The Cost of Loyalty: A Crisis of Ethics in the Military

[Boats]

The Cost of Loyalty: A Crisis of Ethics in the Military
By: Timothy Bakken - History News Network - 03-15-20
Re: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174571

About this writer: Tim Bakken is a professor of law at West Point. His new book is The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military. The views here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

At a time when faith in our institutions is precarious, and our old dependence on norms has proven to be misguided at best, Americans take succor in believing that the backbone of our country’s security—the U.S. military—is, well, secure.

It’s necessary to think this way because the alternative is just too disturbing to consider. Yet, from the U.S. Military Academy, known as West Point, which its military administrators assure us with no hint of humility, or data, is “the world’s preeminent leadership institution,” I’d like to sound the alarm. Our faith in military leaders and their progeny is dangerously misplaced.

The Afghanistan Papers, more than 600 recorded interviews of military and civilian leaders obtained by the Washington Post after years of litigation against the government, showed, according to former lieutenant general Douglas Lute, “we didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking” in a war that started more than 18 years ago.

Now 75 years since America’s last victory in a major war, one led by a general, Eisenhower, who was born in 1890, Americans are numb to the military’s strategic failures: bombing to pulp the cities of North Korea, the war of attrition in Vietnam, the wayward invasion and dismal occupation of Iraq. When President Trump and Congress increase the military budget, the near worship expressed by many Americans for the military prevents discussion about what is necessary for self-defense and what is wasted on the self-aggrandizement of generals and admirals and military contractors.

Recent policies announced by the U.S. military regarding a redeployment of landmines at the discretion of commanders and the placement of low-yield nuclear warheads on submarines should make us shudder. From outside, the military may appear to be an undifferentiated mass of strong-jawed soldiers who come from a sturdier fabric than the rest of us, people who could be trusted with such massive responsibilities. It’s a myth. As I’ve described recently, the military does not have the capacity necessary to achieve success in a modern world. These are average men and women trained within an inch of their nature at the U.S. military academies. And I’ve seen these people up close. I’ve answered to them. I’ve been blackballed by them, retaliated against by them, and will likely be attacked by them again simply for speaking up. At West Point, the headwaters that feeds the armed forces, the values of loyalty and conformity have blasted away any sense of ethics. When fealty to anyone of higher rank becomes the norm—and the essential component of careerism—truth will dissipate quickly.

The military is in trouble because the schools feeding it have long been breeding grounds for its worst tendencies. One 2017 study by researchers at West Point shows that the intellectual core of the Army and West Point has been eroding for the past 75 years.

Most Americans still consider the military institution to be an invincible force. Even though, led mainly by generals who graduated from West Point, it snatched a stalemate from the jaws of victory in Korea, got 58,000 young American men killed in Vietnam, and has run Iraq and Afghanistan into the ground, we continue to worship at the altar of military infallibility. Its leaders are driven by self-regard, its soldiers by self-preservation, and all are ingrained to protect the institution, not us.

From the first day of Beast Barracks, a summer training and indoctrination ritual, new cadets at West Point learn that loyalty to each other is the preeminent value, high above all the others, including truth. Of course, loyalty is important—we all understand the need for it, and how war requires unity forged in this trust. But in reality, loyalty doesn’t look like it does in movies—an exhausted soldier avoiding fire to save his comrade. It takes the form of hiding a breach from a sanctioned “outsider,” protecting a superior from the suspicion of an inspector general, lying on a casualty report, or falsifying records to evade criticism. The value being cultivated by the military ethos at the academies and in the theaters across the world goes by a different word for the rest of us: deceit.

And the military knows it. Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras, former colonels now at the Army War College, wrote in “Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession,” a 2015 study describing a culture devoid of integrity that “’white’ lies and ‘innocent’ mistruths have become so commonplace in the U.S. Army that there is often no ethical angst, no deep soul-searching, and no righteous outrage when examples of routine dishonesty are encountered.” Rather, “mutually agreed deception exists in the Army because many decisions to lie, cheat, or steal are simply no longer viewed as ethical choices.”

The Afghanistan Papersillustrate a military command and civilian bureaucracy in almost unanimous agreement that the strategies employed in the war in Afghanistan have been futile. But not a single official in a position to know ever spoke up. This is not a coincidence. This kind of deception is not a bug of the military hierarchy. It is a feature.

The problems coming from inside the U.S. military will be difficult to solve for two reasons. First, Americans’ trust in the military is akin to religious worship, so we don’t engage in any real oversight. Second, the military itself has no incentives for admitting faults in order to rectify problems, despite a continuing cascade of losses and harm to soldiers at home. “We’re creating an environment where everything is too rosy because everyone is afraid to paint the true picture,” an army officer said in the Wong-Gerras study. “You just wonder where it will break, when it will fall apart.”

The regal military “chain of command,” a relic in 2020, has become, in the hands of military officers, a device to coerce blind unquestioning loyalty at the expense of truth. This has spawned silence among generals when their speaking up could prevent America from engaging in almost perpetual warfare.

They could best fulfill their constitutional obligations by telling us the truth. But, alas, they weren’t trained for that.

Though evidence amasses—through scandals, leaks, evidence on the ground, and decades of failure—Americans stubbornly hold faith in the U.S. military. A staggering 80% of Americans believe our military will always act in our country’s best interest. Is it because, were we to consider the evidence, it would be hard to sleep at night?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's some feedback from the reader(s): Interesting -

1-post. Washington warned against engaging in foreign wars, particularly wars of conquest or vain wars that cannot be won because they have no clear objectives - as in every war since Korea. A military that truly serves the Constitution and the American public would not engage in pointless or endless wars, but would exist solely for the defense of the country and the American people.

