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 28 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