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Captain Joseph Gagliano, USN (Ret.), Associate Professor, Deputy Chair of the National Security Affairs Department; Captain Derek S. Reveron, USN (Ret.), Professor and Chair of the National Security Affairs Department; Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Professor of National Security Affairs; Colonel Rebecca Russo, USAF (Ret.), former Military Professor, National Security Affairs; and Colonel Dana Struckman, USAF (Ret.), Professor of National Security Affairs, are all current or former membersof the faculty at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI.
Warfighting communities provide officers with the necessary skills to operate weapon systems and cultivate their experience to lead in combat, but once junior officers are promoted to higher ranks, they often lack the abilities required of senior national security professionals. Joint professional military education (JPME) plays a deliberate and pivotal role in an officer’s operational and strategic growth. This growth is essential for the Department of War’s development and management of the joint force, not only in building strategic aptitude but also in enabling officers to engage effectively with civilian leaders across the national security system.
The joint force’s senior national security professionals hold critical leadership responsibilities in strategy development and operational planning. As active participants in civil-military relations, they synthesize political objectives, military capabilities, and interagency tools into coherent strategies and plans that advance national interests. These responsibilities require more than operational experience—they demand a deep understanding of strategy development, planning methodologies, and the broader policymaking context in which national security decisions are made. This is where JPME plays a vital role. It provides a structured environment for officers to develop the intellectual agility, critical thinking, and collaborative skills necessary to lead complex decisionmaking at headquarters preparing for the future battlefield. By exposing leaders to differing perspectives, historical case studies, policy-relevant simulations, and wargames, JPME prepares them to serve at higher headquarters throughout the Department of War.
Developing Leaders as Thinkers
Translating broad strategic guidance into employable strategies and executable plans requires both assessing the international security environment and analyzing domestic policymaking system constraints. Simply put, national interests and strategic objectives are not enough to guide national security planning. Instead, leaders and their staffs require methodologies to make sense of two complex environments simultaneously: the international security environment and the domestic policymaking environment.
Today’s officers need intellectual depth and agility more than ever. Active and critical thinking is essential for strategists and planners. They must be able to develop a deep understanding of operational context amid evolving policy and security landscapes. Strategic thinking is rarely intrinsic, so JPME institutions develop it deliberately through realistic educational scenarios. JPME plays a key role in conditioning cognitive muscles through reading, analyzing, discussing, and writing. Simply put, JPME is boot camp for the mind.
In-residence JPME leads officers to a better understanding of the profession of arms and their relationship with the civilian policymakers who control the military. Although military officers appreciate the Clausewitzian dictum that war is politics with1 other means, they instinctively avoid anything that seems political. Senior military leaders have largely evolved beyond Samuel P. Huntington’s view that civilian and military leaders reside in two separate camps. However, this perception predominates among junior officers entering JPME programs. Subscribing to a simple view of civil-military relations that separates the two camps, these junior officers want civilian leaders to provide defined objectives and allow military leaders to develop plans with desired end states. As the Naval War College’s Lindsay Cohn has written, “Politics and policymaking are never that simple or clear-cut.”2
Indeed, military planning across civil-military lines customarily is characterized by imperfect understanding from both sides. On the civilian side, policymakers sometimes do not know what the military can and cannot accomplish, often believing that multiple low-level tactical successes will guarantee achieving high-level strategic ends.3 Further, they may not recognize that the military does much more than “fight wars.”4 In fact, its operations in steady-state environments—long before a crisis is brewing—are marked by deterring adversaries, reassuring allies, and enabling partners to reduce security deficits as a tool of foreign policy. On the military side, officers frequently underestimate the difficulty of obtaining agreement across the interagency community with regard to policy. Summarized by the adage “No plan survives first contact,” the process in reality includes iterations and revisions with civilian policymakers as partners. Additionally, military plan development must account for what risk the executive branch can tolerate and what costs the legislative branch can resource, and those restraints often are not articulated until after military leaders submit their plan for review.
