Introduction
Military organizations that succeed in innovation can acquire decisive advantages in war (Murray & Millett, 1996; Finkel, 2011; Krepinevich, 2023; Luttwak & Shamir, 2023). Arguably, Ukraine’s resistance against Russian aggression would have been difficult to sustain without such innovation (Jones, et.al., 2023). Considering these high stakes, it is unsurprising that military organizations spend billions in peacetime on organizational reforms, educational reforms, setting up war colleges, and funding research. However, Western military organizations have frequently been criticized for their inability to innovate and to learn and adapt swiftly to changing circumstances (Rosen, 1991; Farrell & Terriff, 2002; Nagl, 2002; Lock-Pullan, 2005; Grissom, 2006; Murray, 2011; Foley, 2014; Hill, 2015; Jensen, 2016). Why, then, do military organizations struggle to innovate despite the potentially enormous benefits?
Scholarly explanations of military failure to innovate have varied from bureaucratic inertia (Rosen, 1991), a mismatch between conceptions of military virtue and the particular nature of the innovation (Hill, 2015), lack of learning processes (Nagl, 2002), military culture (Farrell et.al., 2013), and service identity (Schneider & Macdonald, 2025), to issues of organization (Foley, 2014; Jensen, 2016), including inter-service rivalry (Builder, 1989). Although these explanations offer useful insights, they suffer from certain limitations.
First, and most importantly, while recognizing that criticism can have costs for the progress of an individual’s military career, they do not recognize the impact of a particular military knowledge ideal. Second, methodologically, this research almost exclusively draws on single case studies of innovation in the militaries of great powers. The paucity of cross-national comparative research makes it difficult to identify causal factors behind innovation.
In this article, I develop a parsimonious, complementary explanation of the failure to innovate. My argument, in short, is that a particular knowledge ideal entrenched in Western military organizations, herein named ARCH, constrains criticism and thus presents a significant obstacle to innovation. ARCH is an acronym of four interrelated biases (action, relevance, conflict, and hierarchy) that collectively operate as a meaning-making devise specifying roles and relationships between different concepts and categories of knowledge in the military domain. In doing so, ARCH disincentivizes bottom-up criticism, thus hindering alternative ideas of future war and the development of criticism as a mechanism of self-correction within military organizations. It should be pointed out that military organizations have not developed this knowledge ideal to deliberately hinder criticism and innovation. Instead, ARCH is a reflection of a particular way of understanding war that is deeply engrained in modern Western military organizations. Accordingly, criticism and innovation can be understood as collateral damage in attempts to optimize military organizations in pursuit of a particular version of war.
In order to empirically examine how military organizations relate to knowledge, I rely upon a thematic analysis of the military doctrines of the United States and Sweden in a most-different design comparative case study. If common traits can be found between these two greatly different militaries, there is reason to believe that they are shared across other Western military organizations as well. The article contributes to the field of military innovation through the development of a parsimonious, underlying explanation of military organizations’ struggles to innovate. By focusing on the understanding of knowledge, it is possible to uncover the influence of non-material factors on organizational criticism and identify structural impediments to innovation. While this does not necessarily replace existing material explanations drawing upon power relations and career opportunities within bureaucratic organizations, it complements existing explanations insofar as highlighting how knowledge ideals can influence the inner workings of military organizations.
The article proceeds as follows. First, I review military innovation studies to assess the state of knowledge. Although the field is impressive, there are still gaps in theorizing the mechanisms of bottom-up innovation, and the role of criticism especially. The second part outlines how criticism can influence military innovation. After this, I develop the research design of the study, focusing on how knowledge ideals can be embedded in doctrines. The main analytical section of the article identifies the inherent knowledge ideals of Western military organizations. In the concluding section, I elaborate on the results and discuss how criticism ought to be able to find space within military organizations without negatively affecting military effectiveness.
Why it Matters
Military innovation studies, to echo Grissom (2006), form a reasonably coherent field of inquiry seeking to solve the vexed question of why military organizations regularly fail to innovate despite plentiful evidence of its necessity. Rather than properly preparing to fight the next war, they become stale and rigid, seemingly preparing to fight the last one. As such, the field addresses a central strategic issue that has attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention, which is theoretically sophisticated and well supported by evidence.
As Grissom (2006, p. 907) points out, most scholars researching military innovation explicitly or implicitly conceptualize innovation as implying a significant change in the conduct of military operations, leading to greater military effectiveness. As such, many differentiate between the continuous day-to-day routine problem-solving and “true” innovation, where the latter signifies a more far-reaching change (Murray 2011; Jensen 2016, p. 9). By the same account, the literature is primarily concerned with cases of innovation proven to have led to higher military effectiveness. For example, the adoption of the tank and the machine gun are at the center of the literature while the adoption of, arguably, counterproductive ideas such as French operational thought in 1940 fall outside the definition of “innovation”. The literature is also fine-grained, distinguishing between the varying difficulties faced by innovation in times of peace and in times of war (see Murray & Millett, 1996; Murray, 2011). Moreover, it often disaggregates innovation, separating doctrinal from technological developments. Empirically, the field is dominated by analyses of the great powers, and in particular US cases of innovation and only rarely (for example Raska 2016) do small states feature as cases.
