Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 History and the Future
- 2 Thucydides and Clausewitz
- 3 Clausewitz out, Computers in: Military Culture and Technological Hubris
- 4 Changing the Principles of War?
- 5 Military Culture Does Matter
- 6 History and Strategic Planning
- 7 Thoughts on Red Teaming
- 8 The Distant Framework of War
- 9 The Problem of German Military Effectiveness, 1900–1945
- 10 Reflections on the Combined Bomber Offensive
- 11 The Air War in the Gulf
- 12 Thoughts on British Intelligence in World War II and the Implications for Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century
- 13 The Meaning of World War II
- Index
- References
3 - Clausewitz out, Computers in: Military Culture and Technological Hubris
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 History and the Future
- 2 Thucydides and Clausewitz
- 3 Clausewitz out, Computers in: Military Culture and Technological Hubris
- 4 Changing the Principles of War?
- 5 Military Culture Does Matter
- 6 History and Strategic Planning
- 7 Thoughts on Red Teaming
- 8 The Distant Framework of War
- 9 The Problem of German Military Effectiveness, 1900–1945
- 10 Reflections on the Combined Bomber Offensive
- 11 The Air War in the Gulf
- 12 Thoughts on British Intelligence in World War II and the Implications for Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century
- 13 The Meaning of World War II
- Index
- References
Summary
One of the greatest understudied aspects of military history concerns the institutional cultures through which officer corps come to grips with the dynamic and ambiguous problems of war and peace. That institutional culture shapes the understanding of the strategic, operational, and tactical choices before the professional soldier, and it also implants broader assumptions concerning the historical framework in which those choices find their meaning. It is a process that proceeds by means of formal education, informal acculturation, and practical experience. Actual events on the battlefield have traditionally exercised the principal reality check on the understandings and assumptions of institutional military culture, this despite ample evidence that military institutions sometimes prove astonishingly resistant to learning from their experiences. And as difficult as they are to learn in combat, how much harder must it be to learn the lessons of war in peace, absent the harsh, unpredictable, and unforgiving world of death and destruction. Consequently, it is doubly important that in peacetime military professionals work to frame the right kind of questions and generate realistic assumptions.
For the most part, however, the historical record suggests peacetime military institutions postulate answers rather than questions, and adopt assumptions that speak more to their own intellectual comfort zones than to reality. American military culture has generated exceptions to this rule during the past century, in some cases dramatically so. But a major cultural shift now appears to be underway that does not bode well for the future, one that is liable to return us to a part of our past experience that is better discarded.
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- Information
- War, Strategy, and Military Effectiveness , pp. 61 - 71Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011