By building a richer appreciation for these aspects of civil-military relations, officers will take part more effectively in the national security system. Bridging this gap requires not only critical thinking but also an institutional setting where theory meets practice. This is where in-residence JPME becomes indispensable—not merely as a means of developing individual strategic acumen, but also as a venue for national security professionals to engage with their peers from across the interagency community.
The National Security Affairs Tradition in Newport
The Naval War College’s Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote more than a century ago that, although the direction of national policy is properly set by statesmen, political questions “are also among the data which the strategist, naval as well as land, must consider.” Mahan explicitly renounced the notion that “politics are of no professional concern to military [officers],” which he observed “once was so traditional in the navy that it might be called professional.”5 Ultimately, Mahan embraced the assessment of his contemporary Otto von Bismarck that politics encompasses the “art of the possible” and must concern itself with the allocation of scarce resources to defined priorities.6 Naval War College students have long carried on the tradition of examining international affairs through the lens of national interests and the policymaking that defines them.
Today, the Naval War College’s Nikolas K. Gvosdev and Derek S. Reveron continue this approach to studying national security affairs.7 This approach incorporates contemporary critical issues—such as strategic competition, geoeconomics, and regional challenges—and uses an ends-ways-means framework recognizable by any joint or navy staff worldwide.8 Students study how the United States develops strategy and uses it to create specified concepts (that is, how to achieve those objectives), while assessing the capabilities needed to implement that strategy.9
This approach stresses that a comprehensive education in national security affairs must acknowledge that a well-crafted security strategy is meaningless if not informed by the domestic policymaking system that develops and resources it. Students examine how strategy development within the domestic policymaking system occurs in executive- and legislative-branch institutions that compete for influence and resources. In doing so, they identify the friction points where strategy meets reality. Employing modern theories of policy analysis, this approach juxtaposes strategy development with defense policymaking. It seeks to answer the questions “How does policy originate?” and “How does the policymaking system influence strategy development?” For national security professionals, these analyses are inseparable.
Policy analysis requires students to consider influences including political agendas, personalities, rivalries, bureaucratic interests, the media, legislative input, and outside advocates and lobbyists. It strips away the language of serving vital national interests to consider Robert Putnam’s “two-level game,” where
at the national level, domestic groups pursue their interests by pressuring the government to adopt favorable policies, and politicians seek power by constructing coalitions among those groups. At the international level, national governments seek to maximize their own abilities to satisfy domestic pressures, while minimizing adverse consequences of foreign developments.10
Officers may want their plans and strategies to be free from politics, but civilian leaders set national objectives. To be sure, those leaders (1) obtained their positions through democratic political elections, (2) represent civilian control of the military, and (3) expect the military to develop plans and strategies in line with their national objectives.11 Suffice it to say, strategic planning cannot remain entirely free from political factors.
This approach joins together an understanding of America’s security role in the world with an understanding of how the U.S. government makes defense policy decisions. In doing so, students learn that strategic considerations are not enough to explain, or anticipate, defense policy—domestic policymaking constraints must be considered as well. For example, in developing warfighting strategy, strategists can explain why the United States attacked Afghanistan in 2001, but without examining the domestic policymaking system and bureaucratic politics, they cannot explain why the United States remained in Afghanistan for 20 years despite not achieving its objectives. In developing grand strategy, strategists hear multiple administrations prioritize shifting resources to countering China in the western Pacific, but without considering domestic policymaking factors, strategists struggle to rationalize sustained investment of resources in the Middle East. In developing Service strategy, strategists can articulate a future naval force structure needed to execute the national military strategy over the next 30 years, but without understanding the domestic policymaking context, they cannot explain why this century’s shipbuilding plans have been unrealized.12
For military officers charged with providing advice and options to senior decisionmakers, a thorough understanding of the policy process enables them to generate options that are realistic and based on the policymaking environment. The notion that there is an ideal “strategic” option that somehow sits above the realities of policy decisionmaking ignores the stubborn reality that politics, personalities, and organizational interests are part of the national security process. This perspective is neatly summarized in Marine Corps doctrine:
For United States Marines, understanding current policy relies in part on understanding the interplay between domestic politics and our enduring vital national interests. Aspects of domestic politics, like the election cycle and contemporary societal issues, affect current policy. These aspects are typically felt by Marines through such things as resourcing decisions, guidance on the composition of the force, and specific direction to focus on particular national interests or particular competitors.13
Two Sides of the National Security Coin
For those without experience in Washington witnessing the politics of democracy in practice, the national security system often seems opaque and overwhelming. Students in the Naval War College’s national security affairs courses use figure 1 as an analytical roadmap to explore this system. Centered on ends-ways-means, this roadmap empowers national security professionals to ask practical, informed questions on both sides of the national security coin: the international security environment and the domestic policy-making environment.
