WE’RE DOING IT WRONG: RETURNING THE STUDY OF WAR TO THE CENTER OF PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION
James Lacey | 06.03.22
We’re Doing it Wrong: Returning the Study of War to the Center of Professional Military Education
After what was effectively a bloody, three-year master’s course on operational level warfare, the Red Army, in June 1944, unleashed an offensive—Operation Bagration—that in mere weeks tore apart three of the four armies comprising Germany’s Army Group Center. In a stunning display of its recently acquired competence, the Red Army proved it had fully absorbed the intricacies of operational warfare. Fortunately, for the fate of Ukraine, at some point in the decades since Bagration, the Russians appear to have forgotten all they had learned.
Just as Operation Bagration forced the world to take notice of the Red Army’s operational skills, the level of Russia’s military incompetence put on display for the past several months has equally stunned the world. What has gone wrong? Undoubtedly, there are many answers to this question. But please allow me to offer one essential item that likely lies at the root of Russian military ineptitude—Russia’s professional military education ceased taking the study of war seriously. The supposed experts of the new forms of war—hybrid warfare, conducted in the gray zone by little green men, with heavy doses of cyber and information operations—have forgotten how to execute more traditional forms of war.
https://mwi.usma.edu/preparing-army-leaders-for-future-war/
