The impeachment debate over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has largely overshadowed his Monday rollout of professional military education (PME) reforms, presented in a 33-point memorandum and a companion address at the Naval War College.
PME refers to the sequence of educational opportunities service members receive as they advance. For officers, it runs from commissioning—through a service academy, ROTC, or Officer Candidate School—to capstone programs for generals and flag officers. These schools prepare leaders for expanding responsibilities, from directing a few dozen troops as a junior officer to commanding thousands as a colonel or Navy captain.
Hegseth is right that PME institutions, particularly at intermediate and senior levels, shape the strategic culture of U.S. military leadership. But his guidance misdiagnoses what about that culture needs to change.
Since becoming a professional military, U.S. forces have repeatedly shown extraordinary operational competence. American units are peerless warfighters and have often achieved immediate military objectives with remarkable efficiency, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the United States has struggled to convert battlefield gains into meaningful political outcomes—the true measure of military effectiveness.
The conflict with Iran illustrates the problem. U.S. and Israeli forces penetrated Iran’s defenses, eliminated senior leaders, and degraded missile and naval capabilities. Nearly nine months later, however, Iran’s regime remains in power, the Strait of Hormuz is still too dangerous for commercial shipping, and the Trump administration has not turned a vast military advantage into a durable political settlement aligned with U.S. interests.
Hegseth’s guidance perpetuates a fundamental misunderstanding of what senior military leadership requires—and of the shortcoming in American military performance that most urgently needs attention. U.S. military leaders do not lack training in field maneuvers or battle. No one doubts the military’s lethality across domains. But adversaries likely believe that America’s national security establishment fails to grasp the fundamentally political nature of warfare: tactical success is necessary but not sufficient to defend and advance U.S. interests in a contested global environment.
By repeating that “the fundamental purpose of the Armed Forces of the United States is to fight and win our Nation’s wars,” Hegseth shows a limited understanding of the military’s role in deterring conflict in the first place. Deterrence requires more sophisticated thinking and a broader curriculum than executing battlefield maneuvers or even overseeing a theater-level campaign.
Sustained deterrence is the apex of military effectiveness. It requires understanding adversaries, anticipating their calculations, managing escalation, communicating resolve, and integrating military power with diplomatic, economic, and informational instruments. Preparing leaders to advise civilian defense officials and contribute to whole-of-government decisions on consequential matters of state demands a much broader intellectual foundation than training them to carry out operational orders.
Consider Taiwan, a potential flashpoint between the United States and China. Deterring Beijing from imposing a blockade—or launching a full-scale invasion—is not merely a matter of developing operational capabilities for contingency response. Effective deterrence requires understanding Beijing’s perceptions of American resolve, the political calculations of Chinese leadership, Taiwan’s domestic politics, the economic consequences of conflict, and the credibility of U.S. commitments to regional allies. Military leaders who cannot think strategically across these dimensions, however proficient at operational planning, will struggle to give civilian defense leaders effective options for averting what would almost certainly be a catastrophic conflict.
These criticisms aside, several worthwhile ideas appear in Hegseth’s direction, although many supposed innovations are already standard practice at command and staff and senior service colleges. Emphasizing “jointness” among the services in PME is hardly new. When I taught at the National War College from 2019 to 2021, I served as the Office of the Secretary of Defense Chair alongside several talented Warfighter Chairs seconded from the military services. Far from “stagnant,” as Hegseth alleges, the PME environment surprised me with its agility. It continually adapted curricula, incorporated lessons from recent case studies, and experimented with new approaches to preparing officers for an increasingly complex security environment—all while shifting to virtual learning during a global pandemic.
Among the genuinely new proposals, the most promising include deepening focus on artificial intelligence in modern warfare; adding a mid-career “PME 1.5” requirement to bridge field-grade operational experience and senior school; better using private-sector expertise in curricula; and employing simulations, tabletop exercises, and competitive wargames to evaluate students under conditions approximating the uncertainty, time pressure, information asymmetries, and competing demands of actual command.
The greatest danger in the new guidance is further politicization of the institutions that cultivate strategic judgment in senior military leaders. Shifting PME oversight from the Joint Staff’s J7—a three-star billet—to the Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness—a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed position—is not objectionable on its face. But it gives political appointees more control over what is taught, and some may be tempted to pursue ideological agendas. Likewise, eliminating tenure for civilian faculty and making such hires subject to political preferences will reduce—and may eliminate—the unique expertise civilian scholars bring in history, international relations, economics, political science, technology, and regional studies. More broadly, the challenge a relative outsider can pose to the conventional wisdom of experienced officers is among the most valuable contributions a civilian professor can make to a serious war college.
The military’s strategic culture cannot be remade every four years. To be effective, PME institutions need continuity, intellectual independence, and freedom to challenge prevailing assumptions—including those of the sitting administration. Senior officers must understand and execute civilian policy, but they must also have the intellectual independence to identify flawed assumptions, offer candid advice, and challenge strategies they believe will fail. That requires an educational environment where disagreement is encouraged as a way to reach better decisions.
Ultimately, a successful PME system is measured not simply by whether it produces officers who can win battles, but by whether it produces strategic leaders who can communicate complex ideas to civilian policymakers, deter adversaries, and overcome the most consequential shortcoming in the American way of war: translating military strength into enduring national advantage.
Greg Pollock served in leadership positions in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2010 to 2025, including twice as acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. He taught at the National War College from 2019 to 2021 and is now an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Climate and Security.
