A Practical Guide to Design: A Way to Think About It, and a Way to Do it

摘要

Military Command Is difficult. This difficulty arises in part because the commander's operational environment renders near-complete understanding and prediction impossible. Yet understanding and prediction of a kind are necessary. Since the commander's lethal and cooperative work occurs in a socio-political and ethical context, he must understand a complex mix of military and nonmilitary factors and visualize how his units' and other actors' interventions will play out. It follows that commanders face the same challenges that vexed political theorists from Socrates to Machiavelli to Marx and statesmen from Caesar to Madison to Obama. Military commanders, like political theorists and statesmen, need political judgment to interpret and intervene in the world.