I wanted to post this months ago, but I was too sad. With a little spark of hope, here are some quotes from the article, which I'd recommend if you're seeking to understand what has happened to...
I wanted to post this months ago, but I was too sad. With a little spark of hope, here are some quotes from the article, which I'd recommend if you're seeking to understand what has happened to the US armed forces under Hegseth's wilful malice:
On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, by British psychologist Norman F. Dixon, has long been considered a must-read, even within U.S. military circles that relentlessly cull their own reading lists. Dixon sought to answer a question that had long bedeviled the British military, most especially in the wake of World War I: Why are lions always seemingly led by donkeys?
By and large, the (British) military shunned innovation; prized physical prowess and sporting achievements over book smarts (“lethal warrior” mentality); cherished tradition, spit-and-polish, regulations, and petty rules that all come under what Dixon defines as “bullshit.” Soldiers that had those traits to a great degree naturally advanced to higher ranks, eventually the highest, precisely to positions where those characteristics were either useless or catastrophic.
Another characteristic Dixon found in decades of military dysfunction was an ingrained fear of “effeminacy,” producing a combination of homophobia and misogyny that translated into a crusade against anything feminine, especially women potentially doing military jobs previously done only by men. “Anti-effeminacy” even extended to battlefield behavior, Dixon suggests, including a previous disdain for taking cover, wearing protective gear, or even running protective convoys to shepherd merchant shipping during wartime.
Most of Dixon’s book focuses on generals. But Pete Hegseth is not a general. He topped out as a major in the National Guard, after serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he has managed to carry his junior officer’s mindset into the office of the secretary of defense in a way that clearly echoes much of what Dixon lamented about wartime leadership in the British military.
Take Dixon’s euphemistic “bull,” the bane of button-polishing, parade-ground existence, even if it has a role in fostering discipline, uniformity, and an esprit de corps. “The phenomenon involves ritualistic observance of the dominance-submission relationships of the military hierarchy, extreme orderliness and a preoccupation with outward appearances,” Dixon notes.
In my experience, these types of people did not make it to staff roles at the Pentagon, let alone to senior military command roles or (like Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin) ex-military leaders with civilian supremacy over the military branches.
Dixon’s belief that fears about masculinity drive some senior leaders’ behavior finds expression both in “bull” and in personnel and force structure decisions. Dixon cites “[t]he importance attached to such outward signs of sex-role identification as hair-length,” and a “deeply rooted prejudice toward women who try to adopt traditionally male roles.”
One doesn’t have to look far to find Hegseth mandating testosterone tests (and possible injections) for U.S. “warfighters,” or a systematic bias against the promotion of female officers or the expansion of female combat troops.
“Authoritarians will be less likely to understand enemy intentions,” Dixon wrote, as well as have a tendency to underestimate the enemy’s ability. He was thinking of the disastrous Allied battle plan in the spring of 1940, but today it reads as if he was writing about the Pentagon’s failure to prepare for Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, despite the scenario being war-gamed out for decades beforehand.
Dixon’s book is dated, both in its martial case studies and much of its science. Even the notion that Britain’s generals were “donkeys,” especially in World War I, has given way to more recent scholarship suggesting a nearly competent class of officers struggling with a whole new way of war.
Yet it is still a fascinating glimpse at why the very things that make the military work most of the time tend to act against best performance at the most crucial of times. Creativity, openness to new ideas and dissent, overcoming petty conventions and regulations, promoting the best and brightest, and embracing the unconventional are among the traits Dixon identified in successful commanders.
Those are qualities that the U.S. military has sometimes sought—but under Hegseth, it’s far more important to be white, male, and clean-shaven.
I'm taking a bit of a Tildes break, but my commentary on the above is: the US Armed Forces were culturally almost unrecognisable from the late-Obama cultural and doctrinal reform era compared to now. Then, they were a group of organizations that prized innovation. They underwent massive cultural reform in regards to de-emphasizing being white, male, and masculine, and selecting leaders that had diversity of background, intellectual thought, and demonstrated proven innovative thinking.
As incremental as the progress was, the establishment and embedding of Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response cells in the Pentagon, each combatant command, and in every operation went a long way to curbing the worst excesses of the forever wars. The US was genuinely trying, in my view, especially with more financial commitment and personnel commitment to the UN Department of Peacekeeping's Women, Peace and Security initiative. Both were cut by Hegseth, resulting in well-known tragedy.
