faculty, again, what we 

have all said I think is have the services take education more seriously so their placement is effective. The same thing is true for 

agencies. I would actually work with State, AID, Treasury, the 

other people we get faculty from earlier in their careers saying— 

highlight when you are older, would you want to come to War College and teach, think about that now. So I would recruit younger. 

And with civilian faculty, we need to have more opportunities to 

do research, to have some time off. I like the idea of us going back 

and forth between the executive branch and coming back to the 

War College, so we have practitioners who work at OSD or work 

at State for a while and come back. So more flexibility with our civilian faculty. 
34 

We have increased our civilian faculty a lot since the era of the 

Skelton Commission, so I don’t really have any complaints about 

it, but I think we need more flexibility. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Cochran. 

Dr. COCHRAN. Two things, sir. 

First of all, I would urge you all to re-examine the notion of tenure and under—— 

Dr. SNYDER [continuing]. On your statement—— 

Dr. COCHRAN [continuing]. Mr. Skelton. And I was a Title X import. I came in under his initial things, and I ran the tenure gap, 

and I got there and it was marvelous. And it is, as I understand, 

at all PME institutions, tenure is no longer valid. 

And I honestly feel that that is a worthy goal. I would also pursue within that the notion of tenure for military faculty themselves 

while they are still on active duty, similar to what they do at the 

service academy. I would have to think this through a little bit 

more, but that sparks me. I mean, you need to get good people that 

are good at what they do and stay there, and not with the threat 

of some kind, somebody coming in and changing the curriculum. 

The second thing, I would seriously address this notion of somehow coming up with a differentiation between uniform faculty and 

civilian faculty. And I am not so sure what the answer is, but it 

does work at the inner—within a department, because each specialty has something they are really good at, and they don’t cross 

over. If you are an Air Force professor, you are pretty good at flying an airplane. If you are a civilian professor, you are pretty good 

at researching something. 

What do I want to do? Do I want to learn to fly that airplane 

to get ahead and—, so I think someone needs to really think that 

one through, and I think that would improve the quality of the faculty. 

And the last thing here, I differ with my colleague, Dick Kohn. 

Teaching at a PME institution is all about teaching. It really is. 

And if you want to go research and write, you are in the wrong 

place. You really are. You have got to go there as a teacher. And 

what I think of in my own experience with higher education, there 

are certain colleges, as opposed to universities, where the teaching 

experience is the one that is valued. That is most important. And 

I think that needs to be emphasized. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Kohn. 

Dr. KOHN. Well, I won’t take the bait from my friend Sandy, but 

the history of American higher education contradicts what he says. 

I would make five points, Mr. Chairman. First, I would have the 

committee and the Congress mandate certain conditions, backgrounds, and tenures for the leadership of these institutions so that 

they have the experience of being on the faculty, understanding 

faculty, and will take on as their responsibility the making certain 

of having the highest quality faculty in their institutions. 

Now, the second thing I would do is I would look at the personnel systems of the armed services to make sure that they are 

encouraging their best officers to get higher education in the civilian world and to become faculty members. One of the great points 

that the Skelton Report made was that many very senior and very 
35 

successful leaders in World War II had served on the faculties of 

War Colleges and the staff colleges. 

The third thing, and I don’t know how this could be done from 

the Congress, but the recruiting of civilian faculty needs some kind 

of oversight, because it seems to me that the civilian faculty 

often—if you have a Ph.D., you have a Ph.D. And Ph.D.s are differing in quality and substance across American higher education 

just as law degrees are, medical degrees and others are. 

And so, I think that the service schools are isolated from American academe. They don’t have the personal contacts in the best 

training institutions. Because I had experience in the Department 

of Defense and elsewhere and was known to the Air Force, they 

would send very good students, and to the Army, very good students to me for graduate training. 

But you can get great graduate training at many other places, 

and I think they are disconnected there. 

A fourth thing I would do is I would prohibit—I don’t know how 

to do this, either—prohibit the number of retired officers who are 

hired onto these faculties, sometimes with quite good credentials, 

but oftentimes because of the compatibility factor. He or she understands us, knows the culture, won’t make waves, won’t rock the 

boat, et cetera, et cetera. There is a bit of sinecurism going on here, 

at some schools more than at others, and sometimes almost none 

at some schools. 

And then, last of all, I heartily endorse the issue of tenure. I addressed that in my written testimony to say that tenure is what 

creates outstanding faculties because it forces an up-or-out decision 

on the people after a period of probation in which they have to 

demonstrate not only their accomplishment and their worth, but 

their promise for the future as faculty members. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Wittman, anything further. 

Mr. WITTMAN. All done. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Can I just ask, are very many denied tenure? 

Dr. COCHRAN. When I was at the Air War College, yes, there 

were. I would say at that time, and this was early 1990s, we actually had—it was 50 percent were denied tenure. And some people 

left because of that. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. And I don’t agree with that, with the tenure 

question. I support it at a normal university. I like the idea, at National at least, of having this vitality of bringing professionals in 

for a while, having a retired foreign service officer or somebody 

from cabinet level who is with us for a while, because we are so 

focused on Washington decision-making, that is the vitality of people coming together. 

Dr. KOHN. Then your tenure track only goes for your academic 

side, not for your special—— 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Yes. We have it almost essentially—we have 

three-year renewable contracts. We have people who have been on 

our faculty for a long time. It kind of works out. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Obviously started something here. I didn’t mean to 

do that. 

Dr. COCHRAN. Well, in my observation of some of these schools, 

the lack of tenure in process is no deterrent to keeping people on 
36 

for lifetime appointments, because, ‘‘Oh, well, we will just continue 

so-and-so on for another,’’ or, ‘‘I don’t want to go through the problem of letting them go.’’ 

You can have a dual-track faculty, professors of the practice, as 

we have in some professional schools, and then tenured academic 

people. So I think that can work. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you all for being here. I think our question 

today, we hit mostly broad themes of this. All of your written statements, I think had a wealth of some very specific things for us to 

look at, and we will. I think this is a good kick-off for us, and I 

appreciate you all being here. 

Let me repeat very formally, if you have anything written, modifications, addendums you want to submit, we will make it part of 

our record and deliberations here and share it with the other members on the subcommittee. And we are certainly going to feel free 

to grab you again should we have other questions. 

Thank you all for being here. We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:35 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

MAY 20, 2009 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

MAY 20, 2009 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER 

Dr. SNYDER. 1. What should be the focus in our study? What questions should we 

ask the commandants and deans of the various schools? What should we ask the 

combatant commanders? What should we ask the Secretary of Defense and the 

Chairman? What should we ask the secretaries of the Services and their uniformed 

heads? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. At heart, the key question for the study and indeed for our 

military leadership is simple: how important to this nation is professional military 

education? If the military is to overcome the perennial ‘‘anti-intellectual’’ charge 

against its officers, will the leadership, both civilian and uniformed, embrace and 

support PME? Will serious attention be paid to student selection, military faculty 

assignment and leadership recruitment? I would ask the Secretary, the Chairman, 

the Service Secretaries and the Chiefs and Combatant Commanders what they want 

in our war colleges, what they want from the National War College. I would ask 

what expect from graduates of the colleges—what skills, depth of understanding, regional preparation. Do they want our graduates to understand the distinct bureaucratic and service cultures? 

