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| CIVIL-MILITARY GAP: BACKGROUND | |
 November 1999 
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A collection of articles written by or about participants in our forum about the civil-military gap. |
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Reflections on the Nature of War and its Implications for Women in Combat and "Gender"-Integrated Training by Mackubin Thomas Owens It is a great honor and privilege to have the opportunity to testify before this commission. The issues you have been asked to examine are of critical importance to US security because the decisions we make now will have a major impact on the kind of military we have in the future. I hope I can add something of value to the debate. Thomas Ricks of the Wall Street Journal has observed that the American military "is extremely good today," indeed "arguably the best it has ever been and probably for the first time in history the best in the world." But there are ideas at work today that threaten the continuation of this state of affairs. One of these ideas is the increasingly popular claim that technological advances are creating a "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) that has so completely changed the nature of war as to render the old verities that underpinned the traditional military ethos no longer true. Advocates of this school contend that these emerging technologies and "information dominance" will eliminate "friction" and the "fog of war," providing the commander and his subordinates nearly perfect "situational awareness," thereby promising the capacity to use military force without the same risks as before. Another dangerous idea asserts that since large scale war is only a remote possibility in our enlightened age, and since if it does occur, it will be a high-tech affair, the US military can become a constabulary force in which values more appropriate to a liberal democratic society can replace traditional military virtues. This would eliminate the "gap" that some analysts claim pervades civil-military relations in the United States. The one issue that crystallizes these two ideas is the debate over women in combat. For if the nature of war has changed, if the old verities upon which the traditional military ethos is based are no longer true, why not permit women in combat? If, on the one hand, the possibility of large-scale war in the future is remote, there is no reason to exclude women from any military specialty. If, on the other, we can exercise whatever military power we need by means of our capability to identify, track, and destroy at a distance any target of importance on the face of the earth, then the necessity to close with and destroy the enemy is obsolete and it becomes harder to deny the claims of advocates of women in combat. There are several reasons to suggest that these claims are not just mistaken, but dangerous. Regarding the claim that large-scale war is a thing of the past, we should not be lulled into a sense of complacency by the rhetoric of perpetual international cooperation. After all the last time the world was as "interdependent" as it is now was on the eve of World War I. In this vein, it is instructive to consider a passage from Winston Churchill's The World Crisis, in which he mocked the fatuous optimism that had prevailed during the Agadir crisis of 1911, which although it was peacefully resolved, marked another milestone on the road to Armageddon: "[War] is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the 20th Century....Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong." Concerning the claims advanced by the advocates of the RMA, optimism about the capabilities of technology must be tempered by three realities that characterize real war, as opposed to war as we would wish it to be. These include the persistence of "general friction" as a structural component of combat; the seeming impossibility of eliminating uncertainty from war; and increasing evidence that war is by nature a "non-linear" phenomenon. These factors have been most fully and systematically developed by the Prussian "philosopher of war," Carl Von Clausewitz. The Clausewitizian understanding of war underpins the arguments advanced by the "traditionalists," among whom I number myself. Like Clausewitz the traditionalist believes war to be a violent clash of opposing wills, each seeking to prevail over the other, further complicated by the fact that the will of each adversary is directed at an animate object that reacts, often in unanticipated ways. This cyclical interaction between opposing wills occurs in a realm of chance and chaos, constantly generating "friction...the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper." The traditional understanding of war was summed up by Nathan Bedford Forrest: "War means fighting, and fighting means killing." Clausewitz and the Nature of War Clausewitz argues that war is a "remarkable trinity" composed of first, "primordial violence, hatred, and enmity" (the realm of the people); second, "chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam" (the realm of the commander and his army); and third, the "element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes [war] subordinate to reason alone" (the realm of the government). While the character of war is infinitely variable, the nature of war is basically immutable. It is a violent clash between opposing wills, each seeking to prevail over the other. In Clausewitz's formulation, our will is directed at an animate object that reacts, often in unanticipated ways. This cyclical interaction between opposing wills occurs in a realm of chance and chaos. Since war is a human enterprise, the human dimension is central to the proper understanding of the phenomenon. Accordingly, war involves intangibles that cannot be quantified. War is shaped by human nature, the complexities of human behavior, and the limitations of human mental and physical capabilities. Any view of war that ignores what Clausewitz called the "moral factors," e.g. fear, the impact