Irregular Warfare Education “A Lifelong Process”

Checker games are short, and although they do require a strategy the complexity in contrast with chess is incomparable. The complication of nine games of chess is significant, but if your peer competitor plays “Go” (Henry Kissinger), we now have game board disconnect.  How does the Department of Defense prepare strategic and operational level thinkers to link these board games and win? Can policy makers even define what winning is? The education process to enable successful Irregular Warfare (IW) campaigning is lengthy and does not fit into the traditional professional military education model, it is an iterative lifelong learning process that combines several pillars: a unique pedagogy, didactic, methodology, a form of classical liberal arts education, self-study, and experience. Those fundamentals foundations provide the skills to think, plan, and execute in the realm of IW campaigning.