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“Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house — the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.”
— Benjamin Britten, composer
When Rear Adm. Phil Wisecup described the difficulty military strategists face in looking into the future, he cited neither George Patton, George Washington nor George Armstrong Custer.
He instead alluded to composer Benjamin Britten’s remarks about music emerging in his mind like a house in the fog.
That’s not surprising from a man who holds three graduate degrees, including one from the University of Strasbourg, France, Institute for Advanced European Studies, where he was an Olmstead Scholar.
And it offers a peek through the fog of misconception to the level of sophistication of the teaching and research going on at the Naval War College (NWC), of which Wisecup is the 52nd president.
Rather than a video-game-style focus on technology and tactical weaponry, Wisecup said, the school focuses on more basic and fundamental things.
“We’re talking about how nations go to war, the theory of why nations go to war — case studies and history going back to the Peloponnesian War,” he said.
“We study why people act the way they do. We also look at large organizations” — such as governments — and how they carry out their work, Wisecup said.
If it’s not what people expect of the military, he said. “It’s what taxpayers ought to expect — that their naval officers bring a level of sophistication” to the work of defending the country.
Richness a surprise
Despite having received his own degree from the Naval War College in 1998, Wisecup said that on becoming president Nov. 6, 2008 — a year ago this coming Friday — “the revelation to me was the variety and the richness of activities going on.”
In the past few months the NWC has:
• Co-hosted a program on piracy on the seas with the Atlantic Council, which promotes the United States cooperation with transatlantic allies.
• Hosted the International Seapower Symposium, bringing together representatives of more than 100 world navies.
• Held an Artic conference examining possibilities and problems that may emerge in maritime security as the polar ice cap melts.
• Brought together experts in what’s called irregular warfare, fighting armed groups that differ from traditional armies.
Among the other projects of major import at the NWC is its China Maritime Studies Institute’s work on the implications of that country’s growing influence on the sea.
In a speech to the Atlantic Council, Wisecup said cooperation with a wide range of outside groups “conforms to my idea of linking the intellectual capabilities in Newport with the greater international security community.”
Academic with a twist
Wisecup said in a telephone interview the college “really is an academic environment” — one that now has more than 60 percent civilian faculty, and one that’s particularly interesting.
“I had faculty over in Afghanistan this summer in support of our commanders,” he said.
The faculty also reach many more students through a distance-learning program available online.
Whatever the faculty’s strengths, Wisecup said “faculty have told me we’re unique because of the student body.”
Many students come to campus after two or three tours of duty in Afghanistan or Iraq. “They’re coming from the front lines, and they know what they’re trying to get done here,” Wisecup said.
Because they bring points of view with them based on experience, “I love to sit in on the classes,” Wisecup said. “It’s riveting sometimes.”
The students and faculty become “the flint and the steel” that come together to spark discussion. “Then when you throw in international students,” it gets even more interesting, he said.
In an era when cooperation and integration of the forces is being stressed, about half of each year’s students come from outside the Navy, Wisecup said, and a fair number from overseas.
The student body composition is designed to build relationships as well as knowledge so that people in different branches of the United States military or in military services abroad will know one another when they make contact again.
As Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughhead said in a recent speech, “you can’t surge trust.”
Nor is it possible to surge the kind of influential people working in the field who are graduates of the NWC.
Wisecup noted such alumni as Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who replaced Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq; Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan; and Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
Help in the fog
In his speech on the NWC’s 125th anniversary, Wisecup said the college’s mission is “about looking ahead, developing ideas for what the Navy and our military should be doing in response to threats or problems we don’t even know exist yet.”
To that end, he added, “It’s about developing our people, producing leaders with a broad education, habits of thought and the ability to critically analyze ambiguous problems and recommend what should be done.”
Asked what he thinks he brings to that mission, Wisecup answered, “my curiosity.”
“My contribution is trying to enable the faculty to give the kind of instruction and lead this critical thinking and to inspire our researchers to go that extra mile to think about things that others aren’t thinking about.”
Wisecup’s biggest worry in the job is one shared by anyone venturing into the fog of the unknown: “What are we missing?”
“The good news,” he said, “is I’ve got lots of help here.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.
“They’re coming from the front lines, and they know what they’re trying to get done here.”
Rear Adm. Phil Wisecup
52nd president Naval War College
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