The courses at JSCSC are too high brow and whilst they are correct, and true, they are absolutely irrelevant.
and
JSCSC is one entry mechanism to this exclusive 'club' and some officers have made it to at least 1* without having done ACSC, but woe betide officers who have attened a foreign staff course - now that will be held against you.
Johnny Foreigners knowing about war? Utter tosh....
I never thought I would say it having spent years preferring ops to staff work and thinking that doctrine was just dull tosh done by those less punchy types with the sicknote from Matron, but during a recent JSCSC lecture given by an excellent Brigadier, he made the point that doctrine is the foundation of what we do. We don't have to like it, but we do have to understand it (I make no excuses - I don't really like or understand it particularly well). As he put it, you would hope that a surgeon might have a passing knowledge of anatomy and physiology before he opens you up - to say you 'don't do doctrine' is like that surgeon 'not doing' anatomy.
But, and it is a huge but, we have become so beholden to it to the extent that rather than being used as guidance, it is the ends ways and means not to operational success but a successful career for thrusting types, who either use it to make up for a lack of real-world operational understanding or the inability to get people to do things because they are the right thing to do at the time and not because it is written in some doctrine note. And that is the problem. Unfortunately in the current political and risk-adverse times, the doctrine-wallahs are very much in the ascendency. After all, follow doctrine and it all goes wrong you can blame it on the doctine.
As for Johnny Foreigner not knowing about war: I would have thought our rapid about turn on the COIN front having sat back on our Borneo / Malaya / NI laurels for too long demonstrated that we don't have all the answers. Subsequently watching the US military show us how modern COIN needed to be done should be a salutary lesson that we might not be as good as we like to think we are.
That said, I would still rather share a bird table on ops with a senior operator who is pragmatic and flexible enough to take / leave doctrine as required by the situation at the time than a full on doctrine-wallah.