The overwhelming majority of research studying military innovation employ structural approaches and the central debate within this literature revolves around exactly which structural factors best explain variation in innovation. As such, external threats (Posen, 1984), inter-agency rivalries (Avant, 1994), bureaucratic inertia (Rosen, 1991), intra-organizational competition (Jensen, 2016), and military culture (Kier, 1997; Farrell & Terriff, 2002; Hill, 2015) have been suggested as explanations for the variation in outcome of innovation processes. As Grissom (2006, p. 920) points out, however, there are many cases of “bottom-up”-driven innovation that cannot be explained by the structural theories. Foley (2014) even suggests that the German tactical adaptation in the winter of 1917 before the spring offensive of 1918 occurred despite German military culture. Theory explaining the “bottom-up” pressures of military innovation, it seems, remains incomplete.
The standard organizational inertia argument in military innovation studies is straightforward. Since organizations are created to solve a particular problem and since those creating the organization do not want the problem to recur, organizations are usually “designed not to change”, as Rosen (1991, p. 2) puts it. As Jensen explains:
Big structures create deep habits. This standardization suggests modern military bureaucracies should resist change. … The modern military, like all bureaucracy, is an iron cage prone to crowding out innovation in an effort to promote efficiency and existing processes. (Jensen, 2016, p. 3)
Hamel, similarly, points to vested interests as an obstacle to innovation:
The worshipful observance of precedent is a very good thing for those who sit at the top of organizations, because precedent protects their prerogatives. It rewards the skills they’ve perfected and the knowledge they’ve required in running the old thing. (Hamel, quoted in Price, 2014, p. 130)
Innovation and criticism
When Hirschman (1970) set out his now-classic idea that individuals facing what they perceive to be oppression, injustice, or inefficiency could either choose “exit” or “voice”, he did not necessarily have the military in mind. His argument, nonetheless, is still relevant for military organizations. Exit in the form of resignation of higher officers faced with what they understand to be wrongful political decisions has been subject to considerable debate (e.g., Snider, 2017; Faever, 2017; Kohn, 2017). So, too, has cases of civilian leadership’s punishment of outright insubordination (Bessner & Lorber, 2012; Levy, 2016), and disobedience short of mutiny (Levy, 2017). The subject of voice, however, has seen less discussion. While the literature frequently equates voice with the political agenda of the military (e.g., Urben 2014), here, I consider it to be bottom-up criticism within the military.
In short, criticism increases the likelihood of innovation since it enables those thinking critically to voice their alternative option to the present order. Such alternatives cannot be identified without reflexive thinking – i.e., by being able to see and understand the foundations of present knowledge claims. By enabling critical thought and by allowing such alternatives to be voiced, criticism also impregnates the organization with a self-improving mechanism. Hence, criticism both projects alternative futures and is a tool to separate and evaluate those alternatives systematically. In this way, poor alternatives can be distinguished and discarded; while good alternatives that improve military effectiveness can be pursued. Before outlining the scope conditions of this theory, however, it is necessary to define criticism more precisely.
Criticism is derived from the Greek κρɩῑ́νω (krɩῑ́nō): to differentiate, select, judge and decide. To this day criticism “continues to refer to the art of judging” (Koselleck, 1988, p. 104). If we conceive of criticism as the practice of passing judgment, it is easy to see how it can create controversy and how criticism can be antithetical to hierarchy in organizations. In modern everyday language, criticism is the act of simply stating what is wrong or bad, i.e., generally negative comments – spontaneous, normative, even emotional. More developed forms of criticism both identify something as wrong or bad and explain why that is the case – a rudimentary form of analysis. As a literary form, critique often designates commentary (a review or appraisal) of something within one’s area of expertise, on specific topics ranging from food and wine to art. Here, critics normally use a set of rules or a schema to pass judgment. From this perspective, criticism and critique are facets of the same phenomena: at the core, both terms are examples of polemical acts directed at an object (behavior or actors) under judgment (Koselleck 1988, p. 103), each projecting or measuring something against an alternative to an existing situation.
Criticism, for the sake of this text, is considered the art or practice of examination, investigation, and evaluation. It is functionally a form of judgment on the current order or situation serving to highlight how this current state might be altered to ameliorate a perceived imperfection. This judgment may be presented in a number of different ways. It may be verbal or non-verbal; constructive or non-constructive; explicit or implicit; formal or informal. This definition does not distinguish spontaneous criticism from considered criticism. Nor does it specify if the subject of criticism is specific or abstract. Criticism should not be confused with whining or whingeing in general, nor is it a matter of being obnoxious: it is a question of proposing alternatives with argumentation drawing on evidence or logic.
