Document created: 6 January 04
Air University Review, July-August
1972
Lieutenant Colonel
Russell A. Turner II
We are on a collision course with change. World cultures are restless, and the hot breath of dissent is seering the moral fabric of nations. The time seems out of joint, and the nihilism expounded by Nietzsche is echoed by today’s intellectual avant-garde. This condition of change is producing confrontations and conflict that threaten to destroy our economic structure and cultural value systems.
The imperative character of this world change is permeating all levels of American society. As a subculture of that society, the American military establishment has recently been one of the targets of carping attacks challenging its traditions, customs, and operational needs. Even some military people have joined the vociferous voices of those critics advocating immediate and sweeping changes in our military system.
That change is in process is self-evident. What is not so self-evident is where this change is leading us and how we in the Air Force should respond to it. More important, how will a changing American society affect a future all-volunteer military force?
Numerous in-depth studies have already been made addressing the many cause-and-effect relationships of specific factors influencing our society and the Air Force. However, while these studies are invaluable, they are often recondite and microcosmic in their analysis. What the military needs is a uniform, responsive policy with which to meet the problem of change and guide it through the transition to an all-volunteer force. This policy would recognize certain principles and flexibilities in the military establishment. The principles are essential to the military’s purpose, existence, and effectiveness. Although they are influenced by change, they remain essential. The flexibilities support the principles by allowing the military to adopt certain changes that are necessary to maintain or increase its effectiveness as a fighting force. By adopting these changes, the military becomes a more realistic reflection of the society at large.
It is important that the public understand these principles and flexibilities if America’s youth are going to support an all-volunteer force. This will not be easy, however, since some Americans have always suspected that the professional soldier and a standing army constitute a threat to political freedom. According to Marcus Cunliffe, the American’s concept of the ideal soldier is the civilian who eagerly takes up arms when duty calls, defeats the professional enemy soldiers by his vigor and ingenuity, and then resumes his peacetime occupation when the danger is past.1 This ambivalence is again manifesting itself today as the nation seeks to substitute a volunteer force for its conscript armies tainted by an unpopular war. Therefore, before discussing the principle and flexibility factors, let us clarify the need for a strong military establishment in the future.
The necessity for the United States to maintain a strong military force for
defense against internal and external dangers is an absolute. The present
worldwide activism calling for love and human rights does not necessarily
signal a mellowing of man’s aggressive nature—a fact seemingly not realized by
the activists who believe in the efficacy of demonstrations to produce
universal peace. It is no secret that there is a prominent animalistic element
in humanity which is prone to violence and conflict. Man is a recalcitrant,
insecure organism competing for existence in a hostile world. Aggressive
impulses are inevitable in a competitive environment, and the emergence of
different world cultures has expanded man’s aggressiveness into organized wars.
Immanuel Kant wrote: “Peace among men living side by side is not a natural
state; natural to them is rather a state of war, if not open hostilities at least
the eternal threat of them.”2
The growing belief today that war is not inevitable belies the fact that war has survived throughout history regardless of changes in social and political systems, in religions, ethics, in intellectual and technical standards. A recent seven-year study of 75 major nations of the world found that internal and external aggression is more than a random occurrence and that the greatest period of frustration (and possible aggression) in a nation is the “mid-awakening,” or the period during the middle of the transitional phase between traditional societies and modernity.3 The population explosion and the rising expectations of the have-not peoples of the world are now, more than ever before, combining to make today and the immediate future a seething cauldron for potential aggression.
Although the decision to switch to an all-volunteer force will be the result of changing values and needs in American society, the need for a strong military establishment will remain unchanged because of man’s aggressiveness and the historical fact that all major societies have been strongly oriented to war. Therefore, a lasting peace would require universal fundamental changes in society and man. For the United States unilaterally to make military defense a minor national priority, as some revolutionaries and intellectuals advocate, would be quixotic. Thus, the need remains for the United States to maintain a strong military defense establishment for the foreseeable future.
Now, what are the principles and flexibilities that will aid the United States in maintaining a strong military establishment and help the military respond to the problems of change and transition to an all-volunteer force?
Numerous principles and flexibilities might be identified as inherent in a military establishment. Space, however, permits me to define only a few of the many overlapping sociological, psychological, political, and other factors influencing those principles and flexibilities. Therefore, the purpose of this article is merely to provide an impetus for thought on a conceptual level and a working hypothesis for further consideration.
