FM 3-27.75 The Warrior Ethos and Soldier Combat Skills

[marct]

Hi JW,

For example, if the Armed Forces of France consisted solely of the Foreign Legion. (Let's all refrain from the too obvious comments.)

Actually, I was thinking of Byzantium post-Manzikert, but ...

The problem of (Marc, I hope I phrase this properly) lack of aggregation of the military with society at large goes back to the earliest days of the United States. It has become an immense issue in recent years, I think largely because of the undue influence of academic "intelligencia," with it contempt for the mililtary (and the United States). For example, can anyone imagine an elite university in this country offering John Keegan any sort of position?

I think the anti-war rhetoric certainly played a part in the current situation, but I don't think it is causal - more of a symptom that a source as it were. I think the problem is tied more closely into a shift in the military-economic system. Basically, if we look at the development of industrialization, we can actually track most of the social organization as coming out of the military revolution of Maurice of Nassau; i.e. standardization, assembly line production, time-motion efficiency, etc. This gets adopted (co-opted?) during the early industrial revolution as the basis for the factory production system and then worked back into the military post-F.W. Taylor.

Meanwhile, as Stan would say , "Sierra happens" and the military undergoes major shifts. Up to the present, and we have a system designed by engineers that is increasingly divergent from the society. Don't like your job? Leave and get another one. Don't like your family? The same. Increasingly, "community" is being divorced from physical location and identity is being divorced from citizenship (one of the effects of globalization amongst many) and I think that this is where a lot of the intelligentsia are playing a part. As I note, I really don't want to get started on that rant .

"Warriors fight, soldiers fight together." In either case, they are either products of the society they fight for, or that society is in trouble.

Yup.