Criticism as fault-finding and judgment regarding current practice or doctrine is often based on an understanding of what works (to a greater or lesser extent) and what does not. As Adamsky (2010, p. 2) points out: “The ability to diagnose and to understand the discontinuity in the nature of war – the rapid change in ways and means of fighting – is probably the most critical aspect of defense management”. More than adding value, then, critical thought and criticism is a necessity when it comes to innovation. Identifying failure is just as important as recognizing success, since failure often shows the route to improvement. Criticism is the exercise of judgment, and it enables the articulation of alternatives.
Critical thought is a necessary prerequisite for criticism. But only criticism itself has the potential to change organizations. How exactly, then, does criticism operate within the military organization, and how does it serve innovation in military organizations?
Most significantly, the extent to which the organization allows criticism is a significant indicator of when and where innovation occurs. Criticism is by definition a bottom-up mechanism – but both incentives to criticize and institutional conditions favoring criticism must be in place.
First, criticism must be encouraged, perhaps by identifying separate, but equally (or more) rewarding and prestigious career paths. The critics operate much like “norm entrepreneurs” (Bloomfield, 2016) or “programmatic actors” (Jensen, 2018) frequently becoming the chief enablers of innovative changes within their national professional communities. They interpret events, frame the discourse, and construct new consensuses. At the very least, critics should not be punished for their criticism. Bureaucracies require standardization and if there is not an existing process of change, then there is automatically no room for criticism of the existing order. In short, what is required in extreme cases is a tailor-made process for criticism. Jensen (2016, pp. 15–24) recognizes this condition and situates his explanation of doctrinal reforms in what he terms “incubators” and “advocacy networks”. In so-called incubators, officers are specifically assigned the task of thinking about future war and devising a new and appropriate “theory of victory”. By being ordered to think freely, they can avoid organizational pressures, vested interests and avoid organizational punishments from devising a new idea that is not in the interests of some of the organizations’ sub-units. The British General Sir Rupert Smith (2007, p. 41) recognized that the officers’ corps too must change:
This will require the selection of individuals who have the intellect and aptitude to innovate in adversity rather than the implementers who are so often favoured by the selection systems of institutions; particularly those like armies intended for industrial war where the priority is the conscripts’ training cycle and the need to hold the force in readiness for mobilisation and the execution of the master plan. Now we need innovators, intelligent, practical, imaginative and bold, capable of operating successfully in novel circumstances.
Cohen & Gooch (1991, p. 12) reserve a damning verdict of the British war effort during World War I with respect to lack of criticism:
The submissive obedience of Haig’s subordinates, which Forester took for blinkered ignorance and whole-hearted support, was in reality the unavoidable consequence of the way in which the army high command functioned as an organization under its commander in chief. A personalized promotion system, built on the bedrock of favoritism and personal rivalry that had characterized the pre-1914 army, ensured that middle-ranking officers undertook offensives of no tactical or strategic use whether they believed in them or not: If they obeyed orders, they could hope for promotion, but if they did anything else they faced the certainty of removal and disgrace. The way Haig ran his headquarters, preserving an Olympian detachment, tolerating no criticism, and accepting precious little advice, reinforced the rigidity of the system.
In a study of Soviet innovation, Kimberly Zisk (1993) also suggests that protected career paths for innovators are crucial. Adamsky (2010, p. 53) even states that in the USSR, the atmosphere did not permit open criticism of senior commanders. Instead, the old successful tactical experience of WWII was glorified, studied, and its lessons applied dogmatically even in new contexts. Tactical failures, meanwhile, were obscured and ignored. All this was reflected in the conduct of junior Soviet officers. It was not until the late 1980s, when prominent Soviet military theorists began to publish introspective articles criticizing Soviet tactics for their conservatism, dogmatism, intellectual stagnation, and the lack of creativity, innovation, and capacity for improvisation among junior officers.
Second, the organization must be receptive to innovation. In Jensen’s (2016) terms, once criticism has generated a new idea of victory, it is only adopted by the organization at large if sufficient support for the idea can be mustered within the “advocacy networks”. Hence, if powerful networks can be created across the organization in support of a particular idea, then the organization is able to reform. Instead of networks, Adamsky (2010), Farrell (2005) and Finnemore and Sikkink (1998) suggest that critics must have close links to powerful patrons within the organization, meaning that innovation requires institutionalization and protection. Criticism and innovation are thus intimately linked in looking at the present and imagining a different future; linearity and path-dependence are supplanted by (more or less radical) shifts to something conceivable only in the minds of a few. However, these alternatives are not always welcomed, and this is especially true when it comes to criticism from below. In every organization there are chokepoints both institutionally and individually. The individuals with the power to induce change are linchpins when it comes to bottom-up criticism, whether these leaders (official and unofficial) can be swayed into backing innovative ideas is crucial since without them change is not possible.
