It is the hour of need, faced with the dire prospect of being removed from the face of the earth that creates the catalyst to change and adapt to overcome our enemy. However not all militaries successfully transform to overcome their adversaries capabilities or advantages. The ability to successfully transform a military to win conflicts comes from two things, military leadership and the military culture created by the leadership.
It is when culture and the correct leadership combine that there is a potential to create enlightenment within a culture and you see willingness and desire for improvement to enable transformation of a military to successfully respond to and overcome an enemy’s effort against them.
To understand the “enlightened military culture” I write about in this paper, I refer to the definition of culture to better explain what I envision when I state military culture is the primary reason for any given military to adapt and transform successfully to overcome a foe’s challenge.
Culture is the “predominating attitudes and behaviors that characterize the functioning of a group and or organization”. To hone in on the essence of what culture can be, I include the following clarification of what can happen within a culture when the conditions are right, “development of the intellect through training or education which in some cases results in enlightenment from such training or education” (Culture).
In my opening statement I also mention leadership as a critical component to creating military culture. I will not spend a lot of time on this subject but my perspective is that without leadership of any kind nothing is possible, even with leadership an enlightened military culture is not possible if it is not selfless and focused. To analogize, leadership is the soil from which all military cultures grow from.
In the most perfect conditions you develop through training and education an enlightened military culture, open to change and adaptive...