by Mackubin Owens
Sen. Ted Cruz took the opportunity to compare the Army’s recruiting campaign to that of the Russians, arguing that the latter seemed to understand the purpose of a military better. In response, Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, tweeted that “politicians like Senator Cruz are disgracefully trying to draw the military into culture wars that are terrible for cohesion in our military. Cohesion and commitment are what wins wars, and these attacks damage it.”
Ms. Schake is right about cohesion, although I believe she misconstrues its meaning, but her concern for keeping the military out of the culture wars comes several decades too late. To paraphrase Trotsky, “The military may not be interested in the culture wars, but the culture wars are interested in the military.” In fact, the U.S. military has always been battling to maintain its ethos against civilianizing forces.
That battle has sharpened lately.
As I’ve written previously in the Washington Examiner, the source of this battle is the tension between the military’s functional imperative, to fight and win America’s wars, and what Samuel Huntington called the societal imperative: “the social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within the society,” especially “liberalism.” Huntington worried — properly, it turns out — that in the long run, the societal imperative would prevail over the functional imperative, undermining the military virtues necessary to ensure military effectiveness.
A liberal democracy faces a paradox when it comes to the relationship between the military and society at large: The former cannot govern itself in accordance with the democratic principles of that society if it is to protect that society and therefore preserve those very same liberal principles.
Behavior that is acceptable, indeed even protected, in civil society is prohibited in the military. The military restricts the freedom of movement of its members, it restricts speech, and it prohibits certain relationships among members, such as fraternization. It stresses virtues that many civilians see as brutal and barbaric because the military is one of the few jobs where you may have to tell someone, “Go die."
If the military fails, the society it protects may not survive. And long experience has taught us that certain kinds of behavior are destructive of good order, discipline, and morale, without which a military organization will certainly fail. The goal of military policy must be victory on the battlefield, a purpose that cannot be in competition with any other, including the provision of entitlements, “equal opportunity,” or diversity. Unfortunately, many of those in positions of responsibility seem to have forgotten this.
Since war has been mainly a masculine realm throughout history, it’s true the military ethos has traditionally been masculine as well, with a heavy focus on brotherhood (think Band of Brothers). The glue of the military ethos has been what the Greeks called philia: friendship, comradeship, or brotherly love. Philia, the bond among disparate individuals who have nothing in common but face death and misery together, is the source of the unit cohesion that all research has shown to be critical to battlefield success.
Given this history, it is not surprising that the earliest and most sustained attack on the traditional military ethos has come from feminists and their ideological allies, who have argued that the military excludes women by stressing aggression, male bonding, and other “macho” attitudes. These purported characteristics led Madeline Morris of Duke Law School, a former adviser to Bill Clinton’s secretary of the Army, to criticize the U.S. military philosophy as “masculinist” and call for the military to embrace an “ungendered vision” in which unit cohesion is achieved by compassion and idealism rather than by “macho posturing.”
Morris’s comments are typical of a civilian elite that sees the military ethos not as a valuable contribution to military effectiveness but as a problem to be eradicated in the name of multiculturalism and sexual politics. At a minimum, elite opinion contends that the military is obligated to adapt to contemporary liberal values, patterns of behavior, and social mores no matter how adversely they might affect the military’s ability to carry out its functional imperative. In the Weekly Standard in 2014, I wrote about the pitfalls of coed combat units.
Of course, the debate extends beyond sexual politics to diversity in general. But attempts by the military to address an alleged lack of “diversity” in the ranks can actually lead to division by pushing “identity politics.” Consider the proposal of a U.S. Navy task force assembled in July 2020 to address “racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, and other personal biases affecting the service” with a pledge to “advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities” and more.
But identity politics tends to divide people rather than unite them by suggesting that justice is a function of attributes such as skin color rather than one’s identity as an individual. Identity politics undermines military effectiveness, which depends on cohesion born of trust among those who operate together.