In other words, military organizations need to be receptive to criticism. They cannot be, that is – in Alvesson’s and Spicer’s (2012) terms – “functionally stupid”. The functionally stupid organization, even if made up of individuals of extraordinary intellect, will display an “inability and/or unwillingness to use cognitive and reflexive capacities in anything other than narrow and circumspect ways. It involves a lack of reflexivity, a disinclination to require or provide justification, and avoidance of substantive reasoning” (Alvesson & Spicer 2012, p. 1201, emphasis in original). Here, “reflexivity” is a question of individuals being prepared and able to identify hidden assumptions behind their ideas and the ideas of others. Without this ability, it is impossible to identify alternatives – and thus impossible to be able to criticize. “Flexibility” is related to being willing and able to abandon earlier ideas once they have been proven flawed; truth, accordingly, is always provisional and under continuous re-evaluation. “Justification” provides the means through which motives and considerations are communicated, and thus become open for deliberation and criticism. What makes matters even worse, Alvesson and Spicer (2012, p. 1202) contend, is that organizational stupidity is further reinforced by “stupidity self-management”, in which individuals conduct self-censorship and stop short of criticism. In other words, functionally stupid organizations are distinguished by a lack of, or an unwillingness to engage in, critical thought, forming an environment inconducive to criticism from individuals. Functional stupidity thus presents a formidable obstacle to successful innovation.
By contrast, an organizational mind-set open to criticism embraces and encourages critical thought, deliberation, and open-ended questions. Such an attitude increases the likelihood of innovation since it does not prematurely close paths of thoughts, nor does it prevent critical voices. Furthermore, by encouraging critical thought and criticism, it not only directly offers a route to innovation, but it also increases the likelihood of continued innovation and improvement if careers benefit from it. In this way, criticism in an organization characterized by deliberation can be self-propelling. But as much as criticism seems to be associated with the possibility of innovation, it does not seem to be a conspicuously common feature within military organizations, empirically speaking. Thus, this study focuses on identifying overall knowledge ideals in military organizations to elucidate structural obstacles to bottom-up criticism and critical thinking.
Research Design
In order to generalize about Western military organizations’ ideal understanding of – and how they relate to – knowledge, this study consists of a comparative case study with a most-different design (George & Bennett, 2005). The armed forces of Sweden and the United States have been selected as cases. Although these certainly have similarities in terms of being reasonably modern, they are the armed forces of states, rather than other armed political organizations, and both are controlled by democratically elected, rather than authoritarian, governments, they are also vastly different. The Swedish armed forces can muster nearly 50,000 soldiers, while the United States in total fields over 2.1 million (International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2024). The Swedish armed forces’ operational space is limited to the Baltic Sea, while the U.S. armed forces have global reach relying upon a set of satellites orbiting Earth and fleets in every ocean. While Sweden spends a comparatively meager USD 11.8 billion on its armed forces annually, U.S. defense spending amounts to USD 900 billion. Furthermore, at the time when the doctrines I examine were written, Sweden was non-aligned, setting the case apart from other smaller Western armed forces. However, if we can find similarities in how these two vastly different organizations relate to knowledge, we can generalize the findings to other cases of Western armed forces.
It is also clear that both the armed forces of the United States and Sweden, like other Western military organizations, have historically been compelled to attempt to balance the needs of top-down hierarchy and bottom-up criticism and innovation. In the mid-1920s, U.S. Air Force General Billy Mitchell was even court-martialed for his open criticism of his leadership whose reforms, he thought, were too slow. Partly as a result, as Williamson Murray (1999, pp. 40–41) claims, the U.S. Air Force still demands its officers “submit their writings for policy review”. Similarly, the anonymity of several Swedish officers in the mid-2000s, whose blogs were highly critical of the armed forces, was probably related to the fallout of the so-called Colonel Uprising in 2002, when ten high-ranking Swedish active-duty officers wrote a critical op-ed in Sweden’s biggest daily newspaper and found themselves threatened with being relieved of their duty by the Ministry of Defense. Punishment or threats of punishment for criticism are not restricted to the U.S. or Swedish case either. Murray (1999, p. 41) continues: “It is well to remember that in the mid-1930s the French army commander in chief, General Maurice Gamelin, demanded that all officers submit their writings for review by the high command. ‘Everyone got the message,’ a junior officer later wrote, ‘and a profound silence reigned until the awakening of 1940’.”
In order to assess the understanding of knowledge of the Swedish and U.S. armed forces, I conduct a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021) of the joint, army, navy, and air force doctrines. In the U.S. case, I have also added the doctrine of the U.S. Marines (Swedish Armed Forces, 2017; 2020; 2021; 2022; 2023; U.S. Air Force, 2021; U.S. Army 2019; 2022; U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff 2017; 2023; U.S. Marine Corps, 2017; 2018). I have chosen doctrines since they represent “institutionalized knowledge of how, for what and why military force” is used (Angstrom & Widén, 2015, p. 5). Doctrines, therefore, specify the organization’s “theory of victory” in Jensen’s (2016) words. We may expect such documents to be useful to the analysis of how the organization relates to knowledge. In order to provide the armed forces with a tool for education, command, and change (Høiback, 2013), doctrine needs to both contain knowledge and to specify the conditions under which such knowledge ought to be applicable. By standardizing and harmonizing the thoughts of commanders (the rationale goes), doctrine contributes to getting everyone on the same page, to the benefit of the smoothness and success of operations (Sjøgren, 2022). When reading the doctrines, I have both focused on what they contain (the substantive knowledge) and on what they do not contain. Asking about the blank spaces when reading allows for the identification of a particular text’s counter-positions; these are themselves useful in the identification of tacit assumptions. When attempting to identify knowledge ideals, I have searched the doctrines for statements regarding what kind of knowledge that is favored, about what knowledge is sought, and how it is decided if knowledge is accurate.
