No academic curriculum can adequately replicate actual combat experience in preparing for the proverbial “fog of war,” but an ash-leaden haze of eye-stinging, lung-clogging smoke could offer a good and sooty semblance of battlefield murk.
That must have been the National Defense University’s (NDU) thinking when it refused to move its June 8 graduation ceremony indoors despite Washington being encased in a smothering smog from raging wildfires in Quebec, surmised keynote speaker U.S. Army Gen. and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
“Thinking strategically,” he joked in his opening remarks.
Founded in 1976, the NDU at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington is a fully accredited five-college institute run by the Department of Defense that offers degrees in education, training, and professional development for current and future “national security leaders” from the U.S. and allied nations.
NDU incorporates the College of International Security Affairs, Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, College of Information and Cyberspace, Joint Forces Staff College, and National War College.
Its 1,500 to 1,700 enrolled students earn a master of science degrees in national resource strategy and national security strategy in addition to other graduate-level degrees.
According to NDU, the Class of 2023 includes 630 graduates, including 130 women, with nearly a quarter—137—from nations in Africa, Asia, Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East, Canada, and Mexico.
“They come from countries that represent about 61 percent of the world’s population—that is 4.8 billion represented in these 630,” NDU said in a Twitter post congratulating graduates.
Among the 493 American graduates, 28 percent represent 40 U.S. government agencies, with 18 percent currently serving in the Army, 17 percent in the Air Force, 7 percent in the Navy, 6 percent in the Marine Corps, and 1 percent each from the Coast Guard and Space Force.
About 60 percent—roughly 378 of the 630 graduates—hold senior officer ranks in their respective services, with nearly 40 percent O-6 or above in comparable U.S. military officer rankings. An O-6 is a captain in the Navy, and a colonel in the Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps.
“Sitting here today is a future president ... a future chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a service chief, a combatant commander, agency directors,” Milley said. “There is little doubt in my mind that each and every one of you are going to rise to significant positions of responsibility in the years ahead.”
Indeed, he said, alluding to a troubled world where Europe is enflamed in its largest ground war since World War II and an aggressive China is increasingly threatening allies in the western Pacific and noting that American NDU graduates will be among those charged with meeting present and future challenges.
“It will be you, each of you,” Milley said, “that are in charge when decisions of great consequence are to be made. You are going to be the leaders who steer our nations through the numerous challenges ahead.”
Technology Can’t Replace Leadership
The uniformed leader of all American armed forces, who also delivered NDU’s 2022 graduation keynote address, tailored most of his remarks to U.S. military graduates.“Our adversaries know the U.S. military is capable today and ready to react to any threat, anywhere, at any time. And they know we have the will to use it if required,” Milley said. “That is the key to deterrence. The key to preventing large-scale great power war. Together, we must continue to maintain that advantage. We must never give it up.”
What happens next will be determined by what happens now in an environment being disrupted by the emergence of technologies, he said.
“We’re going to have to modernize the United States military very significantly in the next 10 to 15 years,” Milley said. “Our leaders and troops are going to be semi-autonomous, and they’re going to operate in a highly lethal, very decentralized and dispersed environment. This is going to require incredible and intense leader development. This is going to require changes in selection, promotion, and training.”
There may be no substitute for experience in being an effective combat leader, but the fundamentals of leadership itself can be a learned discipline honed through execution, he said.
And despite the rapid integration of technological advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence into military systems, that very human discipline is needed now as much as it ever was, Milley said.
“We are currently in a fundamental change to the character of war,” he said, but there is no replacement for character.
“The world needs your leadership,” he told graduates. “We’re at a historic pivot point. One of the most important pivot points in human history. We need your leadership, and we need it now more than ever. Good luck to each and every one of you.”
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