of danger, and physical exhaustion, is fraught with peril. As the Prussian observed, "Military activity is never directed against material forces alone; it is always aimed simultaneously at the moral forces which give it life, and the two cannot be separated." Since the art of war deals with living and moral forces, it cannot attain anything approaching absolute certainty in things either large or small. The Non-linearity of War War does not take place in a deterministic, predictable, or mechanistic world. Rather it is characterized by complexity, apparent randomness, and sensitivity to initial conditions. War is not a mechanistic system that can be subjected to precise, positive control or synchronized, centralized schemes. Instead it is a highly complex interactive system characterized by friction, unpredictability, disorder, and fluidity. Such systems are composed of numerous independent agents that interact with each other, co-evolve from this interaction, and adapt. War is an open system interacting with its external environment (including the enemy), and characterized by complex feedback loops and non-linear dynamics. The two conditions of linearity are proportionality (changes in system output are proportional to changes in system input); and additivity (the whole is equal to the sum of its parts, and that therefore a problem can be broken down into its component parts for analysis, then added back together to obtain the solution to the original problem). Non-linearity is said to exists when a system disobeys these two conditions. Non-linear systems exhibit erratic behavior, arising from disproportionately small outputs or disproportionately large outputs relative to inputs; and from "synergistic" interactions. An important branch of non-linear dynamics is so-called "chaos theory." "Chaos" is often observed when a system is non-linear and sensitive to initial conditions. Immeasurably small differences in input can produce an entirely different outcome, can follow various behavior routes, and exhibits characteristics of randomness. War seems to be such a system. Throughout On War, Clausewitz displays a deep and abiding concern for unpredictability and complexity. Consequently he searches for ways to express the importance of such matters as context, interaction, effects disproportionate to their causes, sensitivity to initial conditions, time-dependent evolutionary processes, and the serious limitations of linear analysis. This constitutes what seems to be a recognition of the non-linear nature of war. Consider Clausewitz's first definition of war in On War: it is, he says, "nothing but a duel on a larger scale…an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will." When we think of a duel, we usually envision two individuals facing each other with swords or pistols. But the German word translated as "duel," zweikampf (literally "two-struggle") is more far complex than the English meaning of "duel"; this complexity is better conveyed by Clausewitz's own metaphor for the interactive struggle he envisions: a wrestling match. "The bodily positions and contortions that emerge in wrestling are often impossible to achieve without the counter force and counterweight of an opponent." As Clausewitz argues, "War is not the action of a living body on a lifeless mass... but always the collision of two living forces." The interdependent nature of war leads to the sort of unpredictability observed in chaotic systems. Military action does not produce a single reaction but a dynamic interaction, the very nature of which is bound to lead to unpredictability. This unpredictability inherent in war as a non-linear system is magnified by three other phenomena that Clausewitz addresses in some detail: chance, uncertainty, and friction. Chance, Uncertainty and Time War takes place in the realm of chance and uncertainty, constrained by time, and always subject to friction. As Clausewitz observed, "No other human activity is so continuously and universally bound up with chance" as is war, and "Three-quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty." Uncertainty represents what we do not know or understand about a given situation. Practically, it is a doubt that threatens to block action. Uncertainty is not merely a lack of data that can be solved by gathering and processing more information, but the natural and inevitable product of the dynamic of war. In war, all actions generate uncertainty, and the ultimate requirement is to be able to operate effectively despite uncertainty. It is true that perhaps uncertainty can be reduced if we have sufficient time to fully understand the situation, but if we take the time to reduce uncertainty, we risk surrendering initiative to our adversary, which generates new uncertainty. This interaction between time and uncertainty seems to be a part of war itself. Clausewitz writes that: Circumstances vary so enormously in war, and are so indefinable, that a vast array of factors has to be appreciated-mostly in light of probabilities alone. The man responsible for evaluating the whole must bring to his task the quality of intuition that perceives the truth at every point. Otherwise a chaos of opinions and considerations would arise, and fatally entangle judgment. Bonaparte rightly said in this connection that many of the decisions faced by the commander-in-chief resemble mathematical problems worthy of the gifts of a Newton or Euler. But due to the "interplay of possibilities, probabilities, good luck and bad," the bases for the calculations that the commander must make in war are not "absolute, so-called mathematical factors." In this regard it is instructive to note that in discussing chance and probability, Clausewitz does not compare war to dice and coin tossing, but to cards. As one observer notes, "This analogy suggests not only the ability to calculate probabilities, but knowledge of human psychology in 'reading' the other players, sensing when to take risks, and so on." It seems clear that to adequately deal with chance and uncertainty, one must rely less on mathematical certainty