A bureaucratic model of politics suggests that “where you stand depends on where you sit.” You see what you see, you study that which you see, and the evidence sought and found will tend to support predetermined notions. These officers, like most, view the world through the lens they have developed over a career in their particular branch of service and career specialty. Though each observation may be accurate on its own terms, each is also incomplete. Army, General James McConville, repeated the maxim that amateurs study tactics and professionals study logistics General Mark Kelly, Commander of Air Combat Command, pointed to a lack of air superiority as Russia’s problem while General David Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps, used the conflict to argue that ‘winning the reconnaissance/counter-reconnaissance fight early on critical.’ These observations point to some of the potential biases career professionals can bring to the discussion and the risk of determining lessons to be learned while combat operations continue.Ĭhief of Staff of the U.S. The Strategy Bridge second quarter call for submissions included an interesting set of observations from senior U.S. The Risk of Validating Military Operational Lessons Learned Too Early
A brief overview of liberal and neorealist international relations thought allows us to examine, in light of the war in Ukraine, select key assumptions of the liberal and neorealist international relations paradigms that have been challenged and validated, respectively. The result is that states, to ensure their own security and survival, must recognize this fact and prepare accordingly. The fact is that the nature of human beings, and the nature of international politics, is such that there will always be bad actors. While some scholars have noted that humans, thence states, have become less violent or that states have grown more inclined to cooperate over time, the historical record bears out a contradicting set of facts. Yet, that a state would carry out such an act of “naked aggression” should not come as a surprise to any who have engaged in even a cursory study of international politics.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine may have come as a surprise to some foreign policy and military experts.
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