“Leave no man behind.” This slogan is the peak of military romanticism. No matter how much you suffer for the cause, you are never alone. You belong to an unbreakable brotherhood of blood.
“I’m expendable.” This admission is the peak of military realism. You’re not part of a loving “family”; you’re part of a callous system. If you die, you’ll be replaced by someone else. Before long, the men who sent you to your doom won’t even remember your name.
You could protest, “The truth is somewhere in between.” Indeed, but position on this continuum matters. And the position of actual militaries is at least 90% of the way to pure military realism. Probably more like 98%. Militaries want to win, and winners don’t let the human costs of winning distract them.
Sure, we can disaggregate. Romanticism dominates military rhetoric. On boot camp graduation day, your officers preach camaraderie with tears in their eyes. Realism, however, dominates military action. When officers decide how to deploy you, you’re just a number.
Still feeling a hint of romance? Then reflect on the adage that actions speak louder than words. And reflect further that the “expendable” lesson goes far beyond the military. Words say, “I want nothing more than to come to your birthday party.” Actions, however, say, “I’ve got something better to do.” Words say, “I’d do anything for you.” Actions, however, say, “Unless it’s inconvenient.” Words say, “I put God first.” Actions say, “Unless there’s a football game on.”
General lesson: The adage, “Actions speak louder than words” is as bitter as it is illuminating. Once you take the adage to heart, you see human nature clearly. But many will wish they hadn’t.
Some people, admittedly, have no trouble just accepting human weakness. Others find comfort in self-deception. But the only escape route that resonates with me is to divorce this society and build a beautiful Bubble.
READER COMMENTS
MarkW
Oct 20 2021 at 10:38am
“Then reflect on the adage that actions speak louder than words”
If anyone needs a bit of a laugh, here’s a relevant Flight of the Concords song.
Prester John
Oct 20 2021 at 11:24am
Dr. Caplan, ordinarily I agree with you, even if you phrase your opinions more strongly than I would in the same circumstances. However, here, I think, you’re showing a lack of experience with modern military doctrine in practice.
Theoretically, indeed, military doctrine is realistic: some lives will be sacrificed in the service of prosecuting our wars, and we know this. The personnel system does work on these principles: as much as one may believe in the romantic belonging to the unit, you are assigned and reassigned as a cog in a complex machine, valued for your skill set perhaps, but not permitted to fix emotionally upon your comrades or your banner.
In the field, however, our doctrine-in-practice is anything but gritty realism. We consider every casualty a personal affront and denigration of our capability. Operations are planned to result in zero risk to soldiers. SAR efforts are often wildly disproportionate to the value of the personnel who are MIA. We invest staggering amounts of money in armoring vehicles that were never intended to accept armor and issue our soldiers so much plate and armor that they often disobey orders in removing portions of it in order to maintain mobility. Risk is very heavily managed and commanders are exactingly judged on their response to injuries and deaths. Our doctrine has shifted to favor remote weapons and distance tactics that, while less effective in achieving our goals and more prone to collateral damage, risk fewer lives of our side (bombing, drones, missile strikes).
I’m unsure what inspired this missive, but it should be plain that it’s badly calibrated for the current moment—at this time in history, maybe above all other times, the commander and his country are *least* willing to sacrifice lives in pursuit of their objectives, to the point that the naked objective of many opposing forces are not to win territory or seize strategic control of resources, but rather to wear down popular and military will by increasing the casualty price to levels that we become avoidant of further engagement. And, to be frank, it has worked on us quite well, to the point that we resigned ourselves to a hasty and ill-planned withdrawal from Afghanistan even in the face of rapidly accumulating evidence that their military and consequently government would collapse without support, rendering twenty years of nation-building and billions, perhaps trillions of dollars spent on infrastructure and support totally worthless, a giveaway to the bad guys. Actions do speak louder than words, and not a single one of the senior leadership of our military chose a winning strategy over an exit strategy.
No, I see the broad point you’re trying to make, but in this case you’re stuck in a concept of the military that, while in some respects historically accurate, has little to do with the modern reality.
steve
Oct 20 2021 at 6:38pm
Nicely explained. I think too many people watch Rambo or something worse and think that is reality. The military was not and is not a bunch of knuckle dragging yahoos.
I am guessing your ME experience was different than mine. I came away thinking we would never change those people. 20 years or 50 years and they would fall apart as soon as we left. You cant gift or impose a functional government and society on a people.
Steve
Jose Pablo
Oct 20 2021 at 10:40pm
“Operations are planned to result in zero risk to soldiers” then, you have to admit that they are very badly planned since they resulted in close to 7,000 US service members killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That is, at least, a very particular way of understanding the concept of “zero risk” or “planning” or both.
The best way to avoid casualties is to avoid conflict. Particularly so since the “risks” of conflict are so dificult to avoid and the “benefits” of “modern” conflict so little (and by “modern” here I mean every conflict that the US military has been engaged in since WWII).
Prester John
Oct 21 2021 at 9:06pm
To the contrary, I point to those historically low wartime fatalities as evidence of our commitment to force protection and risk aversion, and I point to our unwillingness to continue even when we are paying, by all accounts, a very low price for occupying those countries as evidence that we no longer have the stomach for war.
