Abstract
The military career has most often been compared with "traditional" professions, such as law, medicine, and the clergy; but it is perhaps more appropriate to compare it with corporate executive development. There are many differences, but both systems are essentially "careerist" rather than "professional." In business, such careerism may well be utilitarian, but in the armed services it is harmful to military capability and thus to national defense. Members of a new "Military Reform Movement" are disturbed by the focus on careerism, but their demands for military self-reform are misdirected. The services are incapable of self-reform; externally generated reform is the only cure.
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