School for Grand Strategy

In the study room assigned to him at the National War College, an Air Force colonel stared glumly one day last August at the pile of books he had drawn out of the college library only a few hours after reporting for duty. The books were on history, sociology and economics--quite a shock for an officer who, a few days before, had been leading jet bombers across the Atlantic at 40,000 ft. as commander of a SAC B-47 squadron. "Has the Pentagon gone off its rocker?'' the colonel asked a classmate. "What the hell are we supposed to be doing here?"

By last week the colonel had other ideas about his assignment. Now in its tenth year, the National War College at Ford Lesley McNair in southwest Washington, D.C. has trained 997 promising officers and civilian officials. Though little known outside of Government circles, NWC is in its own way one of the most vital schools of higher learning in the U.S.

Top Secret. The school grew out of a complaint made by General Henry ("Hap") Arnold during World War II. Too many officers, Airman Arnold said, know too little about the needs of the other services. In 1943, the Government set up an Army-Navy staff college to help the two services understand each other better. In 1943-45, Washington brass began to think it might be a good idea if the services and the State Department also understood each other better. In 1946 they set up the present National War College (named by then Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower), "concerned with grand strategy and the utilization of the natural resources necessary to implement that strategy, [whose] graduates will exercise a great influence on . . . national and foreign policy in both peace and war."

The college's 132 students average 43 years of age. All have top-secret clearance; all are in line to assume important positions of command. The Army and Air Force have 34 men each, the Navy 26, Marine Corps 7, the State Department 18, Defense and USIA 3 apiece. Other students come from the Coast Guard, Commerce, Treasury, CIA, the Bureau of the Budget. All students wear civilian clothes on the theory that uniforms and emblems of rank create false barriers.

Russia's Viewpoint. NWC's 17 regular instructors (five Air Force, four Army, three Navy, one Marine, four civilians) use no set textbooks, give no marks. For part of the time, students are divided into six-man to eight-man study committees, are rotated into new committees every four weeks. Each committee takes up a hypothetical problem, researches it, discusses it, then draws up "position papers" for the U.S. and its allies. Sample problem: "The time is May 1956. The U.S.S.R. sends simultaneous notes to the U.S., France and Britain proposing the immediate unification of Germany with some degree of militarization. Assignment : prepare position papers for the U.S., France and Germany." Another hypothetical question: What should the U.S. do in case "volunteers" in Indo-China suddenly sweep across the 17th parallel in Viet Nam? Or, swinging around to figure Soviet strategic thinking: What should the U.S.S.R. do in light of Red China's growing power?

Few colleges can boast the type of guest lecturer that the NWC can command, e.g., Vice President Nixon on foreign policy, Lebanon's Charles Malik on the Middle East, Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce on U.S. policy toward Italy. Between lectures and seminars, NWC students must also prepare annual theses of 6,000 to 12,000 words on such subjects as "Racial Factors in International Relations" or "The Korean Armistice and Its Consequences." Then during their last weeks they reach the climax of the term: each student gets a 23-day field trip to Europe, or Asia, or South America, or the Middle East to talk to local military and political leaders. When the students return, each presents to the class a final briefing on what he has seen and heard.

Of the 297 Army men who have graduated from NWC, 161 are now generals. The State Department's graduates include Ambassadors Max Bishop (Thailand), John M. Cabot (Sweden) and Robert McClintock (Cambodia). But more important than any individual success story is the fact that hundreds of officers and officials in the different services have learned something about working together. As one Army colonel put it last week: "Before I came here, I used to see State Department papers that conflicted with what I thought should be done on a particular problem. I'd get impatient. I'd say, 'What's the matter with those jerks?' Well, I've been sitting in groups and committees and riding in car pools with State guys, listening to them and arguing with them. I can appreciate their problems, and I guess they know I have some too. I won't rage at them in the future. I know they're trying to do the same thing I am--help this country."

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