Our Mission
Provide an independent source of broader thinking, deeper understanding, and better decisions, for a stronger Marine Corps.
Our Values
We believe the Marine Corps must be responsive, relevant, and ready today, and more so tomorrow.
We believe the Marine Corps is never owned by any small group of people, but is always held in sacred trust by every Marine and friend of the Corps, past, present, and future.
We believe Marine Corps success in garrison, in the field, and in operations is a complex ecology of the physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual.
We believe in the complexity of combat.
We believe good data is good, but waiting for more and more data is not necessarily better.
We believe no information system can or will sweep away the fog of war.
We believe nothing is more uncertain than certainty.
We believe planning is good, but first plans rarely survive first contact.
We believe Marines must prepare to battle skilled, devious, and unpredictable adversaries
We believe Marines must be always ready to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel enemy assault by fire and close combat.
We believe in combined-arms, multi-mission capable Marine Corps units that can quickly arrive anywhere, and address any conflict or crisis.
We believe the Marine Corps must experiment with new technology constantly, and adopt it prudently.
We believe in practicing and perfecting proven methods, while also experimenting with and adopting new methods.
We believe in the Marine Corps culture of teamwork, trust, creativity, and courage.
We believe in candid culture among Marines, never cancel culture.
We believe the strength of the Marine Corps comes from the valor at the heart of each Marine. Each Marine draws strength from the entire Corps of Marines. Together, all Marines are joined across time and geography by the unbreakable red stripe of service.
This is an excellent list. I do have a suggestion though; I'm a "words mean things" knuckle dragger, so I have to offer my chop on semantics of wording. I've never been a fan of "we believe in" outside statements of faith. Use of it here weakens the list by conveying the impression of mysticism over application. Belief in something doesn't make it real or right, though modern western cultural conventions often treat it as if so. Therefore, as this is a list of values, I would suggest rephrasing as a list of what we hold important. This would better focus the list of values in support of the practical considerations we are discussing and using to evaluate concepts against.
Since I'm playing good idea fairy with someone else's baby, here are some examples:
-"We believe in the complexity of combat" becomes "Combat is inherently complex".
-"We believe in candid culture among Marines, never cancel culture" becomes "Marines are best served by a culture of candid communication.".
Final 'big brain on brad' comment from me; it may be worth breaking the values list further down into values and principles, since some of the listed items don't phrase well as a value. For example, the previously mentioned "We believe in the complexity of combat" and it's rewrite; is that a value or a principle? Aren't we really saying "Combat must be regarded as an inherently complex phenomenon", which is a principle (or a praxeology). Additionally, succinct lists of values tend to be more powerful as the values are less likely to be watered down by their volume.
In closing, as someone who's had plenty of my own staffing babies covered in red ink by my bosses, I'll finish by saying again, I think it's an excellent list and I offer my commentary as an addition to the work already done in developing it. I'll show myself out now.