This is Secretary Hegseth's Best Idea

For years, I have advocated for evaluating the warfighting and command capabilities of colonels and Navy captains aspiring to be general and flag officers.

In September, Pete Hegseth announced the implementation of a Joint Warfighter Evaluation (JWE) for all 0-6s aspiring to become flag and general officers. 

Each service will implement JWE In a slightly different manner, but each will require decision-making under pressure in a wargaming simulation and an evaluation of the candidate's ability to make decisions in a time-constrained written evaluation.

No system will be perfect, but the JWE will eliminate the worst of those unable to make sound decisions under pressure.

Virtually every retired military officer with combat experience has horror stories of commanders who made poor decisions under fire.

Some simply failed to make decisions at all. 

The uniformed bureaucrats who bungled the execution of the Iran conflict and failed to give the national command authority viable options for a successful termination of the conflict are still in place.

Given a few years under this evaluation system, I firmly believe that we will create a much more effective leadership cadre in the Pentagon and out in the field.

In addition to evaluating leadership under fire, moral fitness is another character quality that should also be considered as part of JWE.

Each candidate will realize that his or her answer might well determine selection or non-selection for future promotion. 

I am most concerned about how JWE will be implemented within my own service, the Marine Corps.

How will the Marine Corps prepare its officers to succeed in high-tempo combat environments?

Unfortunately, the Marine Corps has tasked Marine Corps University (MCU) to evaluate Marine Corps Colonels for JWE.

Why shouldn’t MCU be the one to implement JWE?  I have a list.

Seven years ago, I would have had no such concern.

But since 2019, the Marine Corps officer education system has degraded alarmingly. Frankly, MCU has become rotten to the Corps (pun intended).

MCU is systematically deemphasizing the study of military history in favor of more technical subjects, such as AI and autonomous warfare.

Virtually every competent tactical or operational artist I have known or studied have been students of history; there are exceptions such as Nathan Bedford Forrest and Francis Marion, but they were rare savants.

The evolution of military technology on the battlefield such as what is taking place in Ukraine doesn’t alter the conduct of operational leadership or a leader’s ability to make crucial, timely decisions in the heat of battle.

Whether on the battlefield or in war games, recognitional decision-making is critical -- the larger the decision maker's mental encyclopedia of the mistakes and successes of the past, the better his chance of coming out of any fight a winner.

That seems to be lost on today's senior Marine Corps leaders, particularly those at MCU.

For seven years, the constructive self-criticism and vigorous doctrinal debate that characterized the Marine Corps that I knew has been unabashedly discouraged.

Once the Marine Corps Force Design (formerly Force Design 2030) was introduced, the Marine Corps shut down debate and discourse as to whether such a generational change to force structure, doctrine, and combined arms capability would negatively impact the Marine Corps’ ability to fight and win wars.

MCU went a step further and banned retired General Charles Krulak and other retired Marine generals from MCU.

They even banned General Krulak from the "Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare," which was named after his father.

The current intellectual state of the Corps more resembles that of the French Army of the 1930s before the debacle of 1940 than the Marine Corps I grew up in.

As noted in a recent post in Marine Corps Compass Points, “there is no one at the Marine Corps University who has experience commanding in combat in a General Officer level command.”

Banning other Marine generals -- including Generals Zinni, Mattis, Van Riper and others -- from MCU for the purpose of executing JWE for Colonels considered for general officer is a great loss for the Marine Corps and a departure from the intent behind JWE.

While I don’t always agree with Secretary Hegseth’s decisions, JWE is a much-needed tool in ensuring Marines are ready to fight tomorrow’s battles.

Gary Anderson retired as Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and is the author of Beyond Mahan, a Naval Strategy for the 21st Century.