EOD people work to save lives by outwitting the best efforts of bomb-makers to make tamper-proof devices. By chance I’ve met a few of these people and came to the conclusion that it is very hard indeed to know what makes them tick (so to speak). I am pretty sure that Staff Sergeant James, our hero, is beyond atypical.

I suppose it is just possible that an eccentric EOD person might, on his first day in-theatre, strut off down a street toward a job, putting himself and – what is worse, his team - at hugely unnecessary danger. Rightly, his number two, Sergeant Sanborn, smacked him for that. James’s behaviour is all the more incomprehensible granted that he is a father.

It seems extraordinarily unlikely that James, shortly afterward, would take off alone into the back streets of Baghdad in pursuit of the people who’d murdered a young boy he’d become fond of. Or was he trying to find the family of the boy?

And would he really for reasons of vanity have put his whole team at extreme risk whilst he defuses a car bomb which could just as easily have been blown-up conventionally?

But the last and greatest oddity came when James heads off into the unlit backstreets, with his unwilling little team, to seek out some bombers. This was plain madness and if he’d insisted on doing it, I imagine that his team would have waved him off and good riddance.

I don’t know how unlikely it is that James and Sanborn and one other soldier would be wandering around in the desert in their Humvee, unescorted, and come across a raiding party of Brit privateers replete with human bounty and a flat tyre. The Brits sneer at the Yanks, because that’s what uppity Brits do in Hollywood movies, and a gun battle unfolds in which the Brits get their come-uppance.

In another necessary Hollywood trope, Sanborn – black, lovely, steady, funny, redemptive - gets to be the sniper hero with James as his spotter. It is a great scene, beautifully done.

This is a wonderful film and it has a stillness at its heart which is surprising granted the ferocity of much it depicts.

No related posts.

[A personal note: Naturally, I am interested in being a bit "blue skies" but I believe I am thinking along lines which resonate with some of what, say, Sir Richard Dannatt said in 2007 and with thinking at the Ministry of Defence's Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre.  At the end of this piece there are some other useful references.]

Here are some large modern questions:

Will the nation continue to support its military?
Will the military continue its warrior traditions?
Will the nation want to fight “wars of choice”?
Will the military become more argumentative?

Here are some questions about a future military:

How far should the military be commercialised?
How far should it be part-time and semi-pro?
How far should the military be available for international missions?
How far should the military develop policing, humantiarian or development roles?
How far can we trust the military to evaluate and endorse its missions?

The big arguments in brief

The military is one of Britain’s great assets, and (like media and finance) may well attract the brightest and best – as well as the bravest and fittest – as it develops new ways of contributing to global life.

The military remains an important feature of Britain’s self-perception. That does not mean that the British public will show its old unthinking loyalty to the military: the country’s articles of faith are changing rapidly.

The country likes the idea that it produces a military which is prepared to kill and die. But the military may develop policing, disaster and development work and find these becoming more important to its ethos and marketability.

That may suit a country whose taste for and faith in the warrior ethic may become more conflicted. In turn, a redesigned British military may find itself in demand at home and abroad. It may increasingly contract services out and in whilst expanding and diversifying its part-time branches.

In a post-deference world it is very likely that the military will want – and be required – to be more opinionated as a body and to accept that at every level its ranks will expect to be heard.

The value and limits of a kinetic military

(1) The British military as a source of pride
The British like the vigour, dash, courage, intelligence, camaraderie and sacrifice of their military. Many in the populace like the idea that our young people are prepared to fight and die. At the level of theatre and narrative, this is a good tale. But it may need enriching with wider roles.

(2) Some British young like the military
There is wide acceptance that some young people need risk and will find life-threatening activity somewhere, somehow. It might as well be in uniform as in gangs, mountaineering, or drugs. But the brightest and best may need even more to entice them into the military.

(3) Force has its own logic
The British are quite inclined to accept an argument which supposes that the world is replete in people who only understand force. Taking the war to the enemy quite appeals. But the country and its military may demand a softer role, too.

Some challenges for the military

(1) Patriotism is changing
It is quite possible that the Flag will not be much invoked in the future.

National pride is a strong force, but its style may change. Soldiers and families accept sacrifice on the basis of almost mystical and transcendental understandings which simultaneously justify action and soften suffering. But some of that is changing. We are becoming more secular and sceptical, for a start.

(2) The military family is changing
Part of the intensity of warfare – of its potential cost – flows from a modern intimacy. Even if this acceptable to the military, it may weaken the resolve of families to allow young men to fight. The military family may well become more sensitive and argumentative.

(3) The military as lifestyle choice
The general populace may increasingly see the military as a group of fellow citizens who choose a certain way of life and who will have to accept the costs of that.

 It is possible that the military, and those who support them, and the families of the fallen, may often in the future have to justify and contain their suffering within much smaller and self-defining communities.

