Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 91

STRATEGIC LEADERS

builds powerful communication skills and strong bridges
to civilian leaders. This career path facilitates the development of leaders who are gifted at communicating
a shared vision and possess a natural ability to operate
effectively within the interagency environment.
Finally, these four career paths provide a more
diverse set of options for our commanders and our human resource community to work with as they engage
officers on their next and subsequent assignments. This
approach adds a level of depth and creativity to the
conversations and widens the aperture of how a young
officer might consider diversifying career experience.
Although there is no silver bullet, there is perhaps a
“magazine” of silver bullets that offer the type of broadening paths that may lead more purposefully—and less
haphazardly—toward real strategic development.

Finding a Strategic Voice
As an institution, we can develop a stronger stable of
strategic leaders by expanding the diversity of select leaders’ experiences. This is not to suggest that every leader
would become the recipient of this strategic broadening
approach. In fact, we argue that only the top 10 percent
of our talent should be carefully managed from the rank
of captain and groomed for strategic leadership. Some
of our best and brightest may be missed in the early
stages. Those late bloomers will self-select into senior
ranks through their own personal determination and
exceptional performance, just as some who display early
potential will not reach the highest levels for personal or
professional reasons. However, it is difficult to develop a
steady flow of strategic leaders without a more deliberate effort to manage a highly selective population from a
much earlier point in their careers.
The measure of an officer’s success in the Army is
his or her performance in tactical roles. Yet, beginning
to develop a strategic voice as a colonel is too late. It is
immeasurably difficult to quickly become confident and
conversant in the foreign-policy arena where implications
of certain actions are understood, strong arguments are
made, and alternatives are deeply considered. Starting
the maturation process toward foreign policy comprehension and the development of strategic fluency must
begin much earlier in an officer’s career. The major issues
surrounding tenets of U.S. foreign policy do not change
dramatically from year to year, but understanding nuance
and expressing precisely what is changing require time
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2016

and regular study. In effect, the effort to guide an officer
to develop a worldview and a foreign-policy voice should
begin as a senior company-grade officer and continue
beyond brigade command, at which point there is an
implicit expectation for a colonel to begin contributing
to the formulation of military strategy and foreign policy.
However, developing strategic fluency can take up to a
decade of dedicated study.
Our Army does not have the organizational framework to prepare officers to think more deeply about
foreign policy until enrollment at the U.S. Army War
College. However, it is not merely an understanding of
these disciplines that will best prepare Army leaders
for the transition to the strategic level. Instead, it is the
broad exposure to different concepts, the chance to apply
strategic understanding to unfolding crises over time, the
opportunity to debate strategic options, and the interaction with private-sector professionals that give our best
officers the opportunity to grow intellectually and think
more broadly about the world. Education is certainly a
decisive component of this effort, but it is by no means a
panacea. What is closest to a panacea is the time that our
young military leaders are allotted and carve out to read,
reflect, think, write, and clarify their professional thinking
on larger and more complex geopolitical issues.

Institutionalizing a New
Approach to Strategic Education
The current trajectory for an Army officer without
any change to the well-worn career path includes the
branch-specific basic course (four months in duration),
the advanced course (up to six years later, six months
in duration), U.S. Army Command and General Staff
College for the top 50 percent of officers in uniform (one
academic year in duration), and senior service college for
those officers who have excelled in battalion-level command (one academic year in duration). A close examination of this path suggests there are opportunities where
strategic thought might be instilled. This is not to suggest
that attention should be diverted from the primary tasks
in the basic and advanced courses—to develop mastery of
tactical operations, hone proficiency, and cultivate a grasp
of how to apply those concepts in combat. But, senior-level captains should begin to gain strategic understanding
and, upon reaching the field-grade level, they should
begin the transition to greater strategic comprehension.
Following battalion command, the primary educational
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