Lack of strategic thinking in the Navy
Very interesting post at Information Dissemination: Observations of an Armchair Admiral. It begins:
I have read Tom Rick’s new book The Gamble twice, and I highly recommend it. Both times I read the book, I paused when I read the following paragraph.
“But Fallon prided himself on being a strategic thinker, a sense he may have developed because there was little competition in that arena in the Navy, which in recent years has tended to be weak, intellectually, aside from its elite counter-terror force in Special Operations, which is practically a separate service. It is difficult, for example, to think of a senior Navy officer who has played a prominent role in shaping American strategy since 9/11, or of an active-duty Navy officer who has written a book or essay as influential as those produced by the Army’s Col. H.R. McMaster, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, and Lt. Col. John Nagl.”
At the United States Naval Institute Blog, Steeljaw Scribe posts this paragraph, and offers up some comments by Peter Swartz of CNA as a counter argument. For the record, Peter Swartz is a friend of mine, a reader of this blog, and someone whose opinion I respect a lot. The question is whether Tom Ricks is right, that there is little competition as a strategic thinker in the Navy, and if he is accurate to suggest where strategic thinking exists the competition is weak intellectually.
I think Peter Swartz makes a good argument that there are several brilliant folks part of the broader maritime strategy discussion contributing ideas, but I don’t find his argument in regards to competition in the strategic thinking community of the active duty Navy compelling at all…
