Here's an important professional article from a U.S.A. military source
called "The Victory Disease."
USA Americans will find interesting that its date is summer 2003.
Read it and weep.
The article is from
Timothy M. Karcher
Military Review
July-August 2003
Major Karcher says
the Victory Disease threatens a nation that has a history of military prowess and manifests itself in three symptoms: arrogance, complacency, and established patterns of fighting. As these symptoms compound, the result might be the unanticipated defeat of a previously victorious nation.
Read more following the jump.
This cultural phenomenon manifests itself in a mindset, sometimes referred to as the Victory Disease, which makes a nation susceptible to defeat on future battlefields. Military analysts James Dunnigan and Raymond Macedonia highlight the concept of the Victory Disease in their work, Getting It Right: American Military Reforms After Vietnam to the Gulf War and Beyond.[3] According to Dunnigan and Macedonia, the Victory Disease threatens a nation that has a history of military prowess and manifests itself in three symptoms: arrogance, complacency, and established patterns of fighting. As these symptoms compound, the result might be the unanticipated defeat of a previously victorious nation.The Victory Disease does not always lead to battlefield defeat; it simply increases the likelihood of failure. Since preconditions might exist for the United Sates to fall prey to the Victory Disease, the question is whether the U.S. Army can decrease the likelihood of military disasters in future operations.
The Victory Disease might occur across all of the defined levels of war--strategic, operational, and tactical. At the strategic level of war, the Victory Disease might afflict a nation's citizens, national political leaders, and senior military leaders. At the tactical and operational levels of war, the disease might infect military leaders and planners.
[3] James Dunnigan and Raymond Macedonia, Getting It Right: American Military Reforms After Vietnam to the Gulf War and Beyond (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1993), 21.
Three enemies on the way to professional mastery: Fear, Complacency, Arrogance
Professional mastery is a journey.
It's a path, a way,
that ends as a way of life.
When does it begin, this journey?
It begins when you set foot on the path.
The Chinese say:
"A journey of a thousand li* begins
with a single step."
(* a li is a Chinese measure of distance equalling a 1/3 of a mile)
When does the journey to mastery end?
It never ends. Mastery is the journey.
You master more and more along the way.
I have a colleague with a Master's degree and
decades of management experience
in one of America's toughest corporate environments.
Yet he says, with masterful modesty:
"I am not a master."
On the road to mastery,
there appear three enemies:
Fear, Complacency, Arrogance.
They seem to rise up in that order.
You defeat them, one by one.
Then the next one rises up on your path.
It seems they return from time to time,
yet weakened.
In each encounter, you learn.
You learn to master
fear, by bravery and compassion
complacency, by energy and action
arrogance, by deflation and destruction.
You journey on.
So, good luck, masters.
Good journey. Bon voyage. Buen vieje.
JEG
Sometimes when you look around at injustices of all kinds,
you may be dismayed. Yet injustice is not the end.
Injustice may be temporary.
There is a deep human understanding or experience
of the ways things work out in history.
A scientist may generate a hypothesis: there exists universal justice.
Here are two famous quotes that advance this position:
"But many that are first shall be last, and the last first." (Mark 10:31, King James Version)
"Though the mills of God grind slowly,
yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting,
with exactness grinds He all."
(from "Retribution" by Friedrich von Logau [1654], translation by Longfellow)
So when you see someone or something that is not right
you may note later that justice has come.
Justice exists,
may be your scientific conclusion,
verifying your hypothesis
for another testing loop
in the scientific method.