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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
Location/County: Shepherdstown, Jefferson
September 30, 2018
“Margin of Victory Sunday”
Douglas Macgregor
30 September 2018
2PM at Thomas Balch Library
Margin of Victory’s riveting stories of triumph and defeat are presented against the backdrop of national policies, culture and history. Each chapter is a reminder that to be successful military action must always be congruent with national culture, geography and scientific industrial capacity; that strategy and geopolitics inevitably trump ideology. Building effective military power takes time, resources and imagination. Unity of command, unity of effort and the integration of capabilities across service lines only happen when they are ruthlessly imposed from the top down. These are some of the enduring lessons in the five warfighting dramas that unfold in vivid detail on the tactical, operational and strategic levels of war. Margin of Victory concludes with a discussion of future battle and how the US can leverage the twentieth century’s lessons to secure its margin of victory in the twenty first century. The final chapter argues that America’s future victories depend on a major reset of US national military strategy and an overhaul of US military command structures and force design.
Douglas Macgregor is a decorated combat veteran, author of five books, and the executive VP of Burke-Macgregor Group LLC, a defense and foreign policy consulting firm in Reston, VA. He was commissioned in the Regular Army after one year at VMI and four years at West Point and retired with the rank of Colonel. He holds an MA in Comparative Politics and a PhD in International Relations from the University of Virginia. Macgregor is widely known for both his leadership in the Battle of 73 Easting, the US Army’s largest tank battle since World War II, and for his ground breaking books on military transformation. His fourth book, Warrior’s Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting, describes the 1991 action for which he was awarded a Bronze Star with “V” device for valor.