Why the U.S. Military Must Build a Mental Agoge for Its Leaders

Crucibles uncover extraordinary leaders.

The ancient Agoge of Sparta forged legendary warriors through a brutal program of privation, violence, and relentless competition. The Spartans saw the cultured Athenians as decadent. The Athenians viewed the Spartans’ martial discipline as regressive. But what if, instead of opposition, these mindsets converged—melding intellectual prowess with warrior discipline?

Today’s military leaders must be fluent in both Athens and Sparta. They must apply discipline not just to their bodies, but to their intellect. For too long, many have learned to follow the tune of the senior leader who writes their evaluations—mastering political choreography instead of warfighting. But the military does not exist to orchestrate a symphony of appeasement. It must instead prepare its leaders to conduct the symphony of destruction that GEN George S. Patton envisioned.

To create such leaders, change must come from the top.

The Levels of War Are Dynamic and Overlapping

Carl von Clausewitz famously defined strategy as “the use of engagement to attain the objective of war.” But strategy itself has evolved—from a broad theory of preparation, as Lawrence Freedman notes, to a narrower realm of application.

According to U.S. Joint Doctrine, the military operates on three levels: strategic, operational, and tactical. These levels are not rigidly tied to unit size or rank, but to purpose and impact. A tactical action—such as the raid on Osama bin Laden—can have enormous strategic effects. Conversely, strategic assets like satellites or B-52s can be used in tactical contexts.

Leaders today must think and act across these boundaries, using strategic insight to guide operational design and tactical execution.

Moreover, war no longer confines itself to traditional domains. Conventional, unconventional, and hybrid warfare bleeds across land, sea, air, space, cyber, and beyond. Any leader worth following must be trained and assessed in this full-spectrum view of conflict.

Effective military leadership means making decisions that align the past, present, and future. A true leader must be a historian, analyst, and prophet all at once—understanding past consequences, navigating current realities, and forecasting future outcomes.

Decision-making must exist on a time continuum. Leaders must intuitively grasp how a decision made now might ripple across weeks, months, or decades. That ability is not instinctive—it must be taught, tested, and refined.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” In war, the unexamined mind should not be leading. To build trust in the cognitive capabilities of military leadership, the military must answer two questions:

1. Oral and Written Exams at Key Promotions

Military leaders must externalize their internal understanding—through recommendations, orders, and strategic plans. Therefore, oral and written examinations should be integrated into promotion boards and selection processes for key positions.

Sample question structure:

These multi-dimensional assessments will reveal who understands war not just in theory, but in practice—across time, space, and complexity.

2. Wargaming Must Leave the Dice Behind

Scheller proposed an Ender’s Game-style competition. But wargaming across the Department of Defense remains outdated—still reliant on dice, rigid rules, and slow adaptation.

Chance cannot be the architect of a trillion-dollar defense budget. Wargaming must evolve into a replicable, dynamic, and digital method that explores conflict from strategy to tactics, integrating both human judgment and system-level interaction.

New Definition:
Wargames represent human actions and system-level interactions of conflict in a synthetic environment, spanning strategic to tactical levels.

Using current technologies, officers can interact in a 2D tabletop environment and move to 3D simulated command centers—issuing verbal orders via GPT-like interfaces, syncing real-time decisions with doctrinal databases, and monitoring results in immersive, friction-filled scenarios.

Example:
An officer balances tactical objectives—neutralizing enemy positions with a mix of manned and autonomous systems—against strategic risks, such as pushing a nuclear-armed adversary too far. He can toggle between satellite views and first-person perspectives, navigating not only the battlefield but also the consequences of his previous strategic choices.

This forms a virtuous feedback loop—the officer learns not only the costs of poor decisions but the intricacies of time-bound consequences.

Train for Assessment—Assess Through Training

If oral exams and real-time synthetic wargaming become metrics for advancement, training priorities will realign. Officers will stop jockeying for favor and instead study their craft.

The same systems used to test leaders will serve as training environments. Failure becomes feedback. Progress replaces perfection. Leaders will grow through simulation, not by polishing reputations.

The U.S. military doesn’t just need leaders—it needs exceptional ones.

Excellence requires discipline, intellect, and vision. These qualities must be measured, challenged, and forged. Only a military willing to test its leaders with the same intensity it expects in war will cultivate warriors capable of navigating the complexity of modern conflict.

It’s time to build a mental Agoge—one that produces leaders who can think as sharply as they fight.

S.L. Nelson has served from the tactical to strategic level as a military officer. His views are his own and do not represent the position of the U.S. DoD.