(4) Political trust is declining
It is becoming less likely that the public will endorse conflict: political trust is low and the missions are complex and multi-national. Modern political leadership has not connected well with national populist or elite opinion. This may mean the public looks to the military for a judgment of proposed missions.

How the military can develop

(1) The chain of command may get complicated
The military may be affected by the modern phenomenon of “voice and agency”. What happens when modern military commanders lead their men into dubious missions? In the past a creed of unquestioning obedience was a crucial part of military discipline.

 Increasingly, the led will expect to be allowed to buy into missions. Yes, the military will be inclined to accept missions because they like fighting. But there will be enormous pressure on the military to explain the merits of its own missions.

(2) The military may endorse its own missions
It is very likely that politicians continue to lose the citizens’ trust. This is one of the pressures which will make it important for the public to believe that the military has assessed the merits of the missions they undertake. This might take the form of the military being required to publicly evaluate the moral value of the purposes of the mission. It more obviously will take the form of the military being required to publicly evaluate their ability to deliver the mission. These public evaluations may well become crucial to the public endorsing missions.

(3) A more thoughtful, caring military
Officers send their juniors into danger and will increasingly expect to understand and be expected to explain why the sacrifice is worthwhile. Accepting political direction or military orders may not do in future. Similarly, a more intelligent military will especially attract the brightest and best if its roles are seen to be caring as well as kinetic.

(4) A more commercial military

(a) The military may subcontract more

More of the country’s official military work may be handled by contractors, often with close ties to the official forces. Private military contractors may employ many ex-military to undertake semi-official work which is broadly in line with national objectives.

(b) British official and unofficial forces may be deployed globally

Countries and international organisations may hire the British official military and its commercial military for a wide range of functions. The US, the EU, the UN and others may all be legitimate customers for a British military with exceptionally wide skills.

(5) A wider, more diverse military

(a) The military may acquire much wider skills

It may widen its work to include all sorts of “sharp end” roles beyond the strictly military, not least in policing, development or disaster work. In each of these areas we have seen, from Haiti to Afghanistan, a need for disciplined, skilled operations which need varying degrees of military capability.

(b) A multi-skilled part-time military

As Britain’s military, official and commercial, widens its roles, the Territorial Army and other part-time and reserve branches may expand rapidly so as to bring a military dimension to all sort of professions and skills such as logistics, engineering, policing and social and commercial development.

(c) A more learned military

As the military operates in more complicated environments in more complicated ways, and has to justify itself more, it may well need far greater analytic and linguistic skills. This will enable it to hold its own in policy debates as to strategy and tactics, both with government (Whitehall and Westminster) and the public.

Notes

The nation and its lethal military
Philip Stephens remarked that it is part of Britain’s confidence about itself that: “it has armed forces willing to fight”.
Financial Times, 29 October 2009 

The military and suffering
Patrick Mercer, MP and a former soldier said: “Battalions are now taking very serious casualties – where every man will know every single person that is killed. This is an experience that the Army as a whole hasn’t had since World War Two.”

“Britain’s frontline soldiers have 1 in 36 chance of dying on Afghan battlefields”
The Times, 13 August 2007

Hard hat development work: a new reservist
The Chilcott inquiry heard several senior people say that the “Iraq Aftermath” revealed how there was a need for several sorts of “hard hat” development assistance.
Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of Defence at the time, discusses this sort of issue at pages 90, 91, 102, 105 and 184 of his Chilcot evidence.
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/45042/20100119-hoon-final.pdf

The need for fresh thinking on the role of military and civilian individuals in post-conflict work is highlighted in “Security and Stabilisation: The military contribution”, Joint Doctrine Publication 3-40, DCDC (eg: paragraph 222, page 2-13)
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/microsite/dcdc/

Hard hat disaster relief
The Haiti earthquake demonstrated that disaster relief could not work until security was in place for humanitarian operations.   
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1953379_1953494_1953819,00.html

RDN on commercialization and the military
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001829.php

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I really do want to jot down some stuff about the thrillers of Peter Temple, Michael Connolly and John Sandford (any one of whom is great company for some time out of time). Also about the women writers resuscitated by Persephone (the successor to Virago).

But top of the list for now are:

The Last Englishman by Roland Chambers
Arthur Ransome turns out to be a sort of Edmund Gosse (always trying to please his father), but also very brave, naive, open, thoughtful and tough.

The Mottled Lizard by Elspeth Huxley
This is an account of pre-war life in settler Kenya which is both old-fashioned and very modern. Huxley was so not bothered by being racist that she can talk about human verities which escape or embarrass us now. But she is alert, and liberal in the best sense. Also: funny, acute,

Jew made In England by Anthony Blond
I have half a feeling that Blond would be disapproved of as a self-hating Jew, but I don’t think he disliked his fellow Jews, or his own jewishness. A bit like Huxley, he writes what he sees and it’s funny, absurd and awful by turns – whether he is amongst Jews or not. Reading him makes one feel that our own time has opted for a sort of crippled puritan provinciality of mind and it’s strongly proscriptive and permissive all at once.

