Shi Heng Yi, headmaster of the Shaolin Temple Europe, discussed self-discovery in his 2020 TEDx talk, “5 hindrances to self-mastery.” He asked, “What does the view look like at the top of the mountain?” One can describe what they see. They can even use pictures to share what it was like. However, it is really in the climb to the mountain’s summit that understanding lives. To earn a look at the trees below, the sunset above, to hear the birdsong, brings something hard to capture in a word or graphic. That something is understanding.
The view gained from a reading of history offers something like this. In some ways, it is no less laborious than the mountain trek. To read thoroughly is like summiting a unique kind of mountain. While the stories describe lived experiences, they also imprint the reader’s experience.
For instance, I cannot gain firsthand insight experienced by the warriors at Thermopylae, Greece, but I will never forget my early mornings with Herodotus and how he made me feel in reading The Histories. These experiences compound and change a leader’s inner constitution through capability, clarity and connection. With an eye toward growth during the trek, this is the beginning of transformative change.
Although it is now a decade old, the 2013 Army Leader Development Strategy remains relevant in today’s Army. This document articulates that Army leaders must possess ability across four objectives:
1. Understand the security environment and the contributions of all elements of national power.
2. Lead effectively when faced with surprise and uncertainty.
3. Anticipate and recognize change and lead transitions.
4. Operate on intent through trust, empowerment and understanding.
The personal study of military history offers the most readily accessible path to mastering the first three objectives. The themes of capability, clarity and connection broadly guide these stated Army Leader Development Strategy goals.
To illustrate, a few literary examples illuminate this path of development for the tactical- through strategic-level leader. The lifelong learner and student of the path will find an expressway to the fourth objective.
Capability
The photographer with several lenses is more capable than one without. In a comparable way, the military professional has limited means to “see” their security environment through direct experience alone. Professional military education supplemented with joint assignments provide a strong foundation, but it is the leader’s personal reading of military history that enables fertile synthesis.
William Lind’s Maneuver Warfare Handbook of 1985 explained how the tactical leader gains capability through study of historic German approaches to the battlefield. The German term Flaechen und Luekentaktik, meaning the tactics of surfaces and gaps, provides a simple yet powerful lens. However, Lind insists upon the utility of this framework to expand nonlinear thinking. A dimly lit understanding of strong points and vulnerabilities becomes more tangible for the nonlinear security environment.
The rising strategic leader comes to appreciate the inextricable link between policy and war by reading Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. His vivid descriptions of empires debating their alliances will help the 21st-century leader understand and think about the motivations of allies, partners, peer and near-peer threats and nonstate actors. The Melian Dialogue provides insight into the mindsets of strong and weak stakeholders. Reading about the Mytilenean revolt allows us to experience the frustration and tragedy that can ensue when alliances are not gained through goodwill. The leader willing to dedicate time to serious study of Thucydides will gain perspective on the realities of victory and defeat. Like the photographer’s multiple lenses, these books are rich with cognitive tools to expand our ways of seeing.
Clarity
In his seminal work, On War, Carl von Clausewitz argued that steadiness, self-trust and self-assuredness are the commander’s best antidotes to friction and uncertainty. This kind of conviction can only come with clarity, and building it through study is paramount. For example, many Army schools discuss the principle of security; however, Erwin Rommel’s Infantry Attacks can provide new understanding.
In an intensely personal and graphic description, Rommel shared his experience of killing French soldiers who let their guard down. The reader instantly gains clarity as the principle is internalized. The abstract becomes lucid and forms a new part of who the reader is. It is this type of transmutation—from academic principle to inner being—that prepares leaders with the conviction and clarity Clausewitz believed necessary to conquer doubt, surprise and uncertainty.
Retired Gen. Colin Powell provides strategic leaders wrestling with uncertainty a different kind of example when he described a difficult but illustrative situation in My American Journey. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell directly challenged his civilian leaders to provide purpose for the liberation of Kuwait. He risked significant social capital, yet lived up to his chairmanship duties described in modern joint doctrine by assisting with strategic direction.
His tough questions ultimately served President George H.W. Bush, the secretary of defense and the military enterprise he led. His example of making concerns known, even when uncomfortable, provide inspiration and clarity for leaders seeking to influence effectively in all directions.
Connection
Connection exists in finding patterns among seemingly disparate parts. The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050, by MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, may assist leaders in recognizing change with the dual theoretical frameworks of military revolutions and revolutions in military affairs. In this 2001 book, Knox and Murray demonstrated the impactful role social and political factors can have on military modernization and warfare. Their work primes leaders to search for new connections to enable better questions about the future of war.
Preparing for this future requires leaders to think deeply about the physical, informational and human dimensions of Multi-Domain Operations. Leaders equipped with mental models gleaned from reading are well positioned to find those revolutionary threads offering leverage for positive change.
Connection also means identifying psychologically with those who went before us. In making sense of how World War I officers could send so many to their doom, Michael Howard’s classic 1986 essay, “Men Against Fire: The Doctrine of the Offensive in 1914,” explained the struggle to lead change while deeply embedded in cultural norms. Studying this critical episode connects modern organizational leaders with their centennial predecessor.
World War I leaders recognized the need for combined-arms maneuver but failed to implement it at scale, resulting in a superfluous loss of life. It is sobering to imagine that we are equally fallible. Yet it may be generations before today’s leaders fully bring the theory of Multi-Domain Operations into realized practice. That is, not unless the grim alternative of wasted human life is properly feared.
Connection to these leaders and the pain of their inability to align new ideas in doctrine with practice creates a sense of urgency in leading change and transition.
Bringing It Together
Reading military history does three things for the professional officer. It changes their internal constitution by expanding capability. This is done with new and reinforced mental models, or lenses. Second, military history provides clarity. Clarity and conviction come from personal accounts resonating deeply with the professional officer. While different for everyone, clarity in any degree increases confidence to effectively deal with uncertainty.
Lastly, history builds connection. In connecting the dots to ask better questions, and in connecting the plight of others to modern-day struggle, we create a motivating dynamic that generates urgency for change. This, in turn, forms connection with those not yet born.
Successful leaders must think beyond the scope of their own lifetime. Military history, or history in general, delivers a self-aware link to the great chain. It is the self-aware who reach the fourth objective of the Army Leader Development Strategy.
In climbing the mountain of historical literature, forging new experiences along the way, leaders earn their ability to operate with trust, empowerment and understanding.
Maj. Stein Thorbeck is a 2023 Art of War Scholar at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Previously, he served as tactical officer and instructor of general psychology at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. He deployed to Afghanistan, Kuwait and Oman.