Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 30
he or she was a lieutenant, though that could be a
start. Instead, Army leaders and soldiers should
take a deliberate, disciplined approach to self-development; this aspect of education must receive as
much leader emphasis as maintenance, situational
training lanes, and gunnery. Much has been written
on deliberate self-study, including the classic article
“Use and Abuse of Military History” by Sir Michael
Howard. 10 Howard recommends three rules:
First, study in width. He [the historian]
must observe the way in which warfare has
developed over a long historical period …
Next he must study in depth. He should
take a single campaign and explore it thoroughly … until the tidy outlines dissolve
and he catches a glimpse of the confusion
and horror of the real experience … And
lastly, he must study in context. Campaigns
and battles are not like games of chess or
football matches, conducted in total detachment from their environment according to strictly defined rules [italics added
for emphasis].11
Warfare must be understood in its historical,
social, cultural, economic, human, moral, political, and psychological contexts because “the roots
of victory and defeat often have to be sought far
from the battlefield.”12 Failure to study wars within
their context leads to a superficial view of war, with
lessons and conclusions divorced from their proper
environment.
The disciplined study of the history of warfare
develops important critical thinking skills that help
military professionals deal with the uncertainty of
war and the challenge of institutional change. As
Williamson Murray points out, history offers “military professionals an understanding of how to think
about intractable problems, how to grapple with
uncertainty, and how to prepare throughout their
careers for the positions of responsibility that they
must inevitably assume.”13
Moreover, according to Paul Van Riper, the
vicarious experiences provided through the study of
military history allow “practitioners of warfare to
see familiar patterns of activity and to develop more
quickly potential solutions to tactical and operational problems.”14 This is precisely why soldiers
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need to study war, its theory, and its military institutions carefully and critically.15
A deep, broad, and contextualized understanding of history provides the requisite perspective to
understand and evaluate the theory and the nature
of war. An example of a self-study program that
includes a military history emphasis can be found
in the “Maneuver Self-Study Prog Ʌ