Combat Experience as a Strategic Resource: Lessons of the Red Army Purges

[Nevilledog]

https://www.justsecurity.org/144739/combat-experience-strategic-soviet-army/

Whatever one’s views on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s tenure, there is no denying that he has been unambiguous about some of his stated objectives. In a January 2025 Message to the Force, he committed the Department of Defense to rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence. This would be accomplished through “a focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards, and readiness.” And in September 2025 remarks to General and Flag (Admiral) officers at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Hegseth said, “the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit.” Although some may find Hegseth’s tone questionable at times, his particular emphasis on combat effectiveness garners broad agreement across the political and policy spectrum, and rightfully so.

That said, a wave of controversial changes in senior leadership has taken place alongside the pursuit of that objective. Since January 2025, the Defense Department has removed, replaced, or forced the early retirement of a remarkable concentration of operationally experienced senior officers. Among them are the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff of the Army, and the Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, who concurrently serves as Director of the National Security Agency. Most recently, General Christopher Donahue, one of the most decorated and combat-experienced officers of his generation, has been forced out as Commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and, in his NATO role, as Commander of Allied Land Command. Public explanations have been sparse and, to the extent they have been offered, largely general.

The question regarding these departures is not whether the President and Secretary of Defense have broad lawful authority to reshape the senior officer corps. They unequivocally do. Nor is it a question of whether personnel decisions of this kind are ever warranted. Sometimes they certainly are. Instead, at its core, a central question is their impact on the combat effectiveness, indeed the lethality, of our armed forces.

I take up this question through the lens of a case study drawn from one of the most consequential instances of rapid military leadership depletion in modern history, the Red Army purges of 1937-1938 and their effects on its performance during the conflicts that followed. My central proposition is straightforward: Operational experience, especially in combat, is a strategic resource, a form of military capital that takes decades to develop and that can be squandered in months.

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