Students learn through these courses that strategy development and policy enactment do not occur in series. In practice, the domestic policymaking environment influences strategy develop-ment throughout the ends-ways-means process. This reality demands examination of both sides of the national security coin in parallel. When students master this skill, they are more likely to produce strategy and plans that are feasible, acceptable, and suitable.
For example, students seeking to articulate ends will be guided by the top two boxes of figure 1. From an international security environment perspective, they will ask (1) who and what constrain achievable ends in the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and National Military Strategy; and (2) what theories are most useful in predicting other states’ behavior. From a domestic policymaking environment perspective, they will ask (1) who frames the problem, and how the framing of the problem influences the desired ends; and (2) how the desired ends are affected by domestic policymaking actors, processes, and constitutional constraints.
Figure 1.
By juxtaposing these two sides of the coin, students appreciate that the likelihood of achieving articulated ends is affected by factors in both the international and domestic systems. Neither is necessarily dominant, and they can be mutually constituting. In other words, international security factors may cause domestic policymaking reactions, domestic policymaking factors may cause international security effects, and both may occur simultaneously.
As depicted in figure 1, these dynamics emerge during selection of ways and means as well. On the international side, the ways the United States uses to achieve ends, and the means selected to pursue those ways, are constrained by factors in the international security environment. On the domestic side, selecting ways and means requires an allocation of resources, which necessarily stokes competition within the domestic policymaking system. For example, when President Barack H. Obama considered the costs of continuing the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, he weighed both the economic cost of $1 trillion over a decade and the fact that it was the same as the estimated cost for his proposed health care plan.14
Finally, figure 1 illustrates that a seemingly linear ends-ways-means process is in fact circular. Once ways and means are selected and implemented, we know through practice that not all ends will be achieved because of risk injected from the international security and domestic policy environments. Students will then reassess why, and the reasons may lie on the international side, the domestic side, or both. This circular model of assessment and subsequent reassessments places the students in an important practitioner mindset. First, it makes them see the world as it is, rather than as it should be. Strategy does not unfold in a linear way; instead, both the real international environment and the real domestic policymaking environment can impede advancing national interests. Second, this framework acknowledges that real-world resource allocation is a continuous, repeating process. The executive branch and Congress have competing priorities. At times, this competition removes resources from failing initiatives, but other times, it counterintuitively sustains them.15 This model of national security decisionmaking helps students understand why and offers analytical methods to discern what likely will drive a particular outcome.
Developing Discernment
Building on this understanding of national security underscores an essential cognitive skill that underpins effective strategic thinking: the development of discernment. Like its predecessor 3030.01A, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction (CJCSI) 3030.01B, Implementing Joint Force Development and Design, calls on professional military education (PME) and JPME institu-tions to develop those who can (among other capabilities) “discern the military dimensions of national challenges.”16 Similarly, CJCSI 1800.01G, Officer Professional Military Education Policy, states that PME and JPME institutions must provide graduates who are able to discern military dimensions, characterize issues at the policy level, and recommend viable military options.17 That said, these references do not articulate what exactly officers should be able to discern, and it is rare for students to find explicit information about discernment. At the most basic level, our senior leaders demand graduates who can make sense of an increasingly complex environment, where there are no right answers and no single solutions.