One can, of course, question the utility of doctrine to gauge knowledge ideals on the grounds that doctrine is not always implemented (e.g., Johnston, 2000; Nisser, 2023, 2024; Sjøgren, 2024). However, there seems to be great variation of implementation of doctrine and it seems too early to write them off completely since they are read in military education programs, and even if all aspects of new doctrine are not fully implemented, certain fundamentals will endure. Hence, in the analysis I have particularly stressed things that consistently appear in doctrine. Since these features seem to be unchallenged, it seems more likely that they form an integral part of the implemented doctrine. One can further question the use of doctrine as a way of identifying knowledge ideals since those tasked with developing military innovations in the organization may not necessarily draw on it in the process. Practically, however, those leading innovation are most likely to be senior officers exposed to doctrine in their junior and mid-career training. Thus, the knowledge ideals embedded in doctrine will still exert influence.
ARCH and how it thwarts criticism
In this section, I present the results of the analysis of the understanding of knowledge within military organizations. Although I have not found any irrefutable evidence and statements clearly forbidding criticism and critical thought, it is clear that U.S. and Swedish military organizations strongly discourage criticism by reinforcing an understanding of knowledge consisting of four biases relating to action, relevance, conflict, and hierarchy: ARCH. Taken together, these biases aggregate into a well-integrated and mutually-reinforcing system of thought. I explore each of these biases in greater detail below.
In both sets of doctrines, creativity and critical thought are nominally encouraged. It is also clear, however, that these traits mainly are the province of commanders, and that critical thought alone is encouraged, not criticism. Most explicitly, U.S. Army doctrine states in the operational field manual FM 3-0 that commanders ought to “encourage subordinate commanders to think critically” (U.S. Army, 2022, pp. 8–1). While the U.S. Army recognizes that “the ability to think critically and creatively … provide[s] the Army its collective strength” (U.S Army, 2019, p. vi), other parts of the doctrine also specify that that “the principal audience of FM 3-0 is commanders, staffs, and leaders of theater armies, corps, divisions, and brigades” (U.S. Army, 2022, p. v). Similarly, Swedish doctrine holds that while the doctrine directs behavior, it ought to be understood as the “foundation of improvisation and pragmatic solutions” (Swedish Armed Forces, 2020, p. 13). Yet as in the U.S. case, the improvisation and creativity seem limited to commanders (Swedish Armed Forces, 2020, p. 7). There is even the suggestion that the primary audience is “commanders and members of staff” (Swedish Armed Forces, 2022, p. 13). Certainly, staffs prepare plans for operations – but, critically, they do not decide matters. By restricting critical thought to commanders, doctrine reinforces the hierarchy of the military organization.
The gradual narrowing of thought discernible in the course of an officer’s progression from cadet to colonel may be explained by the unchecked operation of this understanding of knowledge within military organizations. The degree of uniformity increases as their career progresses. As the analysis also demonstrates, the four biases composing the ARCH account of knowledge individually and collectively thwart critical thought and criticism. It is important to recognize that this knowledge ideal has not emerged from nothing; nor was it deliberately designed with the intent of preventing criticism. Rather, the ability and willingness to criticize is inadvertently impaired when military organizations promote a certain understanding of war and how it is to be waged. In particular, modern Western military organizations are designed to wage large-scale industrialized warfare. This mode of operations, arguably, requires a high degree of cohesion, a functional division of labor, and standardization.
Action is preferred to being right
The first bias of the ARCH knowledge ideal is that of action. Military organizations approach knowledge in and of war as something to be acted upon. This is partly derived from the idea that officers in both the United States and Sweden primarily self-identify as “managers of organized violence” (Swedish Armed Forces, 2017, p. 11). This is of course also congruent with Samuel Huntington’s (1957) idea of military professionalism. According to this notion, officers lead the war effort and knowledge that is important is that which can be acted upon in the wars to come. It is obvious that this understanding of knowledge is predominant since both Swedish and U.S. military discourse includes nouns such as “actionable intelligence”. By creating a dichotomy between actionable and non-actionable, it is clear that certain knowledge is more important than other kinds of knowledge. The idea of managers of violence also implies that training, rather than education, is the preferred pedagogical model, and that briefings, rather than the drawn-out modification and deliberation of concepts in seminars, are the preferred pedagogical tool. Following this, too, first-hand experience is the principal source of legitimate knowledge.
