Examining Some Basic Assumptions

515 Plans
515 Plans
Nov 8 · 8 min read

Does the Marine Corps Really Think Deeply About Itself?

I often find myself thinking about the underlying assumptions that serve as the building blocks for what we actually do on a day-to-day basis (contrasted with what we say we’ll do). Indeed, most of those sort of foundational ideas go completely unexamined as we plan, operate, and go about our normal duties — in peacetime or in war. Although we’ve got some extremely smart thinkers throughout our force, we often default to solving tactical, immediate problems instead of thinking about who we really are. This is clearly both easier and more immediately satisfying — since the solution is identified and implemented on the short timeline that our service incentivizes (through 2–3 year tours…if you want to see the fruits of your labor as a commander, you have literally zero incentive to plan for the long term). So that said, I’ve got some thoughts about our basic assumptions.

Brute Krulak wrote that “the nation doesn’t need a Marine Corps, the nation wants a Marine Corps,” and then proceeded to write around 300 pages of self-promotion describing how important it is to keep the Marine Corps around. This leads us to assumption #1 — that the existence of the Marine Corps is, in itself, an inherently good thing for our nation. Brute and the rest of the folks who fought for the existence of the Corps clearly took that at face value…but should they have? Sure, you can point to battles won and tactical triumphs from WWI to Korea…but the “macro” question that we ought to ask ourselves when we do this is — so what? The Marines succeeded at Belleau Wood. And? The Army would have done just fine without the Marine Corps there. Those guys fought well, but didn’t materially change the outcome of the war in one way or another. How about Korea. Allegedly the Marine “fire brigade” in Pusan saved the day. OK, I’ll buy that one. So what? Would we have completely given up on Korea had the Pusan Perimeter collapsed? Would the war have ended in favor of North Korea? Unlikely. More famous in Korea is the “win” at Chosin Reservoir. O.P. Smith and 1st MARDIV killed Chinese in droves…and then the war turned into a bloody stalemate that the Army fought just fine, thank you very much. How about World War II…where the US Army conducted more amphibious assaults — in all theaters — than the Marine Corps? We can play this game with any conflict the Marine Corps has been involved in — ultimately the Army can do the USMC job (assuming the job is amphibious assault…or land warfare…or even long range missiles from an island somewhere) just as well as the Marine Corps. So where does that leave us? Is there evidence to suggest that the existence of the USMC is automatically something good? What does it do that nobody else in the Joint Force can provide?

Here’s another one — the idea that the all volunteer force (AVF) is inherently better than the draft. Without even getting into the arguments about the overall societal issues that come along with the AVF or political arguments about it, there’s a question to be asked about whether the AVF actually best serves the national interest in the event of war. Now I don’t mean small wars of choice — clearly those are best managed by having an exceedingly professional, small volunteer force that 1. can win any tactical engagement without taking lots of casualties and 2. can sustain the fight over extended time periods without causing political blowback. No argument there. Indeed, the British model of Redcoats conducting imperial policing operations is essentially what we’re doing with the current AVF. The argument comes when we start looking at great power and even existential war. The National Defense Strategy claims that great power war is the new focus for the United States (again). If large scale, great power war is really the important thing, then maybe the all volunteer force isn’t as useful as we might think. Some key issues here — up front, we can expect that any great power war will require mobilization. I don’t mean calling up the reserves, I mean replacing casualties beyond anything the AVF can manage (example — ~40,000 US casualties at the Battle of Okinawa — that’s about half of the existing USMC operating force). Once all the professional soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines get killed or wounded, who’s coming behind them? We won’t be able to train the new army (so to speak) like the professional force and get them to the fight quickly…so then what? This problem looks a lot like the British at the eve of World War I. The British Army was small, professional, blooded from years of counterinsurgency (think — Boer War), and ready for war. They were nearly all casualties in the first months of WWI. Perhaps instead of spending our time worried about lethality and professionalism, we should instead think about how we would actually mobilize for a real, serious war — one that we have to win to ensure our way of life, not one that we fight with no real political cost except to the folks who do the fighting. Our society has been lulled into a false idea about how we would fight against a legitimate enemy…and hopefully we won’t suffer for it.

