Training, from the Point of View of Ethics …
It’s not often that the words “ethics” and “training” show up in the same sentence, and similarly infrequent, the words “competence” and “ethics.” Mention of ethics puts us in a Sunday-go-to-church frame of mind, and competence is something for the workplace and the professions. Put “ethics” with “workplace,” and the mind usually goes to sex, lies, and stealing money—still no thought of competence. I hope to persuade you that competence is an ethical imperative in military service.
The basic argument is simple: lives and devastating wounds are at stake in military performance, ranging from the private beside you who might not know how to handle a grenade safely, to millions of lives at risk from weapons of mass destruction. The mortal stakes of military service means that without competence there can be no trust—in peers, in subordinates, in seniors, in self. No more than a surgeon can be excused for failure to achieve and maintain skill and knowledge by simply meaning well, no service member of any rank can be excused from the responsibility to know his or her stuff.
Of course there are moments in war, in dangerous emergencies, and in exercises simulating war, when instant obedience is required. For example, fire fighting in a burning ship cannot be suspended for a chief petty officer to answer “why” questions, but those providing training in these essential activities must know why, and convey enough of this rationality to permit their sailors to build habits of obedience on well-founded trust. Obedience based on well-founded trust in the competence and integrity of the senior is much more reliable than the reflex of blind obedience based on fear. Integrity also means that institutional powers to reward or punish are only employed for the good of the training or the good of the trainees, never for the private personal interests of the trainer. If a trainer uses power to coerce a private gain, be it sexual, financial, or careerist, the whole body of trainees—sometimes the whole service—is injured. There are no private wrongs in the abuse of military authority. In some instances the moral fabric of the whole service is damaged, and the trust and respect of the nation are impaired. In training no less than in military operations, all personnel watch the trustworthiness of those who wield power over them.
What service members need at every level is moral knowledge, as well as technical knowledge.
Every atrocity strengthens the enemy and potentially disables the service member who commits it. The distinction between lawful combatant (who may thus be legally and morally attacked) and protected person is the bright line between soldier and murderer. The overwhelming majority of people who volunteer for our armed services are not psychopaths; they are good people who will be seared by knowing themselves to be murderers. You do not “support our service men” by mocking the law of land warfare and calling it a joke.
Francis Lieber’s 1863 “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field” (the Lieber Code) expressed what I believe to be the continuing consensus of serious military professionals: “Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God.” Even tough-guy gunslingers in the ground forces, and all those whose ideals includes “supporting our troops,” have good reason, based on national self-interest, to respect and support the rules of war. Everyone who thinks that repeating “there are no rules” demonstrates patriotic support for the troops should think again.
LEADERSHIP
It’s easy to make the case that excellence in military leadership is a combat strength multiplier. Proving that such excellence protects the troops from psychological injury is harder, especially since this is the least studied of the three protective components—cohesion, training, leadership. Because of the powerful correlation between the rates of psychiatric casualties with physical casualties, it’s plausible to expect that data connecting leadership performance with physical casualties can be generalized to mind wounds:
Data from the Vietnam war covering 34 maneuver battalions in 5 Army divisions and separate brigades in the years 1965 and 1966 indicate that, “maneuver battalions under experienced commanders (6 months or more in command) suffered battle deaths in sizeable skirmishes at only ⅔ the rate of units under battalion commanders with less than 6 months in command.”51
The scarcity of empirical studies on the relationship between leadership and psychological injury is startling. Reuven Gal, former chief psychologist of the Israel Defense Forces, and his U.S. Army co-author, Colonel Franklin Jones, could do little more than assert their intuition in this, because the data connecting leadership performance and psychological injury rates have never been systematically gathered:
The soldier’s confidence in the commander is also critical in protecting him from overwhelming battle stress…. [This confidence derives from] (1) belief in the professional competence of the commander, (2) belief in his credibility, and (3) the perception that he cares about his troops. While in garrison all three components are equally important; in combat trust in the commander’s professional competence becomes primary.52
These authors visualize the commander as a giant lens that focuses battlefield, unit, and individual factors into the soldier’s appraisal of the combat situation, which in turn determines the soldier’s success or failure in coping.
During the period of military self-reform described above, the Army Chief of Staff, Edward “Shy” Meyer, attempted to implant a culture of leadership that he called “positive leadership”:53
• Make it safe to tell the truth.
• Support subordinate leaders’ professional growth.
• Trust them and work hard to assure their success.
• Assign missions without prescribing the means to accomplish them.
• Provide situations in which subordinate leaders practice what they’ve learned.
• Build their competence to assess situations and take the initiative to develop adaptive solutions.
• Mentor, rather than intimidate, subordinate leaders.
• Refrain from meddling in their spheres of responsibility.
• Require subordinate leaders to study their profession.
• Take responsibility for setting mission and priorities, not assigning every task as “highest priority, to be done immediately.”
• Listen to subordinate leaders’ feedback on time budgets and resources, supporting realistic time management.
• Support self-maintenance, rather than defeat it.
In a painful historical irony, General Meyer was trying to undo the de facto leadership culture that came out of World War II: expectation of instant, blind obedience from subordinates. While demanding blind obedience and micromanaging their subordinates, American leaders were fond of making speeches to them and to the public about democracy and individual initiative. Here’s the irony: the leadership practices listed above were brought to their fullest development by the Germans, who were not then practitioners of political democracy. The Israelis, who do practice political democracy, also follow these “German” leadership practices. In several important ways, the Communist Chinese in Korea also followed these practices at the small-unit level. My point is that there is no useful correlation between the leadership culture of a military organization and the large-scale political culture of the nation that creates it. Conventional wisdom holds that military organizations mirror the culture of the nations that create them. This is like the truth pronounced by the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece: it may not mean what you think it means. The culturally prestigious ideas that the U.S. armed services imported from the civilian sector were the ideas of “scientific management,” not empowering subordinates or the “democratic” spirit of valuing the insight and collective wisdom of the lowly NCOs.
The leadership culture that both protects the troops from psychological injury and makes them militarily effective is well understood: it is the constellation of leadership culture described above. It’s what I me
an by “properly supported” leadership. These practices are neither anti-democracy because the Germans, Chinese, and North Vietnamese used them, nor military democracy, because they run counter to the authoritarian U.S. leadership culture that grew out of World War II—the use of the word “democracy” here is a red herring either way.
Leadership, from the Point of View of Ethics …
Thumos, character, is a living thing that flourishes or wilts according to the ways that those who hold power use power. Character is fluid throughout life, and imitative throughout life. In high-stakes situations, people learn about the use of power from the ways power is actually used in their environment, even if they are not “directly involved.” Moral learning continues throughout life.
As Aristotle famously says in the Rhetoric I.ii.3, it is the ethos, the character of the leader, that is most compelling and persuasive. Listen again to Aristotle’s explanation of thumos in the Politics VII.6.1327b39ff. He says, “Thumos is the faculty of our souls which issues in love and friendship…. It is also the source … of any power of commanding and any feeling for freedom.”54 The spirited self-respect that Homer called thumos becomes particularly critical to leadership in a combat situation. To trust a leader, the troops need to feel that the leader is his or her “own person,” not a slave. In combat, trust goes to the leaders who give critical obedience, rather than blind obedience, to their own bosses. A leader giving blind obedience to an irrational or illegal order gets the troops killed without purpose [“wasted”] or irretrievably tainted by commission of atrocities.55 The “charismatic” impact of a leader being his “own person” doesn’t come from a rational calculation that such a leader would not obey uselessly suicidal or atrocious orders. When Aristotle spoke of thumos as the source of any power to command, he was speaking of its direct emotional impact.
Tell the truth and make it safe to tell the truth. In military organizations, the core reason for truth-telling is the maintenance of trust, both up and down the chain of command. In the long run, neither punitive sanctions, nor the Ten Commandments, nor the finest system for selecting officers of good character can guarantee truthfulness. Consistent, reliable truth telling is only possible when power is deployed in such a way that it is safe to tell the truth. Only then do subordinates air their doubts and problems, tell bad news, own up to failures. This is not coddling, because truthfulness in leadership also calls for vigorous criticism of subordinates’ shortcomings. The trust created by the practices of positive leadership given above is the main reason they are combat multipliers, while mistrust among peers and along the chain of command is a potent self-generated source of “friction.”56 Leadership truthfulness at all levels means eliminating perverse incentives to look good at the expense of being good. Unit “readiness” reporting has been laced with institutionalized fraud for decades.57 This is where personnel evaluation and promotion policy must converge with ethics and good leadership practices. But so far, every attempt to reform this policy area has gone on the rocks.
Use power in accordance with “what’s right.” Nothing destroys trust in the chain of command so quickly as a leader’s exploitation of institutional power to coerce a private gain from subordinates, be it sexual, financial, or careerist. Of these, careerist exploitation is the most frequent and the most damaging. The whole unit—sometimes the whole service—is injured. As I have said, there are no private wrongs in the abuse of military authority. The target of the abuse of power is not alone in being injured. That service member’s trust in the chain of command is going to be impaired or destroyed, of course, but in addition everyone that learns of the violation of “what’s right” also suffers injury to the capacity for social trust. The competence, consideration, and moral integrity with which leaders deploy institutional power are central to vertical cohesion. Everyone watches the trustworthiness of those who wield power above them; and this “fishbowl factor” is far-reaching.
A cartoon titled “Promotion Surgeries,”58 which appeared a few years ago in the Navy Times— it could have been in any of the services—showed three pictures of a mid-career officer stripped to his shorts, and in each frame a different sewn-up surgical incision. The first frame, referring to the rank of lieutenant commander (major in ground and air forces), showed an incision running across his forehead and was captioned, “Brain Removal.” The second frame, a back view referring to the rank of commander (lieutenant colonel), showed an incision running down the middle of his back, and was captioned, “Backbone Removal.” The last frame, again from the front, referring to the rank of captain (colonel), showed an incision on the left side of his chest, captioned, “Heart Removal.” A well-led force needs all of its officers to have all of their literal and figurative organs.59
The technological advances that have taken place since the end of World War II do not change the basic need for cohesion, training, and leadership. Today, a few privileged military formations get these good resources. The veterans I serve demand that every American service member who can be sent into harm’s way shall have them. There is no reason, other than cultural and institutional inertia, that this should not be done.
Trust is the master concept that links cohesion, leadership, and training.60 In fact, they are the things that build trust, forming and strengthening character throughout a military career.
Ethics, leadership, and policy are not distinct realms of function in military institutions—even though the current American institutions treat them separately. They are simply different refractions of the same beam of light, its culture. Recently, Lieutenant General Walter Ulmer, Jr., USA, retired, wrote, “Changing the culture of any organization is a leadership task, yet there appears to be no strategic design for how to change Army culture.”61 I propose that we make creation and preservation of trust across all ranks and between the armed services and the nation as the “vision statement” for such a strategic design, with cohesion, leadership, and training as its embodiments. We have known for more than a century that cohesion, leadership, and training are combat strength multipliers. In contrast, personnel turbulence, individual-based (rather than unit-based) manning, replacement, and rotation policies, training to check all the boxes and looking good rather than robust military competence, a climate of fear among officers, making them averse to decision, responsibility, and truthfulness—these are combat strength hemorrhages.
Some specific policy proposals to nourish the reader’s imagination are found in Appendix III.
You, the American people, are the ultimate commander of the armed services. Caring about these things and informing yourself— so that your caring can be effective—are basic to democratic citizenship.62 If you make trust—founded in cohesion, training, and leadership—your “commander’s intent,” the specific reforms in Appendix III may be the best way to fulfill that intent. Or there may be other, better ways. That doesn’t matter. What counts is that the civilian and uniformed leadership of the armed services faithfully and intelligently carry out your intent. To both the public and the military leadership, the veterans I serve say: Do it!
21 Odysseus As a Military Leader
So many of Odysseus’ grim and despicable failures of leadership responsibility have already been pointed out in this book that it is time to remind ourselves of his strengths and positive contributions to the Greek war effort. Odysseus was extremely productive in all of those military endeavors that involve mētis— cunning intelligence, deception, reconnaissance, manipulation, secrecy, spying, and strategy.1 It’s hard to overstate the military value of these capacities. Good reconnaissance and intelligence allow the soldier to evade the enemy’s traps and to lay his own. Both are keys to winning fights with minimum casualties, good reasons for Athena’s moniker as “The Soldier’s Friend.” She was the goddess of mētis. The ancient Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu sings the praises of reconnaissance and spying in the final chapter of The Art of War:
So what enables an intelligent government and wise military le
adership to overcome others and achieve extraordinary accomplishment is foreknowledge. Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.2
Odysseus was also a spy. During Telemachus’ visit with Menelaus in Sparta, Helen describes Odysseus’ daring solo penetration into Troy (Odyssey 4:274, Fagles). We never hear what Odysseus learned, or whether it was of any value, but his solo mission is consistent with his courage and crafty intelligence.
Iliad 10 reports his night reconnaissance with Diomedes behind Trojan lines. During this exceedingly dangerous mission, he discovers the Trojan order of battle (Iliad 10:471ff, Fitzgerald), but his boss, Agamemnon, the “consumer” of this intelligence, never makes any use of it, in keeping with his general incompetence. Odysseus and Diomedes also learn that Hector and his top commanders are conferring unguarded by the tomb of Ilos (10:458ff). We know that Odysseus is armed with a bow (10:287) and that he is capable of aimed rapid fire of great accuracy. So why do they not decapitate the Trojan leadership or even try? Greed for personal gain gets in the way. Odysseus and Diomedes have just learned that a newly arrived and travel-weary Thracian contingent is camped in an isolated and vulnerable spot with (Iliad 10:481ff, Fitzgerald)
Odysseus in America Page 28