Indecisiveness is considered an equally big problem in the doctrines of both the United States and Sweden. According to U.S. Army doctrine, “disciplined initiative requires a bias toward action rather than waiting on new orders” (U.S. Army, 2022, pp. 8–4). Meanwhile, Swedish Army doctrine even states that “indecisiveness or failure to act is more problematic than making mistakes” (Swedish Armed Forces, 2023, p. 24). While a remarkable statement in several ways, in this context it clearly demonstrates how the military relates to knowledge: action is more important than being right. Even scholars trying to make their research more “useful” are often encouraged to avoid exaggerated theorizing and, rather, design research that produces actionable knowledge (e.g., Byman & Kroenig, 2016). The so-called principles of war, heralded in all of the doctrines analyzed here, also stress decisiveness as a key principle of action. A discourse of the organization stressing mobility, offensive action, surprise and decisiveness does not invite careful considerate analysis – even if it does not specifically forbid it. Again, despite doctrines maintaining the great importance of discretion in decision-making (mission command, for example), the swift making of decisions and promptness in dealing with difficult issues seems to be an operative ideal.
The action bias is an obstacle to critical thought and criticism in several ways. It legitimates the claim that it is acceptable to be wrong and ignorant as long as one acts – a perfect contrast to being able to think reflexively in pursuit of a better-informed decision. Too much contemplation and analysis can make one lose in the race of the OODA-loop. Both sets of doctrines stress that being “ahead” in the OODA-loop is critical for success. The OODA-loop, famously, does not require a decision to be correct. It simply needs to be relatively quicker than the opponent’s (Boyd, 1987). Following such an understanding of contemporary war and military effectiveness, it is logical to disregard time-consuming critical thought over attention to action. Schmitt (2020), too, characterizes Western military organizations after the Cold War as preoccupied with the idea that speed win wars. One could even argue that there is a strong belief among both military organizations that they operate most comfortably under conditions of time pressure. This follows from the idea that there is a tendency to reductively conceive “war” to be a matter of operations, of battle or combat, alone – a notion Echevarria (2014) has demonstrated to have held great sway in the United States.
Relevance is more important than quality
The second component of the ARCH ideal of knowledge is relevance. This is an emphasis on the here-and-now. Insisting upon relevance – commonly understood as “whatever current and future war demands” – is partly a technique to further both the hierarchy bias (see below) and the action bias described above, and partly an important, independent mechanism in the ideal understanding of knowledge within military organizations. Doctrines are underpinned by the relevance criteria as no doctrine can include the entire range of possible warfighting techniques. Siege warfare, for example, has long disappeared from Western field manuals. Given that the enemy is rarely shut up in a castle these days, this may sound perfectly reasonable – but limiting the range of possible operations inhibits reflexive thinking. Relevance also provides the most important justification of military behavior and military thought. If whatever we are thinking is understood to be relevant, then further justification and motivation is unnecessary. In this way, relevance sets boundaries on how far we have to think. Indeed, the Swedish doctrine both claims that doctrine directs how one “should think” and determines common definitions of concepts (Swedish Armed Forces, 2020, p. 5). The U.S. doctrine also recognizes this: “The thoughts contained here are not merely guidance for action in combat but a way of thinking” (U.S. Marine Corps, 2018, p. 2) As in the Swedish equivalent, the United States doctrine also specifies concepts since the meanings of “words matter” (U.S. Marine Corps, 2017, p. 2).
If something is relevant, furthermore, then we are likely to unconsciously interpret it to be good and important knowledge for the war at hand. In this way, bias concerning relevance further strengthens the action bias. While the relevance bias can hinder the development of specific ideas, it most importantly aids in the choice of rivaling ideas. Taking quality of knowledge seriously would imply reflexive thinking and criticism and this would constitute a major contradiction of knowledge ideals. The solution is to promote relevance before quality. Since only the military commander gets to decide what is relevant or not, the hierarchy bias (below) is also reinforced. The underlying logic seems to be that patterns of domination and subordination are useful in the solution of questions concerning which knowledge is to be relied upon. It also reinforces the idea that not everyone may legitimately pass judgement.
The relevance bias makes the knowledge ideal of military organizations inherently conservative. Effectively making the military profession the only body capable of judging “relevance”, it forecloses the possibility of perspectives from outside. On the one hand, other professions are just as subject to the same biases –after all, the expertise of individual professions is supposedly unique to that profession and other “outside” ideas, therefore, ought to be less relevant. On the other hand, however, if one allows professional demands to direct the development of knowledge, the process is likely to be conservative and less inclined towards allowing fundamental criticism. Claims of relevance allow the mind to close, rendering further justification unnecessary.
Conflict is understood as involving us-and-them
The third component of the ARCH ideal is a conflict-dyad bias leading to theories and doctrines constructed in terms of us-and-them. Both U.S. doctrine (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2023, pp. II-10-II-11) and the Swedish doctrine (Swedish Armed Forces, 2021, p. 22) quote Clausewitz’s dictum that war “is an act of force to compel our enemy to do one’s will” (Clausewitz, 1993, p. 83, emphasis added). In doing so, military organizations approach and understand war not as being fought by actors in general, but by “us” and “them”. In Western militaries, this framing places the organization itself within the conflict by default. Thinking about war is, implicitly, thinking as a participant in war. Being an actor in war hinders the ability to objectively and reflexively analyze war in and of itself. Indeed, it raises the stakes of theorizing; the theorist is no longer a disinterested observer. It is far easier to think critically, to present criticism against those fighting a war, if one is not fighting it.
