The Purpose of the Military

EDIT: see this apology to the Major. I do not think that this was my best hour, and I’m sorry for that.

Critics will counter with Clausewitz, dismissing my argument as the naïve, “kind-hearted” words of someone that misguidedly believes there is “some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed.” But Clausewitz was writing in an era of limited options, when a bloodsucking leech was often the medical profession’s first and only recourse. …..The final stake in this mistaken sentiment’s heart is that it misrepresents me as a military person. If my purpose is to kill people and break things, how do I explain this to my wife and two young daughters? Particularly as Gen. Milley considered this our primary audience, stating: “Most importantly, we serve for our children.” Should I get down on bended knee and tell my girls, “Daddy is a killer and a breaker?” Would this make them smile? Proud?

This excerpt is from a recent post at War on the Rocks that I do not just find disagreeable but fundamentally disturbing. It would be one thing if the author simply just noted that Huckabee’s comments were unecessarily reductive. Instead, the author expresses a fundamental queasiness and even shame over the fact that I and other taxpayers pay enormous sums to grant him and others vast resources and distinct privileges so that he can utilize armed violence against enemies of the state. Instead of viewing himself as a technician of violence; a specialized professional in the arts and sciences of warfare, he sees himself instead as a kind of doctor trying to cure a patient.

Organized violence is just a “means” instead of the fundamental purpose to maintain a military as opposed to simply distributing the money we grant it to a patchwork of humanitarian and diplomatic agencies. Maj. Cavanaugh, in his references to himself and others as a “shield,” fundamentally misses the point of what Gen. Patton said when he pointed out that militaries are not organized to die for their countries but make the other poor bastard die for his country. A shield may deflect blows, but it cannot inflict them. Wars cannot be won, enemies cannot be deterred, and lives cannot be protected without the inflicting of blows. A shield, without a sword, is utterly useless.

This is inherent in his mangling of Clausewitz’s notion of armed violence. Clausewitz did not see force as the only way to resolve the matter — war could be averted by overawing an opponent or cleverly inducing them to submit without violence. But Clausewitz also saw, correctly, that when war breaks out it is precisely because such inducements and incentives often do not prevent a determined adversary from being willing to kill to achieve a political goal. Revolutionary France and Napoleon, in his interpretation, by means of a willingness to break the rules of European politics and statecraft in the service of a revolutionary ideal, threw Europe into turmoil for decades and humiliated Clausewitz’s native Prussia on the battlefield.

So I say to Maj. Cavanaugh: if you are ashamed of telling your children that you are a killer, a breaker, we will not force you to have to tell them. You can be a funky humanitarian relief agency that occasionally has to kill the odd person and destroy the odd thing. But the implications of your comments is that the massive amount of resources and the specialized privileges we grant you amount to an elaborate sham. If you are correct, the United States military is simply just another institution of government employees that claims its function is essential to the national interest. If the purpose of the armed forces is not the use of organized violence to further state power, then they ought to have a bake sale to buy a bomber because they don’t deserve taxpayer support. After all, Maj. Cavanaugh’s occupation in the military is as a strategist. What does a FA 59 Strategist, do, pray tell?

[T]he strategic plans and policy functional area has existed since 1997….[doctrine] describes the functions of an FA 59 officer: “to provide Army organizations, combatant commands, the Joint staff, and the interagency community the capability for strategic analysis in support of the development and implementation of plans and policies at the national strategic and theater strategic levels. FA 59 officers execute key institutional and operational core processes, including formulation and implementation of strategy and strategic concepts and policies, and the generation, strategic projection, and operational employment of decisive joint and coalition land combat power [emphasis mine].”

But every public or private agency, from the World Bank to Shell Oil, has “strategy” documents and “strategists.” If Maj. Cavanaugh feels such enormous reluctance, discomfort, and even shame about his duties as a strategist to organize and employ force to kill large numbers of people and destroy large numbers of things, surely we could just transfer him away from the Army to work at McDonald’s, which boasts a unique “strategic direction” of its own. Or, for that matter, what differentiates the Army from the Department of Education, the Center for Disease Control, or the Department of Labor? After all, the Department of Energy and other agencies have heavily armed police services that can kill and break things but fundamentally serve other purposes too. Moreover, every agency and interest group — from health specialists that decry obesity as a threat to national security to climate changes advocates that warn that global warming is a matter of national security — believe that their work contributes to national security. So if the Army and the military writ large is just one among many, what justifies the fact that military spending is 54% of government discretionary spending? What makes them special?

Do not get me wrong. I feel for Maj. Cavanaugh’s anguish. Caitlyn Jenner was born a man but deep down, that oppressive gender category did not truly represent who she was and who she wanted to love. It caused her great anguish and suffering to be a man, and her transformation to a woman was an act of great personal courage and personal liberation that we all ought to celebrate and support. Similarly, Maj. Cavanaugh is a military officer that feels great suffering and anguish over the fact that people think his job is to use lethal violence against enemies of the state. Like Ms. Jenner, he does not believe such a socially constructed identity represents who he truly is. So we ought to honor his request and allow him to express his identity as he truly sees fit.

However, there is a core distinction between Maj. Cavanaugh and Ms. Jenner. The state did not pay Ms. Jenner enormous sums of money and grant Ms. Jenner enormous privileges out of proportion to other citizens simply so that Ms. Jenner could be a man. The military is one of the most trusted and admired institutions in America, and both our budgetary priorities and cultural institutions reflect the understanding that we owe it a special trust because it undergoes great suffering and burden to be ready to fight our enemies on our behalf. If Cavanaugh and others feel discomfort, reluctance, and even shame as to the nature of that role and burden, the special trust ought to be regarded as null and void. We ought to systematically strip Cavanaugh and his employers to the bone of their privileges, authorities, and resources and spend them elsewhere where they would be more fruitful.