Shooting Leave by John Ure
An unabashed account of the British adventurer in Victorian Afghanistan.

No related posts.

Charles Moore (as so often) has his finger on some of the important points. He writes in the Daily Telegraph (8 November 2009) that the war in Afghanistan has claimed very few dead compared with, say, the battles of the Second World War. He might have added Vietnam and plenty of others. (In a separate post I look at other dimensions of his remarks.)

We need to keep score whilst quite separately acknowledging the unquantifiable sacrifice of those who suffer. 

Of any conflict one needs to know the numbers of dead or injured compared with:
(1) the number of military “in theatre”;
(2) the number of frontline, fighting military “in theatre”;
(3) the total number in the armed forces.

Then these can be compared with other conflicts so that one can begin to calibrate the costliness of this or that conflict as against historic examples.

Of course comparisons are odious. Our society may not have the same attitude as previous generations to losses. It may take a different view of whether objectives are worthwhile. These are issues which are well worth discussing, but the numerical evidence would help.

I am not finding it very easy to find these numbers, but will go on trying and hope readers will help me tap into good sources.

I can readily find body-counts (at least for Western forces), but it is the comparisons which matter for this rather chilling exercise.

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2. The British and their military The British military tradition is real, but it is up for grabs. Here...
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The military is an important feature of Britain’s self-perception. As Philip Stephens remarked in the Financial Times, (29 October 2009), it is part of Britain’s confidence about itself that ”it has armed forces willing to fight”.  I think that is code for the idea that they are prepared to accept lethality in both directions.

Up till now, it has been a matter of considerable national pride that this is so. This may well change. Here are some weak spots.

(1) Patriotism is changing
It is quite possible that neither God nor the Flag will be much invoked in the future. National pride is a strong force, but its style may change. Soldiers may die, and families accept pain, on the basis of almost mystical and transcendental understandings which simultaneously justify action and soften suffering. But some of that is changing. We are becoming more secular and sceptical, for a start.

(2) The military family is changing
Part of the intensity of warfare – of its potential cost – flows from a modern intimacy.  Patrick Mercer, a Conservative MP and a former commanding officer of The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters was quoted in The Times (“Britain’s frontline soldiers have 1 in 36 chance of dying on Afghan battlefields”, 13 August 2007):

“Battalions are now taking very serious casualties – where every man will know every single person that is killed. This is an experience that the Army as a whole hasn’t had since World War Two.”

Even if this acceptable to the military, it may weaken the resolve of families to allow young men to fight.

(3) The military is voluntary
The general populace may increasingly see the military as a group of fellow citizens who choose a certain way of life, and believe that they will have to accept the costs of that. It is possible that the military, and those who support them, and the families of the fallen, may often in the future have to justify and contain their suffering within much smaller and self-defining communities.

(4) Politicial trust is declining
It is becoming less likely that the public will endorse conflict: political trust is low and the missions are complex and multi-national.

Against these negatives, there are trends which suggest the military may well thrive and find public support. This may happen because the military is more trusted and admired than any other branch of society.

(1) The British military as a source of pride
The British like the vigour, dash, courage, intelligence, comaraderie and sacrifice of their military. Many in the populace like the idea that our young people are prepared to fight and die. At the level of theatre and narrative, this is a good tale.

(2) Some British young like the military
There seems to be a strong strand of thought that some young people need risk and will find life-threatening actvity somewhere, somehow. It might as as well be in uniform as in gangs, mountaineering, motorbiking or drugs. In short the military is a richer source of possibility even than sport, rock ‘n’ roll, crime, rap.

(3) Force has its own logic
The British are quite inclined to accept an argument which supposes that the world is replete in people who only understand force. Taking the war to the enemy quite appeals.

Related posts:

1. A New Military Covenant: The 21st century warrior? The British military tradition is real, but it is up for grabs. Here...
2. The Military Covenant revisited I am keen to develop some lines of argument about the...

Charles Moore (The Daily Telegraph, 6 November 2009) discusses the costs of the Afghan war with a robustness which is rather unusual (as we see in another post). He provides an excellent way into some arguments.

For instance, he remarks that the public believes that the determination to win a war ought to reflect – almost proportionately – its death toll. That is: deaths are only acceptable in the degree to which they are suffered in a war which is seriously prosecuted. The war has to be necessary, to be sure, but it must also be pressed home.

This is a bit like saying that politicians had better make darned sure they win a conflict on which they expend our side’s blood.

