Henry was a consummate, peerless warrior, skilled at jousting with the lance, a master of sword and axe. He would lead his knights across the small plains of their homeland in military exercises.
One day, his hermetic kingdom finally came into contact with the outside world - the Russians to be precise. As these things go, disagreements arose. The Russians proceeded to address their minor inconvenience.
Henry and his men faced the invasion in glorious array, the Prince in full armour on his war horse leading the way. Across the other side of the plain appeared the vanguard of the Russian forces: spetsnaz troops supported by Armata tanks, helicopter gunships and artillery. Prince Henry gave the order to charge. The ensuring battle must have lasted .. well, all of four minutes.
The question arises: did Prince Henry have military skills?
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My view. It's a mistake to get too philosophical about this, treating it as a debate about definitions or eternal abstract categories. Prince Henry and his men trained hard and long and were plainly differently-skilled to his peasants. So they plainly had military skills.
But in the current military context, those skills were useless and could not be leveraged into military effectiveness. In contemporary war-fighting, they had no military skills.
Both things can be true. The term 'military skills' is relational, it's not a thing.
Interestingly, this argument can be formalised: Having military skills is not exactly a predicate.
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Note: this fable is isomorphic to the discussion of Marx's theory of value as debated between David Harvey and Michael Roberts.
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