The Military Question

Diving Into a Neglected Issue: The Cultural Priorities of our Armed Forces

There are two basic visions for our Department of Defense. I’m writing this to explain what I think they are and to stimulate conversation about this issue. I rarely read any articles or essays about this question and the fact that our society spends so much time debating progressive issues while neglecting our military is a terrible oversight. Most of our attention should always focus on the most important aspects of our (and every) civilization: defense and borders, law and order, economic production and distribution. If these are issues which you feel are unimportant or even passe then I promise that you’re wrong and I hope (for both our sakes) that no disaster strikes which reveals your blindness. These are important questions and they matter for much deeper reasons than activists would like to believe. Whether or not your life depends on this debate…. someone’s does.

Any general or admiral that was involved in any of the DEI woke shit has got to go. Either you’re in for warfighting and that’s it, that’s the only litmus test we care about. You’ve got to get DEI and CRT out of the military academies so you’re not training young officers to be baptized in this type of thinking… There’s a reason people don’t serve. It’s because they don’t trust that their senior leaders are going to have their best interests in mind in combat.

-Pete Hegseth

The military cannot be organized like a Harvard fraternity, catering to ever-more-obscure constituencies. Our key constituency is normal men, looking to be heroes and not victims. We aren’t a collection of aggrieved tribes. Equality is our bedrock, lethality our trademark. There is no black and white in our ranks. We are all green. Our strength is not in our diversity, but in our unity and in our love for each other, our families, and, most of all, our nation.

-Pete Hegseth

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People in this country are overwhelmingly supportive of the United States military but they know little about that world. I’ve been hearing for years about the plummeting morale of our troops, incompetent military investigators, stupid training, and falling recruitment. I would hope the media would report on these developments, but it seems undeniable that, at this point, anything which reflects poorly on DEI or the Biden administration or progressive values in general simply won’t get a hearing. Everyone should care about the military-it’s arguably the most important institution in/for our country. And if you “support the troops” perhaps you shouldn’t dismiss their perspective… which seems to be: progressive changes have weakened and demoralized the military.

Checking our privilege, and validating the feelings of others

Fundamentalist Versus Progressive Vision

There are two visions of institutional focus in the United States today: fundamentalist, and progressive.

Fundamentalists want to keep institutions focused on their central mission. They prioritize traditional ethical standards and meritocracy and hierarchies which have proven to be effective. If people are distracted or inept, according to this perspective, they should be jettisoned.

Progressives don’t ostensibly want to degrade institutional performance, but they feel that new values and selection systems and a radically different ethos can be grafted onto the old structures. They want to do this because of their deeper political and cultural commitments. In addition to organizations directed to serve some social purpose, progressives see large institutions as vehicles for social and cultural change.

Teachers’ colleges train teachers. Their effectiveness can be gauged by their ability to create teachers out of novices, and by the quality of those teachers. Hospitals exist to treat patients. They are a part of our society because we need a place to locate medical services and their professionals in order to provide preventative and medical treatments, including vaccines, surgeries, tests, and inpatient stays. The effectiveness of hospitals can be understood by examining the health outcomes of their patients. A military exists to defend borders and protect a nation’s citizenry and-in the case of the American military-to police the world and train/support allies, man far-flung bases, launch secret missions of destruction, and patrol the world’s oceans and maintain the global system of trade. None of these institutions exists to systematically and pre-emptively change our ideas or attitudes about race or gender or cultural or morality, and any major effort to make them do this will represent diversions of resources and distractions, which will weaken them.

It’s easy to talk past one another when you stay in the realm of generalities. I will use some very specific training and selection policies which illustrate what I mean. As I name these, keep in mind: the institutional representatives often explain them as helpful to the institutions (not always) but the activists and academics who design and press for these changes aren’t focused on institutional effectiveness. This is obvious because any question of whether the changes improve the institution’s performance are immediately designated as ‘wrongthink.’ The fact that these policies ostensibly exist to help women or racial or other minorities puts them in a special category… but that usually precludes any investigation of their effects. Keep the fundamentalist position in mind: hiring and training policies shouldn’t be primarily focused on helping women or minorities. They should be oriented around the goal of making the institution more effective and efficient.

Some examples:

1. Diversity quotas within the organization which degrade military effectiveness and destroy morale

2. Training about racial sensitivity and inclusion and DEI. Fairness and teamwork are the only values which should be emphasized by leadership, and they don’t require classroom instruction or PowerPoint slides. If your unit functions well together it is simply irrelevant what a person’ political attitudes or personal values are

3. Trans inclusion across the military, which is expensive and inconvenient and not optimal for military readiness

4. Leadership statements about history or racial sensitivity and focus on rightwing ‘extremism’ which distract from the missions and create ideological division within the ranks

I find that questions often get right to the heart of these issues. These are the questions I would ask those military members who defend the above changes, but still resist the label of ‘progressive’.

Questions:

1. Would you agree that mission readiness is more important than LGTBQ sensitivity?

2. Would you agree that instruction for servicepeople about divisive ideas (such as the claim that America is ‘systemically racist’) is unnecessary and inappropriate?

