learning by doing versus hearing
lessons from the wargaming in the 1930s
Today is a satisfying day because I am at the Western Naval History Association fifth annual symposium both because I have sat through many Governing Board meetings on this program and I am getting to hear some terrific discussions. Bully for research!
In particular, Dr. Norman Friedman, the well known Naval historian, gave a terrific keynote on a number of lessons regarding how we went from a relatively poor Navy in 1919 to an extraordinarily Navy in 1941, much less by the end of World War II four years later. Much of his discussion centered on the wargaming practiced by the Naval War College (no, my former National War College did not even exist until 1946) in Newport, Rhode Island. Newport’s wargaming during the 1930s is renowned and one of the most prestigious legacies of that institution.
Friedman’s comments that especially resonated for me regarded why this wargaming was different from so much of what we focus on today with professional military education. The wargaming of that period at Newport, as true with the Navy as a service, was infinitely more to concerned with doing rather than studying for the sake of observing. The 1930s wargamers who developed the analytical approaches to targetted questions desired practical solutions to apply should an anticipated conflict unfold with Japan. The specific questions for study were not at the highest national decision-making level but at the fleet level where the lessons could become part of the active navy.
The Newport faculty were practitioners, meaning active duty officers thus able to translate the most prescient questions and lessons to slightly more junior officers serving as students. The conversations were not focused on abstract, cosmic issues but on specific ‘actionable items’ that could apply immediately should they be needed. Friedman opined that a number of specific issues, such as ships that would have to endure multiple battles for a sustained war, derived from this wargaming. There were many others as well.
Today’s professional military education too often hues to education without consideration for application. With the move towards civilian accreditation in the 1990s, faculties across professional military education—in the ‘joint’ institutions (National War College, Eisenhower College for Resource Strategy, Joint Forces Staff College, College of Information & Cyber Studies, or College of International Security Affairs which constitute the National Defense University) and even the ‘service’ schools at various levels (each of the services has an intermediate and senior level study program in a college)—began replacing practitioners with traditional academic professors. Why? Congress mandated that military education would increase intellectual rigour with a sense that military officers might not hold their fellow service personnel to the same harsh standards of thinking. The academic standards also prepared these institutions to apply for candidacy as accredited master’s degree under civilian accreditators. While one can argue about whether the assumption was correct, the move towards a sustained professorate of non-military scholars decreased the focus on practical questions in the courses of study. Friedman’s conclusions included repeated instances where the abstract versus the practical made a tremendous difference for the U.S. Navy in the period leading to World War II.
This matters because warfare itself is learning by doing. The U.S. military—all militaries if they will succeed—must specify a desired state of success (an endstate), assess a situation at the beginning, recognise assumptions about that scenario, execute what is necessary to accomplish a mission, evaluate its successes and possible improvements, decide how to use those improvements, and implement the improvements to renew the learning cycle. Failure to assess correctly any aspect of a questions in an on-going conflict can be fatal for hundreds so the imperative to solve (if not avoid) it is vital, as Friedman did not even have to say. Navies, along with the other services, are active players rather than merely impartial observers of warfare.
Traditional academics, on the other hand, operate with different incentives. Academics pride themselves on coolly studying a problem without becoming too invested in a particular solution, though likely to become invested in theories surrounding those solutions. But, scholars deliberately keep a distance from their subject which is not how the wargaming proceeded in the Interwar period discussed this morning.
I was struck as he spoke that the ‘empiricism’ of much of today’s social science is quite different from the evidence-based questions Newport studied a century ago. But, contexts change.
Why does this matter today? The practical questions confronting the Fleet today would pertain to an Asia Pacific conflict of the twenty-first century, of course. The focus of the military education system includes wargaming today but often apparently as an after thought. Instead of wargaming being the central feature to the education, as the Naval War College practiced, lectures and passive learning too often edge out wargaming and truly experiental learning because professional military education is asked to include way too much in a ten month academic program.
Friedman noted more than once that he had doubts the 1930s lectures made much difference in the education while the lessons garnered from the wargaming went directly into the office of Chief of Naval Operations. The applications were immediate for the Navy and for the officers privileged to go through the program. Today’s military education values active learning through seminars but that is quite different from a series of targetted wargames.
I don’t pretend I served in the military as I most certainly did not so I too am an abstract academic. I do, however, believe fervently in the lessons we need squeeze out of the multiplicity of learning objectives we establish for each year must focus more on discrete insights we can use soon, if not now. The military in the United States confronts a multitude of immediate challenges, not the least is the bureaucracy of the contemporary era. I would prefer we have the knowledge we could apply now before we need it in a possible war.
From my perspective, it’s already been a bang up conference. Friedman’s study, providing empirical evidence of lessons to help the Navy, reinforces views I have long held. We love having our views validated, of course. But, he also provides evidence of a supplemental applications for professional military education. That strikes me as a glorious benefit for all.FIN