On the Use of Military Theory

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Whether they are mistakes, achievements, or anything in between, events from the past teach individuals and groups of people invaluable lessons. The problem is that people cannot experience themselves all these events; neither can they learn about them all. So they rely on analysis, conceptualizations, etcetera, which beyond historical collection of facts, constitute what are called theories. The wisdom that George Santayana captured in his famous quote, and that he stated with respect to human learning process, makes perfect sense in military matters.
Military theory is an evolving set of fundamental thoughts, ideas, principles and rules, that are related to military matters, such as soldiers, armed forces, weapons, war or peace, and that military leaders have to study all along their careers in order to analyze, understand, explain and eventually address the challenges they face. So as to establish this thesis, it is first necessary to consider and define both terms military and theory, individually and together, and to determine the dominant trends of thoughts in military theory. Second, it is required to explain how the purpose of military theory equals its utility, and why it is mandatory for soldiers to study military theory all along their careers. Finally, it is crucial to understand that military theory is the basis of any military doctrine, strategy, operational art, and subsequently of any military action across the range of military operation.
A theory can be defined as systematically developed assumptions, principles, and rules devised to analyze, predict or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena. People have always s...

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... War. Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1989. He explains it in the first four paragraphs of his preface, p. 61.
Julian Corbett. Principles of Maritime Strategy. Minneola, NY, Dover, 2004.
Giulio Douhet. The Command of the Air. Edited by Joseph Patrick Harahan and Richard H. Kohn. Tuscaloosa, AL, The University of Alabama Press, 2009.
Robert M. Citino. Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare. Lawrence, KS, University Press of Kansas, 2004.
David Galula. Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Praeger Publishers, 2006.
Fred Iklé. Every War Must End. New York: Columbia, 2005.
WS 524 L, Main Point 1.
WS 500 L, slide 5
WS 500 L, slide 6
WS 500 L, slide 7
JP1, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp1.pdf, p. 43
Ibid, chapter 1
WS 500 L, slide 1

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