On top of that, senior leaders are rotated quite often, further disrupting policy implementation. Then there is the change-over in national leadership and corresponding changes in policy, objectives, and prioritization of resources. Theorists, academics, and idealists can opine all they want about mastering narratives, cultural awareness, and human terrain. But the realities of cultures that stretch back centuries and value systems that have been shaped and solidified by wholly different contexts create current realities that confound theories every time.

We may want military forces to be able to reshape other peoples into pseudo-Americans. But that is something for which military power is generally ill-suited. Moreover, our nation is disinclined to devote the requisite time, resources, and necessary methods. Military forces can create security conditions within which other efforts can be made, but the “space” created is temporary unless the condition being replaced has been comprehensively overturned, as happened at the close of World War II.

The military services—and the Army in particular—need to return to the enduring lessons of warfare and about warfare ably captured by a long line of authors from Thucydides, Clausewitz, and Fehrenbach to Churchill, Keegan, West, and Hanson. Each service plays a critical role in securing U.S. national interests and not at the expense of each other. They should find confidence and justification in this but it does require understanding and accepting the reality of the world in which they operate. It also requires self-discipline—to keep from getting lost in the fog of fuzzy thinking.

The Army and its sister services should focus their efforts on competency in combat and solving real-world problems they have encountered or expect to encounter (urban operations, leveraging/countering the proliferation of unmanned systems, and accounting for the disruptions likely to be caused by cyber warfare are good places to start). In assessing the relevance of business models and academic theories to military affairs and idealistic notions on conflict resolution, they should retain a healthy skepticism.

And when it comes to telling their stories, especially to obtain key resources like funding, each service should focus its efforts on the relatively few people that matter: the Service Secretaries, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, and key members of Congress (those serving on the Armed Services, Appropriations, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence committees).

War—a violent conflict among and between peoples—has a tenacious consistency stretching back to the origins of Man. The character of warfare evolves continuously on the edges, but its fundamental nature remains true to its immutable core. This should lead modern-day warriors to be circumspect—especially when they are considering tossing centuries of experience out the window in favor of the alluring promise of transformative, leap-ahead, game-changing, and revolutionary technological solutions.

Dakota L. Wood is the Senior Research Fellow for Defense Programs in The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy Studies.

Image: US Army Staff Sergeant Pablo N. Piedra