His account of the activities of General Harold K. Johnson and the team of colonels who supported the then-Army Chief of Staff during a particularly difficult period is a compelling tale of the art and science of strategic leadership at the highest levels of government. Robert P. Haffa, Jr., and James H. Patton, Jr., provide a concise summary of the enduring value of wargames to the US armed services. They show how and why such activities can contribute substantially to the evolution of US national security strategy and to the development of the doctrine and materiel that will emerge during the first decades of the next century. After Next series, and analyzes the purpose, conduct, and outcomes of the first two games. The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men . . .
Plans can go astray because of outdated, flawed, or forgotten assumptions.
Walter F. Ulmer, for example, asks if our officer evaluation system should continue to be based on the premise that the observations of one's superiors in the chain of command are both necessary and sufficient to prepare a performance evaluation, or if we ought to examine closely the benefits that business and industry claim to derive from peer and subordinate input in the evaluation process. Beneath Ralph Peters' foray into cultural comparison lie the unstated assumptions of which we are all prisoners when we confront people from other cultures. They discuss in detail recent changes in key assumptions related to the US Merchant Marine that could affect our ability to carry out national security strategy. Finally, articles by Robert B. Killebrew and by Robert P. Haffa, Jr., and James H. Patton, Jr., are about the durability of strategic and operational assumptions and the need to identify and evaluate them in an orderly and productive manner. The documented benefits of the wargames and associated planning conducted by all the US armed services between 1920 and 1940 demonstrate that such activities are much more than expensive peacetime intellectual exercises.