Adam Chapnick - Academic Writing for Military Personnel

Academic Writing
for Military Personnel

Academic Writing
for Military Personnel

Adam Chapnick and Craig Stone

U NIVERSITY OF O TTAWA P RESS

University of Ottawa Press, 2009
All rights reserved.

The University of Ottawa Press acknowledges with gratitude the support extended to its publishing list by Heritage Canada through its Book Publishing Industry Development Program, by the Canada Council for the Arts, by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences through its Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and by the University of Ottawa.

We also gratefully acknowledge the Department of National Defence whose financial support has contributed to the publication of this book.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA
CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Chapnick, Adam, 1976
Academic writing for military personnel /
Adam Chapnick and Craig Stone.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7766-0734-4

1. Military art and scienceAuthorship. 2. Academic writing. 3. Rhetoric. 4. CanadaArmed ForcesRecords and correspondence.
I. Stone, Craig, 1958- II. Title.

UB165.C3C53 2009 808'.066355 C2009-904246-0

Published by the University of Ottawa Press, 2009
542 King Edward Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5
www.press.uottawa.ca

To our daughters

Contents

The genesis of this book is a series of lectures that we have given and discussions that we have led at the Canadian Forces College about the academic process and writing in particular. We would like to thank Cathy Murphy and the staff at the CFCs Information Resource Centre for their constant support of this initiative and helpful advice throughout the process. The students, staff, and faculty at the CFC have also contributed helpfully to this project through their feedback and advice over the years. Lieutenant-Commander John Wilson deserves particular thanks for allowing us to use his research proposal as an example.

Vronique LaRue-Constantineau provided initial research assistance and Noelle Morriss work towards the end of this project was exceptional.

Lieutenant-General (retired) Fred Sutherland, Major-General (retired) Ivan Fenton, and Major-General (retired) Herb Petras all read an early draft of the manuscript and provided helpful and detailed feedback. We are also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers solicited by University of Ottawa Press for their constructive and supportive assessments.

Adam Chapnick would like to thank the Chapnick and Berman families for their continued support and pay a special tribute to baby Avery whose impending birth pushed this project along.

Craig Stone would like to thank the Stone family for their continued support and encouragement in pursuing this project at the expense of other family activities.

We recognize the CFC Directorate of Academics publication fund and Dr Jane Errington and her Office of the Dean of Arts at the Royal Military College of Canada for their financial support. This book would not have been possible without it.

Finally, we extend our thanks to Eric Nelson and the staff at Ottawa University Press including David Bernardi, Jessica Clark, Marie Clausn, Mariam Faye, Lynne Mackay, Trish OReilly, and Johanna Pedersen for their faith in this project and for their professionalism in bringing it to fruition.

Academic writing has a terrible reputation outside the walls of the so-called Ivory Tower. Its long-winded, incomprehensible, and elitist, critics are bound to say. Moreover, theres no denying that successful journalists and popular writers sell far more copies of their books than do most academics, and popular magazines have far greater circulations than scholarly journals. So why, then, should military officers bother learning this skill? Why not spend the time and effort on improving staff writing? At least staff documents reach a guaranteed audience of interested readers. Why bother conquering the academic style when no one will read what youve written anyway?

There are actually a number of reasons to be able to write academically, all of which only become clear once you accept that this approach to writing and research is a style. Like any style, it can be used effectively, or its results can be disastrous. At times for example, as we explain below, in efforts to infuse a military perspective into discussions among the states political leadership it can serve as a military officials most effective form of communication. At othersfor example, in communicating a commanders intent to his or her subordinatesit is entirely inappropriate. Furthermore, we (a civilian academic who has written books, journal articles, newspaper commentaries, and popular reports and a former artillery officer with 29 years of service and a PhD in War Studies) contend that most readers outside the academy have been exposed primarily to poor academic writing. When those same people see the best of what we can do, they are much more open to considering our opinions.

The fact that academic writing doesnt have to be dull, boring, and long winded is not enough on its own to justify the time you will have to spend to acquire the skills described in this book. There are other, more important reasons to consider:

Good academic writing can serve as an effective formof communication with the policy elite both nationallyand around the world.

It is true that academic work might not be read as widely as more popular material, but the quality of the audience for it is unusually high. The best academic journals are read by the most influential policy analysts and practitioners. The ideas in them can often shape a governments strategic thinking. Canadas International Policy Statement (2005), for example, reflects many of the ideas in Andrew CohensWhile Canada Slept: How We LostOur Place in the World, the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institutes In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy inan Insecure World, and Jennifer Welshs At Home in the World:Canadas Global Vision for the 21stCentury. Much of the thought behind Canadian prime minister Stephen Harpers initial foreign policy decisions can be found in Roy Rempels book, Dreamland:How Canadas Pretend Foreign Policy Has UnderminedSovereignty. So we see that military personnel who can contribute to the policy dialogue at the academic level can integrate their perspectives into what has typically been an almost exclusively civilian domain. And in an era that celebrates, for better or for worse, the democratization of foreign and security policy, it is crucial that the military does not exclude itself from these discussions.

Good academic writing is more than just writing. It isa process of critical thinking, research, and analysis thatcan only enhance an officers ability to do his or her jobeffectively.

This book outlines a rigorous process of research and writing. It challenges practitioners to question unfounded assumptions, to differentiate between evidence and assertions, and to argue comprehensively and logically. These are transferable skills that become increasingly important as military personnel progress in their careers and begin to operate at the strategic level more regularly. We envision a companion to this book devoted specifically to critical thinking in the military contexta text that emphasizes the transition from linear to non-linear thinking, explores the differences between the verifiably true and the simply convincing, and embraces the unknown as one of the keys to the learning process. That book, however, is a project for our successors.