It is also a little like the three piece argument that Sir Jock Stirrup made on BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show, just before going off to his official duties at The Cenotaph on Sunday, 8 November. This was that a war’s being worthwhile depended on (a) the merits of the overall mission, (b) whether it had a winning strategy (c) whether it was properly resourced.  Sir Jock argued that all three are in place in the case of the allies’ work in Afghanistan.

He didn’t add, but might have, that it is traditional for the military to be nervous of discussing these matters. After all, (a) and (c) are extremely political.

It is a poor argument (and I don’t think Moore is making it) to say that one must stick with a war as a way of honouring the people who have already died and suffered in it. If the nation decides that the rationale for a war was or has become misconceived, it would be folly to continue to squander lives on it.

Actually, though, it easy to see how the powers-that-be might stick with a war for longer than the general populace and this may lead to a greater military disaster, but equally to the only chance it has of success.

We need to remember that the military like warfare: it is what they are for and once engaged they don’t like to admit they have failed. Politicians are often like that too, though they are more prone to populist anxieties.

For what it’s worth, I am agnostic about the merits of the Afghan war. I am trying to wrestle with an understanding of whose voice is worth listening to.

I am edging toward the conclusion that the military are becoming the most important single voice as to whether any campaign, including this one, is worthwhile.

It is fascinating that the defence of every aspect of the Afghan war is now in the hands of the military. No-one (including me) is very interested in what politicians or Parliament is saying.

Journalists, retired military, academics, politicians, the Government, think-tanks, grieving parents – these and others are interesting. But a combination of knowledge, intelligence, experience and plain locus makes one listen to serving military voices more than any others. And that is perhaps especially because it is the military who pay the highest of the prices involved.

In future efforts I shall try and pick the bones out of that. It is conditioned by whether the military are truly speaking their minds. And by my understanding that the military likes fighting. It is certainly nothing like the understanding I was brought up with.

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The Military Covenant: background
There is a fascinating modern debate about the relationship between soldiers, sailors and airmen and society. What do civilians and the military owe each other? I want to discuss the past, present and possible future of this Covenant. How is the military to know it has society’s backing? How is society to know the military really accepts its missions? How expendable is the fighting person? Can society and the military accept or mitigate the mental injuries caused by fighting? Will society accept paying the various costs of having a military?

The military may get a new Covenant, but also have to fight its corner at home as well as abroad.
 
Theme #1: The Mercenary Option
Let’s imagine a military three or four times the present strength, and available for rent. Who would legitimate it? Insure it? Employ it? How to develop (combine, separate)  its kinetic, policing and welfare roles?

More and more British soldiers work for Private Military Corporations and there has been a long tradition of the British military being loaned out in various guises to work for foreign governments. How far can we press this? A British force for UN use, etc? Can the state license force or must it “own” the forces it deploys?

It is interesting to speculate whether there is a bit of the military’s activity which can’t be privatised. Special Forces? Sharp-end infantry? Routine infantry? Policing? Hearts and minds engineering?

This is partly an exercise in imagination. Asking the privatising question encourages one to interrogate the issues of legitimacy and guarantee which bedevil military force.

I am intruiged to wonder whether the military is something the British can do so well that they have a comparative economic and cultural advantage they should exploit.
 
Theme #2:  The  thinking military
The modern democratic society expects everyone including the military to be able to, to want to, and to have to, explain themselves. This challenges the oldest ideas about our standing army and its covenant with us.

The military used to be politically silent, its men sent to war without opinion or option in the matter. Is that right now? Should we hear more from our military commanders and should the commanders hear more from their men?

One approach would be to separate the political policy behind a mission and the military’s professional ability to deliver it. Society would have to to legitimate a mission’s strategy (its purpose) but the military have to endorse its delivery (resources, riskiness, etc). On that basis, would the military have taken on its Iraq role? Its original Afghan role? Its current Afghan role?

Theme #3: The military and suffering
To a remarkable extent, the modern military seem to accept that suffering is their business. They impose and incur it. If society is increasingly squeamish, and produces increasingly squeamish people, that tendency has not seemed to dent the willingness of young men and women to come forward to face and endure the extremes of suffering. Indeed, arguably it is the feebleness of much modern discourse and behaviour which produces a fanclub for the military where people remain free to challenge themselves.

One question here is whether we are sufficiently brutal in warning young military personnel of the hazards they face. Another is whether we have developed the right approaches to the damage military life does to people and perhaps especially to the people who most like it.

Theme #4: The New Profession of Arms
I suspect society will become less interested in the military’s role as an arm of the state, or of patriotism. Something like the dis-establishment of the military may take place, as it will of the Church of England. A New Military Covenant may liberate the military to develop a new Profession of Arms, but also require that the military account for itself, and the damage warfare does to personnel, as a much more independent and responsible body.

Society may allow that the military gains a voice of its own and an increasingly interesting role around the world. But society may also insist that the New Profession of Arms has to justify what it does directly to civil society,not lea

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