“The problem is to see not what is desirable, or nice, or politically feasible, but what is necessary.” – T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War
Fehrenbach, as usual, has it right. Those examining the purpose of the Academies will profit by revisiting Fehrenbach’s masterful discussion of the kind of military we need to defend a democratic society. Here, I want to use necessity to place the purpose our Academies serve in America in conversation with the rights of cadets as citizens. If education is a primary good of our lives, what justifies curtailing a cadet’s education in the name of America’s defense? To my mind, this is a first order question in any discussion of what kind of Academy America should have. Sometimes, I will argue, what is good for the state may have to come second to the rights it exists to protect and those it must respect.
I plan to argue that necessity suggests at least two important points in the context of our question above: First, with a prospective cadet’s right to an education in view, the current push to narrow, or eliminate, liberal education courts a charge of exploitation. Second, while necessity may allow us to set aside important rights and thus avoid concerns about exploitation, it does not apply in the present case. In fact, the suggestion that it might misunderstands what necessity requires. Far from being a luxury we cannot afford, liberal arts education develops the intellectual flexibility essential for winning wars and securing just peace.
Citizens have a fundamental right to full education. Whatever value it provides the state, education remains something we choose for ourselves and our children because it is an intrinsically valuable part of human flourishing. If this is true, then requiring people to set this good aside as a condition of service to the state runs the risk of exploitation – of wrongfully profiting the state while depriving one of its citizens of a primary moral good. This means we need a weighty moral reason to place on the scale and one might point to consent. That is, since cadets consent to the deal on offer, their consent relieves us of the charge of exploitation. However, I doubt this holds because the deal, akin to other recruitment strategies, plays quite directly on their vulnerabilities – vulnerabilities often ameliorated by a liberal education. So, let’s move to the other moral reasons that are likely top of mind – those arising from the requirements of fighting a just war in defense of a legitimate state.
I think many will agree with me that the just defense of a legitimate state provides a weighty moral reason that alleviates concerns about exploitation. Suppose this is right, surely the weight of these moral reasons are not absolute. That is, the moral weight of national defense cannot justify any sacrifice we choose to impose. As a matter of justice, the moral reasons that arise from our obligations to defend the state are constrained by, among other things, necessity.
There are two aspects of necessity that I find relevant, and concerning, to the present discussion: imminence and victory. First, is the idea of imminence. I would argue that for such moral reasons to have reality in our decision-making, the threat of unjust harm a state faces must be ready at hand and nearly existential. Even the worst-case scenarios, including a conflict with China in 2027, fall short of imminent threats of existential unjust harm to my mind. The precedent here is instructive. During World War II, West Point compressed cadet timelines and coursework. Cadets lost things like summer leave and saw their humanities classes focused and compressed. But, tellingly, retained. One can rightly view the threat of China, and other 21st Century security threats, and still reasonably doubt we have, at hand, an imminent threat of unjust existential harm.
Suppose I am wrong, and it is the case that our collective security threats do rise to threats of unjust existential harms. We still have to requirements of victory. I think revising and limiting liberal arts education fails the conditions of necessity for at least two more reasons associated with victory. On the one hand, we have options. Historical precedence is again instructive. We can keep a full education and meet the threat by compressing the curriculum before we remove it. On the other hand, victory is why we are all here and the form of education matters. If cadets are to fight just wars and win them, they need more than technical skills. A liberal education—literary criticism, foreign languages, and an unvarnished account of American history—forms minds capable of empathy, adaptability, and strategic imagination.
To wage a just war is not to annihilate the enemy but to seek a better peace. That requires understanding adversaries in their own terms and imagining ends that transcend mere destruction. Exposure to diverse traditions and uncomfortable truths nurtures such intellectual agility. History reminds us that Athens fell at Aegospotami despite its proud naval tradition, and Sparta later lost at Leuctra despite its vaunted military culture. Both suffered from intellectual arrogance that contributed to their demise. Victory often goes to those with intellectual flexibility and openness to new ways of war.
The point I am suggesting here finds common purpose with the old saw that a sure path to defeat in the next war is preparing for the last. Exposure to other ways of thinking – however alien – and other perspectives on history – however painful to our collective pride – are instructive in the ways of victory. Even more so for a victory in a just war that will remain just in its conduct. In a just war, we kill some to influence others. Namely, the enemy and their leaders. The point of a just war is not elimination of the other, but a better state of peace between we and they. To imagine, as a matter of strategy and state craft, an end that might lead to that better state of peace and communicate to our enemy in terms that matter to them requires the sort of flexibility of mind that comes by way of the most liberal of educations.
So, necessity offers an answer to those who argue that our national defense overrides a cadet’s right to a full education. Education is constitutive of victory, not opposed to it. Even in total war, West Point preserved its humanities curriculum. Moreover, technical skills and tactics alone will not suffice. War is not only a technical contest; it is a contest of wills, ideas, and legitimacy. Officers who lack breadth of mind may be tactically competent yet strategically brittle.
The kind of academy we build reflects the kind of nation we are. Nations and states are not intrinsically good; they deserve loyalty only insofar as they protect and respect rights. If cadets must forego elements of a full education, it should be for weighty moral reason, and support victory in the next war by producing leaders capable of justice as well as victory. We must educate future officers not merely to fight wars, but to understand what kind of war has come to their hands—and to win it in accordance with justice. The academy worthy of a rights-respecting nation is one that equips its leaders with both technical competence and the intellectual breadth to achieve a just peace.
Dr. Bob Underwood is a philosopher and retired U.S. Army Colonel ( Bob Underwood LinkedIn ). The views expressed are his own.
1 Of course, the content of that education is up for debate, and I will not enter it here. I have in mind something like a traditional liberal-arts education that, among other things, equips one to think critically about the right, the good, the beautiful, the true, the real, and situate oneself into that conception.
2 Research conducted with Chat-GPT. U.S. National Archives. Records of the United States Military Academy (RG 404): Records of the Academic Board, 1818–1973. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. Available at: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/404.html.