Making oneself a part of war also silences critics. The stress upon unity of command is clear in both the U.S. and Swedish military doctrines. Both sets of doctrine are careful in spelling out the hierarchy of documents: nominally strategic documents are expected to direct the contents of operational doctrine and operational doctrine is expected to direct the service-specific doctrine (e.g., Swedish Armed Forces, 2020, p. 6; U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2017, p. ii). Since criticism of this kind, by definition, involves positing a future different to that projected by the organization, criticism automatically questions the chain of command. Constantly situating oneself as in the middle of war thus tacitly implies that one should not question one’s superiors. The alternative is to approach war from the standpoint of the observer rather than the participant. Standing alongside war, rather than fighting it, can make it easier to recognize alternative courses of action and to question hidden assumptions.
Being part of war also necessitates organization. In the West, in particular, this has become understood as the standardization of organizations, something straightforwardly seen in the standard army structures of corps, divisions, brigades, battalions, companies, platoons, and squads. While such standardization is understood to be part of preparation for war, it also reinforces a chain of command in which it is easier to question and thereby silence critics. The typical military staff will comprise an intelligence section, a logistics sections, and so on – but no criticism section. Critical thought, that is to say, can be organized away.
Further, doctrines do not merely imply the military organization is in the middle of war; they also conflate war with combat. Imagery, phrases and, again, Clausewitzian quotes stating that “essentially, war is fighting, for fighting is the only effective principle in the manifold activities generally known as war” (Clausewitz 1993, p. 145) also promote a particular version of what war is. This version of war, however, is not one conducive to criticism or critical thought: combat is understood to be time-sensitive and dangerous, thus calling for obedience and speed rather than requiring or allowing reflexive and critical thought. Indeed, situating yourself in the middle of the fight makes it difficult to forget the severe legal consequences, present in both the United States and Sweden, for those who do not follow their superiors’ decisions (cf. Borell, 2004).
Hierarchies decide quality of knowledge
The fourth bias in the knowledge ideal of Western military organizations relates to hierarchy. In short, those at the top of the hierarchy define what counts as knowledge and determine the quality of this knowledge. This is clear in the doctrines of both Sweden and the United States, each including a preface from senior leadership authoritatively declaring that what it contains decides how the organization should behave and think (the Swedish Armed Forces doctrine of 2022 by the then-Supreme Commander; the U.S JP1 of 2017 by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). The generals also encourage discussion of the doctrine in this preface – but this discussion is compromised from the outset: the doctrine sets the limits within which thinking is allowed. Rather than accepting knowledge as something to be expanded upon, collegially deliberated, provisionally accepted and continuously debated, that is, Western military organizations understand the quality of knowledge as something intrinsically linked to hierarchy. Again, this reflects the same understanding of war as that promulgated in the doctrines. Drawing again on Clausewitz, both the Swedish and the U.S. doctrines continually stress that war is fraught with uncertainties and friction. Decision-making must continue despite the uncertainty – a conundrum solved by the military organization through the exercise of authority. Rank decides what is true or not.
Jensen (2016) also opens to the fact that advocacy networks are not about identifying and supporting the correctly forecasted version of future theory of victory, but rather about agreeing upon one version. Hence, the choice of future reform – the contents of the theory of victory – is not dependent upon truth. To some extent, truth is also impossible since the future has not happened. Rather than empirical truth – or an argument underpinned by logic – it is legitimacy and power that decides truth. Again, as a reflection of the understanding of war, not knowing is certainly uncomfortable when the stakes are high. To have someone with authority on top of the organization then claiming what is true provides ontological security. There is no need for critical thought or criticism, nor for ideas of alternative futures and the difficulties of choosing between them. The commander decides what counts as valid knowledge. Deciding about knowledge, of course, is to assume that knowledge can be final. Everything is known – and that’s the end of it.
The understanding of knowledge as hierarchically determined also implies that process, rather than product, is the relevant measurement of progress. In the Swedish army doctrine, it is even stressed that “all activities need a commander.” To stress command and control (including the control of knowledge) is to thwart debate – and therefore open-ended outcomes. This way of thinking consequently reinforces a hierarchy of domination and subordination. It provides the commander with the power to question and silence critics by asking the one criticizing or asking a question who authorized them to make it. One only has to take a cursory glance at military organizations’ planning procedures (another authorized document, incidentally) to understand how thinking is prescribed in a certain way, thus discouraging competing patterns of thought.
