Compass Points - Decision Time
How best to prepare commanders for war?
August 15, 2026
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Chamberlain knew full well the precarious position his regiment was in—one more Confederate charge could drive them off Little Round Top. As a brief lull developed over the battlefield, he quickly called his officers around him. Of the 358 men he had mustered at the beginning of the battle, only 228 remained standing. Chamberlain, however, had already decided on his next course of action—he was going to charge right into the Rebel force.
“Not a moment was about to be lost,” he later wrote. “Five minutes more of such a defensive and the last roll call would sound for us! Desperate as the chances were, there was nothing for it but to take the offensive. I stepped to the colors. The men turned towards me. One word was enough—Bayonets!”
-- “‘Hold That Ground at All Hazards’” Warfare History Network
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In war, commanders face moments of decision. How can commanders prepare for their moments of decision? Preparation for desperate moments of decision is the purpose and province of military education.
Col Joshua Chamberlain’s momentous decision that day on Little Round Top changed the course of the American Civil War. Surrounded by his men and the sounds of battle, Col Chamberlain was completely alone. The seconds ticked by in his decision making. What preparation did the embattled warrior need at his moment of decision? Did Chamberlain need more technology information or more military education?
Did he need more information about the modern technology of the time? Photography was new during the Civil War, did he need more information about the camera? The railroad and the telegraph increased the speed of transportation and communication, did he need more information about those new technologies? Iron clad ships and submarines were amazing new technologies, did Chamberlain need more information about those? At the moment of decision, did Col Chamberlain need more information about the powerful new weapon, the Spencer carbine that allowed soldiers to fire multiple rounds before reloading? In sum, did Col Chamberlain, in his great moment of decision, need more technology information or more military education?
The struggle to find the proper balance between technology information and military education, between the study of the science of war and the study of the art of war in the Department of the Navy has been continual.
For example, in 1972 when he became the 37th president of U.S. Naval War College (NWC), Adm. Stansfield Turner was determined to transform the education of military officers. He wanted to prepare officers for their moments of decision. Did Turner focus the Naval War College on technology information or on military education?
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Turner served as president of the school from June 30, 1972 to August 9, 1974. He arrived with the task to change the college by instituting a rigorous and challenging curriculum that would broaden officers’ outlooks beyond their narrow specialties and give them the education to analyze problems effectively.
Under Turner, the college created its three-course curriculum that still exists today. He established the Strategy and Policy Course that begins with the reading of Thucydides and is built around critical analysis of historical case studies.
-- Naval War College - Obituary for Admiral Turner
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Today, the leadership of the Marine Corps University is changing the focus away from military education and more toward technology information. Where Admiral Turner made sure students were prepared for their moments of decision by studying history, beginning with Thucydides, the leadership of the Marine Corps University in a recent article mocks the study of Thucydides, mocks the study of the Civil War, and mocks, “stale seminars and lectures that reflect concerns about strategy and history.”
Should those entrusted with the education of Marines belittle the study of military history? How should Marine leaders be prepared for their moments of decision? Should they study deeply the history of men in battle or should they study technology? Does the new curriculum at the Marine Corps University find the right balance? The first President of the Marine Corps University has doubts.
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It’s like déjà all over again
By Paul K. Van Riper
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After reading Matthew Tracy and Benjamin Jensen’s article in War on the Rocks, “The Next School of War: Educating for Tomorrow’s Battlefield” I could only think of Yogi Berra’s paradoxical witticism “It’s like déjà all over again.” Perhaps more appropriate, however, is the well-known caution from Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Perhaps the authors, Tracy and Jensen are not aware of the past to which I will refer in the following paragraphs. If they are aware and still made these changes, I judge their actions as professional malpractice.
Heading into my 89th year, I am not a new Lieutenant. I have been around the block more than once. What Tracy and Jensen are doing to change the education of Marines away from military history was tried during the years 1950-1970 and it led indirectly to the disastrous outcomes of the Vietnam War.
The study of military history was largely removed after the end of the Second World War. US military academies, war colleges, and command and staff colleges marginalized the study of military history, believing it was of little value in the atomic - then nuclear - age. Authorities asserted that there was no use in studying past battles and campaigns because tactical nuclear weapons would quickly solve all military issues.
Military history was also pushed aside by the study of management techniques from the corporate world and increasing instruction on operations research and operations analysis. When Robert McNamara became the Secretary of Defense he and his “Whiz Kids” required the study of systems analysis in support of the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). Quantification of thought became more important than quality of thought.