than on judgment "rooted in intuition, common sense, and experience." Friction Like uncertainty, friction in war also seems to be an intractable problem. Clausewitz identifies friktion as "the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper." As he observes, everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war. Countless minor incidents-the kind you can never really foresee-combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal….The military machine-the army and everything related to it-is basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should keep in mind that none of its components is of one piece: each part is composed of individuals,…the least important of whom may chance to delay things or somehow make them go wrong….This tremendous friction, which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduce to a few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance. Clearly, unnoticably small causes can be amplified in war until they produce unanticipated macro-effects RMA advocates claim that technology will eliminate friction and the fog of war. But the evidence suggests otherwise. In his masterful study of Clausewitzian friction, Barry Watts argues persuasively that "general friction" is a "built-in or structural feature of combat processes" arising from the fact that war is a human enterprise. "The propensities and constraints built into humankind by biological evolution provide a wellspring for general friction that seems likely to persist at some level as long as Homo Sapiens do." Friction seems to be an intrinsic part of war, reflecting the disproportionately large effects of the "least important" individuals in the system and of minor unforeseeable incidents. Technology does not change this reality. Indeed, there is evidence that technology itself generates its own brand of friction. Military Responses to the Complexity of War: The Military Ethos and its Critics While friction and the other characteristics of war that create uncertainty seem to be inherent to war itself, military organizations, of course, attempt to reduce these factors. Friction is countered by such means as training, discipline, cohesion, regulations, orders and what Clausewitz calls "the iron will of the commander," i.e. what we think of as the components of the military ethos. I would contend that anything that undermines the components of this ethos generates friction. Those who insist that members of both sexes should be trained together or who would expand further the role of women in the military must confront the possibility that such steps will have precisely this efect, to the detriment of combat effectiveness. This possibility is most clearly visible in the areas of unit cohesion and effective training. Cohesion Those who have seen combat up close recognize that unit cohesion is critical to countering the natural friction generated by combat. Indeed, most of the research on men in battle has shown unit cohesion to be a necessary element of battlefield success. Recognizing the important role of cohesion in justifying the traditional military ethos, critics have either denied its importance, e.g. Elizabeth Kier in the fall 1998 issue of International Security, or attempted to define it down so that it could just as well apply to a civilian workplace. But unit cohesion in combat is far more than teamwork. Cohesion arises from the bond among disparate individuals who have nothing in common but facing death and misery together. This bond is akin to what the Greeks called philia--friendship, comradeship, or brotherly love. Philia or the bond that underpins unit cohesion has been well described by J. Glen Gray in his discussion of unit cohesion in The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle: Numberless soldiers have died, more or less willingly, not for country or honor or religious faith or for any other abstract good, but because they realized that by fleeing their posts and rescuing themselves, they would expose their companions to greater danger. Such loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale. The commander who can preserve and strengthen it knows that all other physical and psychological factors are little in comparison. The feeling of loyalty, it is clear, is the result not the cause of comradeship. Comrades are loyal to each other spontaneously and without any need for reasons. There is no better description of unit cohesion than that of the 1992
report of the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in
the Armed Forces: cohesion refers to "the relationship that develops
in a unit or group where 1) members share common values and experiences;
2) individuals in the group conform to group norms and behavior in order
to ensure group survival and goals; 3) members lose their identity in
favor of a group identity; 4) members focus on group activities and
goals; 5) unit members become totally dependent on each other for the
completion of their mission or survival; and 6) group members must meet
all the standards of performance and behavior in order not to threaten
group survival." Anatomy vs. Social Engineering The major source of the increased friction generated by women in combat units is traceable to the reality of bodies. As Stephanie Gutmann asked in a New Republic article early last year, "Sex and the Soldier," "what happens when you try to integrate into a cohesive whole two populations with radically different bodies?" What happens when we examine the female soldier "not in political terms, but in the real, inescapable terms of physical structure?" What are some of these physical realities? A partial catalogue would include the following facts: the female soldier is, on average, about five inches shorter than the male soldier, has half the upper body strength, lower aerobic capacity and 37 percent less muscle mass. She has a lighter skeleton, which may mean, for instance, that she can't "pull G forces" as reliably in a fighter plane. She cannot urinate standing up. She tends, particularly if she is under the age of 30 (as are 60 percent of military