While I think all the above is very nice and true, I think an assessment of if you are ready for the next war can be answered in one question.

Are you improving yourself, developing and learning? Its very easy to get lazy and just do your day to day job and be happy with that. It is nice and convenient and work can bog you down absolutely, we have all been there. While it sounds bad to denigrate you for ‘doing your job’ as leaders we really should be doing more. Some good bosses I had helped me understand that if you aren’t prepping and yearning for the next job, your stagnate. As we see on Shark Week, staying still is not a good idea. You need to develop yourself, which can often be very different than training yourself on things like battle drills or warrior tasks.

Again, I completely agree doing the basics well is very necessary, I am a firm believer in that too. Getting buy in and understanding the why is also critical. However, to prepare for war as the prompt asks, as a leader, I think that comes from learning about past conflicts that will more resemble the next one and thinking about what you are going to do when that happens.

So, I read, as much as I can. I think there was a thread on here a while ago about blogs and threads and great articles. Rinse and repeat on that until you think you can rival Clausewitz or Marshall. I’m not there yet.

Finally, I think your point about working alongside the National Guard and Reserves is great. As we see down at Stewart that program has taken off. I do not know how it is going, but I hope they develop a model that the rest of the Army is able to adopt and that becomes a success story as I think it will be critical in the future.