And today, with the critical lack of accountability at the highest levels, the question becomes: Will the military be more honorable, responsible and ethical than the unethical, dishonorable, irresponsible political leaders currently in charge? Will they remember that their true responsibility and loyalty are to the Constitution and its single purpose - the preservation of American democracy - and not to any person or political or religious ideology?

As citizens it is our duty and our responsibility to demand that our military leaders are more loyal to the Constitution than to any political administration.

(The writers name can be found the report link only)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2nd - post. Excellent article introducing a book worth reading. In my active-duty service (Infantry, U.S.A.) I learned, experienced, and confirmed that in an oligarchy, such as the U.S., the military logically developed into a self-serving socio-economic class, precisely because social mobility, a promised feature of democratic societies, is specifically voided and discarded by the plutocrats who are the oligarchy. A notable example is defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's dimissive-office-manager behaviour, upon initiating Iraq's colonisation: that 'an army goes to war with whatever (inadequate) equipment is to hand', and the consequently great losses of soldiers and marines.

Why the surprise that the U.S. military are a self-preservation society? After all, they — the enlisted soldier-marine, the sergeant, and the officer — never, truly were included to the socio-economic mainstream of U.S. society, because they were not born to the corporate-manager social class, like Trump, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.; the U.S. remains the intended, 18th-century feudal society codified in the 'Sacred Scrolls' for government-by-plutocrat. Progressive change — political, social, and economic — is feasible for the U.S. and the military class through parliamentary government, in place of the private-property government of the oligarchy.

(Writer(s) names on the original link only.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3rd - post. To begin, our political leadership makes the decision to employ armed force. Afghanistan and Iraq were mistakes from the beginning because no clear political goal was ever articulated. Good tactics are not a substitute for a clear strategy.I would disagree with your judgment regarding Korea. We changed goals in October 1950 and reassessed after Chinese intervention and ultimately both the US and the Chinese decided uniting Korea was not worth the expenditure of blood and treasure it would require.As for Vietnam, see my comment above about strategy and understand this was a disaster that involved both Congressional and Executive collaboration with no one inside or outside government was able or willing to challenge an anti-Communist consensus after the damage wrought by the Red Scare.

The loss in Vietnam was a shock to the Army's system and its selection process became more focuses on competence. After Action Reviews were blunt in the period through the mid-1990s and rank insignia was ignored during these sessions. this began to change after the end of the Cold War. A peacetime military with peacetime routines re-emerged. This is normal in all institutions. What is abnormal is the uncritical adulation of the military by the public.

You might compare the source you cite with earlier studies that highlighted the same problem in the early to mid-1970s which also came out of the Army War College. The Army was able to correct itself then, it should be able to do so now. Whether it will is another question. As for Professor Bakken's comment about deceit, the lies are eventually uncovered but what he is so shocked about has been going on in the US Army since 1790. The only time it has abated is during a large war in which a considerable number of hostilities only people served.

As for grmce's comment, understand that MacArthur never worked or worked well in a coalition. His conduct in Korea mirrored his conduct in world War II. BTE, has the USA treated the Australians with greater respect on the operational level than did the British Empire during both world wars, or even in the Boer War?

(The writers name can be found on the original link only)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4th post: Speaking as a citizen of one of the staunchest military allies of the U.S. (Australia) and a keen student of military history might I humbly suggest that one of the biggest problems with the U.S. military is its overweening arrogance and disrespect for its allies. Stating with Pershing's decision to withdraw AEF troops from the allied forces the day before the battle of Hamel on the Western Front - Pershing was nowhere near as accomplished a battlefield commander as Lieutenant General Sir John Monash and his boorish treatment of his AIF allies earnt him the lasting contempt of Australians to this day - and the same goes for MacArthur and his contempt for our local militia troops and their fighting retreat back over the Owen-Stanley Range from Kokoda until they finally stopped the Japanese outside of Port Moresby - the arrogant ignoramus should've been tied down in a chair and forced to watch Damien Parer's Academy Award winning documentary "Kokoda Front Line!"

During the Vietnam War there were problems getting the U.S. military to share intelligence with the Australian military and, of course there was also the matter of the collision in the Sth. China Sea when the U.S.N. destroyer Frank E. Evans cut under the bow of R.A.N aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne - the USN tried to lay the blame on the Melbourne! As some of my ex-service acquaintances have expressed it, "With allies like the U.S. who needs enemas?"

2nd post by the same writer: Regarding WW1 the action of Imperial Germany in invading France by violating Belgian neutrality called for allied action in defence of the two violated nations.

Regarding WW2, once again, the hostile actions of Germany, by this time an aggressively fascist nation, required an international defence of Poland and France - oh, and by the way, my father was in Darwin when it was bombed by the Japanese and my neighbours were on Java when the Japanese invaded and my step-father was a PoW on the Burma Railway - the treatment of PoWs/internees by the Japanese warranted concerted allied action.

What a pity the isolationist Republicans nixed Wilson's plan for a "League of Nations". By the way, Prussian Field Marshal, Moltke the Elder (1800-1891) had warned that, following the various wars of the late 19th C, the next war might last 30yrs. If one combines the duration of both world wars of the 20th C that is pretty much spot on!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Personal I was intrigued by the open responses to this post. There are more on this site if you care to read additional posting(s).

Boats