The fact is that because of a commitment to unit cohesion, the United States military services have been at the forefront of achieving harmony and cooperation in what used to be considered true “diversity,” one of all races, ethnicities, religions, and regions. For instance, as the late military sociologist Charles Moskos observed two and a half decades ago, the Army was once the only American institution in which black men routinely gave orders to white men. Although far from perfect, military service has been a “school of the nation.”
For most of American history, those in the military stood up for the military ethos. Sometimes they prevailed, sometimes not. It was for this reason that the military has remained one of the most respected institutions in America. But this seems to be changing.
The commitment to “diversity” at all costs is today’s party line within the Pentagon. No one wants to be accused of racism or sexism, so too many officers hold their tongues as the rank and file are indoctrinated by ideologues. Those who don’t can find themselves sacked. Yet others remain silent as the military is now subjected to the calumny that it is a hotbed of “extremism” and “white supremacy.”
This last issue is of particular concern to those who believe in the importance of cohesion based on mutual trust. Like identity politics, the claim that the military is now populated by right-wing extremists and white supremacists does not unify; it divides, undermining trust among service members.
The source of the extremist claim seems to be the fact that there were veterans among the rioters who unlawfully entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, the persistent claim that Donald Trump appealed to extremist groups, and Trump’s popularity with the military. But the real problem is that political and military leaders have failed to define their terms. What constitutes extremism or racist behavior? Is it resistance to critical race theory indoctrination? Is it conservative political views? Reports that the Pentagon will use a private firm to police the social media of military members only feed this narrative.
Of course, there have been serious racial incidents involving military service members in the past. Military leaders did not condone such behavior and were quick to deal with the perpetrators appropriately. Such incidents have also been rare. The idea that racism and extremism are somehow pervasive throughout the military is nonsense — indeed a slander.
The claim that extremism and white supremacy are widespread in the military undermines trust on two levels: first, between the public and the military as an institution; and second, between the military rank and file and their leadership.
The public holds the military in high regard, perhaps too high. But if civilians have tended to place members of the military on a pedestal, implying that extremism and white supremacy are rampant in the military can only engender disrespect for the institution.
Regarding trust within the force, what is the rank-and-file soldier to think when politicians and senior officers seem to suggest that supporting Trump or traditionally conservative ideas such as gun rights and limited government might make him or her a threat to the country? What will be the consequences for morale and discipline if the ranks believe that senior leaders have sold them out by their seeming willingness to go along with such accusations?
I am personally aware of increasing disillusionment on the part of service members who feel betrayed by their senior leadership. Individuals join the military for a variety of reasons, but a dominant one is a sense of patriotism, which is undermined if service members believe that senior officers are willing to sacrifice them to trendy political ideas.
The suggestion that white supremacy and extremism are rampant in the military undermines the military ethos. Both political officials and senior officers owe it to the country in general and the military forces to define extremism, identify actual cases, and provide data supporting their claim that a real problem does, in fact, exist — or stop tarring the service (or allowing it to be tarred).
These sorts of issues demonstrate that contrary to Ms. Schake’s claim in her tweet to Sen. Cruz, the U.S. military is already engaged in the culture wars and, indeed, is fighting for its very survival. The military ethos is under assault both from within and without. Can the military remain a trusted and respected institution if it becomes a figure of fun, mocked as another example of wokeness?
I believe the answer is no. The U.S. military claims to be a “profession.” But instead of defending its professional ethos, the Pentagon is revealing itself to be just another failed government bureaucracy pursuing its budgetary self-interest.
The ethos of the United States military has served the republic well. The burden of proof is on those who would undermine it in the name of the prevailing concept of diversity. Responsible political leaders and military officers themselves, both active and retired, are obligated to require those who would change it to prove that those changes will not further undermine the very purpose of the military: victory on the battlefield. The battlefield mocks diversity. It will be of little consolation to us if a defeated U.S. military was diverse enough to meet the demands of progressives.
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