personnel) to get pregnant. These differences have had an adverse impact on the US military at a time when continuing austerity in the US defense budget is driving us toward a smaller and leaner force, one that will have to meet its obligations by increased emphasis on competence and readiness. For instance, women suffer a higher rate of attrition than men and, because of the turnover, are a more costly investment. Women are four times more likely to report ill, and the percentage of women being medically non-available at any time is twice that of men. If a woman can't do her job, someone else must do it for her. Only 10 percent of the women can meet all of the minimum physical requirements for 75 percent of the jobs in the US Army. Women may be able to drive five-ton trucks, but need a man's help if they must change the tires. Women can be assigned to a field artillery unit, but often can't handle the ammunition. In the course of a year, somewhere between 10 and 17 percent of service women become pregnant. In certain locales, the figure is even higher. James Webb notes that when he was Secretary of the Navy in 1988, 51 percent of single Air Force women and 48 percent of single Navy women stationed in Iceland were pregnant. From the beginning of the US deployment to Bosnia in December 1995 until July 1996, a woman had to be evacuated for pregnancy approximately every three days. During pregnancy (if she remains in the service at all), a woman must be exempted from progressively more routine duties like marching, field training, swim tests, etc. After the baby is born, there are more problems, exemplified by today's 24,000 unmarried service mothers, none of whom could fairly be said to enhance military readiness. Fairness and the Military Ethos How has the military responded to the problems created by large numbers of women in the service, now approaching an unprecedented 14 percent of our total force-a much higher percent than any other nation in the world? By in effect discarding the very essence of the military ethos: fairness. The military ethos depends on fairness and the absence of favoritism. The crux of the problem with women in the military is precisely the issue of fairness. As James Webb observed in The Weekly Standard, ("The War on the Military Culture,") "In [the military] environment, fairness is not only crucial, it is the coin of the realm...." The military ethos is dependent on the understanding of all that the criteria for allocating danger and recognition, both positive (promotion, awards, etc.) and negative (non-judicial punishment, courts-martial, etc.), are essentially objective. Favoritism and double standards are deadly to philia and its associated phenomena: cohesion, morale, discipline--elements of the military ethos that are absolutely critical to the success of a military organization. Unfortunately, the attempt to integrate women into the military has generated a series of undeniable double standards. Such double standards cause resentment on the part of many military men, a resentment that in turn leads to cynicism about military women in general, including those who have not benefited from a double standard, and who are performing their duties with distinction. The political source of double standards arises from the fact that the desire for equal opportunity is, in practice, usually translated into the demand for equal results. The consequence has been the watering down of standards to accommodate the generally lower physical capabilities of women. In fact, every service has lower physical standards for women than for men. No one can deny that "gender norming" is widespread in the military. The experience of the US military in successfully integrating blacks is instructive in its stark contrast to the far less successful attempt to integrate women. A major cause of successful racial integration of the military is that the services abjured double standards. According to Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler in their recent book on the Army's successful effort to integrate blacks, All That We Can Be, the Army was, from the beginning of integration in the 1950s, adamant that merit would not be subordinated to quotas achieved by lowering standards, which would "stigmatize applicants by raising doubts about their true qualifications." By following this path, the Army eliminated the "paradigm of black failure"-the notion that blacks cannot succeed unless standards are adjusted for race. Eros vs. Philia As dangerous as double standards for the sake of political correctness may be, more dangerous by far are those arising from the introduction of eros into an environment based on philia. Unlike philia, eros is individual and exclusive. Eros manifests itself as sexual competition, male protectiveness, and favoritism. As Mr. Webb observes, "there is no greater or more natural bias than that of an individual toward a beloved. And few emotions are more powerful, or more distracting, than those surrounding the pursuit of, competition for, or the breaking off of amorous relationships." The destructive impact of such relationships on unit cohesion can be denied only by the ideologue. Does a superior order his or her beloved into harm's way? If the superior demonstrates favoritism toward the beloved, what is the impact on unit morale and discipline? What happens when jealousy rears its head? . To paraphrase George Orwell, only an intellectual could believe that social engineering can change the fact that men treat women differently than they treat other men. It is ironic to note that the cover story of the December 14 issue of US News & World Report concerns "romance in the workplace." The thrust of the article is that at best, such romances do not enhance efficiency, and in many cases they adversely affect morale and teamwork. But while lives are not at stake in the civilian workplace, they are in military units in combat. Training Standards In addition to generating and maintaining unit cohesion, military organizations seek to deal with friction by means of training, both individual