Many foreign policy experts have compared the post-Sept. 11, 2001 period, and the transformation it has wreaked on American foreign policy, to the advent of the Cold War, another time of seismic change in U.S. policy. As during the early days of the Cold War, today America’s service academies and graduate-level war colleges are scrambling— with some success—to adapt their curricula to the post-Sept. 11 world and the threats America faces.
 
The academies have a pool of men and women inspired by the terrorist attack of Sept. 11 to join up and change the world— for example, applications for the first-year class at West Point rose 10 percent in 2002. And “many people inside the services will tell you that … younger [soldiers] are more receptive to new ideas,” says Loren Thompson, an expert on the military at the Lexington Institute, a Virginia think tank. Unfortunately, however, though the academies and war colleges have begun to revamp their classes, their institutional bureaucracies can be slow to change.

Homeland Security

All the service academies and major war colleges have added post-Sept. 11 changes in strategy and foreign policy orientation. For one, all have added classes on the military’s role in homeland security—the most recent Quadrennial Defense Review instructed the Pentagon to make homeland defense its top mission. “We have increased our focus on homeland security,” says Col. Jim Thomas, deputy dean of academics at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. “Before [Sept. 11], we were focused more on security outside our borders.” The Army War College, Thomas says, has begun incorporating more case studies in which the military contributes to civil defense into required classes and electives. The college also is bringing more civilian experts from the outside to talk about homeland security issues, he says.

Meanwhile, at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., professors have introduced debates over the legal role of the military in homeland defense into seminar classes, according to James Miskel, associate dean of academics. And as at the Army War College, Miskel says the Naval War College has invited more civilian security and disaster experts, such as officials from FEMA, onto campus to lecture.

The academies and war colleges also have increased their emphasis on post-conflict situations, using case studies from Iraq and Afghanistan to spark discussion. Ironically, prior to the war in Iraq, the U.S. Peacekeeping Institute, a part of the Army War College that focused on post-conflict peacekeeping, was slated to be closed. But the institute has won a reprieve, though its name will likely be changed to the Army Institute for Stability Operations. Other colleges and academies also are considering adding peacekeeping training to their required course loads. Lorelei Kelly, a peacekeeping expert at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, says the “Army War College now definitely has peacekeeping and stability operations as part of their [required] curricula.”

At West Point, some faculty are proposing creating a Center for Stabilization and Security Studies on campus that would offer classes on peacekeeping and other post-conflict operations. And the Naval Academy now has a class on peacekeeping and conflict management which includes simulations taken from Afghanistan, says Gail Mattox, chair of Navy’s political science department.

Meanwhile, several training centers for enlisted servicemembers are adding specialized post-conflict courses. At Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., soldiers are being instructed in the use of nonlethal weapons, since Pentagon officials realize there is a need for troops trained in nonlethal force to keep order in Iraq. And during the past two years the Marines have held a series of new exercises focusing on strategy in an urban post-conflict environment.

Counterterrorism also has become a central focus. Last year, President George W. Bush highlighted the need for the military to focus on counterterrorism strategy in a speech at West Point. Since then, the academies, training centers for enlistees, and war colleges have internalized the message, teaching students asymmetric warfare against small terrorist groups. Enlisted Army servicemembers can increasingly access information about counterterrorism strategies by signing up for one of the military’s new online counterterror courses. Meanwhile, the Marines have added courses that teach how to rescue hostages, fight terrorists in an urban setting, and master other asymmetric warfare skills.
 

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