Dr. SNYDER. 2. What should be the role of ethical discussions and education in 

PME beyond ‘‘just war’’ theory? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. On ethics education. Over my 12 years at the War College, 

I saw frequent requirements for ethics or leadership education. When offered suggestions for these topics, we received vague and general topics that did not address 

the tough questions that officers face when forced to choose between career and professional military advice. If an officer has observed over time that certain types of 

individuals are promoted for ‘‘going along’’ then no amount of ethics training will 

overcome that lesson. So my first challenge for each Service is to evaluate the promotion criteria, does it include the naysayers, the questioners? Are officers who respond to ‘‘those below as well as those above’’ promoted? 

I did observe one type of course that provided a unique opportunity for officers 

to consider their professional responsibilities. The National War College has an elective on civil-military relations which requires a slow and most careful analysis of 

Huntington’s The Solider and the State. This course exposes the students personally 

to the tension between career ambition and professional responsibility—with slowly 

increasing pressure and logical discipline. No student can shirk or dismiss Huntington’s profound questions. I would advocate this approach at all the War Colleges. 

Dr. SNYDER. 3. What specifically attracts top notch civilian academics to faculty, 

particularly if the programs are not accredited for master’s degrees? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. The type of civilian academic we wanted at the War College 

was not the typical graduate school professor. We found that those attracted to this 

school came because it is a policy professional school, not an academic research institution. We do best with a mix of practitioners, former Ambassadors, governmental 

officials, Congressional staff, as well as civilians with specific academic specializations. The National War College attracted ‘‘top notch’’ civilians—from Harvard, Yale, 

Princeton—even before we went to the master’s degree. I believe the War College 

needs thoughtful ‘‘policy academics’’ who are comfortable in a mixed professional environment, and who want to teach. 

Dr. SNYDER. 4. Is the only way to achieve the Skelton Panel’s recommended joint 

(and now increasingly interagency) acculturation through long (at least 10 months) 

in-residence education? 

a. Are the faculty and student mixes dictated for the various institutions still appropriate? If so, was it appropriate for Congress to allow the Service senior 

schools to award JMPE II credite (NDAA FY2005) despite their lower ratios 

and lack of a requirement to send any graduate to joint assignments? Do you 

see unintended consequences to that? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. I do believe that the National War College program, which 

is interagency and joint BY INTENTION, must be in residence. It is the very interaction of the students and the faculty, the ongoing contact that brings together diverse bureaucratic cultures that Eisenhower, Arnold, Marshall and Forestall had in 

mind when they established the College. This is not a training program that can 
92 

be done through distributed computer based learning, although that can be useful 

in other settings. This is a policy based educational experience that prepares officers 

for the real life interagency and inter-service tensions they will face on graduation. 

Dr. SNYDER. 5. What constitutes rigor in an educational program? Does this require letter grades? Does this require written exams? Does this require the writing 

of research or analytical papers, and if so, of what length? Does this require increased contact time and less ‘‘white space’’? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. On the question of Rigor. I have observed that ‘‘letter grade’’ 

standard results in overall student A¥/B+ grades. I would have you evaluate the 

experience at ICAF in this regard. I do believe that the Colleges need to work with 

students on their writing quality, but I am not convinced that writing a research 

paper is a definitive evaluation technique. To me, the most important evaluative 

measure, either in oral examination or in written examination, is the challenge of 

scenario analysis. As I mentioned in my testimony, I believe that National War College can demonstrate rigor and superior preparation of its students, through the use 

of strategic analysis along the lines of the framework series of questions that various professors have developed over the years. If a student can analyze the components of a given scenario, its strategic implications, and thoroughly respond to the 

in depth questions prompted by the discipline of the framework, we can assess the 

rigor of the student’s thought and preparation. 

Dr. SNYDER. 6. Should performance at PME matter for onward assignments? Does 

which school one attends matter for later assignments? 

a. Does the requirement that the National Defense University send 50% (plus 

one) graduates to joint assignments and the Service senior schools have no 

such requirement matter even though now all award JPME II credit (since 

2005)? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. On the issue of onward assignments and student performance. It would be useful to track the career paths of DG graduates from the Colleges, versus the career paths of students with strong ‘‘sponsors’’ or mentors. The 

dynamic of the sponsor also impacts the selection of senior college. Logically, the 

Joint Staff and the Services should send students to ICAF for in depth economic/ 

acquisition/industrial analysis, to National for strategy, and to the Service colleges 

for senior service specific education. I do not understand how the Service Colleges 

came to award JMPE II credit. 

Dr. SNYDER. 7. How does one measure the quality of the people in the PME environment? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. To measure the quality of the people in the PME environment, see my answer to #5. The purpose of the National War College is to educate 

officers in the field of strategy, in depth critical analysis. As our first Commandant 

mused, the measure of the College’s success is our ability to make the student’s 

‘‘ponder.’’ As a professor, I encouraged students to take advantage of a year when 

they can try on other opinions, experiment with other views, dive into the study bureaucratic and international cultures, develop critical thinking skills. 

Dr. SNYDER. 8. Does gender and ethnic diversity matter in the assignment of senior leaders and the search for qualified faculty? How should PME institutions increase the diversity of their leadership and faculty? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Years ago, I served on the diversity panel for the National 

Defense University. The panel recommended a number of steps to increase racial 

and gender diversity, beginning with earlier recruitment of military officers for advanced degrees and eventual assignment to NDU. We suggested that the services 

consider that advanced students at the command and staff level schools be contacted 

for possible future assignment to the War College. But more than gender or racial 

diversity, the military needs to foster more respect for officer advanced education 

and teaching. 

Dr. SNYDER. 9. How should PME commanders, commandants, and presidents be 

chosen? What background(s) should the Chairman and uniformed heads of the Services be looking for when they nominate individuals for these positions? Should the 

focus be on operational leadership or academic background? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. As obvious as this may sound, a key criterion for selection 

for PME commandants must be an officer’s intellectual engagement with senior officer education. While it would be useful for an officer to have had past academic or 

administrative experience in higher education, I believe that the key factor in success is a passion for the mission of the National War College, and a desire to teach. 

(One would not expect an Air Force fighter squadron to be commanded by officer 

who does not fly. Why do we not aspire to have a senior service school led by an 

officer engaged in the educational mission of the school?) 
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1These views represent Dr. Cochran’s based upon his PME experience and do not represent 

that of the US Army or Department of Defense. 

To assist in the Commandant Selection process, I recommend that the National 

War College revive its past advisory board, formally called the Board of Consultants. This Board could be active in identifying appropriate candidates and could do 

the initial screening interviews before recommending a slate to the Chairman. 