Inherent in an effective military establishment is the principle of discipline. This principle leans heavily upon the flexibilities for support and is much affected by cultural changes. A great many of the disciplinary and morale problems in the military today can be attributed to the social ills inherited by the military from a changing society, e.g., drug abuse, racial strife, crime, revolutionaries, militants, the Vietnam syndrome, and youthful officers and draftees who are the products of an affluent and permissive environment. Compounding this problem has been the charge that some officers and NCO’s do not exercise their lawful responsibility to enforce order and uphold the provisions of policy directives and regulations. In Vietnam, this combination of factors has, on occasion, culminated in physical threats to and the fragging of officers and NCO’s.4 No military organization can function effectively whose leaders have been intimidated or have abdicated their authority through fear or frustration. What have we learned from these circumstances that can be applied to an all-volunteer force?
First, we have learned that authoritarian discipline usually produces only outward conformity while raising inward resentments. Graduating AFROTC students at North Carolina State University were told last year by the guest speaker, Major General Robert N. Ginsburgh, that for “a deeper discipline” a man must know “the reason why.”5 We should adopt this democratic approach to discipline because it provides us the flexibilities of guidance without domination and freedom without laxity. It recognizes that the infinite gradations of human behavior are due mainly to environmental rather than hereditary factors and that this is a basic sociological phenomenon underlying group attitudes which produce tension and conflict. Behavior and attitudes are so interrelated that psychologists cannot agree which is the cause and which is the effect. (It is probably a mixture.) But behavior in any situation is influenced by the individual’s anticipations concerning the effects of his actions. Thus, when an individual who violates a group norm does not receive the anticipated group sanctions, the norm is likely to become ineffective. People do not feel right if their misbehavior is persistently overlooked. The principle of discipline then does not tolerate disruptive behavior that intimidates authority. It expects and demands role performances to conform to role requirements and expectations. This means that military group norms—the rules, regulations, policies, and directives—be enforced, not through a martinet application of authority but through a democratic approach to discipline designed to produce an enlightened body of military personnel. The new personnel pamphlet, “Air Force Standards” (AFR 30-1), is a special effort in this direction.
In practicing democratic discipline we must also recognize that there are certain types of individuals who will take advantage of the lenient flexibility and become egocentric and self-assertive. These are the proverbial troublemakers. Perhaps it would be better if the military did not waste its time with these types but discharged them instead. An all-volunteer force affords the military the luxury of being selective, something it could never completely be under the compulsory draft law.
Differential psychology shows that individual differences tend to be quantitative rather than qualitative, a difference in degree rather than in kind. In theory, this means that most men can become soldiers. In practice, however, it means that some people are better off in other professions than in the military. Many of these types of individuals could be identified early through a testing and training period designed for this purpose. If, at the end of this period, the enlistee decides he wants out, or if the military decides he is not the “soldier type,” he could be returned to civilian life without stigma. It is wasteful in money and human resources, besides being unrealistic, to expect the military to take just any kind of individual and try to make a soldier, sailor, marine, or airman out of him and then return him to society a better man. The privilege of selectivity, therefore, would free the military of this responsibility and allow it to incorporate only those individuals it could employ effectively. In support of this selective approach, psychological studies show that there are probably no inherently superior or inferior races or ethnic groups as a whole, since man is largely a product of his environment. Thus, society at large must improve the environmental conditions of all its members so that their offspring can benefit during the critical formative phase of their lives.
The regulation of behavior in accordance with the will of the community is a principle of law. This is secured through moral, social, and official sanctions and by law enforcement agencies. The crucial relation between law and social mores has been expressed by Dr. Robert M. Hutchins in the following passage:
The law is a great teacher. It is
. . . the way in which newly discovered moral truth is disseminated among the
population and incorporated in the conscience and mores of the community. The
popular notion that law reflects the mores is, as countless historical examples
show, often the reverse of the truth. Law helps make the mores. Law-making is
the process by which the members of the political community learn what the
mores should be.6
The significance of this concept to the military, in the author’s opinion, is that since World War II the major egalitarian decisions by the nation’s courts have helped to increase differences between the military and civilian segments of our society. These differences have been further compounded by a small portion of the communication media, by a determined onslaught upon our judicial system by militants, and by a public opinion that on occasion appears to support the law violators rather than the legal authorities.
Future enlistees in an all-volunteer force will come from this environment where almost everything is at issue in the war between the young and their elders-from morality, to politics, to love, to personal cleanliness. The assimilation of these young men in the future military could bring increasing confrontations and conflict unless the military acts to maintain a certain minimal adjustment to changing conditions that will insure its survivability as an effective fighting force. If, as Hutchins says, law helps make the mores, then military law can help bridge the civilian-military cultural gap. The principle of law then should protect the military against disintegration from too many and too varied innovators, while at the same time avoiding the suppression of innovators whose ideas represent improvement and benefit. This is the optimum balance between conformity and deviation.