Tracy and Jensen are likely to argue that military history has not been sidelined with their new curricula, but the three current and two former Marine Corps University faculty members who reached out to me in the past month tell a different story. They are alarmed at the reduced hours devoted to the study of military history and the cutting of staff rides and overseas trips to battlefields. This time it is not management techniques but instruction on artificial intelligence, war games, and Joint All Domain Operations that will supplant military history. These topics are of some importance, just as management techniques were of some importance in the 1960 and 1970s, but they are not central to military education. History has always been seen as “The school of the soldier.” Tracy and Jensen offer no evidence that technology can now serve as the school of the soldier.
Tracy and Jensen’s write that in their view, “Professional military education tends to reinforce stale seminars and lectures . . . .” That is an indictment of their own jaundiced view of military education. Seminars and lectures are only stale if the instructor is stale, a correctable problem. I was a member of the 2006 Wilhelm study that the authors reference. The study participants’ first order of business was to define the key elements of a professional education institution, and we determined those were, in order of importance, a first-class faculty, a meaningful curriculum, motivated students, and good facilities. We believed that a first-class faculty could overcome deficiencies in the other three, but the reverse was not possible. I am of the school that if a student fails to learn, that means the teacher has failed to teach. No seminar or lecture on military history is inherently stale.
In the late 1970’s the US Army began to wake up to its error with military history instruction and commissioned several studies to determine how to rectify the damaging situation. The outcome was the return of military history to all the Army’s professional educational schools.
Another outcome was the publication of a book in 1979, A Guide to the Study and Use of Military History by John E. Jessup, Jr. and Robert W. Coakley, which for a time was issued to every newly commissioned Army officer. Jessup and Coakley wrote:
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Quite beyond vicarious experience of the battlefield, the study of military history affords an understanding of the interplay of forces that have shaped the present and provides the means of viewing current problems against the long perspective of how men have handled similar problems in the past. (p. xi)
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After the Army woke up and realized that gutting the study of military history was a mistake, it took the Marine Corps another nine years to realize the full extent of the problem. In 1988 when Commandant General Al Gray assigned me to be the Director of Marine Corps Command and Staff College, he directed me to make military history and maneuver warfare central to the course. I was not to simply add hours for these two topics, but to ensure the curriculum was imbued with them—they were to provide the essence of the course. A little more than a year later when General Gray assigned me as the first president of Marine Corps University, he repeated his instructions that military history and maneuver warfare would be central to all the professional schools at Quantico.
The Tracy and Jensen expression of concern about the time students spend reading The History of the Peloponnesian War compared to the time they spend reviewing modern war plans reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of why officers need to study history. The Peloponnesian Wars offer a timeless look at some of the most important features of war—grand strategy, international relations, alliances, balances of power, and most importantly the human friction inherent in decision making. One of the most influential events in my own professional education occurred in the first weeks of the Naval War College’s Naval Command and Staff course where I was required to read Thucydides’ masterpiece. It was one of the most broadening and rewarding experiences of my long career.
There will always be competing interests when leaders design the curriculum for a professional military school. The question is are they preparing students more for the remainder of their careers, or more for their next assignments? What is the best balance between material on the art of war compared to the science of war? In my view, the decision in peacetime should be to skew toward the art of war and the rest of the students’ careers. In wartime it should skew in the opposite direction. Tracy and Jensen write “While there is a role for the historical mind and deliberations on strategy, there needs to be better balance to prepare students for the wars they will fight in the next decade.” They are taking the exact backward approach.
The fallout from Tracy and Jensen’s tragic mistake—and that is what it is—will be a repeat of the mistake the US military services made 75 years ago. Sadly, when officers are not prepared with a deep understanding of military history, that lack of understanding will likely lead to future strategic and operational errors. Better outcomes in war tomorrow come from better education of warriors today. Degrade the study of military history at the Marine Corps University? That is the opposite of what the Marine Corps University was established to do.
Commandant General Eric Smith, why are you allowing this to happen?
-- Paul K. Van Riper
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Back in 2006, before changes were made to the Marine Corps University curriculum, the Marine Corps conducted a study by a panel of experts. Where is the study by experts today that recommend that the study of history at MCU should be reduced? There is no such study. There are no such findings.
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The primary purpose of education for officers is to inculcate within the officer corps an understanding of the fundamental nature of war. A careful and thoughtful use of history, military history in particular, represents one of the most effective tools. Since military organizations engage in war only episodically, it represents the most effective tool available.