Dr. SNYDER. 10. How should PME institutions attract top-tier faculty away from 

the Harvards and Stanfords of the academic world? What are the elements that 

would attract the highest quality of faculty—tenure, copyright, resources, pay, ability to keep their government retirements, research and administrative assistance? 

a. Please define academic freedom in general and discuss what its role should be 

in a PME setting. 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. Again, my view is that the National War College is not designed to be a Research University. I believe the ‘‘top tier’’ faculty members are attracted to the War College because of their access to and impact on the future leaders of our country, the setting of the College in Washington and their proximity to 

the policy community. As I mentioned above, we have had outstanding civilian faculty over the years without tenure, copyright, and research assistance. That is not 

to say that these are not important factors to keep the MIX of faculty that is so 

important. I support the current system of a few ‘‘tenured’’ faculty, more research 

support for those who want to do research, a more flexible sabbatical program to 

allow faculty to enter the policy process. 

On academic freedom. Aside from DOD rules in article publication, which did not 

seem burdensome, there is a larger issue concerning the atmosphere of academic 

freedom. When a leader in an academic institution suggests that certain speakers 

should not be invited, that administration policy should not be questioned, that certain schools focus too much on history and policy criticism, great harm is done to 

military officers. In my mind, the goal of senior officer education is critical analysis 

and strategic thought . . . to be prepared to answer the question, ‘‘now what do we 

do?’’ Faculty and students need to be free to question, to reconsider, to challenge. 

It is the ultimate gift of a war college education. 

Dr. SNYDER. 11. What should be the role of history in PME? 

Dr. BRESLIN-SMITH. The role of history. For a nation that spends so little time 

considering the past, it is all the more important to expose its military leadership 

to both diplomatic and military history, as well as deeper understanding of the 

world’s political cultures. The benefit of the American generally positive focus on the 

future obscures the weakness of our analysis and strategic thought when we ignore 

the practices and experience of the past. The recent past, the after action analysis 

of the period leading up to the terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars must be 

studied before the complexity of the current blur of international and domestic 

issues numbs analysis. 

Dr. SNYDER. 3. What specifically attracts top notch civilian academics to faculty, 

particularly if the programs are not accredited for master’s degree? 

Dr. COCHRAN. In my view, this question misses the point, particularly the notion 

that civilian academic are attracted by master programs. None of the service academies nor community colleges and many smaller academic colleges—all of which 

lack master degree programs—have problems with attracting quality civilian faculty. Rather, the issue is the lack of mobility for faculty between civilian and military PME institutions. Once any civilian academic makes a commitment to a PME 

faculty situation, few if any can expect to return to the civilian academic world. 

There is an inherent mistrust amongst civilian faculty towards military PME institutions [one of the purposes of the ‘‘visiting professor’’ positions at PME schools is 

to counter this] and the attitude towards academics who take the PME route are 

treated as if they sold their soul to the devil. Acknowledgement of this by PME officials, as well as members of Congress, would be helpful (see my response below for 

further on attraction of civilian faculty).1

Dr. SNYDER. 5. What constitutes rigor in an educational program? Does it require 

letter grades? Does this require written examinations? Does this require the writing 

of research and analytical papers, and, if so, what length? Does this require increased contact time and less ‘‘white space’’? 

Dr. COCHRAN. As I stated in my oral testimony, rigor in any PME program will 

result in the synergy between a qualified civilian and military faculty teaching in 

their areas of expertise and a motivated student body that really wants to learn. 

From this will flow a rigorous curriculum. To think that ‘‘rigor’’ should drive is putting the cart before the horse. If the inherent curriculum is weak, a solid faculty 
94 

with innovative leadership will fix that—responding to the demands of a student 

body. 

The type of grade given is irrelevant as very few, if any, PME schools ‘‘flunk’’ students, certainly when compared to civilian institutions. 

Written examinations are only as valuable if a qualified faculty is prepared to 

spend as much in the evaluation as the students did in the study and writing. More 

valuable are oral examinations that cut across academic departments—thus being 

truly integrated—as are conducted by the National War College faculty. Research 

papers are only as useful as the contribution of qualified faculty with requisite expertise who direct them; all too often ‘‘papers’’ at PME institutions are ‘‘check the 

block.’’ 

On contact time, my experience has always been less is better, thus forcing hard 

decisions on what to and not to teach as opposed to filling time. The whole notion 

of ‘‘white space’’ is meaningless outside of PME; indeed it would be embarrassing 

to explain this to civilian academics? 

Dr. SNYDER. 6. Should performance at PME matter for onward assignments? Does 

which school one attends matter for later assignments? 

Dr. COCHRAN. How well students perform at PME should be a requisite for future 

assignment. However, the factors such as a 100 percent pass rate and the lack of 

weight given to ‘‘academic evaluation reports’’ inhibits competition. Such a system 

would require some innovation in the personnel system. 

With regard to school attendance mattering for specific assignments, here various 

PME schools need to coordinate (particularly across services) on what is the focus 

of each institution—even create ‘‘centers of excellence’’ on inter-service matters such 

as Army schools on leadership, Air Force schools on technology, NDU schools on 

strategy. Another factor is the elimination of ‘‘waivers’’ prior to assignment that all 

too often become accredited after assignment. 

Dr. SNYDER. 9. How should PME commanders, commandants, and presidents be 

chosen? What background(s) should the Chairman and uniformed heads of the Services be looking for when they nominate individuals for these positions? Should the 

focus be upon operational leadership skills or academic backgrounds? 

Dr. COCHRAN. The military ‘‘heads’’ of the various PME institutions should be chosen on the basis of demonstrated leadership in the expertise and at the level of the 

applicable school. The more senior the school, the more essential this leadership category is. S/he should be assigned to that position for a minimum of three years (five 

for staff and war colleges) to plan, execute, and assess the programs, curriculum and 

changes. ‘‘Touch and go’’ or ‘‘holding pattern’’ assignments demean the seriousness 

of PME. The academic ‘‘dean’’ for each school should be chosen for academic background in field of the institution and kept in those positions for at least twice that 

of the ‘‘head’’ tenure to ensure overlap. As the ‘‘head’’ should be a military person, 

the dean should be civilian. 

Dr. SNYDER. 10. How should PME institutions attract top-tier civilian faculty 

away from the Harvards and Stanfords of the academic world? What are the elements that would attract the highest quality of faculty—tenure, copyright, resources, pay, ability to keep their government retirements, research and administrative assistance? 

Dr. COCHRAN. Similar to the first question above, this question misses the point. 

Most of the ‘‘elements’’ or perks for civilian PME faculty exceed those of comparable 

positions on civilian campuses with the MAJOR EXCEPTION OF TENURE. Matters of pay, funds for research and travel, access to resources, and assistance, particularly for younger scholars at prestigious ‘‘Harvards’’ and ‘‘Stanfords’’ as well as 

established scholars in the academic world, simply cannot be matched by civilian 

institutions. The issue is not so much ‘‘attraction’’ rather than ‘‘retention.’’ Here senior leadership needs to be innovative. Addressing the failure of PME institutions to 

implement a system of Title X tenure as outlined 20 years ago would be a positive 

step in that direction, for both younger scholars and established academics. 