Jose Pablo
Oct 20 2021 at 12:46pm
Taking into account the time that we spend “signaling” and the amount of effort and money most people put into it, that should mean something.
You can even argue that our whole political, and academic, systems are built around “signaling” (as a matter of fact you have done just that).
It seems that the action of putting a LOT of effort into signaling speaks very loudly about us humans. What it does say is not that clear to me.
Matthew Jernberg
Oct 20 2021 at 2:53pm
Who would join an organization with a uniform code of dress and think that they aren’t replaceable? That’s one of the main principles behind having a uniform code of dress to begin with: it homogenizes difference to aggregate individuals into a mass body.
Mark Z
Oct 20 2021 at 4:36pm
Military policy is ultimately implemented by soldiers on the ground, not military bureaucrats, and even if bureaucrats don’t care at all about the lives of soldiers, soldiers typically do care greatly about the lives of other soldiers in their units, and will likely go to great (‘irrational’) lengths to save one another. Soldiers would also probably be less willing to serve in a military that thoroughly imposed a cold, calculating ‘rationality’ on them, interfering with the sense of loyalty to the other soldiers in your unit comes naturally. Put simply, too much realism is bad for morale. For that reason, I think you’re probably wrong about this, and I think there are plenty of instances where the military expends more than it is worth, rationally speaking, to save individual or a few soldiers. The fact that the soldiers themselves – and the officers who command them directly – are human beings and form strong bonds with one another limits the extent to which realism can be implemented.
steve
Oct 20 2021 at 6:30pm
I went to enlisted boot camp and officer boot camp. No one had tears in their eyes on graduation day. Just a number? I think this is your own romanticized idea of the military. For most missions in Afghanistan and Iraq you needed to have an adequate number of beds in the ICU open before the team could leave.
“Before long, the men who sent you to your doom won’t even remember your name.”
Certainly true for the ones who never knew the name to begin with. I still remember the name and face of the young man who died while I tried to save him. Remember calling his fiancé. Still wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes. Happened 31 years ago.
Steve
David Seltzer
Oct 21 2021 at 5:39pm
Those who’ve never been in country can’t know that we in the bush were connected by a bond that is thicker than brother’s blood. Those who served in the 7th Cav with Lt Col Hal Moore at Ia Drang, saw him saddened, even in victory, such as it was, because he didn’t die there with his fallen soldiers. At every squadron reunion I’ve attended, some 60 years on, we are still soldiers.
Mike W
Oct 22 2021 at 8:41pm
Others find comfort in self-deception. But the only escape route that resonates with me is to divorce this society and build a beautiful Bubble.
And how is you beautiful bubble not self-deception?
nobody.really
Oct 23 2021 at 2:05pm
Caplan does an able job of illustrating various principles of economics. Here he intends to illustrate the principle of revealed preference–but instead, he illustrates the principle of supply and demand, and diminishing marginal returns. Specifically, Caplan has a demand to write a blog post, but has depleted his supply of topics. So he’s left to scrape the bottom of the barrel of his imagination, and comes up with this. Yup, there’s a lesson about revealed preference–but the example does little to illustrate it.
First, citing Rambo seems like a dubious way to illustrate anything.
Second, the Rambo quote doesn’t even illustrate what Caplan seems to want to say: Rambo says that he was selected for a mission because he was expendable. According to Caplan, ALL soldiers are expendable–and thus, Caplan’s definition of expendability would do nothing to explain why Rambo thinks that HE was selected. Rambo seems to regard himself as somehow MORE expendable than other people who were not selected–which contradicts Caplan’s thesis.
Third, as many people who have actual military experience note, Caplan plainly does not know of what he speaks. Many authors have discussed military service, and how military training does promote group cohesion. This results in soldiers being willing to put themselves at risk for the benefit of their comrades–but also with soldiers coming to regard a mission as having more value than their own lives. See, for example, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (2002). Far from illustrating his point, Caplan merely illustrates the poverty of his own imagination.
In contrast, C.S. Lewis had copious imagination–but regarding war, he did not need to rely on it; he served in the trenches during WWI. In his essay Talking about Bicycles, he discusses people’s capacity for critical evaluation–both the risk of enchanted thinking, but also mere cynicism parading as wisdom. To gain wisdom, a person must first feel the enchantment and then transcend it. Only that perspective permits a person to then evaluate which parts of the enchantment were justified and which were not:
Ben
Oct 28 2021 at 12:37pm
I’m not sure I saw where Caplan aimed his comments at the US Miltary vs “militaries” broadly.
The point holds though that for a multi-person organization to thrive the people have to hold a view that they are valued, nearly indispensable, part of the organization and the organization has to think about it’s long term success.
Layoffs, up or out policies, or the willingness to send troops into harm’s way (or even just deployed to crappy locations) all indicate that the organization views people as expendable at a certain level. That people swear loyalty to these organizations demonstrates that they’ve bought into the culture.
I dont think this is morally wrong by the organization. People should be open eyed about their relationships with organizations though. Some of the “great resignation” is people realizing that the job they had and company they worked for wasn’t exactly what they thought it was and they’re now realigning a new match. No word on how long people’s memory is though.
Comments are closed.