3. Should a candidate’s demonstrated leadership and service capability (and integrity) be the only factors for selection? Would you agree that promoting or selecting candidates using factors of race/sex/gender identity/religion is inimical to the mission of the military?

4. Do you agree that ALL military training and indoctrination be imbued with patriotism and a love of our country as it exists currently?

5. Do you agree that priorities like equity, inclusion, climate policy, feminism should never be priorities for active duty military members and should be left to the realm of civilian culture and politics?

I think a fundamentalist would answer ‘yes’ to every question. If they wouldn’t, they should be able to make a case as to their policy priorities using military considerations as they exist in the world right now, without appeal to abstract values or future political developments. 30 years ago these wouldn’t have been difficult issues to settle.

If our institutions were discussing these changes it would be one thing. Instead they’re often being imposed from above, and any dissension or criticism is punished. Would you sacrifice your life for an organization which treats you with passive aggressive distaste? What do you think that does for morale and unit cohesion?

The American Warfighter

The military is a strange and cloistered, and intensely meritocratic, world. I’ve intimately known hundreds of male service members (and I spent a brief period in uniform myself) and dozens of female ones (no non-binary ones, though). I personally think that the considerations of unit cohesion and mission orientation should dictate that women not be in combat arms roles (save aviation) and that trans people who want to live as trans people shouldn’t be allowed at all. Trans is a psychological condition and so no one need designate themself with the label, but if your mental health depends upon lifetime medical support and life as a member of the opposite sex, and everyone around you indulging your identity, you shouldn’t be in the military. There are other folks out there to do the job, who will be easier to integrate and cheaper to support, and that’s the end of my calculation.

This demonstrates the fundamentalist approach: military recruitment and training shouldn’t be about concepts like social justice or affirmation or cultural change. They should be made according to one iron question: does this policy make us better at organized and coordinated destruction? Does it enhance our teamwork and aggression and motivation and lethality?

Let’s use a hypothetical: women haven’t been allowed to serve in a field artillery unit until several years ago. There’s a pilot program, across several divisions. Data indicates that the units with high rates of female participation perform worse in battle drills and have more disciplinary infractions, on average. Do you expand female participation to the entire branch? You might, if there was a serious dearth of male recruits. Otherwise you probably wouldn’t.

This hypothetical sidesteps some uncomfortable facts. The people pressing to open the military up to women and sexual minorities often dislike the kind of data you would need to evaluate the changes. They also often press for different and easier standards for the newcomers. Their priority isn’t effectiveness, in other words. They want women (or other new identity categories) in these units. They believe that it will be beneficial, eventually, but they want it even if it’s slightly detrimental in the short- and mid-term. They’re driven by a vision of change and reform, and this has nothing to do with military effectiveness.

Women in the military is almost certainly a net-positive… but trans people? Women in combat roles? DEI when it’s unpopular and hurts morale? These decisions are based in a progressive outlook which prioritizes social justice above military effectiveness.

There are adjacent issues as well. Having female soldiers dramatically increases the chance of sexual assault and harassment allegations (true or not). If they’re true they obviously badly hurting staffing and morale. Even if they’re untrue, they still demand investigation and (often) discipline, distracting from the primary mission. A progressive might protest “the men are misbehaving! Change their actions!” This might be true but’s it’s also irrelevant. If you know that introducing women is going to change the sexual and social and organizational dynamic of a unit then those changes (which are largely negative, for a military context) should be assessed soberly. Unless allowing women improves the warfighting ability of the unit overall they shouldn’t be admitted. This goes for any group. Even racial minorities used to be heavily discriminated against in the military-but they’re a key demographic now. There’s absolutely no question that allowing nonwhite servicepeople is a massive net benefit. That’s why it shouldn’t be questioned. Sex and gender identity and sexual preference are different factors and should be spoken about differently, but always with a singular focus: do these policies make us a better military as a military, and not as a diverse and inclusive and welcoming space? Those latter attributes are, frankly, irrelevant.

There’s a related issue of corruption and incompetence within the JAG corps and military investigators as well. I can’t find any data on this but I’ve now heard anecdotally from multiple sources that the prospect of being investigated (and therefore inconvenienced or besmirched, or ruined) has led many capable soldiers and officers to leave the service. When influences like these begin to work in an organization the people who stay tend to be more mediocre and passive than the average. These aren’t great qualities for servicepeople to have.

In fairness to the progressives, they rarely seem to acknowledge that their preferred changes would or could degrade the mission effectiveness of the relevant units. That is part of the reason they often dislike the production and dissemination of data to that effect. I think that they see a future society, with norms and beliefs and cultural patterns much closer to their private fantasies. They feel that their preferences are inevitable destinations-that eventually military gender roles will have mostly disappeared and trans people will serve without any question or issue and everyone will subscribe to the ideas of 4th-wave feminism and DEI education. We’ll be living in a land of windmills and solar panels without borders or gender roles. This kind of thinking is pure wish and ideology, and it’s irrelevant to the reality of military operations in a dangerous and scarcity-riddled world. The people who nurture such ideas are never (in my experience) the same ones who have survived brutal combat missions or overcome terrible injuries or become fearsome soldiers. In other words, these preferences have a whiff of utopianism… and weakness.