Dr. SNYDER. 10.a. Please define academic freedom in general and discuss what its 

role should be in a PME setting. 

Dr. COCHRAN. In my view, it is not so much the definition of academic freedom 

in PME as it is abuse in the civilian world—and the lack of understanding by both 

military and civilian communities. The expectation (indeed the obligation) within 

the military culture to offer alternative views, particularly in the decision making 

process, is strong. A penchant to ‘‘hold on’’ to minority positions for long periods of 

time works at cross purposes with the orderly conduct of business is accepted within 

by most in academia. Helpful here is the notion that PME is for the military, about 

the military, and by the military. If one has a problem with that, then they should 

avoid becoming associated with PME. 

Dr. SNYDER. 11. What is the role of history in PME? 
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Dr. COCHRAN. As noted above, the focus of Professional Military Education is the 

profession of the military; at its essence, it is about war—preparation for, conduct 

of, and assessment after. Hence it is ‘‘war studies’’—past, present and future. In the 

past decades, civilian institutions have adopted exceptional war studies programs— 

an essential part of which is the study of history, along with that of political science, 

economic, behavioral studies, anthropology, and other established academic disciplines. History is a part of this but does not dictate or dominate. As war studies 

is multidisciplinary, the role of history in PME should be the same. While one cannot quantify just how much, it should be respectively complimentary. 

Dr. SNYDER. 1. What should be the focus in our study? What questions should we 

ask the commandants and deans of the various schools? What should we ask the 

combatant commanders? What should we ask the Secretary of Defense and the 

Chairman? What should we ask the secretaries of the Services and their uniformed 

heads? 

Dr. CARAFANO. As I stated in my testimony, ‘‘[t]he centerpiece of the reform discussion should be on senior-level professional military officer education. The reason 

for that is simple. The skills, knowledge, and attributes of strategic leaders are the 

most important product of the military’s professional development program.’’ The 

war colleges are the pivotal professional military development experience. If clear 

vision for what they do can be established, it is much easier to work in either direction to identify the other key assignment, education, and training milestones that 

support the war college experience. Likewise, understanding the requirements for 

officer professional military education is the backbone for then determining what 

needs to be done for enlisted personnel, warrant officers, and civilian employees. 

In questioning senior military and civilian leaders I think it will be important to 

force them out of the ‘‘here and now.’’ Fundamental changes in the professional military educations won’t solve short-term problems. Furthermore, these changes will 

likely influence the character of the military for many decades. Thus, each should 

be asked to envision officer duties; the skills, knowledge and attributes; education 

and training requirements; and operational assignments—thirty years in the future. 

Dr. SNYDER. 2. What should be the role of ethical discussions and education in 

PME beyond ‘‘just war’’ theory? 

Dr. CARAFANO. As I stated in my testimony, ‘‘[m]oral and political issues are part 

of war, not a separate sphere that military leaders can ignore. Officers will have 

to engage in the struggle of ideas against terrorism and other ideologies that may 

emerge in the 21st century. They will have to understand the political dimensions 

of war and the complexities of civil-military relations.’’ Thus, ethical considerations 

must transcend traditional discussions of just war theory and include topics such 

as social justice, economics, and the environment. 

In many ways, this curriculum will reflect what is often called a ‘‘classical liberal’’ 

education. 

Dr. SNYDER. 3. What specifically attracts top notch civilian academics to faculty, 

particularly if the programs are not accredited for master’s degrees? 

Dr. CARAFANO. Top notch research facilities and opportunities are always a powerful draw. Likewise, faculty is attracted by the opportunity to work with a talented 

student body. Finally, the opportunity to work in a truly ‘‘multi-disciplinary’’ environment with a minimum of distractions from administration. 

Dr. SNYDER. 4. Is the only way to achieve the Skelton Panel’s recommended joint 

(and now increasingly interagency) acculturation through long (at least 10 months) 

in-residence education? 

Dr. CARAFANO. No, but this must be the core component and a touchstone for the 

educational experience. The gold standard by which alternative educational models 

are measured. I would make the senior PME experience universal and not tied to 

assignment or promotion. My argument here is simple. You can never predict with 

clear certainty how officers will respond over the long-term and which will have the 

essential skills, knowledge, and attributes necessary for future conflicts. The more 

officers through the pipeline the better the odds you will have the right leaders 

when you need them. This may not be the most efficient process, but my guess is 

we are still decades away from solid predictors of cognitive performance and there 

won’t be any useful ‘‘metrics’’ to determine whether you are producing the right 

leaders other than how they perform in over the long-term. 

Dr. SNYDER. 5. What constitutes rigor in an educational program? Does this require letter grades? Does this require written exams? Does this require the writing 

of research or analytical papers, and if so, of what length? Does this require increased contact time and less ‘‘white space’’? 

Dr. CARAFANO. Rigor comes from developing critical thinking skills. Probably the 

most important variable here is the quality of the faculty rather than the specific 

requirements and time allocation in the course. In general, however, I would advo-
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cate for more depth-less breath. As I stated in my testimony, ‘‘Joint Professional 

Military Education requirements have become overly prescriptive. They are also 

growing. Quality is becoming a victim quantity. The current vogue of emphasizing 

‘‘cultural’’ studies is a case in point. Reform proposals call for everything from Arabic-language training to negotiating skills to increased engineering and scientific 

training. These calls ignore reality. Operational requirements are leaving less, not 

more, time for professional education. Likewise, the Pentagon cannot be expected to 

foresee exactly which kinds of leaders, language skills, and geographic or operational orientations will be needed for future missions. The future is too unpredictable.’’ 

Dr. SNYDER. 6. Should performance at PME matter for onward assignments? Does 

which school one attends matter for later assignments? 

Dr. CARAFANO. See answer to question 4. 

Dr. SNYDER. 7. How does one measure the quality of the staff, faculty, and students in the PME environment? 

Dr. CARAFANO. See answer to question 4. Metrics are a recipe for disaster for disaster. Increasing social science is finding that the over reliance on quantitative 

measures can actually drive down performance. Long-term performance is the only 

adequate measure. 

Dr. SNYDER. 8. Does gender and ethnic diversity matter in the assignment of senior leaders and the search for qualified faculty? How should PME institutions increase the diversity of their leadership and faculty? 

Dr. CARAFANO. Diversity obviously matters. We live in diverse world. That is 

where men and women have to fight. That is the world they need to understand. 

There are ways to achieve an appreciation for diversity without imbedding it the 

make-up of the students and faculty. The quality of the faculty is the number one 

variable in the quality of the education. That should never be sacrificed. The best 

means to ensure a diverse, quality faculty and student body for senior PME is establish opportunities for career of service to diverse population and build professional 

development programs that qualify them to teach and learn at senior PME institutions. 

Dr. SNYDER. 9. How should PME commanders, commandants, and presidents be 

chosen? What background(s) should the Chairman and uniformed heads of the Services be looking for when they nominate individuals for these positions? Should the 

focus be on operational leadership or academic background? 