Time studying in an in-residence JPME environment exposes officers to many different theories, frameworks, and tools to help discern the elements of national power in the international security environment and domestic policymaking systems. When studying national security affairs in Newport, students examine at least five perspectives of foreign policy analysis, five theories of international relations, three levels of analysis, and the concept of two-level games.18
Officers without experience in this type of complex critical thinking can become frustrated that there is no doctrinal solution for this kind of problem-solving. Similar to how the military tool of political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time (PMESII-PT) guides analysis of the operational environment, students seek doctrinal simplicity to provide answers for the strategic environment. However, complex national security analysis requires multiple ways to frame problems, assess challenges, and develop strategy and plans. Strategists must have the ability to discern the critical actors and influential factors that affect the struggle for power in international security and domestic policymaking environments. They also must be able to wrestle with the discomfort of suspending personal opinions and providing policy options with which they might not personally agree. In-residence JPME provides the education and venue for developing this discernment.
Between preparatory reading and classroom discussions, officers demonstrate discernment as a requisite skill for future national security jobs. This skill development cannot be replicated in short or asynchronous online courses. In-residence seminars allow officers to exercise discerning what is important or unimportant in national security discussions with their peers. They learn to assess what to consider and what to discard.
The classroom experience is crucial. Students will spend hundreds of hours together in small seminar groups, assembled using joint guidance from CJCSI 1800.01G. To maximize its joint quality, class composition exposes students to warfighting perspectives among their classmates—by department/agency, Service, and warfighting community—that they likely have never experienced before. Additionally, every year approximately 100 international officers come to Newport and integrate into seminars with their U.S. counterparts. Since coalition coordination is the norm in modern warfighting, this mix enables U.S. students to gain invaluable experiences cultivating relationships with allies and partners. Each student brings hands-on knowledge and insights into their community’s contributions toward national security—contributions that can be incorporated into a comprehensive security strategy that employs the total joint force. Discussing national security issues with peers and international students enables officers to appreciate how the application of force fits in the U.S. national security system and international security environment.
In a deliberate way, this approach develops warfighting discernment in each student, because officers confined to their own warfighting community are limited by its understanding of value. Mid-career officers naturally value the warfighting platforms they were taught to employ; senior officers with experience outside their warfighting communities discern when another community brings more value to the military operational environment; and senior joint-educated officers discern when other Services, departments, and agencies bring more value to the national strategic environment. This learning is foundational to JPME and an important reason why joint acculturation is the first common education standard of officer professional military education policy.19
The significance of discernment lies in its ability to show a direct connection between actions and sense-making. If staff officers lack the ability to discern the international security environment and the domestic policymaking environment, the options they propose to their commanders likely will lack the required elements of feasibility, acceptability, and suitability. Consequently, the more practice students gain in assimilating vast amounts of information through readings and discussions with their peers, the more proficient they become in giving their commanders useful recommendations that avoid inefficient staff rework.
Arming the Back Bench
At in-residence JPME programs, military officers instinctively seek relevance. Rather than simply discussing abstract academic theories, they ask how the concepts they are learning can be applied in practice. After all, they are accustomed to military training, where they learn how to do tangible things—fly planes, navigate the ocean, or conduct large-scale maneuver.
Faculty prompts like “What might be factors?” or reflected questions like “What do you see?” rarely satisfy first-term students who weigh complex national security questions like “How can we avoid escalation with China over a Taiwan Strait crisis?” or “How does emerging technology impact force development?” However, students in this dual-accredited JPME and master’s degree program quickly appreciate that they are learning new ways to think about these types of problems. In-residence JPME disabuses preconceptions that there are textbook solutions to long-standing strategic challenges, and it teaches students to think more deeply than memorizing what to think or which references to use. It helps students shift their focus from an immediate-application mindset toward considering career-long benefits of this education beyond the classroom.
