Newbold deconstruction

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This is a deconstruction of the following article:

https://taskandpurpose.com/opinion/critical-military-theory/

 

The U.S. military has two main purposes — to deter our enemies from engaging us in warfare, and if that fails, to defeat them in combat.

Wow, delusion (or lies?) full speed ahead right at the beginning, without any warm-up. No, the purposes of the U.S. military are not those. These legitimate purposes have become an afterthought. The main purposes of the U.S. military are to bully if not take over Third World countries and to deter Russia from breaking out of its restrictive influence sphere and to deter China from setting up any kind of influence sphere in the first place. The latter two points can be interpreted as deterrence and defence to the benefit of certain foreign (not always allied) countries if one wants to be particularly nice.

[George Washington quote]

That's an appeal to authority - not a good smell

(...) the traits that deter a potential enemy and win the wars that must be fought: Conformity, discipline, unity. 

Either I don't get the translation completely right or the "conformity" part is total nonsense. More about that later.

“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us.”

I had my own version of this, so I won't criticise it much. It still leaves a bad taste behind when I see such talk / writing elsewhere because this kind of talk (wolf/sheep et cetera) is all-too often linked to a Fascist-leaning demographic.

There is only one overriding standard for military capability: lethality.

No, that's bullshit. I understand he writes for civilians, but the statement is wrong (albeit it fits with usual American military-industrial talk on the topic).

These previous blog posts hint at what's most important in peer battles:

/2009/02/jericho-sirens.html

/2009/06/politically-incorrect-today-fire.html

/2010/01/repulsion.html

/2010/03/musings-about-military-theory-framework.html

In blunt terms; it's how scary you are. It sounds silly, I know. The era of armies just killing a third of each other in a day of battle are over. Nowadays (and especially during WW2) two peer armies facing each other respect the other's firepower so much that the various ways of scaring the opponent are dominant, and actual lethal action the exception. But as I mentioned before, the U.S. military is largely about bullying vastly inferior opponents, and against those you want great lethality in battle. It's too bad for Americans that too much inferior opponents understand this and minimise their exposure in long guerilla campaigns where lethality ifs again totally subordinated to reconnaissance & intelligence and the most promising path to victory is political, not military.

Combat is the harshest meritocracy

And we're on bullshit mountain again. The cowards tend to survive much longer in warfare than the high performers. His view only applies to wartime officer promotions in the field. I suppose what he's really trying to do here is to paint the military as somewhat noble.

A military force’s greatest strengths are cohesion and discipline. Individuality or group identity is corrosive and a centrifugal force.

That's kinda true, but on the other hand it's the particularly individualistic people who devise new tactics instead of simply following doctrine or blundering. German WW2 fighter and CAS strike fighter groups were astonishing examples of how extremely important - and often extremely effective - the unusual individuals were. Those pilots were also more drunk than disciplined, and NCOs didn't shy away from shouting at officers when the latter had fucked up on the previous sortie. It's very important to make good use of smart individuals despite their corrosive and centrifugal force nature. This retired Marine 3-star sounds very First World War-ish here.

Then again, I kinda wrote something similar without ever retracting it (for all I know the concerns I wrote about proved to be overblown).

(...) how conformity creates efficiency and superior group results (...)

And we're back to delusional. No, efficiency stems from letting the top performers do their thing and find for others something suitable and useful to do.

Taliban radio intercept after engaging U.S. forces.

This reminds me of how Americans told each other that the F4U fighter was called "Whistling death" by the Japanese. The Japanese were quite interested to learn about this after the war. My bullshitmeter broke.

because it’s service to others

Let's face it; enlisting in the U.S. military is nothing but a path to affordable college for a huge share of the recruits. Hardly anyone has thoughts of sacrificing himself herself or itself when enlisting.

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The U.S. military personnel systems are known for forcing service members to attend courses on all kinds of non-military stuff, including sensitivity stuff, anti-rape, anti-STD, whatever. There were also powerful efforts to open up more jobs to women, including combat specialisations. Opposition to this is widespread. The German Bundeswehr had decades of resistance and complaining about similar issues since the introduction of "Innere Führung". In the end, soldiers are too old to submit easily to efforts of educating them.

His basic concern is understandable, and I suppose he gets his message conveyed, but he used a typical amount of bullshit, delusion and pathos along the way.

For a similar takedown, have a look at /2018/04/a-deconstruction-of-micc-propaganda.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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