Leadership is the wonder weapon of modern armed forces

Lieutenant General Zoltán Mihócza – who delivered a lecture at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio – told defence.hu that the close partnership between the Hungarian Defence Forces and the Ohio National Guard – a long-standing military organization of Ohio State, USA – has been running since 1993. “Based on the US State Partnership Program, every state has chosen a partner country. The partnership between the Hungarian Defence Forces and the Ohio National Guard dates back to 1993, and the main reason for that is that the largest Hungarian American diaspora lives in Cleveland, a city of the midwestern state – said the general.

The lieutenant general highlighted that the Ohio National Guard offers a scholarship within the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (AROTC) program at Miami University, and the International Leadership Conference – where Hungarian and Serbian military delegations were also in attendance – was organized within this framework. During his visit, Lieutenant General Mihócza met American students who are enrolled on the ROTC program. “They asked very interesting questions about Hungary, the EU, NATO and the war in Ukraine” – he added.

In his lecture delivered at the International Leadership Conference with the title “Solving the Challenge of International Leadership: Integrating Military Strategy and Diplomatic Engagement”, General Mihócza shed a new light on Holy Roman imperial military leader Raimondo Montecuccoli’s well-known idea that “for war you need three things: money, money and money”: according to General Mihócza, in the 21st century, leadership as a factor is at least as much decisive as financial resources.

“The two cooperate anyway, but in recent times, the importance of human resources was not always given sufficient emphasis. The human factor must be treated on an equal footing with armaments and training level, because it is these three that together make up real military capability – the general told defence.hu. With regard to artificial intelligence and drone technology, General Mihócza said that one of the biggest challenges of modern warfare is the question of how military leadership can keep up with technological development. “While using AI, we must act as a kind of filter. We need to be able to tell true from false information, as we have known since the ancient philosopher and military leader Sun Tzu that all warfare is based on deception” – he added.

The lieutenant general recalled that leaders of the military and the civil spheres can mutually learn from one another. “At the end of my lecture, I asked the audience a billion-dollar question: what is it that can be fed back to the military from the world of civilian business and the company managers’ experiences? Reservists spend a big part of their office and civilian life in the business sphere, where they have to work at a much faster pace with a more profit- and success-oriented attitude. Efficiency, the time factor and a performance-oriented attitude may be utilized in the armed forces as well” – he said, adding that civilians can follow the example of the analytic and systematic approach of military thinking. “The planning of military operations does not take place in a flash: it is characterized by a series of logical steps, preparations and decision-making processes. The civil world, too, can successfully adopt this approach, the discipline of strategic planning” – he explained.

The conference was held on Friday and Saturday at the Oxford campus of Miami University: on Friday, General Zoltán Mihócza attended the program as an invited guest, and on Saturday he took the floor as a speaker. During his visit, he met with Brigadier General Matthew S. Woodruff, Adjutant General, Ohio National Guard, who had visited Hungary in the previous month.