When General Colin Powell spoke at the Naval War College more than two decades ago, he advised the students:
You are about at that point in your career now . . . when you have to have a better understanding of the broader context in which you are serving. When you have to have a better understanding of what is happening on the world scene. Where you need a better understanding of how politics works, of how public relations work, as to how you generate support for the armed forces of the United States. To make sure you understand the influences that are pressing on the Department and on your particular Service.
It’s important for you, at this stage in your career, to . . . have a firm grasp of the outside pressures that come to bear, the political pressures, the public relations pressures. I am still not satisfied that senior officers coming up, or officers at this level, really understand the political context and how politics works in Washington. It’s not a dirty business. It’s the business that the “good guys” upstairs put in place.
Anybody who says that politics is nasty, and military people should stay away from it, or never become a political general—don’t worry about that—you’re not going to be successful. Politics is the way the country runs; it’s the way our Founding Fathers wanted it to run. So, as you become more experienced, as you leave here and go on to jobs, start to understand the international situation a little more. Start to understand the political context in which we do our business. Start to understand the public relations and the media context in which we do our business. Because ultimately we are answerable to the American people, not by us giving speeches, but by us defending our actions to our political leaders, to those who have been elected over us, and by our explaining our actions through the media to the American people, and ultimately ensuring that we are doing what the American people wish us to do.20
And that is the real work of the Naval War College. JPME institutions like ours celebrate when alumni rise in rank to flag and general officers, but the collective national security contribution of those who serve below this rank is far more impactful. Less than 1 percent of O–6s will promote to O–7, and the other 99 percent are the staffers—long known as the “back benchers”—who prepare the work for flag and general officers. Behind every senior leader lies a larger personnel ecosystem of O–4, O–5, and O–6 back benchers who prepare their bosses to be effective decisionmakers.
In today’s world, flag officers are pulled in so many directions, and are managing so many portfolios, that they do not have the bandwidth to develop strategic plans from scratch. They depend on educated, thinking strategists and planners to bring them well-developed options with well-articulated risks. This delegation of responsibility enables the executive to decide efficiently before moving on to the next portfolio decision. This is where the Department of War’s investment in JPME institutions really pays dividends.
In-residence JPME institutions maintain a storied history of graduates going on to achieve flag or general rank. But outside the senior officer spotlight of congressional hearings or meetings in the White House Situation Room, other JPME graduates will work from the back bench, preparing information papers and decision briefs, facilitating relationships with civilian leaders and their staffs, and answering congressional inquiries.21 Some of these staffers are future flag or general officers themselves, but most are hardworking national security professionals in the most productive assignments of their 20-year military careers. Developing proficient strategies and plans from the back bench does not come with the cachet of flag rank, but that is what nearly all JPME graduates will do.
This is the essence of in-residence JPME programs—building national security teams that work tirelessly around the globe to further the Nation’s interests. Their work at higher echelons is more complex than pairing resources to demands. They must weigh constraints and risk in both the international security and domestic policy environments, discerning the critical actors and influential factors. Photographs capture for history the principals around the table, but success or failure depends on the unsung staff work behind those leaders. In-residence JPME institutions arm these officers for this critical responsibility. JFQ
Notes
1 James Holmes states that “politics by other means” is a mistranslation and the accurate translation would be “politics with other means.” James R. Holmes, “Everything You Know about Clausewitz Is Wrong,” The Diplomat, November 12, 2014, https://thediplomat.com/2014/11/everything-you-know-about-clausewitz-is-wrong/.
2 Lindsay P. Cohn, “Political Realism and Civil-Military Relations: Clausewitz and the Meaning of War,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Political Realism, ed. Miles Hollingsworth and Robert Schuett (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 75.
3 Janine Davidson, “Explaining the Broken Dialogue,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 1 (2013): 129–45, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43286700.
