Citizen-soldiers

William Astore, Our Military's Disturbing Transition to Warriors (via Russell Arben Fox)

One could argue that the Federal Government and the Union Army have not actually promoted the idea of a citizen-soldier since the 1860s, if not before, and certainly using the military to prop up an empire seems counter to republicanism. The best way to maintain the ethos of the citizen-soldier would be to keep state and local militias, and to avoid engaging in 'unnecessary' wars abroad. (D.W. Sabin has a pointed comment in response to Professor Fox's post.)

Is it possible to be a warrior and a citizen-soldier? It depends on what sort of values (or virtues) are being held up for adoption. One does not want to be a warrior in the way the Spartans were. Aristotle criticizes them for being concerned only with war, and not realizing that war is for the sake of peace (and leisure). But he also points out that polities/republics are exemplified by the citizen's possession of martial virtues.

Perhaps the use of warrior imagery and language is necessary in a time when masculine ideals are being lost and society is growing increasingly soft. A change in language is not really the problem, given that military culture is beset with feminism and a 2GW mentality, and careerism affects the officers corps (at least those who aspire to have a nice office in the Pentagon), and the union is no longer a republic. Fixing the language without fixing the real political and cultural problems is rather pointless.

Tomgram: William Astore, The U.S. Military's German Fetish by William Astore
(via EB)

Once the United States started on the path of imperialism (and even before), when has its elites not been enamored with using the military for their imperial ventures? Given the successes of the Germany military, it's not surprising that the Americans would try to learn from them. The Germans are convenient scapegoat; whom did the American army emulate after World War I? Iirc, it was the French. Those with imperial ambitions or who seek to become a world power will want their military to be modelled after the best, not the worst.

A problem-solving leadership exercise, Project X consisted of several scenarios and associated tasks. Working in small groups, you were expected to solve these while working against the clock. What made the project exciting and more than busy-work, like the endless marching or shining of shoes or waxing of floors, was that it was based on German methods of developing and instilling small-unit leadership, teamwork, and adaptability. If it worked for the Germans, the “finest soldiers in the world” during World War II, it was good enough for us, or so most of us concluded (including me).

Project X was just one rather routine manifestation of the American military’s fascination with German methods and the German military mystique. As I began teaching military history to cadets at the Air Force Academy in 1990, I quickly became familiar with a flourishing “Cult of Clausewitz.” So ubiquitous was Carl von Clausewitz and his book On War that it seemed as if we Americans had never produced our own military theorists. I grew familiar with the way Auftragstaktik (the idea of maximizing flexibility and initiative at the lowest tactical levels) was regularly extolled. So prevalent did Clausewitz and Auftragstaktik become that, in the 1980s and 1990s, American military thinking seemed reducible to the idea that “war is a continuation of politics” and a belief that victory went to the side that empowered its “strategic corporals.”

3GW may have become popular in the "right" circles, but was it really ever adopted? (I think the Marines were more successful than the Army, according to William Lind.)

The American military’s fascination with German military methods and modes of thinking raises many questions. In retrospect, what disturbs me most is that the military swallowed the Clausewitzian/German notion of war as a dialectical or creative art, one in which well-trained and highly-motivated leaders can impose their will on events.

In this notional construct, war became not destructive, but constructive. It became not the last resort of kings, but the preferred recourse of “creative” warlords who demonstrated their mastery of it by cultivating such qualities as flexibility, adaptability, and quickness. One aimed to get inside the enemy’s “decision cycle,” the so-called OODA loop -- the Air Force’s version of Auftragstaktik -- while at the same time cultivating a “warrior ethos” within a tight-knit professional army that was to stand above, and also separate from, ordinary citizens.

Is Clausewitz really the model for 3GW? Here he sounds more like a 2GW thinker.

