Since the Vietnam War, the US Army has struggled with deep cultural issues that have impacted the ability of its leadership to think strategically. In the years following its defeat in Vietnam, the army reestablished its cultural foundations by revamping its doctrine, training, recruiting, professional military education, and equipment with a singular focus on conventional combat. These advances, along with development of advanced information systems and guided munitions, led to victory in the Gulf War, but blinded army leaders as to the larger realm of warfare. The invasion of Iraq seemed wildly successful initially, but senior policy makers assumed peace would follow and turn battlefield triumph into political success. When instead the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq morphed into guerrilla struggles, army leaders were at a loss. Since then, the army has undergone a renaissance of sorts, creating new doctrine and organizations for counterinsurgency warfare and retraining its members to adapt to irregular conflict. It remains to be seen whether these innovations will be permanent, or if the army will slide back into the culturally ingrained mind-set that the only wars worth fighting are large, conventional conflicts. Culture evolves slowly; it remains to be seen whether the army can overcome its anti-intellectual, heroic mind-set in favor of a more balanced mentality.

Culture is a key determinant in organizational effectiveness and plays an enormous role in the lives of military organizations. Cultural biases often result in unstated assumptions that have a deep impact on strategy, operational planning, doctrinal creation, and organization and training of armed forces. The impact of culture on military affairs often remains opaque for years, if not decades, after the events it has affected. Leadership is essential to creating and maintaining organizational culture. Leaders who can shape an organization’s culture from its inception have an outsized influence on its future orientation. Leaders, therefore, must be discriminating when establishing the initial culture of an organization, for once embedded, that culture will prove extraordinarily difficult to change. But even superb leaders are limited. Selection of the right subordinate leaders is critical if an organization’s culture is to survive a leadership transition. Some military organizations do change, assisted by cultures that embrace innovation and a reasonable degree of risk-taking. Organizational culture takes on the characteristics of wider societal culture, but when the military becomes a caste apart, the result can be the degradation of its ethical foundations. Military organizations often have subcultures with significant influence on the larger organization. Technology-centric forces must not allow a culture focused on technological excellence to turn into one centered on technological determinism. Professional military education is critical in sustaining organizational culture.

The American Civil War presented an exceptional state of affairs in modern warfare, because strong personalities could embed their own command philosophies into field armies, due to the miniscule size of the prior US military establishment. The effectiveness of the Union Army of the Tennessee stemmed in large part from the strong influence of Ulysses S. Grant, who as early as the fall of 1861 imbued in the organization an aggressive mind-set. However, Grant’s command culture went beyond simple aggressiveness – it included an emphasis on suppressing internal rivalries among sometimes prideful officers for the sake of winning victories. In the winter of 1861 and the spring of 1862, the Army of the Tennessee was organized and consolidated into a single force, and, despite deficits in trained personnel as compared to other Union field armies, Grant established important precedents for both his soldiers and officers that would resonate even after his departure to the east. The capture of Vicksburg the following summer represented the culminating triumph of that army, cementing the self-confident force that would later capture Atlanta and win the war in the western theater.

Dissatisfaction with the Royal Navy’s World War I performance led a generation of officers to analyze the fleet’s wartime record. This analysis revealed three problems: over-centralization of authority, a reluctance to fight night actions, and an overly defensive use of destroyers. In an effort to correct these issues, the Royal Navy made changes to its doctrine, training, and professional military education that improved the Navy’s World War II performance, especially in surface warfare. Reforms flowed from a variety of sources, including First Sea Lord Adm. David Beatty, contributors to the Naval Review, and Mediterranean Fleet exercise. The interwar reforms reflected an organizational culture that pursued improvement and learning in response to the perception that in World War I, the Navy failed to live up to historical standards of success.

From 1914 through 1945, the British Army displayed extraordinary heroism on the sharp end, while leadership at the higher levels was less than satisfactory. To a considerable extent, this was a result of a peculiar regimental culture that had developed over the nineteenth century when the army served as a constabulary force with its regiments spread across the empire. The result was a military culture that focused downward and that devalued the serious study of war as crucial to the development of military professionalism. The result was that at the sharp end, British regiments produced extraordinary brave and tough soldiers. However, at the higher levels, British generalship was less than impressive. The two exceptions to that rule, Field Marshals William Slim and Bernard Law Montgomery, spent substantial portions of their careers during the interwar period either as students or as instructors at the staff colleges. Moreover, both were serious students of military history.