Before all of the Navy's top performers start calling their favorite JAG let me explain.
The Navy does not send its best officers to the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. As a student and later as deputy director for the Navy Element at CGSC from 2000 to 2004, I learned first hand about who the Navy sends-basically anyone they can get to go. This does not mean a few good men and women do not make it into the course every year. But most of the Navy folks who do get sent suspect they are not among "the best." Some recent classes included several passed-over lieutenant commanders who attended the course only to retire not long afterward.
The Navy has had egg on its face when it came to having enough qualified joint specialty officers (JSO) in the promotion pool for flag. The college is the first step toward JSO, but if only average and below-average performers go there it does nothing for the long-term health of the Navy and gives us a black eye in Congress and with the Defense Department.
Meanwhile, the world and the other services send the best they have. The staff college usually has between 90 and 110 officers from more than 70 countries annually attending the course. They are integrated into every staff group (seminar). These officers are the best their nations have to offer. David Tevzadze, a Georgian officer, rose to become Minister of Defense of that country five years after graduating. When 9/11 occurred and we needed to work with Pakistan for overflight and other issues, the relationships several of our senior officers cultivated with their Pakistani counterparts during their student days at Leavenworth came into play.
As for the other services, they have always used in-residence attendance at intermediate level service college (ILC), including CGSC, as a discriminator for promotion. It is the rare Air Force major who does not make lieutenant colonel after having attended the staff college. As for the Army, its new policy is to give every major "in-resident quality" ILC-they send their best, along with everyone else in their operations fields.
Obviously, there are a number of benefits of having the top leaders of the Navy cultivate extra-service professional and personal relationships at an earlier point in their careers. First and foremost would be the practical benefit of having our leaders educated earlier in their careers while at the same time establishing bonds and relationships that will serve them well in the joint and multinational environments that are the norm today. There are also the less tangible benefits of having our future senior leaders learn about other service or national cultures.
Are there drawbacks? The response we always received when dealing with Navy Military Personnel Command about our quotas was that it was hard to get officers ashore-even for the year that CGSC takes. This complaint no longer holds water-if it ever did. The notion that the Navy cannot afford to send 44 of its best and brightest every year would make the founders of the Naval War College scratch their chins in wonder.
The second complaint is that an academic tour, no matter how short, has a negative influence on promotion due to "not observed" fitness reports. Hmmm, if you send the lower 50% then you are not going to get stellar rates-a self-fulfilling prophecy. Besides, officers are often sent to the Pentagon or shore staff to "kill time" while awaiting promotion to commander, which can be as much a danger to their careers because of what I call the "new guy" effect. Sometimes those "new guy" fitreps can be far bigger career-killers than the not observed variety.
I am not proposing an increase of overall year group detailing, just filling CGSC billets with our best-say from the top one third. These courses are a must for the future of the Navy. If we make these tours more attractive, many of our detailing problems will solve themselves. Then, someone like Rear Admiral Mike Lefever, who is currently heading relief efforts in Pakistan/Southwest Asia, when meeting his coalition and service counterparts, could say, "Hey, remember that year at Leavenworth in Staff Group 13 . . . ?"
Commander Kuehn teaches military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He is currently writing his dissertation to complete a Ph.D. from Kansas State University.