NEW! Infinity Journal Special Edition

[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“]

Our friends at Infinity Journal have released a new special edition, International Relations in Professional Military Education, which is excellent and covers the topic from West Point to Sandhurst to the Scandinavian-Baltic range of NATO states. The authors are thorough in explaining building PME curriculum to inculcate strategic thinking and the role played by incorporating and teaching IR theories.

A few samples:

Who Are We Teaching – Future Second Lieutenants or Strategic Leaders? Education for Strategic Thinking and Action – Scott A. Silverstone & Renee Ramsey 

….For some, the notion of strategic thinking and action at junior officer levels is a controversial claim. The word “strategy” is often treated as though it begins and ends at the highest levels of policy making. The president, supported by senior civilian and military advisors, develops national-level political objectives, the conceptual ways to achieve these objectives, and then mobilizes and deploys the resources necessary for executing the strategy. Approached from this perspective, young Army officers are merely the instruments of strategy. They receive and execute orders that someone much higher in the chain of command has developed with, hopefully, a carefully calculated understanding of how these tactical operations will contribute to national strategic ends. What business does a Platoon Leader, or even a Company Commander at the grade of Captain have in thinking and acting “strategically”? In fact, it is not hard to find Battalion Commanders who bluntly assert that they do not want their junior leaders thinking strategically; they simply want them to execute their operational tasks with skill and determination.

Silverstone and MAJ Ramsey deserve credit for tackling straight on “Big Army’s” increasing aversion to strategy being taught even in places like Leavenworth, much less to the undergraduate cadets they have as students at West Point. Strategy is not a “level” that should wait until an officer gets a slot at a War College, but is a fundamental domain for the military officer, the foundation for which should begin early in their career and not begin just shy of retirement.

IR, or No IR? The Potential Contribution of IR Subjects to Professional Military Education at the Latvian National Defence Academy – Toms Rostoks

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