DEI Training

Which brings me to this:

DEI Is Crushing Military Recruitment

Between 2019 and 2024, the percentage of conservative veterans who would advise a young family member to join the military declined from 88% to 53%. That almost entirely explains the shift in the broader veteran population. Far more conservative veterans cited the “military’s DEI and other social policies” as a “major factor” (85%) in withholding their endorsement than the “possibility of physical injury or death” (33%) or the “possibility of psychological problems” (27%). The military is heading in the wrong direction, say 90% of conservative veterans.

The military has a culture, developed over the centuries. It is masculine and competitive and coarse and fraternal. These are not elements that can be changed from above, and any attempt to do so will involve serious damage to the morale and esprit de corps of a unit (or a branch, or a military).

Matt Osborne

writes that:

Radical individualism is incompatible with a mission-focus on lethal action against the enemy. Policies which create disunity are incompatible with victory. It is why armies wear uniforms and march together. Identitarian politics, on the other hand, is a great way to lose wars and get a lot of people killed.

It doesn’t matter what the leadership or the activists believe. The point isn’t to inculcate the ‘correct’ ideas. It’s to mold military servicepeople into efficient and competent operators, and often into killers. There is no ideological framework which can promote DEI (with its emphases on racial sensitivity and implicit bias and workplace comfort) while emphasizing the value of toughness and aggression. These outlooks are fundamentally at odds.

There’s also an issue: people in the military do not believe these ideas. Some of them do, surely, but there’s a reason these frameworks began and spread through the university system. The military’s working class pedigree and especial reliance on white men from small towns (especially in the infantry) means that any attempt to promote DEI or anti-racism or feminism or indigenous sensitivity or LBGTQ inclusivity will be met with blank stares at best, and violent rejection at worst. You don’t have to like that but you must recognize it (and any leader or activist who ignores or minimizes it isn’t being honest). They should recognize that soldiers and sailors and airmen aren’t blank slates (tabula rasa) upon which your cherished ideas can be indelibly imprinted. The military has a command structure but this exists for combat, not for indoctrination, and the more time and resources are devoted to representing ideas which are at best silly and at worst toxic the less faith the rank and file will have in their leaders.

Military leaders don’t have to be brilliant or kind or charismatic. But they can’t be seen as ridiculous or soft or disconnected. These kinds of ideas immediately give the impression that they’re all three.

Matt Osborne

writes:

Biden administration priorities could not have been more opposed to the military culture. In a 2021 congressional hearing on the ‘woke military,’ Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin claimed that “diversity, equity and inclusion is important to this military now and it will be important in the future.” Signing an executive order to install a new DEI bureaucracy throughout the Department of Defense at every level of command in 2023, President Biden declared that diversity was necessary for “all successful military operations,” a laughable assertion to this military historian. ‘Colorblind’ policies have been replaced by ‘equity’ and ‘identity’ along the entire chain of command, corrupting the culture of merit and achievement in uniform.

The Prospect of Welcome Change

It’s been a long time since I wore the uniform. Perhaps all of these developments are exaggerated, and insignificant. There’s no way (that I can see) that they could be helpful though. Training soldiers and commanders and cadets about implicit bias and ‘white rage’ and other fashionable academic ideas (if such things are happening) simply represents an incursion by activism into the military.

In a sense the military is ripe fruit for the Critical Theorists: it’s hierarchical and the people near the top tend to be extremely political in their calculations. There’s a lot of pressure to conform and it’s easy to remake hiring policies or institute training programs which will affect millions with very little oversight or scrutiny. The military is too important for these games though. The people making these changes seem to be operating under the assumption that our military is simply a neutral bureaucracy, a kind of social laboratory to advance feminism or Queer Theory or anti-racism. It’s not. It is the keystone of our entire society and weakening it (especially in this flamboyant and public way) puts many Americans at risk, along with countless civilians across the globe. If inclusion isn’t a value for which you’re willing to risk war I recommend desisting.

The fact that these ideas are alien and unpopular to most people who join (or would join) the military is all you need to know. If you want to educate people write a book… start a Substack… organize a club. Leave military training for those matters of deadly serious team coordination which are necessary to it. Ultimately these are just your opinions. The nation has won every war without believing these things. I think we’ll be okay.

DEI seems to be slowly dying (or at least crawling back into the fetid classrooms and government offices from whence it emerged). The tide seems to be turning.

As the culture expresses its growing displeasure with progressive ideas, President Elect Donald Trump has just nominated CPT Peter Hegseth as Secretary of the Department of Defense. he has the zeal of the reformer and is a fundamentalist through and through on this issue. I suspect that’s what voters want. I’m certain it’s what grunts want.

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More pieces on the military and cultural change:

Rough Men Stand Ready

Team Obama-Biden-Harris Does Not Believe In The Possibility Of Victory

Leadership

In Memoriam