Gents, first post here, so I hope I'm not going to step on too many toes.

It occurs to me that from my reading of the thread thus far, that there is a distinction between the strategic corporal being discussed and that envisaged by Krulac. His point, surely, is not that we need to train our soldiers and junior commanders to act in a strategicly positive way as an end in itself: rather he is proposing that the globalisation of information exchange means that the actions of any soldier are going to have strategic consequences no matter whether the Chain of Command actively prepares and trains our junior leaders for the role. Especially in the current assymetric environment, the actions of the section commander/squad leader (depending on which side of the pond you start...) are inevitably going to have strategic consequences.

The televisation of the death of Mohammed al-Durah by IDF fire at the begining of the Al-Aqsa intifada is a case in point. Arguably, the current events in the ME would not be taking place had the junior leader at the time had other options for dealing with stone-throwing youths than .762 calibre ones.