The creation and maintenance of ontological security by certifying the status of the commander as arbiter of truth is clearly visible in the doctrines under study. Both stress the crucial nature of leadership for military effectiveness and success (see, for example, U.S. Army, 2022, pp. 8–1; Swedish Armed Forces, 2021, p. 21) The more the organization stresses leadership, the more critical thought is curbed, since leadership automatically reinforces the patterns of domination and subordination – that is, the notion that the commander will solve the issue and decide what is true and not.
Concluding Discussion: The Promise of Critical Thought
In this article, I have suggested that innovation in Western military organizations is impeded by certain underlying knowledge ideals that clash with criticism. Criticism holds significant potential for fostering innovation, as it enables individuals to think reflexively and to articulate alternatives to the existing order; such alternatives cannot be identified without the capacity to see and understand the foundations of present knowledge claims. By enabling critical reflection and giving voice to divergent perspectives, criticism introduces a self-correcting dynamic into the organization. It serves both to help with alternative futures to be imagined and to provide a systematic means of evaluating them.
The study of U.S. and Swedish doctrines presented here demonstrates that a particular knowledge ideal of military organizations (here, of course, designated ARCH for the mutually reinforcing biases of action, relevance, conflict, and hierarchy), presents a significant obstacle to innovation by thwarting criticism. The development of this knowledge ideal cannot be attributed to any intention on the part of any military organization to deliberately hinder criticism and innovation but is a reflection, rather, of a particular way of understanding war, deeply engrained in Western military organizations, stressing mass, concentration of force and standardization. Accordingly, criticism and innovation can be understood as collateral damage in attempts to optimize military organizations in pursuit of a particular industrialized, large-scale version of war.
Allowing for criticism would reposition power-knowledge structures currently underpinned by the ARCH-ideal of knowledge. This makes criticism a more fundamental transgression than if it only had been mere disobedience. Exactly how those problems appear, however, is in need of further research. We do not know if criticism is encouraged or punished depending on context, or on rank, seniority, gender, age, service, or unit culture. Furthermore, we do not know if knowledge claims play out differently in headquarters, or for staff that are more likely to read and write doctrine when compared to the regular fielded forces. Perhaps most importantly, however, we have yet to understand how deeply engrained knowledge ideals are with other prevailing ideational patterns in military organizations. How are, for example, knowledge ideals interlinked with professional military identity or organizational culture?
It is perhaps too much to hope that military organizations might embrace criticism to the same degree that universities or other research organizations do. But they should at least aspire not to organize themselves to thwart innovations that might improve their fighting power. To this end, three things seem to stand out. First, it is important to guard against false dichotomies. It is not necessary, for example, to choose between innovation by permitting criticism, and increased lethality or, in wider terms, military efficiency. In many contexts, professional military identity is framed as that of a manager of organized violence. This is too often understood in a very literal way. The officer is thought to be directly involved in violence – and therefore their province is the tactical level of war, not the strategic level. Understanding tactics and strategy as unrelated is a typical example of a false dichotomy with, arguably, disastrous consequences in World War I where strategy did not direct tactics. While it is of course difficult to infer clear conclusions from the ongoing war in Ukraine, both parties seem to combine innovation with large-scale, industrialized warfare in unfamiliar and different ways.
Second, the military profession – as other professions have done already – need to come up with a “grand bargain” and figure out under what conditions and in what specific situations in which criticism is allowed. Creating a space for, and an acceptance of, criticism would permit innovation without posing risks for individual critics’ careers or necessarily challenging existing bureaucratic power structures. In all likelihood, professional military education will play a central role in shaping personal attitudes towards criticism. In most, if not all, military educational institutions, a balance between training and education needs to be struck. This is perfectly natural for any vocational degree, for which students need to learn certain procedures and technical skills as well as accompanying analytical skills. Perhaps military educational institutions need to re-think this balance and pay attention to the ways in which criticism is encouraged or discouraged; it may have long-term consequences, inside the military organization. This is not necessarily a call for any specific change in this balance – simply that it should be clarified for students that while criticism is central for the military profession, it does not imply that voicing criticism is necessarily appropriate for everyone, all the time. At the moment, it is also difficult to provide evidence-based advice of exactly where the balance ought to lie, even if some suggest that military efficiency on the whole, if not in every specific instance, is better improved through more education and less training (see, for example, Mukherjee, 2018).
Third, while professional military education can develop and foster the ability of individual officers to think critically and creatively, criticism will also require individuality, integrity and a great deal of fingerspitzgefühl to navigate the often-implicit norms of when and how criticism is allowed. Again, the development of an organizational culture in which criticism is not considered disobedience or disloyalty, but an attempt to improve organizational efficiency, is crucial. Naturally this is far from easy and in competitive, hierarchical systems such as military organizations, there is a great risk that cohesion and homogeneity will trump individuals’ opportunities to voice criticism. A first step may be to recognize how knowledge ideals mirror and reinforce certain “modes of warfare”, to borrow Schmitt’s (2020) term, and begin to re-calibrate attitudes towards criticism depending on the organization’s theory of victory in future war.
Competing Interests
Jan Ångström is an editorial board member of Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies. No other competing interests exist.