Under Trump 1, these cultural reforms seemed to continue, and the Branches were largely left alone. Until Covid - I'd say CAPT Brett Crozier's quelling of a near-mutiny to save the health of his sailors ran straight into Trump's Covid-denial agenda, and put the military's independence in the firing line. GEN Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during 2020, made some horrible mistakes under pressure no Chairman had been under before.
But, he also put duty before his position and worked diligently with the tools that he had to make sure a catastrophe was averted. I think an instructive counter-factual intellectual exercize is, 'What may have happened on January 6th if Mark Milley was not still in his position?'
During Biden's term, the US Armed Forces went back to 'normal'. Nothing significant to report here. It was nice to be able to discuss certain topics openly again, and I heard many stories of how professional officers kept their people safe and sheltered them from the political acid being poured on them by the executive branch from 2016 to late 2021.
Then Hegseth. The cowardly, craven, dishonorable, Christian Nationalist news anchor, who was such a failure as a soldier he was flagged as an insider threat to due to his far-right wing ideology and alcoholism, and barred from even parading with the DC National Guard. That man was not allowed access to a service rifle, and now has the whole US military under his control.
The article explains the impact that has on the US's ability to use its military for strategic ends better than I can. I know there is very little hope that Hegseth ends up at the Hague, due to Bush's Hague Invasion Act. Hegseth deserves to be tried for war crimes at the ICC, as do those supported him, and those who were complicit by breaking their oaths and their legal obligations by knowingly following illegal orders.
I wanted to post this months ago, but I was too sad. With a little spark of hope, here are some quotes from the article, which I'd recommend if you're seeking to understand what has happened to the US armed forces under Hegseth's wilful malice:
In my experience, these types of people did not make it to staff roles at the Pentagon, let alone to senior military command roles or (like Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin) ex-military leaders with civilian supremacy over the military branches.
I'm taking a bit of a Tildes break, but my commentary on the above is: the US Armed Forces were culturally almost unrecognisable from the late-Obama cultural and doctrinal reform era compared to now. Then, they were a group of organizations that prized innovation. They underwent massive cultural reform in regards to de-emphasizing being white, male, and masculine, and selecting leaders that had diversity of background, intellectual thought, and demonstrated proven innovative thinking.
As incremental as the progress was, the establishment and embedding of Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response cells in the Pentagon, each combatant command, and in every operation went a long way to curbing the worst excesses of the forever wars. The US was genuinely trying, in my view, especially with more financial commitment and personnel commitment to the UN Department of Peacekeeping's Women, Peace and Security initiative. Both were cut by Hegseth, resulting in well-known tragedy.
Under Trump 1, these cultural reforms seemed to continue, and the Branches were largely left alone. Until Covid - I'd say CAPT Brett Crozier's quelling of a near-mutiny to save the health of his sailors ran straight into Trump's Covid-denial agenda, and put the military's independence in the firing line. GEN Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during 2020, made some horrible mistakes under pressure no Chairman had been under before.
But, he also put duty before his position and worked diligently with the tools that he had to make sure a catastrophe was averted. I think an instructive counter-factual intellectual exercize is, 'What may have happened on January 6th if Mark Milley was not still in his position?'
During Biden's term, the US Armed Forces went back to 'normal'. Nothing significant to report here. It was nice to be able to discuss certain topics openly again, and I heard many stories of how professional officers kept their people safe and sheltered them from the political acid being poured on them by the executive branch from 2016 to late 2021.
Then Hegseth. The cowardly, craven, dishonorable, Christian Nationalist news anchor, who was such a failure as a soldier he was flagged as an insider threat to due to his far-right wing ideology and alcoholism, and barred from even parading with the DC National Guard. That man was not allowed access to a service rifle, and now has the whole US military under his control.
The article explains the impact that has on the US's ability to use its military for strategic ends better than I can. I know there is very little hope that Hegseth ends up at the Hague, due to Bush's Hague Invasion Act. Hegseth deserves to be tried for war crimes at the ICC, as do those supported him, and those who were complicit by breaking their oaths and their legal obligations by knowingly following illegal orders.