History provides innumerable insights at every level of war, significant understanding of leadership, and glimpses of the fog and friction that are integral to war. The insights and perspectives one can gain from the use of history can also illuminate ways of meeting new and emerging challenges. Complex case studies dealing with the issues of strategy and policy, campaign planning, and leadership can and do provide an analytic guide for officers later in their careers. To be sure, history offers no “silver bullets” or fixed solutions. Rather, it helps officers to ask the right questions and challenge the superficial PowerPoint briefings that characterize so much of current strategic and operational analyses.
. . . Moreover, one should never lose sight of the fact that the future has a way of surprising military prophets and pundits, who have often gotten the next war wrong. Therefore, what matters most is the ability of the U.S. military institutions to adapt to the actual conditions that the military leaders of the future will confront, and that, in turn, require the ability to ask the right questions. The purpose of Professional Military Education, then, is not to teach what the next war will be, but rather to provide officers the analytic tool to address reality, no matter how harsh and inconvenient it may prove to conventional thinking.
-- USMC Study and Findings on Officer Professional Military Education 2006
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In war, commanders face moments of decision. How can commanders prepare for their moments of decision? The crucial preparation for war is the purpose and province of military education. In the tumult of battle, when Col Joshua Chamberlain had to make the decision to retreat or to attack, he did not need to draw on more technology information. He needed to draw on a deep understanding of men in battle. There are future battles coming for Marine commanders and in those battles will be moments of decision. When those decision moments arrive, Marine leaders will need more than technology information, they will need a broad and deep military education.
Compass Points salutes Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper for his decades of service to Country and Corps.
— Lieutenant General Van Riper brings considerable experience to any discussion of professional military education. He taught at The Basic School, the US Army’s Institute for Military Assistance, and all of Marine Corps University’s schools where he held a teaching chair for 11 years after retirement. He has lectured at the Army’s Command and General Staff College, the Army War College, the Air War College, and the Joint Forces Staff College. He was a member of the National War College’s Board of Visitors. He was selected as part of General Wilhelm Study of Marine Corps Professional Military Education. LtGen Van Riper’s article “The Relevance of History to the Military Profession” discusses how understanding military history is crucial for effective military education and strategy.
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U.S. Marine Corps
Officer Professional Military Education
2006 Study and Findings
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The Cove Press
The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession
By Williamson Murray and Richard Sinnreich
Includes - “The Relevance of History to the Military Profession” by Paul Van Riper
https://cove.army.gov.au/read/past-prologue-importance-history-military-profession
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What we are witnessing at MCU is the FD equivalent of "divest to invest" - - get rid of what works under the false flag of acquiring something better. How did this work for the MAGTF? It failed and so will the MCU experiment for similar reasons, chief among them being the lack of transparency and inclusion.
LtGen Van Riper is right, and the direction being taken at Marine Corps University is a mistake that history has already graded.
Commanders do not fail in their moments of decision because they lacked the latest briefing on emerging technology. They fail when they lack a deep, internalized understanding of the permanent nature of war: friction, fear, exhaustion, the limits of men under fire, and the moral weight of ordering others into lethal risk. That understanding is forged by serious study of men who have already faced those moments—Thucydides, Chamberlain on Little Round Top, the endless case studies of decisions made under incomplete information and mortal pressure. Technology changes. The human material of war does not.
The post-1945 experiment of sidelining military history in favor of management techniques, systems analysis, and the newest technical orthodoxy helped produce the intellectual failures of Vietnam. The services eventually had to climb back out of that hole. The Marine Corps, under General Gray and with Van Riper’s direct involvement, deliberately restored history and maneuver warfare as the core of professional education for a reason. It was a hard-won correction. Reversing it now, under the banner of preparing for “tomorrow’s battlefield,” repeats the same error with new vocabulary—AI, Joint All Domain Operations, war games—while mocking the very studies that once corrected the last version of the mistake.
Chamberlain did not need more information about the Spencer carbine or the telegraph when he ordered the bayonet charge. He needed judgment formed by an understanding of what men can still do when the defensive position is about to collapse. Future Marine commanders will face their own versions of that moment. If their education has trained them primarily as consumers of technical information rather than as students of the art of war, they will arrive at those moments under-equipped where it matters most.
This is not an argument against technology. It is an argument about hierarchy. Technology is a tool. The educated judgment of the commander who must decide under pressure is the irreplaceable core. When professional military education begins to treat the study of history and the human reality of battle as “stale,” it signals the same cultural preference we see elsewhere: the elevation of the new, the procedural, and the technical over the permanent and the hard. That preference does not survive contact with a serious enemy who still studies the older lessons.
Van Riper has seen this cycle before. The Corps would do well to listen before it has to relearn the cost the hard way.
Semper Fi!!!