Intellectual spring cleaning: it’s time for a military “Do Not Read” list; and some sources that should be on that list

Abstract

Military reading lists, intended to promote professional reading and in turn enhance education and develop critical thinking skills and sound judgement, recommend key texts to military personnel. This is a noble intent but the lists themselves, while generally good, are not flawless. Critiques of military reading lists often focus on what sources they are missing. This article offers its own critique but from a different perspective. It does so by analysing why some sources, which have become outdated, are based on faulty or incomplete research, have been thoroughly disproven, or some combination of the above, nevertheless linger on military reading lists. It then offers a short list of such sources, which it recommends be either removed from existing reading lists or accompanied by other sources that place the original source in appropriate historical context. Where applicable, it also recommends alternative sources that provide insights into the same subject matter. In so doing, this article is intended generate debate and to assist militaries to achieve a better balance between evaluation, induction and retention of valid knowledge on one hand, and rejection of outdated or flawed knowledge on the other.

Keywords:

• Military reading lists
• knowledge retention
• knowledge evaluation
• knowledge rejection

Notes

1. Chillingly, Builder further illuminated that these services have placed institutional goals and self-preservation of their war-waging methodologies even above US national interests. Essentially, if a service could fight a war in a manner that could lose it, but could wage the war in the manner that most fulfilled its institutional self-interests, the service would choose that approach.

2. For an excellent summary of the rise of Clausewitz in US Army doctrine and education, and in particular the proliferation of the Paret and Howard edition, see Melton 2012, pp. 85, 86.

3. The irony is not lost on this paper’s authors that this website (Clausewitz.com undated) personally attacks Rapoport while simultaneously accusing him of doing the same to Clausewitz. This paper’s authors were unable to locate any literary criticism of Rapoport’s actual points in his essay, as opposed to ad hominem attacks on Rapoport as an individual.

4. Huntington (1996) identified the major civilizations as Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Japanese.

5. For a counter-argument to Kelly and Brennan (2009) that is nevertheless still critical of Huntington, see Jackson (2014b).

6. This novel has already appeared on at least one military reading list, that being the 2007 edition of the Australian Army Chief of Army’s Reading List. Unfortunately, it was removed from the current (2012) edition.