West Point: faut-il abolir?

Un article qui surprend quand on connaît le prestige généralement associé à l'académie militaire. L'auteur présente une série d'arguments en faveur de l'abolition des académies militaires et il affirme que la formation n'est pas supérieure à ce qui est offert dans les Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC)dont la formule est beaucoup moins coûteuse.

 "No evidence shows that officers who attended civilian colleges, or any one of the U.S. Senior Military Colleges such as the Citadel, are lesser leaders than their service-academy colleagues. Tom Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning defense journalist, put it succinctly: “After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I’ve concluded that graduates of the service academies don’t stand out compared to other officers.” After all, perhaps the most preeminent Army leader in recent times, Colin Powell, is a product of the ROTC, not West Point.

This parity in skill has been slowly expressing itself in a rising number of promotions for ROTC officers over the past few decades. Thirty years ago, most Army three-star generals had graduated from West Point. As of 1997 (the last year for which data is available), only a third had. A study of naval officer ascension using data from 2003 concluded that, on average, there were no real differences in promotion rates between Naval Academy officers and ROTC officers. Of course, these arguments from statistics can’t be definitive, but they do indicate that ROTC officers are able to compete with their peers. Nearly half of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serving over the past decade bypassed the service academies."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-we-dont-need-west-point/2015/01/23/fa1e1488-a1ef-11e4-9f89-561284a573f8_story.html?hpid=z2