Dr. CARAFANO. They should be chosen by an independent board. They should 

serve a term of ten years and have to retire afterwards and receive post-retirement 

promotions. The leaders that should be chosen are the ones best qualified to implement the vision for the institution regardless of their operational or educational 

background. 

Dr. SNYDER. 10. How should PME institutions attract top-tier civilian faculty? 

What are the elements that would attract the highest quality of faculty—tenure, 

copyright, resources, pay, ability to keep their government retirements, research and 

administrative assistance? 

Dr. CARAFANO. See answer to question 3. I think existing practices for academic 

freedom in the military education institutions is adequate. 

Dr. SNYDER. 11. What should be the role of history in PME? 

Dr. CARAFANO. Critical thinking is the most vital skill. History is a great instrument for teaching the practice of critical thinking. It is an essential, but not a sufficient component. Twenty-first century leaders must be ‘‘multi-disciplinary’’ and understand a variety of methods of analysis to solve modern complex problems. 

Dr. SNYDER. 1. What should be the focus in our study? What questions should we 

ask the commandants and deans of the various schools? What should we ask the 

combatant commanders? What should we ask the Secretary of Defense and the 

Chairman? What should we ask the secretaries of the Services and their uniformed 

heads? 

Dr. KOHN. The focus should be on the extent to which the various schools accomplish their overall mission of education for the waging of war. Special attention 

should be paid to the obstacles or impediments PME faces, ones that could be overcome through different policies, procedures, and personnel. The mission at the precommissioning level is the education of potential officers and their basic preparation 

for company grade service; at the intermediate level, education in the waging of war 

and leadership/command at the operational level; and at the senior level, education 

in the formulation of strategy and leadership/command at the division, fleet, and 

major, unified, and specified command levels and higher. 

Commandants and deans at the various schools (and in ROTC and OCS/OTS) 

should be asked what those impediments/obstacles exist to increasing the quality of 

their institutions: resources, quality/nature of the students, quality/nature of the 
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faculty and particularly support from their leadership (civilian and military). Attempt to differentiate what might be changed with different policies or behaviors 

from the leadership: could chiefs, service secretaries, and OSD do anything differently to enhance the schools’ mission success? Explore with them the exogenous 

factors that are more difficult to compensate for: ops tempo, personnel policies of 

the services (selection and follow-on assignment of students in particular); support 

from COCOMS and commanders at lower levels; and curricular requirements of the 

services, joint staff, and civilian accreditation authorities. (I suspect that jointness 

and interagency issues have quite likely come to crowd out other important subjects 

in ISS and SSS.) Then see if they think there is anything in their power that can 

strengthen their schools. The differentiation is critical. 

Academy deans and superintendents should be asked about the balance between 

military training/education and more basic civilian education: do they give their cadets/midshipmen enough time, and enough encouragement, to pursue the intellectual experience of college, and develop both the respect for, interest in, and commitment to lifelong learning? To what extent do they rely on honor codes to teach professional ethics, as opposed to specific, targeted issues that they will face as junior 

officers? Do the academies (and ROTC) require enough foreign language fluency to 

be of value to the military establishment in the future, enough civics/government/ 

political science to understand the character of American government and how it 

differs from other forms of government, and enough American history to appreciate 

the development of the United States’s current economy, society, politics, and role 

in the world? Ask specifically whether the amount of science and engineering could 

be reduced, as vestigial holdovers from a distant past, in favor of less technical information that might prepare them for a lifetime of military service. Last, academy 

superintendents should be asked to explain why such a large percentage of their 

graduates leave the service after their minimum obligation, and at the ten year 

mark—and whether, if the chief reasons lay outside academy walls, whether they 

might during the four years better prepare officers to accept the challenges and remain committed to the profession of arms for lifetime careers. The combatant commanders should be asked if the graduates of ISS are adequately prepared to do the 

campaign planning needed by the command, and the graduates of SSS to formulate 

effective military strategy needed by their commands. Second, ask what in their 

judgment they could do personally or institutionally to make PME stronger; would 

they support alterations in the personnel policies of the services to improve PME? 

Do they think officers are adequately prepared for staff and war college? Do they 

think the educational experience is demanding enough? Do they think it was as demanding as their civilian graduate education, and if not, why not? 

The Secretary of Defense, Chairman, service secretaries, and service Chiefs could 

be asked the same set of questions. First, on the selection of school presidents and 

commandants, should not prior experience as a faculty member be required for leadership of a PME institution? Second, inquire what these senior leaders see as the 

primary or most important mission of the various levels of PME, and what in their 

judgment might be done to improve the accomplishment of these missions. Third, 

ask for their judgment as to the comparative importance of PME as opposed to civilian graduate school for the professional development of officers, and if they believe 

both to be necessary, whether their personnel systems make sufficient space in assignment patterns for the most promising officers to pursue both and still compete 

for flag rank. Each should also be asked whether they believe assignment to a PME 

institution faculty is as valuable for officer development as operational assignments, 

indeed even command. 

Dr. SNYDER. 2. What should be the role of ethical discussions and education in 

PME beyond ‘‘just war’’ theory? 

Dr. KOHN. Ethics should be central to education at every PME level, as part of 

the study of the broader subject of the profession of arms. 

At every level of education, the different stresses and dilemmas of core professional ethics need to be explored in depth. Officers need to be taught how to exercise 

their command power responsibly; what their obligations are to their soldiers, colleagues, and commanders; how to combine mission accomplishment and with personal ambition; what institutional pressures they will face in the course of a career; 

and many other professional dilemmas, pressures, and difficulties that arise in 

every profession at every level. There should be case studies and role playing, along 

with biographical studies. Ethics should be integral to the study of leadership and 

command, tactics, law, civil-military relations, public affairs, joint and combined operations, organization, and more. Professional ethics should be compared to, and 

sometimes differentiated from, personal ethics and morality, religion, social norms, 

and the like. The assertion of norms, values, and ethics needs to be supplemented 

with an investigation of them in depth in various situations. PME should play a 
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central role in defining professional ethics, teaching them, and nurturing an understanding from their application in tactics at the beginning of officers’ careers all the 

way through advising the president of the United States during wartime. 

Dr. SNYDER. 3. What specifically attracts top notch civilian academics to faculty, 

particularly if the programs are not accredited for master’s degrees? 

Dr. KOHN. Two things attract civilian faculty: the opportunity to teach their specialties to outstanding students, and to pursue their own contributions to their fields 

through research, writing, consulting, and publishing. This means specifically the 

freedom to choose (to some degree) what they teach and how (including the types 

and amounts of assignments), and research time and support, including travel and 

hours away from the office either in libraries, archives, interviewing, field work, or 

other venues. Like other professionals in other fields, scholars wish to be able to 

practice their profession at the highest level of accomplishment and excellence to 

which they are capable. They are particularly sensitive to whether the conditions 

of service support, rather than hamper, the pursuit of excellence and the opportunity to make their work known to colleagues in their field. Issues of compensation, 

provided that is at a living wage level and adjusted for a twelve month as opposed 

to nine month appointment, are secondary. See also question 10. 

