Figure 1.1

Table 1.1

How do militaries learn? The answer to this question has both theoretical and practical implications for security in the world today.

This book germinated as a dissertation then grew into something substantially different, so it has engendered debts by the barnful. I owe some of my greatest debts to the unsung military officers who taught me through word and deed a respect both for professionalism and for the fearsome complexity of the strategic art. Without their unwitting yet earnest contributions over the years, I would have...

Scholars and military officers alike spend a great deal of time explaining military success and failure, but more often than not...

France and Prussia are the natural starting points for an inquiry into how militaries learn, since most modern patterns of military education trace their roots there.11. Huntington 1957. An examination of military educational reform in France and Prussia also...

France and Prussia adopted the system of military reflection amid economic modernization, but Turkey and Egypt are still modernizing their economies, albeit at different rates. Both Turkey and Egypt have engaged in substantial military reforms in their history, often prompted by negative battlefield results, Egypt on the heels of the disastrous 1967 war with Israel and Turkey a number of times...

In late 2012, the small Arabian Gulf nation of the United Arab Emirates began an ambitious experiment. The goal was to build a National Defense College (NDC) that would be the premier school for senior level defense and security studies in the Gulf, possibly even...

The most successful states in the twenty-first century will have the intellectual wherewithal to turn military prowess into strategic success. States might put trust in the good faith of allies or in the sophistication of modern weaponry, but these will not guarantee success on the battlefield. To turn the raw materials of national power into strategic success, states must rely on knowledge.

This appendix provides technical details for the statistical correlations presented in chapter 1, which began by establishing a link between military education and battlefield effectiveness, then explored the reasons why states might reform military education in order to adopt the system of military reflection. The academic literature described in that chapter suggested six hypotheses, and the...

Nathan W. Toronto has taught strategy and security studies to military officers and government officials for over ten years, at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies and the United Arab Emirates National Defense College. Dr. Toronto’s research interests include Middle East security, theories of warfare,...