Achieving this optimum balance is perhaps the most urgent psychological problem in the military today. It means the changing of attitudes. Since attitudes are the residuals of our past experiences, they tend to constrict, conserve, and stabilize our worlds. As such, we find security in the status quo and tend to resist change by identifying with people and things that reinforce our preconceived concepts. When we are confronted with the reality of change, we sometimes behave like the emperor in his new clothes.
But the world does change, and man must change with it. The military can ease the transition of change within its ranks by utilizing the flexibilities available to it. Flexibilities are the military’s ways and means of narrowing the gap between itself and its parent society. We have already touched on a few of these flexibilities, i.e., a democratic approach to discipline, a testing and training period for enlistees, and the protection that law affords to the innovator. There are myriad other ways in which the flexibilities support the principles. For example, flexibility allows the length of hair to change with the prevailing social standard; enforcement of the required length is a principle. Allowing an airman to seek redress through approved channels for what he feels are infringements of his rights is a flexibility; the prohibition against demonstrations in the military is a principle. The right of an airman to question the reasons for an order is a flexibility; the carrying out of that order is a principle. Flexibilities thus help the individual adjust to the principles of his military role by decreasing as many frustration-causing factors as possible.
Defining flexibilities will require careful consideration. Commanders must
refrain from initiating innovations in a pell-mell fashion. For example, what
appears as fair and equal treatment to a white airman might not be interpreted
as such by a black airman whose environmental background has deprived him of
the education needed to compete, or who has a marked inferiority complex
because of his socioeconomic status. Selected, highly trained, and perceptive
officers and airmen are needed in every military unit, to serve as a direct
link between the men and their commander. In this way the root causes of
frustration and tension can be identified, brought to the attention of the
commander, and corrected before they develop into confrontations and conflict.
The morale improvement program of the Air Training Command is an outstanding
example of this approach.7
In dealing with deviant behavior, however, the military must never bow to unjust demands either through appeasement or compromise. De Tocqueville warned against tyranny of the majority in America. Tyranny of the minority can be just as deadly. In identifying and defining principles and flexibilities, optimum balance must be maintained. In explaining this course to the American people, the military should avoid apologia. If the military lacks the courage to stand against its critics when it believes itself right, or if it fails to pronounce judgment upon itself when it believes itself wrong, it will be guilty of moral agnosticism and deserving of the most acute public criticism and censure.
It seems inevitable, as Anthony Wermuth suggests, that “change will probably be endemic in the armed forces for the next decade, at least, as social change in American society gathers momentum.”8 The military can weather this change and successfully progress to an all-volunteer force if it remains true to its principles while bending with its flexibilities.
Washington, D.C.
Notes
1. Marcus Cunliffe, Soldiers and Civilians: the Martial Spirit in America, 1775-1865 (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1968), pp. 101-19.
2. Urpo Harva, “War and Human Nature” in The Critique of War: Contemporary Philosophical Explorations, ed. Robert Ginsberg (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1969), p. 45.
3. Ivo and Rosalind Feierabend, “Conflict, Crisis and Collision: A Study of International Stability,” Psychology Today, May 1968, pp. 26-70.
4. Arthur Hadley, “The Soldiers: No One Cares Anymore,” Washington Post, August 15, 1971, pp. B1-B3.
5. Major General Robert N. Ginsburgh, “Discipline and Dissent,” an AFROTC commissioning address at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, 15 May 1971.
6. R. M. Hutchins, “The Nurture of Human Life,” Bulletin, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions of the Fund for the Republic, No. 10, March 1961.
7. John G. Rogers, “Something New in the Air Force: Got a Gripe? Tell the General,” The Washington Post Parade, August 29, 1971, pp. 18, 20.
8. Anthony L. Wermuth, The Impact of Changing Values on Military Organization & Personnel, ASG Monograph No. 6, December 1971 (Waltham, Massachusetts: Westinghouse Electric Corporation, 1952), p. 29.
Lieutenant Colonel Russell A. Turner II (M.A., American University) is Chief of the Air Force Art Program, Secretary of the Air Force Office of Information. A former B-29, C-121, and C-130 pilot, he has been an information officer with Air Force Systems Command and with NATO forces in Iceland. Colonel Turner, a graduate of Squadron Officer School, USAF Communication Course at Boston University, and Armed Forces Staff College, was once a commercial and free-lace artist and has two paintings in the Air Force art collection.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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