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In the end, the military capabilities we need cannot be separated from the cultural traits and reward structure of the institutions we have: the signals sent by what gets funded, who gets promoted, what is taught in the academies and staff colleges, and how we train.

Thirty-six years ago, my old CIA colleague Bob Komer, who led the pacification campaign in Vietnam, published his classic study of organizational behavior called Bureaucracy Does Its Thing. Looking at the performance of the U.S. national security apparatus during that conflict – military and civilian – he identified a number of tendencies that prevented institutions from adapting long after problems had been identified and solutions were proposed:

• 
The reluctance to change preferred ways of functioning, and when faced with lack of results, to do more of the same;
• Trying to run a war with peacetime management structure and practices; 

• A belief that the current set of problems were either an aberration or would soon be over;
• Where because a certain problem – in that case, counterinsurgency – did not fit the inherited structure and preferences of organizations – it simultaneously became everybody’s business and no one’s business.

I cite that study not to re-litigate that war, or suggest that the institutional military hasn’t made enormous strides in recent years. It is, however, a cautionary reminder that these tendencies are always present in any large, hierarchical organization, and we must consistently strive to overcome them.

As you look forward to your next assignments, be they in the services, the theater, command or staff, I would also ask that you take away my remarks this morning, the national defense strategy that informed them, and personal lessons I have learned from service in this arena that began 42 years ago, two things: a sense of humility and an appreciation of limits.

First, limits about what the United States – still the strongest and greatest nation on earth – can do. The power of our military’s global reach has been an indispensable contributor to world peace – and must remain so. But not every outrage, every act of aggression, every crisis can or should elicit an American military response, and we should acknowledge such.

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