Memo to Hegseth: Military education needs a strategic makeover



Watching the swarm of active and former officers on TV and across social media in the wake of the Iran operation, one thing becomes painfully clear: We are not educating the American officer corps for 21st-century war.

In almost every case, these officers — regardless of service — stay locked in the tactical weeds. They can tell you the circular error probable of a Tomahawk missile, the engagement envelope of a JDAM, and the close-quarters choreography of a SEAL platoon. They can talk gear, ranges, platforms, and “capabilities” until your eyes glaze over.

Too many mid-level officers can operate tactically and, at best, think in an operational frame. Few can function in the strategic register.

What they cannot do — with a few exceptions — is think strategically.

Gen. Jack Keane stands out because he can talk operational and strategic moves as a ground commander sees them. But the larger pattern points to a flaw baked into our professional military education system: It produces tacticians who struggle to connect the fight in front of them to the history behind it and the policy goals above it.

That flaw shows up as a shallow understanding of American history, American military history, and the U.S. role in the world since World War II. Even with Iran — a country that has loomed in U.S. policy for decades — many younger officers appear hazy on basic context.

They don’t know, for example, that Iran aligned with the United States during World War II. They don’t know the long arc of American involvement with the Shah (reinstalled in 1948, uninstalled at the fumbling behest of Jimmy Carter in 1979), or the 1979 revolution, or the Reagan-era gamesmanship, or the diplomatic failures and half-measures that followed. They don’t grasp how those chapters shape the threat environment we are dealing with right now — or why “Iran” is never just Iran.

That ignorance produces a second-order problem: a lack of situational awareness about almost any contemporary politico-military challenge.

Too many mid-level officers can operate tactically and, at best, think in an operational frame. Few can function in the strategic register. Fewer still can explain the principles of grand strategy — or, more accurately, war policy: what the nation wants, what it will pay, and what it must prevent.

Without that understanding, senior officers cannot give clear, disciplined advice to a president or a White House staff that may lack military experience. The armed forces become a machine that can execute missions brilliantly while remaining uncertain about the “why.”

There is another cost to this historical and strategic illiteracy: a warped sense of time.

Military operations do not unfold on cable-news timelines. Understanding the implications of a wartime environment takes time. Reshaping an adversary’s behavior takes time. Consolidating a political outcome takes time. If officers making decisions lack a working understanding of the history of that environment, they will miss opportunities that could save lives and treasure — and they will overestimate the speed at which results can be achieved.

I say this as someone who has lectured for decades at military institutions, including the U.S. Air Force Academy, the National Defense University, and the National Intelligence University.

In recent years, I have watched what can only be described as intellectual sludge: more than 20 years of forced social engineering and liberalization within the military academic ecosystem. Diversity, equity, and inclusion became more important than producing officers who are not risk-averse and who understand the hard realities of war — including destruction and death — and the grim imperative to minimize our casualties while maximizing the enemy’s. Brutal, yes. Also true.

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Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Gen. Curtis LeMay put it plainly: “I don’t mind being called tough, because in this racket, it’s tough guys who lead the survivors.”

There is hope on the horizon, at least in the Air Force. Through what looks like a deus ex machina, the Air Force Academy has rapidly changed its top leadership — installing a new superintendent, commandant, and dean in a single sweep. The new dean, Col. James Valpiani, has a résumé you could shorthand as “Clark Kent in blue.” USAFA has also begun reversing the overly civilianized faculty model, replacing it with Air Force officers who have the appropriate degrees and the right instincts.

That is a start.

Now comes the core reform: The academy must make U.S. history, U.S. military history, and U.S. Air Force history — from World War II forward — a central, non-negotiable part of the curriculum. Young officers need to understand not only what America can do, but what America is trying to do — and why. They need a strategic rationale, not just a technical one.

That kind of grounding also restores a concept the services once prized: meritocracy. The smartest and most aggressive should lead, and they should lead with a strategic understanding worthy of the responsibility.

