Alphen, Netherlands. 5
April. “A thorough examination of the
way our military is organized and operates will...highlight our inherent
strengths. Our strategic planning must
emphasise these strengths, which include leader development, training, mobility
and logistics, special operations forces, cyber, space, research and
development”. Speaking at Washington’s
National Defense University (NDU) this week, US Secretary of Defense Chuck
Hagel, who I have had the honour to meet as a member of the Strategic Advisors
Group of the Atlantic Council of the US, could have been any European minister
of defence. With sequestration the US
armed forces are now facing what has been a reality of European militaries for too
many years – doing too much with too little for too long over too great a
distance. So, how can NATO address it
most pressing emerging security challenge; how to close the strategy-austerity-capability
gap?
The Alliance and its
members have an as yet untapped capability too often overlooked – knowledge,
education and training. The fact that
Secretary Hagel chose to deliver his realistic message about US defence
strategy at NDU speaks volumes. Put
simply, the more NATO militaries face capability and capacity cuts and the more
the need to think creatively across narrow domains. That means quality NATO people. It also means a wholly new approach to
professional military education and much greater synergy and cohesion between
the defence academies across the Alliance who deliver both education and
training (they are two sides of the same quality coin).
If I have a passion
(apart from my wife and Sheffield United – I think in that order) it is professional
military education. To my mind
education, the knowledge it is built upon and the connectivity it breeds is the
missing link between NATO nations that will help the Alliance close the
strategy-austerity-capability gap.
NATO 2020 pre-supposes
defence modernisation at a time of acute defence austerity. NATO have created both Smart Defence and the
Connected Forces Initiative both of which further pre-suppose much greater
synergies between capabilities and capacities.
Today, value for money in defence strategy is as much about ‘human
software’ as hard capability. Therefore,
critical to NATO 2020 must be a model of professional military education that
aims to promote comparative advantage of NATO personnel both on and off the
battlefield.
Such a goal will only
be realised if a) lessons-learned are properly captured to ensure corporate
memory is translated into best operational practice; b) exercising and training
really tests weaknesses rather than confirms strengths and as such are
scientific, rigorous, structured and connected; and c) such lessons are
communicated into the defence (and security) classroom. In other words NATO must become as much
knowledge nexus as military nexus.
Thus far professional
military education has been remarkably immune to the revolution in professional
education that has taken place in other fields such as medicine and
engineering. The knowledge base tends to
look backward and little is made of life-long learning concepts to properly
support mission success at every level of command in which and for which
education and training are simply two sides of the same coin. Moreover, the link between commanders and
academic expertise is too often weak, preventing effective
reach-back from the field to knowledge communities (much of which can be explained by at times frankly ridiculous sensitivity over information). Sadly, too many commanders
remain dismissive of knowledge and expertise.
However, defence academia has also to ask itself some searching questions. The research undertaken by defence academics too often either solves
yesterday’s problems or has nothing whatsoever to do with the military
challenges of today. And, too often the
syllabus is narrow and fails to involve the wider security community. Finally,
the revolution in technology that is changing education seems to have been only
partially grasped by defence academics.
Therefore, in my own
modest way I am trying to do something about it and putting the usual backs up
in the usual places for daring to try. In
May I will lead a project entitled Connected Forces, Connected Minds. This project will start to address some of
the important issues raised in Secretary Hagel’s statement.
Knowledge transformation
is the way ahead. To that best practice end new models of professional military
education are needed and must be worked up in a new partnership between armed forces and defence academics. This is both to
support NATO 2020 and all important strategic unity of effort and
purpose in a rapidly destabilising world.
The goal must be clear; to continually enhance and develop the education
and training of NATO officers (and Partners) so that a) in effect they never leave professional military
education; and b) they are continually made fit for mission success in their next command
challenge. Too often they are not.
Almost a year ago, NATO
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen launched Smart Defence. There can be neither Smart Defence, Connected Forces, nor indeed NATO 2020, without smart
education, smart training and smart research.
Thank you, Mr Secretary
Hagel for being so clear and candid.
Julian Lindley-French