Dr. SNYDER. 4. Is the only way to achieve the Skelton Panel’s recommended joint 

(and now increasingly interagency) acculturation through long (at least 10 months) 

in-residence education? 

Dr. KOHN. No. In fact, jointness cannot be left to ISS and SSS, but needs to be 

instilled from the very beginning of careers. Indeed much jointness training and 

education aims to undo service indoctrination, education, and cultural practice— 

down to the very humor officers of the various services use to needle each other and 

the intense competition engendered by service academy football and competing 

roles, missions, and budgets. ROTC units should be housed, train, and socialize together; induction and commissioning ceremonies should be joint; the academies 

should require a semester in residence at each of the other two academies; all precommissioning education should teach loyalty first to country, second to the profession of arms, and third to the service, while at the same time orienting and teaching 

cadets/midshipmen about the missions, purposes, character, culture, accomplishments, and mentality of the other services—and about the achievements of interservice cooperation historically, as well as the harmful effects of interservice rivalry 

and competition in the 20th century. These subjects should be expanded at more advanced levels in ISS. In my judgment, interagency issues should gradually displace 

jointness at ISS and SSS—if jointness still needs to be indoctrinated to any significant degree (as opposed to described or studied) at war colleges, it means earlier 

efforts have failed. The same education in other agencies’ roles, functions, accomplishments, and purposes should be taught at every level of PME, with attendant 

respect for the way civilians and civilian institutions contribute to national security. 

Dr. SNYDER. 4.a. Are the faculty and student mixes dictated for the various institutions still appropriate? If so, was it appropriate for Congress to allow the Service 

senior schools to award JMPE II credit (NDAA FY2005) despite their lower ratios 

and lack of a requirement to send any graduate to joint assignments? Do you see 

unintended consequences to that? 

Dr. KOHN. The mix of students and faculty seems reasonable and functional, and 

as long as a portion of the curricula address joint issues, JPME II credit seems appropriate. Dictating from Congress assignment patterns of this kind will constrict 

the assignment of officers at a time when the services strain to meet operational 

and infrastructure personnel requirements, so I would recommend against levying 

the NDU requirement on the service war colleges. 

In the last twenty-five years, jointness has become something of an obsession. It 

is not and never was either the root of our military difficulties or the solution to 

our military deficiencies. It may be displacing other, more important, subjects in 

PME curricula at the war college level, or forcing excessive time in class meetings 

and group exercises at the expense of individual student reading, research, and reflection. Jointness and interagency are not in my judgment the most important 

issues the HASC should address in PME. 

Dr. SNYDER. 5. What constitutes rigor in an educational program. Does this require letter grades? Does this require written exams? Does this require the writing 

of research or analytical papers, and if so, of what length? Does this require increased contact time and less ‘‘white space’’? 

Dr. KOHN. Rigor rests on challenging students to expand their knowledge, skills, 

abilities, and understanding; and to raise their standards, or the quality, of their 

research, writing, thinking, and discourse. Most important, faculty must insist on 

rigor and precision in analysis and interpretation in written work and oral discourse. While grades, exams (written or oral), briefings, group projects, and writing 
99 

are all indispensable—and the grading of them the only way to hold students accountable for their performance—what is most important is that the faculty press 

rigor in every classroom meeting and every student exercise and requirement. 

Vague, sloppy, superficial, poorly researched or conceived work or participation of 

every kind needs to be brought to students’ attention in a direct but supportive and 

encouraging way. And the higher the level, the more direct and explicit should be 

the feedback. 

Unless students—each individual alone—write analytical papers based on indepth and comprehensive research, addressing the most complex, ambiguous issues 

facing the United States in national defense, they will not be capable of high-quality 

staff work nor will they be able to recognize it. If they lack these skills, they cannot 

supervise subordinates in the preparation of quality staff work nor later, as commanders, will they be able to recognize shoddy thinking, writing, and advice. 

This requires not only short (less than ten pages) and intermediate length (twelve 

to twenty-five pages) papers, but a thesis (indeterminate length) based on original 

research, undertaken under the supervision of a faculty member skilled and experienced in such teaching, that addresses an important subject in national defense or 

military affairs, and makes an original contribution to knowledge. 

Finally, the term ‘‘white space’’ is misleading and offensive. It implies emptiness, 

the absence of anything much less something of substance. Rigor requires more time 

for individual student work: reading, research, writing, preparation. The higher one 

ascends in education, the less time is spent in the classroom listening or reciting 

or otherwise interacting with faculty and peers. More time is spent wrestling with 

complexity and uncertainly on one’s own, formulating problems or questions, pursuing research in depth and breadth (always time-consuming), honing one’s thinking, unraveling inconsistency, filling in gaps in research or logic, and crafting a finished product. 

Dr. SNYDER. 6. Should performance at PME matter for onward assignments? Does 

which school one attends matter for later assignments? 

Dr. KOHN. Both should matter though I believe at present they matter little. In 

other professions—law, health sciences, business, the clergy, education, science, engineering, architecture, etc. etc.—where a professional gets his or her education, 

how they perform (which measures what they learned and the quality of their skills) 

largely determines their first jobs and often subsequent career trajectories. All professions value experience and accomplishment. Only the military seems to ignore 

academic performance in professional advancement. 

Such was not always the case. In the army at various times during the first threequarters of the 20th century, attendance at the Command and General Staff College 

and one’s rank in class had real effect on an officer’s career, and to some extent affected subsequent assignments and advancement as indicative of an officer’s professional ability. 

Dr. SNYDER. 6.a. Does the requirement that the National Defense University send 

50% (plus one) graduates to joint assignments and the Service senior schools have 

no such requirement matter even though now all award JPME II credit (since 

2005)? 

Dr. KOHN. Not in my judgment. 

Dr. SNYDER. 7. How does one measure the quality of the people in the PME environment? 

Dr. KOHN. People in PME should be measured first by their qualifications and 

second by their performance. 

Students, faculty, and school leadership can be measured on qualifications the 

same way civilian professional schools measure their people. 

Students should be measured on the basis of their prior academic performances 

and by examination of their aptitude and preparation, by their interest and motivation for professional schooling as demonstrated in an application and statement of 

interest and intent, and by the extent to which their careers and accomplishments 

to date indicate promise for success in the profession. Currently the service personnel boards review only the last. The first two should be weighted equally at least 

with the last. PME schools should assess the first two, and admission committees, 

in consultation with service personnel boards, should certify eligibility before those 

boards select the students. 

Faculty should be measured on the basis of their professional education, experience, and accomplishments. 

Civilian (or permanent) faculty should be assessed on their performance in graduate school and the graduate education they obtained, on the teaching ability they 

demonstrated or their potential for teaching in a military PME environment, and 

on their ability and expertise in their discipline and subject as measured by their 

writings/publications. This assessment should be undertaken by search committees 
100 

staffed equally by civilian and military faculty; finalists should be invited to campus 

for an interview; recommendations to deans and commandants should explain in 

writing the reasons for selection. 