and unit. In the fall 1996 issue of International Security, Stephen Biddle makes a persuasive case that technology is no substitute for a highly trained, highly competent military force. Biddle argues that the main cause of the one-sided coalition triumph in the Gulf War of 1991 was not, as some have claimed, technology per se but the skill differential between the coalition forces and those of Iraq. Biddle contends, for instance, that the kill ratio for US armored forces during such battles as 73 Easting and Medina Ridge was not primarily due to the superiority of the US Army's M1A1 Abrams tank over the Iraqi T-72, but to the skill of the US tank crews. If it were the former, kill ratios would be expected to be higher for those coalition forces equipped with better tanks. But this was not the case. In their clashes with Iraqi armor, the Marines, primarily equipped with the far less capable M60A1 tank and even light armored vehicles, matched the Army's kill ratio. The allies' technological edge served primarily to punish Iraqi operational and tactical errors, thereby magnifying the skill differential between the two sides. Biddle concludes that in the case of two more evenly matched adversaries, technology would have less impact than in the Gulf War. Vietnam comes to mind. Biddle's study has important implications for the United States military. Without question, the US should seek to leverage technology in order to enhance its capabilities, but an over reliance on technology at the expense of those factors that enhance soldierly excellence, such as high recruiting standards, quality training, and operational readiness, can ultimately reduce future US military capability relative to our adversaries, both actual and potential. Unit training, of course, builds on the foundation provided by individual training. Basic military training in the United States traditionally has been understood as a rite of passage from liberal society to the harder institution that protects society. In This Kind of War, his classic study of the Korean War, T.R. Fehrenbach illuminated the contrasts between the military and liberal society. "By the very nature of its missions, the military must maintain a hard and illiberal view of life and the world. Society's purpose is to live; the military's is to stand ready, if need be, to die." The "Doolittle-ization" of Military Training With the exception of the Marine Corps, the services seem to have abandoned the traditional approach to training. When Secretary Cohen, on the advice of the chiefs of the Army, Air Force and Navy, rejected his own hand-picked panel's recommendation to separate the sexes during basic training, he was taking steps reminiscent of the Doolittle commission after World War II. The Doolittle reforms contributed in no little way to the failure of US arms at the outset of the Korean War. The most egregious example of the "Doolittle-ization" of today's military was recounted in an October 1997 Los Angeles Times story. The article, entitled "Boot Camp Kicks Its Harsh Image," described how "the military is stripping away the sharp edges and hard knocks from this fabled test of manhood." As an example of the "kinder, gentler approach" that now characterizes today's co-ed military training, the article cited the Navy's Great Lakes Training Center. Here a trainee who needs extra motivation is "offered emotional support, instructed on deep breathing and stress reduction, and given a chance to explore his feelings by pasting cut-out magazine photos on a piece of cardboard." The mind boggles at the thought of sailors "trained" this way manning a ship afire or actually under attack. Everyone knows that the reason for such a dilution of military training is to ensure that female trainees can keep up with their male counterparts. This is acceptable, goes the refrain, because "we must train as we will fight." What usually goes unremarked when this phrase is invoked is how its original meaning has been subverted. As Adam Mersereau, an astute observer of the military ethos has remarked, this phrase traditionally was used to justify the hardest, most demanding, and realistic training possible. Only by means of such training could the rigors and demands of combat be approximated in the least. Countless soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines were told that by sweating more on the training field, they were likely to bleed less on the battlefield. "The training is hard, Private, because war is hard. If you can't make it in training, you can't make it in war. You will die, and those who depend on you will die. We must train as we will fight." Now the phrase is employed to justify reduced training standards. "Because women will be in operational units, Private, men must learn how to work with them. We can't enforce the old standards, because not enough women can meet them. But, we must train as we will fight." Conclusion So what does all of this mean? If the technological optimists and social engineers are right, the nature of war has changed making the impact of women on unit cohesion and training irrelevant. No longer will it be necessary to close with and destroy the enemy. Friction, the "fog of uncertainty," and chance, factors that have always characterized war will be eliminated in the future. If the technological optimists and social engineers are right, the traditional objections to women in combat, lack of physical strength and the impact of women on unit cohesion, become moot. But the traditionalists are not so sure that the nature of war has changed. They believe that friction and uncertainty still rule the realm of combat. When it comes to women in combat, they take their bearings from the reality of war as it has been revealed throughout history rather than from the hope of what it might be in the future. The traditionalists believe that the technological optimists and social engineers are advocating changes that will ultimately undermine the very raison d'être of the military--victory on the battlefield. |
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