Abstract
Abstract : Ten years ago the first President of the National Defense University, Vice Admiral Duke Bayne, wrote an article highlighting the importance of senior service school education for our rising military leaders. He drew special attention to the role of the war college experience in strengthening the civil-military partnership that has built and protected this nation for more than two centuries, and that forms the centerpiece of our national security posture today. From my own perspective as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I see that partnership operating at several levels, every day: in the National Security Council arena, civilian and military leaders work together to make top-level security policy; in the Department of Defense, civilian and military personnel are concerned with preparing our forces for combat and with directing them in war; and in our society at large, mutual understandings between citizens and their defenders put down the roots needed to sustain any military establishment over the long haul. When the American civil-military partnership has been united, with each element conscious of its utter dependence on the other, it has been unbeatable. But when its bonds have weakened, the nation's defenses have withered, and our course on a troubled globe has wavered dangerously. All Americans have a vital interest in the nurturing of the cooperative venture -- the civil-military team -- that keeps this nation strong and effective on the world scene. Admiral Bayne's point about military education was that the central meeting ground for the elements of that team is in the mind. Our war colleges play a pivotal role in preparing rising professionals throughout the national security community to find that common ground. A decade later his observations still aptly describe the large-scale challenge addressed in the senior service schools. In this article, I would like to elaborate on that theme, and to outline my own views on the challenge as I now see it.
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