Military (or rotating) faculty should be assessed the same way as ‘‘professors of 

the practice’’ are measured by civilian professional schools: on the basis of experience, knowledge, and demonstrated excellence in the practice of the profession in 

a particular subject area. Search committees with an equal mix of civilian and military faculty should review nominations from the services, interview them, and make 

recommendations to the deans and commandants explaining in writing the reasons 

for selection, beyond nomination by a service. 

Commandants/presidents should be measured on the basis of their education, experience, and interest in the position. At a minimum, they should have faculty experience in PME, for if prior command, familiarity with the function, and experience 

with the weapons system or branch are required for operational and support commands, the same should be true in PME. The truth is that faculty assignments and 

terminal degrees from civilian educational institutions almost always kill the 

chances for promotion to flag rank. However if too few flags have the background, 

the personnel systems should be growing sufficient flag officers to staff these institutions—if they are important institutions/commands. 

Students, faculty, and commandants/presidents should also be measured on performance. Students can be evaluated by means of regular assessments in the form 

of grades and upon graduation, rank order in class just as is done in the academies. 

This will motivate officers to work hard, take advantage of PME, excel, and thus 

improve their professional capacities. Faculty should be measured just as are peers 

in civilian institutions: on teaching performance (as measured by occasional visits 

to their classrooms by senior peers and chairs, not by student survey alone), service 

(committees, course development, leadership, etc.), consulting, and writings/publications. A committee of peers should exist in every department to review the performance of each faculty member on a regular basis. Commandants/presidents should be 

evaluated as in civilian academe: by their supervisors but with input from students 

(including most recent alumnae/i), faculty, administrators, commanders/stakeholders, and Boards of Visitors. 

Dr. SNYDER. 8. Does gender and ethnic diversity matter in the assignment of senior leaders and the search for qualified faculty? How should PME institutions increase the diversity of their leadership and faculty? 

Dr. KOHN. Diversity matters just as much in PME as in the most prominent and 

desirable command and staff positions. Faculty are (or should be) role models for 

students, respected professional experts of accomplishment and reputation. They are 

very visible. An absence of diversity sends a most negative message. 

Diversity can be increased by active, targeted recruitment. However the larger 

problem is that faculty duty for uniformed officers at ISS and SSS is not career enhancing. That could be changed by the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman, service 

secretaries, or chiefs of service—and should be immediately. Recruiting minority 

and female civilian faculty is part of the larger problem of recruiting outstanding 

faculty from academe. See question 10. 

My sense is that the academies and ROTC have been successful in this respect. 

Command of PME schools often functions a tombstone assignment for flags either 

with the requisite qualifications (rarely) or for whom other assignments don’t materialize. That, too, could be altered by the OSD, JCS, and service leadership. 

Dr. SNYDER. 9. How should PME commanders, commandants, and presidents be 

chosen? What background(s) should the Chairman and uniformed heads of the Services be looking for when they nominate individuals for these positions? Should the 

focus be on operational leadership or academic background? 

Dr. KOHN. The Chairman and chiefs of the services should be chosen just as other 

flag billets are filled, and with the active oversight, input, and approval of the civilian leadership in OSD and the services. The backgrounds sought should be outstanding academic performance in PME, faculty experience, diversity of operational 

and staff experience, outstanding performance in command, and personal interest 

in the position. 

Academic background and interest should be equal to or superior to operational 

leadership skills, for leadership of a mixed service and civilian faculty rarely 

equates with command of ground, air, or sea operational units or forces, or the various support functions in each of the services or in the joint/interagency/combined 

arenas. 

If insufficient flags exist at present, retired flags with the requisite background 

should be recruited or voluntarily recalled to active duty until the service personnel 

systems grow an appropriate number of flag candidates. Some years ago the army 

appointed a chief of military history by instructing the O–7 selection board to choose 
101 

from the several outstanding colonels with PhDs in history—and thereby filled the 

position for several years with some of the strongest leadership the Center of Military History and army historical program has ever had. The dean’s positions at the 

Military and Air Force Academies are similarly filled by promotion of a permanent 

professor selected for the job. The same could be done with PME commandants, 

commanders, and presidents. 

However the need to fill these positions with academically qualified officers must 

not be the occasion to derail outstanding flag officers with PhDs into assignments 

that are career-harming. There should be enough qualified flags to staff a variety of 

positions; if the services wish to grow leadership that is as original and adept at 

strategy, civil-military consultation, staff support, and specialized command positions as in operations, they must alter the balance and mix of their flag ranks more 

broadly. 

Dr. SNYDER. 10. How should PME institutions attract top-tier faculty away from 

the Harvards and Stanfords of the academic world? What are the elements that 

would attract the highest quality of faculty—tenure, copyright, resources, pay, ability to keep their government retirements, research and administrative assistance? 

Dr. KOHN. PME cannot recruit tenured faculty from the top level of civilian academe for permanent employment because military schools cannot offer the freedom 

to teach what top scholars wish to teach, or the research time to pursue cutting edge 

original work that will change aspects of their field. There are too few senior scholars expert or interested in the specialties desired by staff and war colleges. The best 

that can be hoped is that PME institutions can attract an occasional top faculty 

member from these institutions for a year or two under the intergovernmental personnel act, or younger faculty attracted for various reasons to teaching military officers and contributing the national defense. 

To attract the best teacher/scholars from civilian academe, the academies, staff, 

and war colleges must offer tenure. Overwhelmingly the top tier people will not risk 

their professional livelihood under rotating military leadership that might not understand academic life, adhere to the norms and values of civilian higher education 

(which do differ in many respects from those of the military profession), or permit 

the kind of freedom of inquiry and working conditions common to research I universities. When in the summer of 1990 I asked Admiral Stansfield Turner how he recruited Philip Crowl, the distinguished naval historian, from the University of Nebraska, the Admiral replied that he made him an offer he could not refuse, and that 

it included tenure. Newport still possesses the most distinguished faculty of the various staff and war colleges, and still operates with tenure. 

In truth, all the PME institutions practice tenure without its chief benefit: a rigorous, searching review of the accomplishments, fitness, and promise of faculty 

members after a suitable probationary period such that only the best are retained 

on a permanent basis. A systematic study of civilian faculty at those PME schools 

that lack a formal policy of tenure would reveal that few if any faculty have been 

discharged in the last ten or even twenty years, and that the average length of service probably approaches or exceeds ten years. 

The argument that tenure undermines the currency of faculty and their familiarity with contemporary issues and expertise lacks all credibility. Currency resides 

both in the rotating military faculty and in the permanent civilian faculty, who keep 

up in their field through study, reflection, research, and continuous interchange 

with students, alumnae/i, and friends in uniform. The publication and professional 

activity record of the civilian faculty, so often praised in the statements of the commandants/presidents to the Committee, demonstrates the currency and excellence of 

long-serving faculty. 