4 Derek S. Reveron, Exporting Security: International Engagement, Security Cooperation, and the Changing Face of the U.S. Military, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016).
5 Alfred Thayer Mahan, Naval Strategy Compared and Contrasted with the Principles and Practice of Military Operations on Land (Boston: Little, Brown, 1918), 107.
6 Bismarck’s dispatches from the Frankfurt Diet, quoted in William C. Martel, Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for An Effective American Foreign Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 35.
7 Nikolas K. Gvosdev and Derek S. Reveron, “Geography, Bureaucracy, and National Security: The New Map,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, July 20, 2023, https://www.fpri.org/article/2023/07/geography-bureaucracy-and-national-security-the-new-map/.
8 For purposes of this article, reference to Naval War College students refers to mid-level and senior level military officers, select civilian students from various government agencies, and international military officers. Joint planning is the deliberate process of determining how to implement strategic guidance: how (the ways) to use military capabilities (the means) in time and space to achieve objectives (the ends) within an acceptable level of risk.” See Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2024). See also John Spencer and Liam Collins, “What Is Strategy in War?,” Small Wars Journal, May 9, 2025, https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/09/what-is-strategy-in-war/.
9 Derek S. Reveron et al., “Competing Regionally: Developing Theater Strategy,” Joint Force Quarterly, no. 104 (1st Quarter 2022): 48–62, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2884235/competing-regionally-developing-theater-strategy/.
10 Robert Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 434, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706785.
11 Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “Should Military Officers Study Policy Analysis?,” Joint Force Quarterly, no. 76 (4th Quarter 2014): 30–34, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/ News-Article-View/Article/577585/should-military-officers-study-policy-analysis/; Jessica D. Blankshain, “A Primer on US Civil–Military Relations for National Security Practitioners,” Wild Blue Yonder, July 6, 2020, 1–30, https://web.archive.org/web/20250209092502/https://media.defense.gov/2020/Jul/07/2002449936/-1/-1/1/blankshain.pdf.
12 Since the beginning of this century, the Navy has submitted to Congress so-called “30-Year Shipbuilding Plans” that respectively have established goals of constructing a Navy consisting of 308, 313, 355, and 381 ships. In August 2003, the Navy fell below 300 ships and has remained between 270 and 300 ships since, with 296 ships at the beginning of 2025. Ronald O’Rourke, Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2025), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL32665.
13 Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1-4, Competing (Washington, DC: Headquarters Marine Corps, 2020), 2–3, https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCDP%201-4.pdf.
14 Peter Baker, “How Obama Came to Plan for ‘Surge’ in Afghanistan,” New York Times, December 5, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/world/asia/06reconstruct.html.
15 For example, see Robert Komer’s humbling lessons from Vietnam. Robert W. Komer, Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1972), https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R967.html.
16 CJSCI 3030.01A, Implementing Joint Force Development and Design (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, October 2022), https://web.archive.org/web/20230102085035/https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Library/Instructions/CJCSI%203030.01A.pdf; CJSCI 3030.01B, Implementing Joint Force Development and Design (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, July 2025), https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Library/Instructions/CJCSI%203030.01B.pdf.
17 CJCSI 1800.01G, Officer Professional Military Education Policy (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2024), https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Library/Instructions/CJCSI%201800.01G.pdf.
18 See National Security Affairs syllabi at https://www.usnwc.edu/Faculty-and-Departments/Academic-Departments/National-Security-Affairs-Department.html.
19 CJCSI 1800.01G, A-C-1.
20 Colin S. Powell, “The Triangle Analogy,” excerpt of an address given at the Naval War College, Newport, RI, June 6, 1990.
21 For examples of high-profile testimony, see Jessica D. Blankshain et al., “Called to Testify: Congressional Oversight of the Armed Forces,” Texas National Security Review 8, no. 2 (2025): 75–96, https://tnsr.org/2025/03/called-to-testify-congressional-oversight-of-the-armed-forces/.