Why We Need A Modern Theory of Special Warfare to Thrive in the Human Domain - Wavell Room

"Our current approach to the human domain lacks depth and rigour. Theory is absent. Methods and tradecraft are underdeveloped, and often improvised. Thinking and theory have been largely outsourced to civilians, forgetting the fact that theory is a core responsibility of military professionals. Theory precedes concepts, doctrine, and strategy3, just like any other profession. Do doctors conduct surgery without understanding theories of medicine, or lawyers practice law without an understanding of its spirit? Perhaps institutions like the Army are ‘running hot’, and consumed by the administrative demands of the day, leaving no time for theoretical exploration and reading. Brilliant battlefield commanders are known to possess coup d’oeil, but this rapid ‘thin slicing’ of situations does not hone the military judgment required for complex problems on a staff. Concept development, strategy formulation, and theoretical exploration require academic study and intellectual engagement. Theory is essential as a description of the elements of the environment, an indication of the workings and interaction of those elements, and a path to determine what winning looks like within defined policy parameters4. Theories also provide a logical structure from which we derive predictions, and those predictions guide strategic choice."