Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 54

existing, almost-completed narrative of these wars
would be a remarkable surprise. This fact, perhaps
more than any other, has the U.S. military viewing the
current operational environment as problematic: an
intricate puzzle that is difficult to solve. Linn wrote
that the Army has been traditionally shaped by the
“echo of battle” that it chooses to hear.23 It would seem
that the echo being heard from the past fourteen years
in Afghanistan and Iraq is noisy and filled with static:
several sounds all at once, threatening to confuse us.
Most misguided, albeit common, is the thinking that
the U.S. military is capable of fully preparing itself for the
next war. This notion suggests that the Army must be
completely ready before the first shots are fired, thereby
preventing the kind of “bad start” that has characterized nearly every conflict in our history. Christopher
A. Lawrence recently concluded in his study America’s
Modern Wars that following the “flawed and improvised” war in Afghanistan, “U.S. citizens have a right to
demand that the national command authorities (the
civilians) and the U.S. armed forces be prepared for
all types of wars and to be able to initiate them with
considerable competence.” While acknowledging that
the United States made substantial strides in adjusting to
the challenges Iraq and Afghanistan provided, Lawrence
quipped, “Even if the glass is half full, the American
serviceman and the American tax payer have every right
to demand that the glass be completely full.”24
He is wrong. The glass will neither be “completely
full” nor will the military be capable of being prepared
for “all types” of potential conflicts at any given time.
The idea of absolute preparedness, bolstered by a
faith in data analysis, models, statistics, and planning
checklists, naively ignores the simple reality that it is
impossible to prepare for every contingency. As U.S.
Army Training and Doctrine Command commander
Gen. David Perkins observed, “Not only is the future
unknown, but it is unknowable.”25 As such, we should
embrace this uncertainty and acknowledge that our
ability to plan, train, and prepare for the next war is

limited. Whatever the next conflict presents, we will be
required to make strategic, organizational, and doctrinal adjustments as we fight. This is not a shortcoming;
it is a simple, historical truth.
The U.S. Army’s recent call for adaptability in its
ranks acknowledges this truth and is appropriate given
the state of political and military affairs today. To
say that we are entering “a period of great transition”
is correct, but to suggest that this is unique is not.26
The problem with viewing current military aff airs as
unprecedented and somehow more complex than those
previous is the tendency to ignore or discount the past.
Thinking that the questions of today can only be solved
with new ideas, new solutions, and new systems is both
wrong and counterproductive.

Conclusion

Nearly thirty years ago, the authors of America’s First
Battles, 1776-1965, warned against the “widespread
current belief that things were never as tough as they are
now.”27 That warning still applies. Complexity, uncertainty,
and confusion are nothing new. They are the historical
norm. Today’s cyberwarfare is yesterday’s nuclear threat.
Today’s nonstate actors are yesterday’s communist revolutionaries. Today’s Arab Spring is yesterday’s collapse of the
Soviet Union. We know just as much or just as little about
the next war as we did when we emerged from the two
world wars, Korea, Vietnam, or the Persian Gulf.
It is useful to remind ourselves that—while the
world around us may not exactly match the world
ten, twenty, or a hundred years ago—we should keep
the present (and the future) in the proper historical
context. We need to maintain the long view. Doing
so allows us to assess current challenges and requirements without thinking that we are somehow adrift in
uncharted waters, driven by currents the likes of which
we have never seen before. Because we have been here
before, many times. We have never enjoyed a certain
future. We are not writing a new book, we are only
adding the next chapter.

Lt. Col. Clay Mountcastle, U.S. Army, retired, is assistant professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command
and General Staff College at Fort Lee, Virginia. He earned his PhD in history from Duke University and has taught
military history at the United States Military Academy, the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, and the University
of Washington. Mountcastle is also the author of Punitive War: Confederate Guerrillas and Union Reprisals.
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March-April 2016  MILITARY REVIEW