This idolization of the German military was a telling manifestation of a growing militarism within an American society which remained remarkably oblivious to the slow strangulation of its citizen-soldier ideal. At the same time, the American military began to glorify a new generation of warrior-leaders by a selective reading of its past. Old “Blood and Guts” himself, the warrior-leader George S. Patton -- the commander as artist-creator-genius -- was celebrated; Omar N. Bradley -- the bespectacled GI general and reluctant soldier-citizen -- was neglected. Not coincidentally, a new vision of the battlefield emerged in which the U.S. military aimed, without the slightest sense of irony, for “total situational awareness” and “full spectrum dominance,” goals that, if attained, promised commanders the almost god-like ability to master the “storm of steel,” to calm the waves, to command the air.

It seems to me that part of Patton's popularity was that he was one of the few who mastered 3GW and used it. But within military culture he may have been idolized for different reasons. Total situational awareness and full spectrum dominance though are relics of 2GW thinking, so how is this really linked to the German way of war?

In the process, any sense of war as thoroughly unpredictable and enormously wasteful was lost. In this infatuation with German military prowess, which the political scientist John Mearsheimer memorably described as “Wehrmacht penis envy,” we celebrated our ability to Blitzkrieg our enemies -- which promised rapid, decisive victories that would be largely bloodless (at least for us). In 1991, a decisively quick victory in the Desert Storm campaign of the first Gulf War was the proof, or so it seemed then, that a successful “revolution in military affairs,” or RMA in military parlance, was underway.

Forgotten, however, was this: the German Blitzkrieg of World War II ended with Germany’s “third empire” thoroughly thrashed by opponents who continued to fight even when the odds seemed longest.

What a remarkable, not to say bizarre, turnabout! The army and country the U.S. had soundly beaten in two world wars (with a lot of help from allies, including, of course, those godless communists of the Soviet Union in the second one) had become a beacon for the U.S. military after Vietnam. To use a sports analogy, it was as if a Major League Baseball franchise, in seeking to win the World Series, decided to model itself not on the New York Yankees but rather on the Chicago Cubs.

3GW is a means, not an end in itself, and I think at the very least the more astute of the German military commanders realized this, even if the Nazi leadership did not. Should we attribute the mistakes made by Hitler to the German military? (As it is, many claim the German military should have resisted Hitler.) We should distinguish the learning of 3GW from thinking that war is the primary means of solving political conflict.

Precisely because that disaster did not befall us, precisely because we emerged triumphant from two world wars, we became both too enamored with the decisiveness of war, and too dismissive of our own unique strength. For our strength was not military élan or cutting-edge weaponry or tactical finesse (these were German “strengths”), but rather the dedication, the generosity, even the occasional ineptitude, of our citizen-soldiers. Their spirit was unbreakable precisely because they -- a truly democratic citizen army -- were dedicated to defeating a repellently evil empire that reveled fanatically in its own combat vigor.

This smells like American exceptionalism and may be giving too much (or little) credit to American military leadership, depending on what one thinks of the Soviets and their role and bringing down the German war machine. I don't think the average German soldier was any less dedicated than the average American soldier. Comparing the average American citizen with the average German citizen with respect to virtues other than those needed for a warrior doesn't make sense to me, since the constitutional order had already been subverted by World War II, and the political power of an average American citizen was rather limited even then. Even the Germans could vote for their leaders under the Weimar Republic. Was the patriotism of a German soldier any less than that of an American? We seem to be repeating WW2 propaganda caricatures.

The author seems to overstretch in order to make his point, and does not appear to have adequate familiarity with 3GW, beyond certain principles. The historical illustrations do not match up. The snarky response is that the author is USAF -- what does he know about ground warfare? But maybe he knows more than this article seems to indicate. Still, the rest of the article serves as a warning to Americans about embracing militarism. Those who think 3GW will give them certain victory in the pursuit of imperial goals should be chastized. 3GW is just a tool; whether one should go to war in the first place is a question that needs to be answered based on justice and wisdom, not on the belief that victory can be achieved. (And in a 4GW world, 3GW may win a conflict against a nominal nation-state, but it will not help in occupation and nation-building, nor is it an adequate response to the use of 4GW by non-state actors after the defeat of the country.)

William J Astore, Dangers of 'the best military'