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Fighting Power

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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.

What Must Be Done

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Some of those who read my recent book, Pussycats, have asked me to say a little more about what could and should be done to restore the West’s waning fighting power. Given the differences between various Western countries, obviously there cannot be a single solution: still the following should apply, more or less, to most.614WXaCRlAL

To start at the beginning, the all-pervasive system whereby many young people are doomed to remain crybabies and forcibly prevented from growing up should be terminated. Provide them with opportunities to be among themselves and play with as little, if any, supervision as possible. Give them freedom to experiment—or else how are they going to learn? Instead of drugging them, demand performance from them and encourage them. Put an end to what one writer called “the war against boys,” under which boys keep being told how bad, how wicked, how oppressive, they and their male friends and relatives are and punished whenever they make a “gun” out of schnitzel and shout “pow-pow” or even look at a girl. Terminate the situation whereby boys over six, or eight, or ten, or fourteen, are taught mainly by women. Have more male teachers in elementary school. If necessary re-segregate the education system so as to allow boys to be boys and save them the humiliation of having to compete with girls.

Second, recognize that training, unless it incorporates some risk, will turn into a childish game and re-organize it accordingly. Bring down the average age of the troops while at the same time ceasing to treat them as if they were infants. Stop subjecting them to all kinds of petty restrictions and trying to turn them into eunuchs. Those sent by their country to kill and be killed should also have some latitude to drink and wench as troops have always done and, if they are worth their salt, will continue to do until doomsday comes. And stop denouncing “militarism.” Instead, recognize the fact that troops are unlikely to fight well if, in a word gone berserk with political correctness, they are not permitted to express their pride and joy in their chosen profession. Including, yes, the joy of fighting enemies and killing them.

Third, women in the military. That many women do their job as well as any man no one questions. However, their widespread presence in the military gives rise to three major problems. First, even a cursory look at the way things are managed will show that women are privileged, causing widespread resentment among the male personnel (the more so because they are not allowed to talk about it). Second, it deprives that personnel from what is perhaps their most important reason for enlisting and fighting, which is to prove their masculinity to themselves and to others. Third, it opens the door to all kinds of claims about “sexual harassment,” to the point any male soldiers are now afraid of being accused or it (and sexual assault, and rape) than of the enemy. To solve these problems, 1. Cut down the number of women to, say, 10 percent of the total. 2. Put an end to coed basic training, which is a pure waste of (to see what such “training” looks like, watch http://i.imgur.com/t3CF25z.gif ) and a humiliation to the men who participate in it. 3. Remove women from all combat and direct combat support jobs, which also means capping the ranks to which they can rise. 4. Reconstitute the woman’s corps in such a way that only women will command woman and sexual harassment of inferiors by superiors brought to an end.

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Fourth, the vexed question of PTSD. The idea that war is necessarily harmful to the soul and, unless properly treated by all kinds of experts, will tend to destroy it is peculiar to the modern West. Looking back into history before 1860 or so, there is little or no evidence to support it; nor does it seem to be, or have been, a major problem in non-Western forces such as Hezbollah, Daesh, and, four decades ago, the Viet Cong. Ergo the phenomenon, which in recent year has grown to the point where it is threatening to undermine what little of the West’s will to fight remains, is a cultural one. So stop the system whereby anyone returning from war is automatically suspect of carrying the problem and practically forced to suffer from it. Reward those who do not contract PTSD instead of those who do so. Instead of pitying veterans and treating them as damaged good, find ways to reward them and above all, celebrate them for their heroism and their sacrifice.

Finally, it is vital that the old truth be recognized once again: Yes, war is a terrible thing. It destroys, it injures, it kills, often on a massive scale. Unless it is very carefully controlled, moreover, it may very well escape control while giving rise to the worse instincts in us humans—sadism, brutality, and what not. Still it should be understood that some things are even worse. Including to mention but a few, injustice, persecution, and slavery. Should the Spartans have surrendered and provided the King of Persia with soil and water, as the latter demanded? Should Abraham Lincoln have avoided war and allowed slavery to continue? Should Britain and France have avoided war and allowed Hitler to proceed with his plan of conquest? War, to repeat, is a terrible thing. But the situation whereby, in Europe and among some left-wing American democrats, this idea is carried to the point where society is incapable of waging it and pay the price it demands should be brought to an end. As the ancient Romans used to say: si pacem vis, bellum prepara (if you want peace, prepare for war.) Not just by improving your technology and purchasing new weapons, which seems to be the preferred Western answer to any military problem. But by changing attitudes.

Note that it is not a question of money. The US and its Western allies comprise all the richest countries on earth. As I have argued in several of my past posts, they already spend enough on their armed forces and to spare. Instead, nothing less than a fundamental change in mentality is needed. Enough to keep Donald Trump, who back in April 2016 promised to spend the first months of his putative presidency fixing the US military, busy for a long, long time.