Gen. George Patton liked to say, “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” A good plan depends on something deeper than PowerPoint. It depends on a commander with history embedded in his soul — history understood as lived reality, not as trivia.

I would sure like to help plant it there.

Iran, China, and Trump’s ‘art of the squeal’



The combined bombing campaign that began in Iran Saturday morning, decapitating senior leadership and hammering military targets across the map, may look like a massive undertaking.

And it is — for Israel.

Iran looks like an existential threat.

It is — for Israel.

An invasion does not run on slogans. It runs on fuel.

For the United States, the existential threat sits elsewhere. Iran has financed and fueled anti-American violence for 47 years — from the 1979 hostage crisis to the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983, from Hezbollah and the Houthis to the IED pipeline that chewed up Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Trump on Saturday morning laid out a clean rationale for turning the mullahs’ war machine into mulch and ending, once and for all, Tehran’s nuclear obsession.

Still, the bigger strategic picture points east — to China.

Beijing’s global ambitions rise and fall on one commodity that keeps modern economies alive and modern militaries moving: oil. If you want to understand why pressure on Iran matters beyond the Middle East, start with the tankers.

Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready for Taiwan by 2027. Call it an invasion timeline or call it a readiness deadline — the intent reads the same.

China has spent years preparing the battlefield: artificial islands to extend maritime control, relentless air and naval exercises that rehearse the encirclement of Taiwan, and a missile force built to hunt U.S. ships and push America back behind the horizon.

That missile layer — DF-21s and DF-26s — supports the bigger concept: anti-access/area denial. China wants to make U.S. intervention costly, slow, and uncertain. It wants American commanders staring at a clock they cannot beat.

Washington answered with its own doctrine and its own race against time. The U.S. built concepts like AirSea Battle doctrine and pushed Agile Combat Employment — a dispersed, resilient approach designed to survive missile salvos and keep aircraft flying. The Air Force started rehabilitating old Pacific airfields and expanding access across Guam, Saipan, and especially Tinian, because the next war in the Pacific will punish concentration.

Then Orange Man Bad made two moves in two months that hit Xi exactly where he lives. Not more nasty rhetoric on Truth Social or posturing. Logistics.

First, the United States seized Nicolás Maduro and dumped him in a Brooklyn jail. That operation did more than embarrass a dictator. It jolted the real-world flow of Venezuelan crude — and with it, a slice of China’s import stream that Beijing prefers to keep quiet, rebranded, and discounted. Analysts peg Venezuela’s contribution to China’s seaborne crude imports in the low single digits, roughly 3% to 5% depending on the year and the counting method. In Beijing’s world, even “small” percentages matter when the margin for error narrows.

Second, the joint strike campaign against Iran instantly put a hand on another lever: Iranian exports.

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Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

China buys the bulk of Iran’s shipped oil. Various trackers place Iranian barrels at roughly 10% to 15% of China’s seaborne crude imports in recent years. Tehran sells because it needs the cash. Beijing buys because it wants the discount. Trump’s move did not need to “block” every barrel to land the message. It only needed to introduce uncertainty, disruption, rerouting, insurance spikes, interdiction risk, and political friction. Oil markets react to fear faster than to facts.

Put the two together, and the math starts to hurt: a meaningful share of China’s oil — not symbolic, not academic — now sits under pressure from U.S. action in Venezuela and Iran.

That creates a Taiwan problem.

An invasion does not run on slogans. It runs on fuel. It runs on shipping. It runs on industrial output. It runs on a domestic economy that stays stable while the military gambles. Xi can build missiles all day long, but he cannot launch an island war on an economy gasping for discounted crude.

So yes, the current Iran campaign matters for the obvious reasons: international terrorism, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the nuclear program. Those are legitimate reasons for “Epic Fury.”

Trump’s larger play hits the supply lines that make China’s invasion timetable plausible.

In only two months, Trump has put Xi in the position of a man getting a testicular palpation from a recalcitrant physician in a hurry.

Do not distract him. He might clench.

I think Trump wrote a book about it, or he should. Call it “The Art of the Squeal.”

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