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This book offers a detailed examination of the professional military education system in the United States, from a critical, insider's perspective.The mission of America's war colleges is to educate senior military officers in both the ways of war and the defence of peace. But are these colleges doing the best job possible in carrying out that important mission? Military education faces many demands, including a lack of preparation by the students, uneven quality of the faculty, and confusion over the curriculum. Many officers attend resident programs at the war colleges programs against the career advice of their leadership, despite the fact that they are virtually guaranteed graduation after less than a year of study, while others do their best to avoid it entirely. As the professional military education system has come under increasing scrutiny and criticism, some have even called for closing the war colleges. That answer, however, does not serve the United States well, especially in a complex, globalized environment, where military leaders need the best specialized education to prepare them for their future challenges. This volume examines the system that created and supports the perpetuation of this system, and why it is imperative that it be fixed.Written by a faculty member at a military college with twenty years'experience of the PME system, this book will of much interest to students of the US Military, US politics and military education in general.

The National War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., is the apex of the American system of military Professional Military Education (PME) Schools. The War College has trained such leading foreign policy specialists as former National Security Director Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and current National Security Director James Jones. Yet, despite its prestige, not all is right at the College. There is a festering conflict between the military brass who run the school and the civilian academics who teach there. The curriculum is outdated, the courses are old-fashioned, and the college failed completely to prepare a new generation of military leaders for guerilla terrorism, a-symmetrical warfare of the kind we are now facing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and democracy-promotion and national building. In Military Brass vs. Civilian Academics at the National War College: A Clash of Cultures, Howard J. Wiarda uses his first-hand experience to examine the conflict between the two cultures, military and civilian, that coexist uneasily at the College. He also explores the issues_tenure, academic freedom, research, teaching_that divide them. While this study focuses on the National War College, what Wiarda has to say about the tensions and'clash of culture'applies to all PME schools.