Other conditions of service would also be required: lower teaching loads, ninemonth appointments (or teaching for only part of the academic year), the right to 

copyright their work and enjoy royalties from writing and income from consulting 

even when done on government time, dedicated secretary/administrative/research 

support, and more. Faculty in research I universities exist not in hierarchical organizations with an effective command or administrative structure but in loose, entrepreneurial institutions that afford them the maximum freedom to teach and research at the limit of their capabilities. They are accountable to their disciplines, 

their colleagues, their students, and their own ambitions. They work hard for long 

hours but on their own schedules, and essentially without supervision. Staff and 

war colleges, and even the academies, cannot duplicate this culture, and for the 

foreseeable future, few of the top American academics would be attracted to the 

military for professional careers because their interests are not focused on national 

defense. 

Dr. SNYDER. 10.a. Please define academic freedom in general and discuss what its 

role should be in a PME setting. 
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1The word ‘‘teacher’’ as used in this document is understood to include the investigator who 

is attached to an academic institution without teaching duties. 2For a discussion of this question, see the ‘‘Report of the Special Committee on Academic Personnel Ineligible for Tenure,’’ Policy Documents and Reports, 9th ed. (Washington, D.C., 2001), 

88–91. 3For a more detailed statement on this question, see ‘‘On Crediting Prior Service Elsewhere 

as Part of the Probationary Period,’’ Policy Documents and Reports, 10th ed. (Washington, D.C., 

2006), 55–56. 

Dr. KOHN. I have seen no better description of academic freedom than the 1940 

statement by the American Association of University Professors, available at http:// 

www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/1940statement.htm: 

Academic Freedom 

1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the 

results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but 

research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the 

authorities of the institution. 

2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, 

but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial 

matter which has no relation to their subject.1 Limitations of academic freedom 

because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in 

writing at the time of the appointment.2

3. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, 

and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, 

they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special 

position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times 

be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the 

opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not 

speaking for the institution.3

Academic freedom is indispensable to all education but particularly PME, where 

faculty and students must be encouraged to discuss (which implies questioning and 

criticizing as well as describing, analyzing, praising, etc.) policy, leadership (political 

as well as military), past and present decisions, and everything else connected to 

military and national security affairs. Without free inquiry, learning cannot occur. 

Any subject, methodology, or thought that is off limits immediately stymies the 

search for truth and understanding. War and military affairs are complex, ambiguous, uncertain, and difficult enough without erecting artificial boundaries on their 

study. We want our military leadership to understand them as much as possible. 

Furthermore, censorship in their education leads to censorship later in their internal functioning and in their interaction with the political leadership. The result 

would be disaster in war. 

Commandants and presidents of PME schools, as ranking officers functioning in 

highly hierarchal institutions operating under authoritarian discipline, must affirm 

an unwavering commitment to academic freedom upon taking command, and periodically throughout their tenure—if nothing else to dispel the intimidation inherent 

in rank and military culture. 

Without academic freedom, top quality scholars in fields related to national defense would avoid employment in PME schools simply because of the limitation on 

their teaching and research. 

Dr. SNYDER. 11. What should be the role of history in PME? 

Dr. KOHN. History is the foundation stone for PME: the accumulated experience 

of war in all of its complexity and diversity, treasure on which to draw for virtually 

any application in the present and future. It has no specific ‘‘lessons’’ nor can it 

‘‘prove’’ anything. What it can do is arm soldiers with the range of possibilities to 

approach almost any problem. History offers deeper and broader ways of looking at 

military affairs, alerts commanders to the unanticipated and the contingent inherent in command. History reminds its students that war is neither science nor engineering nor art, but is above all a human phenomenon with all of the uncertainties 

and unintended consequences involved in human activity. In his speeches over the 

course of his congressional career (most recently at the Naval War College on June 

19, 2009), Chairman Skelton has made these points with some of the most telling 

anecdotes and examples. 

History can be used for case studies of virtually anything in military affairs—even 

technology and technological change—a faculty member wishes to teach. But it is 
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especially useful to teaching the formulation of strategy, planning, operations, leadership, and command. 

History can be used to explain how the world came to be as it is, in whole or in 

part, for one country or a region, for almost any issue or topic of interest to military 

officers. 

History can be used to inspire officers to excel, and to reassure them that no matter how desperate the situation or difficult the problem, their predecessors faced 

similar challenges and succeeded or prevailed. 

American officers are largely deficient in their knowledge and appreciation of history, despite required courses at the undergraduate level, history’s increasing use 

in PME over the last generation, and the continuing efforts of professional historians and advocates like Chairman Skelton. In this the military reflects the larger 

ignorance and neglect of history by the American public, which largely views history 

as a primary and secondary educational exercise, as entertainment, as ‘‘gee whiz’’ 

curiosities—all of this in spite of billions devoted to museums, historic sites, required courses, and continual use (and abuse) of history by the media and prominent people. 

While it does not necessarily promise a remedy, my recommendation would be to 

require in pre-commissioning education at least one semester of American history, 

one of world or global history, and one of military history: American history to educate officers about their client and the development of its political system, economy, 

society, and culture; global history to put the United States into context, and to 

alert cadets/midshipmen to the diversity of the world and its contingent development; and military history as an introduction to the profession of arms, its evolution, the nature of war from the human experience of combat to the high councils 

of government, the origins and effects of war on states and societies, and a number 

of other themes and issues. The military history should not be service specific but 

should include land, sea, and air warfare in its political, social, economic, and cultural context. And all of the historical instruction should be foundational: that is, 

designed to teach students to think in time, understand historical method, and learn 

to enjoy the reading of history as a requirement of the profession of arms. Three 

one-semester courses are certainly as important a professional foundation as three 

one-semester courses in math, science, and engineering since war, to repeat, is a 

human experience. 

At ISS, history should be used as case studies to understand the development of 

the service sponsor of the school, of modern war, of planning and operations, and 

of leadership and command at the operational level. Ethics and civil-military relations should be part of this instructions, as well as joint and interagency issues. The 

case studies should be chosen for their diversity and so that, strung together, they 

impart a coherent sense of how war developed in the last two-plus centuries. ISS 

should build on subjects raised in pre-commissioning education and provide the 

basis for more advanced study in SSS. 

At SSS, historical study should concentrate at the strategic and national and 

international levels: on the development of military thought, the history of strategy 

and planning, and selected wars campaigns that illustrate fundamental problems of 

grand and military strategy, civil-military relations, joint and combined war fighting, the marshaling and integration of various forms of national power, and the 

challenge of command and leadership at the highest levels. Both historical case 

studies and small, coherent historical courses or fragments could be used. 

At present, there appears to be considerable overlap and redundancy in ISS and 

SSS. Both mix the study of national policy, strategy, operations, leadership, and 

command with a focus more limited than appropriate on the operational and strategic levels of war. There does not appear to be much communication or consultation 

on the content of curricula between the staff and war colleges, even within a single 

service with the possible exception of the Naval War College, which has the benefit 

of a single, unified faculty teaching both levels. 

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