Moving to less “strategic” concerns and down into the world that the USMC actually lives in, there are plenty of things we could ask ourselves about the basic driving assumptions that inform the entire service culture. We make Marines by sending them to a 10 week boot camp and having slightly older Marines yell at them until they do whatever they’re told. We assume that since the Marine Corps is inherently good for the nation (see above) and we’ve been winning wars since 1775 (disregard all the ones we didn’t win) that modern Marines should be made at boot camp the way we think we’ve always done it. Clearly, screaming at 18 year olds and making them march around in unison while pretending to reload muskets according to a byzantine set of commands that were outdated a hundred fifty years ago is the best way to make an effective 21st Century fighter. This is not to suggest that either boot camp or drill is automatically all bad…but I do suggest that perhaps we’ve never really tested it. We could surely figure out if a boot camp based on screaming at 18 year olds is more effective than a boot camp based on education, leadership, and positive examples…just set up competing models and see which one actually works better.

There’s at least an argument to be made that the boot camp model — even if it does produce a better Marine — is still a net negative for the force. Since drill instructors provide our junior leadership with the only major example they have to model themselves after, we end up with huge numbers of junior leaders who act like bullies. This isn’t because they necessarily want to be bullies, or even intentionally emulate their drill instructors, but more because they just don’t know a better way to do it. Potentially this is a key driver for a host of toxic culture issues that the Service has had a very hard time stamping out. We (more senior folks) get to reap the rewards of this in hazing investigations, Marines who don’t re-enlist, and the wrong individuals getting promoted up the chain. Finally, you might suggest that the real impact of boot camp has nothing to do with the “discipline” that Marines learn by getting screamed at, walking in perfect harmony, and pretending to reload muskets, but in fact it’s usually successful because it’s a milestone young 18 year olds realize they need to get through in order to be a Marine. One might wonder how many recruits internalize the real lessons we think we want Marines to learn at boot camp (USMC core values first among them), and how many just get the veneer of “Marine-ness” while retaining the 18 year long stamp that their community culture has already put on them? The service probably wouldn’t like the answer to that. Is there any evidence to suggest that 10 weeks of boot camp can change the 18 years worth culture, norms, and beliefs that society has inculcated into a new recruit?

Since we’re talking about entry level stuff, how about diving into the assumptions that underpin our recruiting efforts? We claim that we “only want the best.” That’s sort of true…we do have slightly more stringent entry requirements than the other services. Having a moderately more difficult barrier to entry is not to say that we only want the best, though. We’ll take anyone who can meet those basic requirements. If we really only wanted the best folks we would model the force on SOCOM…but not today’s SOCOM forces which have been gradually watered down to meet the requirements of 20ish years of endless war. We’d look at the SOF folks from the early years of the GWOT. There were physical requirements, sure, but there were also mental requirements, aptitude assessments, and simple “fit-in-ness” played a part. If we cared about actually getting the best folks, we wouldn’t give our recruiters quotas, but would instead give them guidance about who to recruit. As it stands now, we really just recruit a slightly more qualified conscript force. Sure, the standards are slightly higher and most of our enlistees have high school diplomas — this generally tracks with the education of society writ large. Mostly though, our recruiters focus on the exact same population that would have been conscripted were the draft still running. Indeed, our modern day “volunteers” are basically the same as the draftees we once had…we just get them to join in a different way. Regardless of how young people are convinced to enlist, the “revolving door” of our manpower remains the exact same. During the Vietnam War, for example, we had large numbers of “volunteers” (a large number of enlisted Marines in Vietnam were volunteers who would ultimately have been drafted anyway). Most of them left after their enlistment was complete and a few stuck around for a longer term and moved up the ranks. Today, we have large numbers of volunteers in the service. Most of them leave after their enlistment is complete and a few stick around for a longer term and move up the ranks. How different are we really?

There are surely piles more assumptions baked into our thinking about ourselves (as Marines). The Commandant suggests that as we move forward into designing the force, that we should question everything; that nothing is off the table. If that’s the case, we should take this statement to its logical conclusion — and quite literally question everything. Why do we exist? What do we do? Is our existence inherently good, or could giving the mission to someone else better serve the national interest? Is there real evidence to suggest that the way we do business is the best way? If we haven’t asked that question about everything we do, then we’re not serving according to the oath that each servicemember takes — which states that they will support and defend the Constitution of the United States — not one service or another. Ultimately, the defense of our nation should be the primary goal of every person in the defense establishment; defending service equities and other such nonsense is just a different manifestation of the tribalism that is so pervasive throughout our culture.

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