Note: This is a somewhat edited version of an article I did for a German magazine. While aimed at German readers and focusing on the state of the German Bundeswehr, I hope it will interest some non-German readers as well.
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War is the most important thing in the world. When hard meets hard it rules over the existence of every single country, government, and individual. As current events in Tigray are showing once again, neither the old nor the young are immune against its horrors. That is why, though it may come but once in a hundred years, it must be prepared for every day. When the bodies lie cold and stiff and the survivors mourn over them, those in charge have not done their duty, said the ancient Chinese commander/philosopher Wu Zu.
To accomplish anything great the cooperation of many people is required. As, for example, when 100,000 men spent twenty years erecting the great pyramid at Giza. To be sure, the requirement for cooperation is similar in peace and war. However, war is not like building a pyramid. Ancient or modern, what sets war apart is that this cooperation must be achieved and maintained in the face, not just of every kind of hardship but of an enemy who is deliberately trying to kill you.
Organizing, equipping, supplying and training an army is difficult enough. Yet motivating the troops to the point where they are ready to give their lives for the Cause, as well as each other, is much more so still. Unless it is imbued with this spirit, an army is but a broken reed. From the Greek victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 BCE to the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, countless are the cases when small but determined forces clashed with larger, stronger, better armed enemies—and defeated them.
War is a chameleon; everything in it keeps changing all the time. Including technology—from stones and clubs to laser weapons—tactics, strategy, logistics, communication, intelligence, the lot. By contrast, the prerequisites of fighting power being rooted in human nature, have remained always the same. Caesar had his troops decorate their scabbards with gold and silver studs. Napoleon said that it is with colored ribbons that soldiers are led.
The ancient Greeks had a saying: X, or Y, was brave that day. Meaning that a person’s record in war is of limited use in predicting his future performance. The same applies to fighting power of an army. The fact that it fought well in the past does not necessarily mean it will do so again. And the other way around.
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The role of fighting power in war cannot be exaggerated. But how is it created and, which is even more difficult, maintained over time? The following is a very short list of the principles involved.
* War is the continuation of politics with an admixture of other means. Nevertheless fighting power is only partly dependent on politics. Historically speaking, some despotic societies have possessed it to a very high degree. On the other hand, as France in 1939-40 showed, democracies are not necessarily immune against defeatism.
* Whatever the political regime, it is essential that the troops have the support and respect of civilian society. Above all, male soldiers—even today in every army, practically all combat troops are male—must enjoy the support and respect of their womenfolk. The right to “kiss and be kissed,” as Plato puts it. Or else why should they fight?
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* The cause for which troops are called upon must be, or at any rate must be experienced as, just. Why? Because no soldiers are so foolish as to lay down their lives for a cause they consider unjust.
* Turning recruits into an army prepared to fight and die if necessary requires that they know and trust both their commander and each other. However, such knowledge and trust are not born in a day. That is why the authorities should do everything to make the troops stay together for as long as possible. As, for example, by returning those who have recovered from their injuries to their own units rather than to some centralized pool.
* Another indispensable prerequisite of fighting power is discipline. Both trust and discipline require that the troops be treated in a way that is, and is seen to be, just. Rewards and punishments must be distributed in proportion to each soldier’s merits, the risks he is made to take, and the responsibility he carries. They must also be timely; or else they are going to lose much of their force.
* The first concern of commanders must be to accomplish their mission. The second, to look after their troops; to do so they must live with them and share joy and sorrow with them. Overall, the best way to command is by example.
* Fighting power is the outgrowth of shared effort, suffering, and risk-taking. Conversely, any training that does not involve at least some danger will end by degenerating into a childish game.
* Finally, the form manifest of fighting power is what, in one of my books, I have called the culture of war. Including certain forms of shared bearing, discipline, dress, symbols, language, music, ceremonies, etc. As with trust, these things, if they are to mean anything, cannot be stamped out of the ground. They can only emerge from a long tradition, and, ultimately, history. To be sure, spit and polish, as it is known, can be overdone. In case it is it may turn a military into an army of soul-less robots; as, for example, happened in the Prussian Army between 1786 (the death of Frederick the Great) and 1806 (the disastrous battle of Jena). On the other hand, a military that cannot look on its history with pride is, in reality, not a military at all.
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I am not a German and I do not live in Germany. Though I have studied German military history in some depth, present-day German security is only of marginal interest to me. It is not I but Germans who should answer the following questions: does the Bundeswehr have the fighting power it needs to fight? If not, why? What can be done to change the situation? How to deal with the, how shall I put it, not so glorious past?
The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind.