The Cult of the Warrior - Helpful or...Silly, or...Dangerous?

John Kuehn Blog Post

Handgrenade of the Month – June 2018

 

The Cult of the Warrior -  Helpful or...Silly, or...Dangerous?

By John T. Kuehn

 

In the somber aftermath of another memorial day, perhaps this is a good time to revisit something that has bothered me for years—the Cult of the Warrior and its veneration off and on by American military cultures, to say nothing of the American public.

            As a mentor once informed me “define your terms up front.”   The phrase “cult of the warrior” must first be broken into its component parts and then synthesized into a whole.  Cult is a pejorative term that usually stands for an unhealthy grouping of individuals, usually around a religious idea or religious leaders, but any idea will do.  The cult’s purpose is often personality related, i.e. cults are led.   In some cases these leaders have names, David Koresh for example.  Or the more broad idea of a “cult of personality,” the unhealthy grouping of an entire polity around one overwhelming semi-mythic or religious person—Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, or even Napoleon.  In others, they have an ideal.  These second types of cults are more insidious and long lasting because the object of the cult’s veneration and worship does not die, in this case the idea of the warrior.

            As for warrior, it is a term much-enamored by modern militaries, oddly.  Its simple meaning equates to any person who engages in war, from ritualistic combat to the often unheralded combat of mass slaughter in total war.  But more than that, it is an identity, not a temporary moniker, taken on and off like a change of clothes.  Others have written on this, notably the poles of military cultural history represented by Victor Davis Hanson and John Lynn.   Warrior, it seems to me, is that striving for identity in war by individuals who want to retain something of their own humanity.  However, in trading one’s name, say John T. Kuehn, for identification as a warrior, exposes a paradox—striving for identity among the boredom, anonymity, chaos, and carnage of war, the individual makes a devil’s bargain, they trade way true individuality for a brand name—warrior.   With it comes an entirely new ethos, the “warrior ethos” it is named—but warrior really implies someone who is self-actualizing through violence, an unhealthy tendency in humans best captured by those discontents found in Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents.  It leads more often to annihilation of identity rather than its actualization.   After all, who wants to be a mere professional, or even one’s own little dull self, when one can be a WARRIOR (said in a deep voice).

            Me for one.   So let us synthesize.   The cult of the warrior (I am deliberately using small case now) is really about an unhealthy worship of an identity that modern liberal trends would, and should, prefer to minimize rather than glorify.  

            Now for some anecdotal stuff (I hesitate to call it evidence).   This identity, and its associated worship, find much of their currency and appeal, especially among general and flag officers, when there is not much combat going on, with few real “warrior events” taking place.  In the late 1980s, for example, one of my flag officer bosses gave himself the call sign “warrior.”  I think this had to do with the fact that these flag officers and others worried that if combat did come—and because the U.S. had been at peace for so long---that those asked to go into the fight might not have enough warrior spirit to prevail over the others.   If there is one thing humans will probably NOT forget, it is how to get angry and kill each other.

  One also saw, as the Cold War was ending, a tendency to highlight warrior-ship over an ethos of military professionalism, which in fact is what had really been behind the renaissance in the U.S. military components after Vietnam.  There were “warrior days”   and “warrior dress” (flight suits for us flyer-folk like naval aviators).   They were thought ridiculous by many—especially junior officers—at the time.  We thought, “these old geezers, trying to recapture their lost youth.”  I remember me and my mates making fun of all this “warrior nonsense” in the 1990s, after the  brief spasm of Desert Storm and Panama (and more darkly Mogadishu) allowed a few of us to “self-actualize” in combat.  Or at least get “combat time” officially entered in our records, and for some of us green ink in our flight log books.*

            The warrior cult is now a big business, cashing in on society’s overall plunge into mindless adolescence instead of adulthood, and our generals (and not a few admirals) buy into this nonsense-- after all, how are we going to get those slugs playing video games on their X-boxes to join the all-volunteer military?  By making them warriors by gum!  The women, too, are prone to this pathology—for example more and more I get female military history students wanting write about warrior queens (e.g. Boudica) and “warrior stuff.”  Recently, a general at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas reflected glowingly for his captive audience of 1200 majors with the following apocryphal quotation: “"Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”   I am not really sure what that means, but I think it means that there are some people who are by right better, and therefore more deserving of veneration, than the rest of us lowly souls.  And they are known as warriors.  I rest my case.

Humans should ameliorate violence, not celebrate it.

Hey folks, grow up!  

 

Happy Post Memorial Day,  

John T. Kuehn, military professional, but better known to his friends as “john”

 

*In the United States Navy, in naval aviation,  flight hours are normally logged in black ink, but if flying combat missions, that ink is instead green—See OPNAVFORM 3760-31 (current series)

30 Replies

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The reality that I experienced with Marine infantry in Viet Nam was that most who were exposed to combat soon got over glory type thinking and "fearless warrior" fantasies, and became what I would refer to as soldiers, men doing the job as best they could, trying to stay alive and keep their comrades alive. A few were what I'd call professional soldiers, who had some studies of war, were devoted to it as a craft. And then there were just a few real warriors, those who looked forward to combat, who had little to no fear or at least could banish it to the far back of their minds and revel in the adrenalin high of close combat. They were often skilled at killing, would volunteer for dangerous tasks, and could be great leaders when things got really rough. By today's standards we might classify some as a kind of sociopath. But having just a sprinkling of such fighters in the overall group did make it more effective. The old Norse fighters valued the men they called beserkers, who would more or less go crazy in combat and fight like demons, to the advantage of their side and the detriment of the other. Civilized people do not glorify violence, yet war is as uncivilized as human behavior ever gets. So I have to say there is not just a place but a need for that sprinkling of true warriors in the ranks of those at the tip of the spear. But yes, calling everyone who wears a uniform a warrior or a hero is, by my standards, a bit silly.

Good hand grenade (strange to say, perhaps?). Yeah, I suggest we torpedo this misguided meme. Modern war involves too much killing from a distance to justify much support for the macho-centric "warrior cult." We need to look beyond the bluster to guys who quietly know how to get the job done. In my gunship squadron in Vietnam, the two most competent and respected pilots were both Mormon family men, very quiet guys indeed but their quiet confidence radiated out of the cockpit. Sticking with flying (which I know best), in "War Two" there was Guy Gibson of the RAF Bomber Command, an exceptionally competent pilot and leader who, outside the cockpit, did no blustering and was in fact something of a head case, with few friends. The Dams mission in May of 1943 probably should never have been attempted, given the mixed results and the high loss rate. But that it achieved any success at all is due in large part to Gibson.

Going out on a limb I'd say my favorite cinema model of a warrior is John Wayne, in, e.g., Sands of Iwo Jima. Quiet, self-effacing, a hard-ass on his men in the name of professionalism and training, but hardly "macho" -- kind to women, for example. Of course in real life the "Duke" was probably nothing like that, but when I was a kid he set the standard for some of us, on film. How else were we children of the 50s supposed to learn?

I think I know what the general meant: "Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back."

Perhaps he meant that we (the imperial "we" - draft boards, the DOD, recruit training, etc.) don't do a very good job in recognizing or overcoming human frailties when it comes to sending people into combat (I assume he means ground combat, in particular). The general's 10% were examples of where the system suffered a complete breakdown except in one fundamental way: as every good personnel guy knows, somebody has to fill those empty billets.

The general's 80% fall into the category identified by S.L.A. Marshall--they carry a weapon, but may not actually fire it, though Marshall's estimate (that no more than 15-20% of soldiers fired their weapons in WWII combat) yields a lower number in this group than the general mentions. His final 10% are the functional few. Nine of them load, fire, and maneuver; but the last one stands out. This is the one who thinks and fights, i.e. functions at full capacity.

I get that cults are bad, but I can't help wonder. Is a cult of the warrior worse than a cult of celebrity, a cult of some politician, a cult of political correctness or of climate worship or of proper eating or any of the other possibilities mankind has indulged in over the millennia?

All of these seem to be variations on an unthinking (emphasis on "unthinking") secular-cultural religion. Is cult of warrior any more distasteful? I'll need a lot of convincing; call me after the next episode of Kardashians in Space or after I finish Face-Tweet-Gramming for four or five hours.

It is conceivable that a cult of the warrior represents a particular danger to a democracy if it gets out of hand, but it’s possible to see that danger in other cults as well. It seems more likely that as long as the demos doesn't forget to maintain a strong civil-military divide, i.e. limit the warrior/soldiers to their role as instruments of democratic policy, then the nation will survive.

On the other hand, there may be something useful in this talk of warriors at a time when nations have not given up on warfare as an instrument of policy but have trimmed their active forces to the bone. Most would agree that they need a way to ensure that the people sent to fight are--from the get-go--deadly purveyors of the trade. It is clear that a definite divide exists between those who can adjust quickly and effectively to war. Perhaps ‘warrior’ needs to be a label for those particular qualities that nations’ active forces must have to prevail, and that need to be more consciously defined and selected.

An historical example of the need to carry out this sorting process that occasionally crops up is the story of the first submarine COs sent to prosecute the war against Japan during WWII. Many of them were too cautious. Their peacetime training and attitudes did not translate well to the new circumstances and many of them were replaced as soon as the Navy could find the Mush Mortons and the Dick O'Kanes to take over. The unanswered question is this: how many subs failed to return from patrol in those early days, because their skippers weren't in the 10% or so?

Maybe none of this applies to the modern surgically clean war fought via SATCOM links, via video feed, where the workday ends at 1700 with a brew. But maybe it does and in the moment of crisis, will there be adequate time available to find 'warriors' for the skimpy modern forces if someone hasn't figured out how to do that earlier?

Finally, this warrior stuff can make people uncomfortable with fact that somewhere deep inside human frame there are monsters waiting to get out, monsters that are never going to go away. Is all this talk about cults dangerous because it threatens the bonds of civility, or is it nothing more than a way to shift a little honor onto those willing to take a bullet for the rest of us. Calling a scared PFC cowering behind sandbags who never fired a shot a warrior does seem a little silly. S/he's clearly no different than the rest of us, but it does no harm.

Still, there is that monster....

I shared this post on FB, and found that suggesting the 'warrior cult' was dysfunctional for a democracy instantly led to claims that I couldn't 'get it' since I am not a combat veteran. I served as a Marine grunt, but I still 'can't know'.

I wonder how Huntington would react to this 'warrior' idea which has permeated the US military from the '90s onward. It also seems to introduce a schism in the military itself, we already see an increasingly sharp divide between civilian and military, but within the military itself we see a divide between those who see themselves as professionals... and those who claim 'warrior' status. Perhaps expressed most fiercely by the Special Operations community who further claim to be 'operators'.

Some of this is a natural human tendency to rank and order groups, such as in the 19th century British army when some regiments were 'fashionable' others not. But much of it, especially in the veneration given to the military in our larger society as fewer Americans have direct knowledge of military life, is the natural corruption that seems to develop around those granted the right to employ violence on the behalf of society. I suspect the recent police scandals involving excessive use of force are pushed by similar cultural forces.

Yes, modern warfare only has a fraction of those involved actually taking part in close combat. But in the end, it takes boots on the ground to go in, neutralize the opposition, and hold the ground. No, there's no need for beserkers in planes, or running drones, or firing artillery, launching missiles, or cyber warfare. The infantry still exists and will always exist, and men going up against each other to kill and destroy will remain an uncivilized horror. The training to prepare men for that must remain intense, and in those units both soldiers and professionals (e.g. the John Wayne character or the Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan) and a few warriors are all needed for maximum effectiveness.

The general's 80% fall into the category identified by S.L.A. Marshall--they carry a weapon, but may not actually fire it, though Marshall's estimate (that no more than 15-20% of soldiers fired their weapons in WWII combat) yields a lower number in this group than the general mentions. His final 10% are the functional few. Nine of them load, fire, and maneuver; but the last one stands out. This is the one who thinks and fights, i.e. functions at full capacity.

Remember that Marshall's numbers and analysis have been strongly contested in the past few decades, starting with Roger Spiller's 1988 article:

Spiller, Roger J. "S. L. A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire." The RUSI Journal 133, no. 4 (Winter, 1988): 63

 

I have been familiar with the criticism of Marshall for quite a long time. That was not my point, which was that the general may have been using Marshall as his authority, though that's speculation.

Not that it changes the general's principle point, which was, I think, that warriors exist, but they are rare. I happen to agree. Cults also exist, but distaste for cultish behavior should not cause historians to overlook the fact that sometimes a particular collection of traits come together in an individual in such a way as to cause that individual behave with spectacularly effectiveness in combat.

If I had to pick a term to describe them, 'warrior' seem reasonably appropriate.

Personally I blame the movie 300. I never saw Marines sporting Corinthian helmets until it screened.

Just kidding, it’s not all 300’s fault. I actually get a kick out of the flick, though I don’t mistake it for history or a warrior culture that I’d want to emulate. But I wonder if the “cult of the warrior” trend is more a response to cultural changes around military organizations than the result of peacetime commanders looking for something to do.

Militaries are inherently conservative organizations, in that they don’t want to change what they believe to be effective on the battlefield unless they absolutely have to. We can understand this, because military leaders think that the way things are now are what lets them win and keep most of their men alive. Change something, and you risk both loss of life and loss on the battlefield. So I think part of warrior cult comes from a natural contrast - at least in the West - between slow-changing military culture and rapidly changing social culture. A lot of the more traditional things Western militaries value - aggression, defending the weak, avenging an injustice, destroying evil people - are not valued by ever-increasing swathes of the culture. Perhaps “not valued” is not the best characterization, but they are no longer as black and white. Try to live a life based on those values and you’re as likely to be accused of microaggressions or unconscious bias or toxic masculinity as you are to be celebrated for your willingness to put your life on the line to defend them. As society pulls one way, the military pulls another, because it believes it needs to continue to value those things to be effective.

I also wonder whether the contrast comes, again, not from a change in the military’s “warrioriness” but a heightened dichotomy between attitudes toward violence. Western society has become increasingly intolerant of types of violence that used to be common. And while some organizations have violence as part of their mandate, it’s often as a last resort. Law enforcement comes to mind. They use violence, but they also have a vast repository of other tools designed to help keep the peace that are employed before violence becomes necessary. For every news report of police using violent means to resolve a crime, thousands of non-violent resolutions go unreported. The same could be said of a national government. The state has many different tools to pursue its interests: diplomacy, trade, etc. And the state’s reason for existence is not violence, but - ideally, at least - meeting the needs of its citizens. A military is different. Its sole reason for being is violence, for inflicting death and destruction in pursuit of a particular goal. For the military, violence is not one sub-set of its tools; it is the primary tool. There may be different attitudes among military practitioners - the quiet professional soldier, the raging berserker - but they’re all in the group for one reason: executing state-sanctioned violence. And that mindset is increasingly anathema to Western culture. And becoming increasingly anathema, the contrast grows and what might previously have seemed to society like a warrior mindset becomes a cult.

I’m not a fan of looking back to the Spartans or Vikings for inspiration. As a Marine, I’ve got plenty of good examples from Belleau Wood to Fallujah. But I can understand that, as societial changes rocket forward, those more conservative institutions hold closely to those virtues that make them effective, even doubling downing on them as a reaction.

Good discussion, I do not have much to add. I do find the responses one sometimes gets when suggesting that the "warrior" ideal is perhaps unhealthy for civil-military relations in a modern democracy as simply more evidence of the problem. I lump the "warrior" phenomenon into the bucket with all the other things contributing to the "new American militarism", or what I call, using the words of Walter Millis, the "Martial Spirit" 21st Century style. Adults are professionals, children and adolescents want to be warriors, although that is not absolute in all cases, it tends to be what I have observed in my ongoing anecdotal accumulation of memory. When old geezers with stars on their shoulders start tossing around the word "warrior" as if it is some magical gnostic incantation, I cringe.

John T. Kuehn

This has been an interesting discussion of a phenomena that I confess makes me uneasy. It is easy to dismiss the ‘cult of the warrior’ as military childishness, or a form of miltary-social ranking, but the potential for harm is surely there. As someone with a growing interest in the French Army, I have little doubt that soldiers who start to think of themselves as something apart can cause real trouble if the situation permits it.

Even before we get to the potential threats to the state, non-Australian H-War readers may be interested to know that a scandal has erupted here over the behaviour of Special Air Service Regiment soldiers (they prefer ‘operators’, insert eye-roll) in Afghanistan, which is still being investigated, but aside from some pretty off-the-rails behaviour, may include serious criminal behaviour, including war crimes. There are undoubtedly several layers to this, including too many deployments from a relatively small special forces group, habitual (mostly unjustified) secrecy within that group, and that general sense of special forces exceptionalism that has thrived in the last few decades, but the ‘cult of the warrior’ also echoes through it.

Indeed, it might be noted given the reference to the film '300' the other day that one of the alleged perpetrators was nicknamed Leonidas.

To anyone interested the press reporting is here: https://www.theage.com.au/topic/afghanistan-667

Can we make a distinction between the "cult" of the warrior and the "ethos" of the warrior? If the "cult" of the warrior can be "silly" or "dangerous," can the "ethos" of the warrior be something good and noble we need to nurture?

I wonder if you can maintain a true warrior cult without encouraging misogyny and tolerating rape. This is not some snide dismissal of one of the more unfathomable aspects of military life. We live in changing times, and I wonder if it is possible to maintain such an ethos under current social conventions. And if you attempt to suppress certain attitudes and behavior associated with warriors, are you merely creating a situation where warriors will seek to preserve them in an underground setting? This has been on my mind for some time, and I welcome feedback from any quarter. Thank you for your time and kind attention.

Mr. Urwin, unofficial citizen militia units in deep rural America, perhaps? An evermore insular and closed U.S. military that views with utter contempt the civilian population it ostensibly serves?

Can one encourage masculinity's positive aspects without having to accept all the negative possibilities of bad attitudes towards women? Of course that's possible and in fact is a reality for plenty of Western men (even if not all). Thus it is possible to have a warrior mindset and virtues without becoming a brutish killer, misogynist, and arrogant jerk in general. How men can be honorable, admirable warriors without the downsides depends on their leadership, training, and of course, personalities. Yes, there can be a warrior ethos rather than just some excessive variant of warrior culture. And unfortunately, yes, in any large group there will be subsets, and one possible subset of the military are those who fall all the way into how elite and special they are, to the point of deviating from real decency. That such a subset can and will exist should be no surprise, do we not see that among some law enforcement officers, and even among our high level groups like doctors, judges, politicians? Expecting to achieve perfection of all members of any group is silly, as mere humans we are too varied and subject to flaws for that to happen. But we certainly can look for and promote and celebrate a high level of goodness among people, and those in our military are far more good than anything else.

Greg, Stephen. and Jean:
Thank you for contributing and offering insightful comments on all accounts in what has developed into an interesting and productive (I think), thread.

Steve first, I confess to riffing on just this issue--ethos versus something else-- having written a previous hand grenade on the ethos part two years ago. I would argue (passive voice intentional), that the ethos piece precedes the development of a "warrior cult."
See Here:
https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/blog/hand-grenade-week/132885/war…

Jean, Thanks for the report form the field. I have thought for a while now that diffusion of this cultural tendency from Americans to their allies because of 17 LOOOOOONNNNNG years of warfare with "warriors" and "Operators" as the focus might be impacting other military cultures outside those in the U.S. Keep the reports coming.

And Greg, Uberlehrmeister, your post is most troubling of all. It is the old saw, newcomers to existing culture tend to get the vices instead of the virtues. Instead of women infecting men with their more reasonable cultural attributes I sense that instead women (whom I define as having two X chromosomes) are being infected by the more unfortunate male ones.

My thesis is that we need to esteem military professionalism, small p. That point is deliberate, the creation of so many formal nouns, such as Warrior, Operator, Soldier, Airman, Sailor, and the progenitor of it all, Marine, is unfortunate. I know DOD and Army and service regulations mandate this horrible practice, but really??? There is a real problem with over-formalization, it is more evidence of the false, or overheated, inflation of identity. Why can't words retain their original meanings? Why must we constantly redefine them?

To quote the master: "....Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any." Thucydides, 3:82.

I think it is a desire to redefine the rules in our favor, to exalt ourselves. Wir wunderkinder. I reject that. Of course, a al Henry Adams, if you disagree with me I will agree with you. But please explain your disagreement so I can understand as well as agree--to some degree.

best, john t. kuehn, phd, former sailor and professional naval officer

Greg, Stephen. and Jean:
Thank you for contributing and offering insightful comments on all accounts in what has developed into an interesting and productive (I think), thread.

Steve first, I confess to riffing on just this issue--ethos versus something else-- having written a previous hand grenade on the ethos part two years ago. I would argue (passive voice intentional), that the ethos piece precedes the development of a "warrior cult."
See Here:
https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/blog/hand-grenade-week/132885/war…

Jean, Thanks for the report form the field. I have thought for a while now that diffusion of this cultural tendency from Americans to their allies because of 17 LOOOOOONNNNNG years of warfare with "warriors" and "Operators" as the focus might be impacting other military cultures outside those in the U.S. Keep the reports coming.

And Greg, Uberlehrmeister, your post is most troubling of all. It is the old saw, newcomers to existing culture tend to get the vices instead of the virtues. Instead of women infecting men with their more reasonable cultural attributes I sense that instead women (whom I define as having two X chromosomes) are being infected by the more unfortunate male ones.

My thesis is that we need to esteem military professionalism, small p. That point is deliberate, the creation of so many formal nouns, such as Warrior, Operator, Soldier, Airman, Sailor, and the progenitor of it all, Marine, is unfortunate. I know DOD and Army and service regulations mandate this horrible practice, but really??? There is a real problem with over-formalization, it is more evidence of the false, or overheated, inflation of identity. Why can't words retain their original meanings? Why must we constantly redefine them?

To quote the master: "....Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any." Thucydides, 3:82.

I think it is a desire to redefine the rules in our favor, to exalt ourselves. Wir wunderkinder. I reject that. Of course, a al Henry Adams, if you disagree with me I will agree with you. But please explain your disagreement so I can understand as well as agree--to some degree.

best, john t. kuehn, phd, former sailor and professional naval officer

The latest posts on this thread suggest to me that 'warrior'—like ‘assault weapon’ or ‘toxic masculinity’—has become a synonym for ‘something I don’t like.’ ‘Warriors’ are war criminals, misogynists, and rapists; they are infantile, boastful, rash, unthinking, and ultimately dangerous to all we hold dear in democratic society!

This sort of dogmatic alienation is always easier than unpacking and analyzing a concept in its historical context and, in particular, in the context of an apparently eternal human nature.

For example, the definition of the term above reflects a modern provincialism: a view that is first-world, northern hemispheric, west-centric (terms are almost synonymous in any case).

It is modern and first-world in the sense that it is about 100 years old, probably gaining real traction among the educated in the industrialized world about the time Kaiser Wilhelm II dispatched his ‘Huns’ to Tientsin to help put down the Boxer Rebellion. Its northern and west character is apparent from the fact that it’s not at all clear that societies in the world south, particularly in Africa, or non-western world, particularly in the Middle East, define the word in the same way. It also wouldn’t have worked in Europe from about 1000 to 1500 AD.

Use of ‘warrior’ in this way is also revealing of another tendency current in modern Western culture since the time of Rousseau, which is to attempt to submerge the unpleasant components inherent in human nature behind Potemkin fronts or explain them away as the result of external influences. Failings that are inherent to the human animal are attributed to institutions, devices, and etc. that are often incapable of agency absent an actual human participant. The result it that the bien pensant end up taking action to outlaw words (that must be spoken by humans) and devices (that must be animated by humans) instead of addressing the much more complex problem that is the underlying general human character.

Admittedly, societies have a large stake in regulating human behavior. In the past, this has been controlled to the extent it can be controlled through informal mechanisms like traditions, norms, and mores supplemented by conscious indoctrination using institutions like schools, churches, civic organizations, various official propaganda programs, and political parties, among others.
However, with traditional cultural institutions’ influence fading, secular institutions are trying hard to find other mechanisms—like word bans—to try to accomplish the same sort of goal. However, there is zero historical evidence that these tools will, anymore than the earlier ones, eliminate all the bad behavior to which human beings are prone. Neither the Church, the Gulag, nor Vietnamese re-education camps were able to wash sinful tendencies from the capitalist or communist souls, so what hope is there for other attempts?

The problem with efforts to ensure that 'warrior' carries the pejorative meaning, 'immature overly masculine war criminal,' is that it will not lead to the desired outcome, because it will not touch the underlying human behavior. Rather than exploring a broader understanding, this effort is inherently provincial, being limited to a particular limited cultural and historical expression.

Someone, I don’t remember who, once said something like, “A provincial is a person who believes his opinions are laws of nature.” As much as some might hope, the definition of ‘warrior’ is not a new law of nature.

Using a possibly false distinction I picked up years ago from an anthropologist, I think, but my memory is hazy, I have conceived of warriors as people who fight on behalf of their group (tribe, clan, etc) as a function of their social structure – essentially a tribal warrior in the classic sense.

Once you get into the creation of standing armies with its members being paid to apply violence, you are no longer talking about warriors, but soldiers.

This may well be too semantic and we could easily debate the utility and validity of such a taxonomy (as we could any taxonomy), but it seems a fair division to me. I’m not sure that that either the ‘cult’ or the even the ‘ethos’ of the warrior is useful for modern militaries. Both in and out of uniform I’ve long thought that military personnel, who are all specialists of certain kinds, should simply aim for high levels of individual and collective competence and professionalism. Tempering that with a degree of humility probably wouldn't go astray.

Whatever ethos you seek to apply, the potential for problems develops, I think, when that ethos develops into exceptionalism, whether that exceptionalism is directed towards other parts of the military institution itself or the wider society.

All: Here is a repost of an email that Captain (retired) Robert "Barney" Rubel, USN, sent to me on this issue after I forwarded him the discussion. Captain Rubel me to ensure everyone knew that he is "not a trained psychologist or sociologist, just a naval officer that observed some things." He is also the former Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College until about 2 years ago and the team lead for the Fleet Design Advisory Panel commissioned by the Chief of Naval Operations in2016-2017.

"I have observed three types of informal organizations arise within the formal wiring diagram of the military: tribes, cults and baronies. I was a member of the East Coast Light Attack tribe in the Navy. Tribes generate and protect identity; cults generate and protect dogma; baronies generate and protect personal equities. As a tribe member, the warrior ethos was fundamental to our identity. We always disparaged the Air Force cult of strategic bombing. I knew a Navy admiral who operated on the basis of personal equities.

My guess is that there is no such thing in today's military as a warrior cult, as there is no cohesive doctrine/dogma to protect. Rather, the warrior ethos, a necessary underpinning of any professional military, can spawn tribes of various types. Humans have been tribal for millennia and the instinct is likely deeply ingrained. Tribes have some kind of initiation process that determines if a potential member is worthy and loyal, and these can sometimes be brutal and sociopathic. It is not hard to imagine that special forces outfits would be a breeding ground for tribal formation.

Tribes especially have been local and specific, and vulnerable to the development of adverse values. The internet can promote the development and spread of cults and tribes. So, the problem becomes the spread of adverse tribal values and cult doctrine among geographically dispersed "wannabes."

Warrior ethos based on chivalric and accepted social values is a good and necessary thing; distortion and perversion of it due to tribalism is the problem.

Barney"

Posted by John T. Kuehn

The comment about tribes, cults, and baronies really struck me. The best known military "tribe" there is, is the United States Marine Corps. (Full disclosure- I am a proud member.) This is why there's such a huge business in Marine paraphenalia, why the museum in DC is always full of visitors, why the Marine Corps League exists, why Marines always greet each other when they see someone who has any sort of emblem on themselves, their vehicle, or anything else. It is an identity, and also a dedication to the ideals of the Corps (regardless of how often they get violated). Special Forces, SEALs, etc, are also tribal, just smaller. Marine training is or at least used to be in part about being a solid soldier, but also in part some of the warrior ethos. Marines jump on grenades to save other Marines and that example is well known in the Corps. Only bonding and commitment at deep levels enable men to bear extreme hardship, do near suicidal things, and retain reasonable sanity. Recall what some philosopher said, "a sane army would run away", very logical, but not how societies survive.

Entering late to this discussion, but enjoying all the exchanges!
I agree with all the comments on the potential drawbacks and dangers of a "warrior cult."
That strikes me as something from a primitive tribal past even while realizing that we still are largely tribal (sectional, regional) to this day.
The discussion on 'warrior ethos' deserves further thought and exploration.
I would prefer to be thought of as a "professional" (small 'p' John :-)
I have carried the following with me from my LT days and I think it captures both the professional, but with a thread of warrior ethos. My copy is attributed to George L. Skypeck:

I was that which others did not want to be.
I went where others feared to go, and did what others failed to do.
I asked nothing from those who gave nothing,
and reluctantly accepted the thought of eternal loneliness . . . should I fail.
I have seen the face of terror; felt the stinging cold of fear;
and enjoyed the sweet taste of a moment's love.
I have cried, pained, and hoped . . .but most of all, I have lived times
others would say were best forgotten.
At least someday I will be able to say that I
was proud of what I was . . . a soldier.

Signed -
a content sheepdog.

I have devoted some study to the methods the U.S. Marine Corps employed to train its personnel to take their place as America's warrior elite from the late 1930s through the 1960s. I have written approvingly on the results of that training as it impacted on the performance of the Wake Island Detachment, 1st Defense Battalion, and VMF-211 at the start of World War 2 and the subsequent conduct of the survivors of those two units and other Marine outfits while they were POWs in Japanese custody.

My question was not some thinly veiled attempt to inject political correctness into this discussion. Times have changed. The military now contains a higher percentage of women, and those troops are free to try to prove themselves qualified to serve in the combat branches.

I am familiar with the military's assertion that it trains its personnel to be both decent human beings and killing machines. What interests me is how this works out in day-today, real world situations. Can instructors attempt to motivate their charges by threatening them with symbolic feminization? In other words, can you actually say in one way or another, "Be a man!" or "Don't be a girl!"

As for this emphasis on "warrior," why is it not enough to be an outstanding soldier, Marine, or sailor? People operating under those labels have demonstrated their toughness on numerous occasions throughout history. Why is it necessary to inject the appellation "warrior"? Where is the gain there, and what are the negatives when you ask people in their late teens and early twenties to emulate such a model? Is this a reaction to the prominent female presence in the ranks, an attempt to prove that such a presence has not dulled the military's sharpness? Is it a reaction to the bureaucratization of military life, especially with the proliferation of officer/managers?

I don't have a dog in this fight. My research interests terminate at 1945, and I am currently immersed in an 18th-century topic where the opposing armies both attempted to prevent their troops from overly antagonizing the civilian population (which included summary execution of rapists). I do teach a course on American military culture, so I have an interest in how the current military deals with the unique tensions that changes in American society force it to confront.

R.J. Del Vecchio, Tuesday, June 19, 2018:
"The comment about tribes, cults, and baronies really struck me. The best known military "tribe" there is, is the United States Marine Corps. (Full disclosure- I am a proud member.) This is why there's such a huge business in Marine paraphenalia, why the museum in DC is always full of visitors, why the Marine Corps League exists, why Marines always greet each other when they see someone who has any sort of emblem on themselves, their vehicle, or anything else. It is an identity, and also a dedication to the ideals of the Corps (regardless of how often they get violated)."

I too like the tribe, cult, barony terminology, but I have always described the Corps as a cult. The Air Force is a cult to Air Power, the Corps is a cult devoted to the idea of being a Marine. I believe tribes are focused on identity, on membership but cults go beyond that into quasi-religious status that I think better explains the Corps' belief system.

R.J. Del Vecchio, Tuesday, June 19, 2018:
"Marine training is or at least used to be in part about being a solid soldier, but also in part some of the warrior ethos. Marines jump on grenades to save other Marines and that example is well known in the Corps."

I think self-sacrifice of that sort is the trait of a professional soldier, rather than a warrior.

Gregory J. W. Urwin, Tuesday, June 19, 2018:
"As for this emphasis on "warrior," why is it not enough to be an outstanding soldier, Marine, or sailor? People operating under those labels have demonstrated their toughness on numerous occasions throughout history. Why is it necessary to inject the appellation "warrior"? Where is the gain there, and what are the negatives when you ask people in their late teens and early twenties to emulate such a model? Is this a reaction to the prominent female presence in the ranks, an attempt to prove that such a presence has not dulled the military's sharpness? Is it a reaction to the bureaucratization of military life, especially with the proliferation of officer/managers?"

I think this gets to the heart of the matter. I think we can all agree that over the last 20 years there have been real cultural shifts in the U.S. military, and the 'warrior cult' is one of them. The greatest danger of it is that it increases the already wide divide between military and civilian.

When I shared this discussion with my Facebook 'friends', one of my oldest buddies from high school, who recently retired after a long Army career, was incensed about it. He specifically called out, as I mentioned above, my lack of combat experience, and he referred to Kuehn as a mere aviator. There may have been some misunderstandings involved, but that knee jerk reaction highlights the dangers of the warrior cult in my eyes. I think this is a prime area for study, my paper at this past SMH started to touch on on the corners of this in regards to the Marine Corps.

Not a 'warrior,' definitely not. Just another standard-issue military professional with standard adaptive responses in changing circumstances. Anybody would have done the same.

"For 30 minutes, he relied on sound, smell and touch to track and kill six terrorists in the
pitch-black, suffocating environment.
The soldier used his Glock to kill the first three Taliban he encountered, but when he went
to shoot the fourth, his pistol jammed, according to the Daily Star report.
Using a claw hammer, the soldier successfully fought and killed the remaining three
militants before emerging from the tunnels soaked in blood."

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/06/19/british-spe…

By Matthew Kosuta

In reading over many of the discussion posts on The Cult of the Warrior - Helpful or...Silly, or...Dangerous?, it seems that much of the discussion centers on anecdotes, general feelings, and frustration with definitions, etc. The discussion hasn’t systematically tried to define warrior or soldier.

I propose a few fundamental characteristics to aid in distinguishing a warrior from a soldier. Here is a list of 5 characteristics of warriors and soldiers juxtaposed:

WARRIOR SOLDIER
Individual Team
Personal Social
Selfish Duty
Chaotic Disciplined
Class Profession

These characteristics of course overlap, but I am presenting ideal types. I would argue that general unease with having warriors in today’s military is because of the 5 characteristics I listed. The listing of class is the aristocracy (noble-warriors) that nearly all cultures developed and who control political and military power. But of course within feudal Europe, class system of India, etc., armies also included conscripts, mercenaries, and other units that begin to look like soldiers and not at all warriors.

Two “traits” that are present in both but are more prevalent in warriors and more lauded by them are Courage and Heroism. I would say that a soldier becomes heroic and thus more courageous in a military situation when control of that situation breaks down, and thus the situation calls for precisely those characteristics of the warrior – individual, personal, and chaotic behavior.

Thus in a modern army most of the time we do not want warriors per se and a warrior cult would be detrimental. But there are always situations that will come up in combat that could necessitate a soldier displaying warrior characteristic for the benefit unit. And so the debate.

A quick note on tribes: The mentioning of tribes is in the sense of a societal structure, not in the more colloquial use as we hear now that democrats and republicans are “tribes”, or in this case the Marine Corps is a tribe. Tribal societies (hunter-gathers and small agricultural communities) have social structures and demographics that produce reasonably egalitarian societies, all males are warriors, and these warriors basically fit the characteristics I listed above. Farmers with larger demographics and social structures develop hierarchies and specialization of labor and thus the military structure change too. The Aristocracy remain warriors, while their inferiors begin to be conscript-soldiers.

Apparently we must agree to disagree. As an old Marine who remains very active with Marine reunions and activities, I see mostly the elements of a tribe among the hundreds of Marines I know. Yes, there are a few for whom it's more like a cult, but of course in any large group we must expect to see more than a single narrow kind of response to anything. Yes, self sacrifice for others may be part of the ethos for all kinds of military, but the Marine stories of such practices are far more often told than I've seen among other services.
The major difference I see between what is a cult and what is a tribe is that people in a cult don't really have to think about the values and practices they have, they are conditioned and in some senses unthinking fanatics. In what I'd call tribal practice, there is devotion to an identity, a set of ideals, but it's based on thinking rather than simple conditioning. Most people who join the Marines, or who want to be Rangers or SEALs, already have thought about the ideals they want to live out, and join the organization anticipating tough training in order to become part of a group (tribe) that they see as promoting those ideals.
As to how training can both make people into skilled and unhesitating killers while remaining decent human beings, well, in fact that's kind of a challenge. The maelstrom and traumatic intensity of ground combat are beyond the full understanding of most who have not been there. One can never be fully prepared for it, but rigorous training and some conditioning can get people at least somewhat prepared for it. Every new unit will lose people in their first combat experiences, but the unit that was trained really rigorously (and that means lots of stress, which nowadays some people say must be avoided) will lose far fewer people. It's kind of a "pay now with nasty training, or pay later in blood" kind of thing. Yet it is still possible to remind people that they are not just eager killers and destroyers, but must for their own sake retain their humanity.
In the midst of a battle, running on adrenalin and fury, a person may not think at all about taking prisoners, and kill automatically any enemy before them. But in my own experience, ten minutes after the shooting was over, the scared young VC who threw down their guns and were taken prisoner were offered water and some food by the same Marines who would have shot them out of hand so recently.
In truth, we cannot expect everyone to stay as decent and kind in war as is ideal. Depending on circumstances over time, people can descend into hatred and loss of all empathy for anyone they see as the enemy. But American military are the opposite end of the spectrum from the Japanese at Nanking, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or the NVA/VC in Hue. And that's what is important.

Re "Revisionist look at Jutland": The "three large battleships lost at Jutland" were, of course, battlecruisers. ("Something seems to be wrong with our bloody ships today, Chatsworth." Jellicoe). The only battleship lost at Jutland on either side was the German pre-dreadnaught _Pommern_ blown up with all hands; it never should never have been in the line in the first place. As I had noted earlier, battleships seemed to be very hard to kill in battle, but had a disconcerting tendency to blow up catastrophically outside combat.

Regards,

Stanley Sandler

I have been following the many posts on this topic and have enjoyed all the input. It appears that it really comes down to definitions as almost everyone has been writing from their own perspective. I will add my own which is maybe too simplistic but works for me. I equate the "warrior spirit" to a level of aggressiveness which takes one beyond professional performance of a job. Across the US military we have a pretty high level of professional competence, training and development programs coupled with a culture of excellence. For me, and thinking specifically about ground combat, it is that added level of aggressiveness which differentiates the warrior mentality. Another post was just provided about the British Special Air Service and an action in Afghanistan. Their motto is "Who Dares Wins" and as a service they try to inculcate that philosophy (having worked directly with them on live operations I liked them a lot. They are not perfect, nobody is, but this level of aggressiveness permeates their way of doing business and most often leads to success). I will paraphrase Admiral Nelson who said that no Captain can do wrong who puts his ship aside that of an enemy. While I have seen what I thought are "average" actions resulting in the Medal of Honor, in some you clearly see someone who has repeatedly placed themselves into harm and taken the fight to the enemy in a way beyond merely doing the job. So that warrior spirit - going above and beyond, can exist in many professions but is especially acute when one's life and the lives of others are at stake. Warriors make the difference then between winning and losing and a warrior culture across an organization will make it win over cultures where some just do their jobs or less. In the US I would say that warrior spirit exists and comes out naturally in sports among other things. So some are "just born" with it. All military forces seem to encourage it and develop it to various degrees, with the hope that it takes hold in enough of the force to become a reality when needed... and it does, sometimes in truck drivers and in the least suspected places... Those times when a warrior spirit is linked to negative activities and attitudes, I think is a perversion of my concept - you get non-warriors doing stupid things on occasion just as well as warriors. So warrior cults, tribes or mentalities should be a positive thing and I would hope would not be linked to the examples of people claiming warrior status doing bad things... IMHO. Regards. Greg Banner, LTC, USA (SF) (ret.)

With respect, Mr. Sandler, it was Beatty who spoke that famous quotation.

Hey thanks Stan, for bringing two threads together. Albeit unintentionally.

Seriously, easier to post a response to you here....after World War I the US Navy went to Germany, obtained a copy of German damage control doctrine, translated it into English, and then made it the standard damage control doctrine of the US Navy!

best, John (T Kuehn), who has so many identities that I might be accused of being more than a mere chameleon!