Variation on a theme: more on Robert Kaplan’s article on civil/military relations:
Here is the crux of our civil-military divide: As American society grows more socially distant from its own military, American warrior consciousness is further intensifying within the combat arms community itself. The identities of each of the four armed services gradually grow less distinct. Rather than Army green, Air Force blue or Navy khaki, the slow but inexorable trend is toward purple, the color of jointness. The services have not yet lost their individual cultures, but operations both big and small are more and more integrated affairs. As each year goes by, interaction between the services deepens. The Air Force, with its once cushy, corporate ways, is becoming more hardened and austere like the Army, even as the Big Army becomes more small-unit oriented like the Marine Corps. The Big Navy, with its new emphasis on small ships to meet the demands of littoral combat, is becoming more unconventional and powered-down, also like the Marines.
Without a draft or a revitalized Reserve and National Guard that ties the military closer to civilian society, in the decades ahead American troops may become less soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen, and more purple warriors—in essence a guild in which the profession of combat-arms is passed down from father to son.
This is dead on, partly because it is now a requirement to have “joint” command or staff service to make brigadier general. That has set many a colonel scrambling for spots in joint units in order to check the block for career progression. I think the glacial movment towards “jointness” was the reason behind the Marine Corps being denied exclusive US command of the Afghanistan mission.
I absolutely agree that the services are becoming much more integrated. Anyone with recent deployment experience knows how drastically things have changed, and a march toward a “guild” of combat-arms professionals does not seem all that distant to me.
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I think that we are missing the boat on “Jointness.” Remember how we got here. Desert One. Congress decided that the services’ lack of jointness led to the failure, hence Goldwater-Nichols 1986.
Now, in order to make flag, you must be a Joint Service Officer, which means that you have to have gone to a service school and done a joint tour.
I can speak for the Navy in saying that this is difficult when you are trying to get experience and maintain warfighting proficiency for ship/submarine/aircraft squadron commanding officers.
We need our leaders and our services to be able to interact in a combined arms environment, but each service must maintain expertise in thier own area. I fear that the current direction to jointness could significantly impact readiness and our ability to fight when our leaders forget the basics of their warfighting area in the name of jointness.
As American society grows more socially distant from its own military, American warrior consciousness is further intensifying within the combat arms community itself.
Should this kind of thing concern us? I’m less concerned about whether the military is losing it’s individual culture as I am about the civilian populace that funds and commands it losing all understanding of how it functions. As the son (and grandson) of career military officers, I have about as good an understanding of the military as a civilian can have. I’m constantly appalled at the sheer lack of understanding that civilians often display regarding what exactly the military does and how it does it.