Keep Your Honor Clean, Marines

Norman Mailer’s 1948 novel of World War II sheds some light on the debate regarding Force Design 2030.

Force Design 2030 would rubbish tanks, artillery pieces and people, sweeping away old conventions about amphibious warfare, and making room for bright new things — new doctrine, formations, technology – and new business deals, too.

Addressing the path toward Force Design 2030, former Marine Commandant David Berger said, tellingly, “[…] we got to spend some money. We have to buy both the software and the framework that allows the systems.”  

Many Marines below Berger’s rank must adhere to General Cummings’ rule that power cascades from the top. They’ve been busy maneuvering themselves into proper alignment with its flow, flooding the media and cyberspace with advocacy pieces supporting Force Design 2030.

Their cobbled-together commentaries are predictable and tedious.

They support the boss and attack his critics, especially an older generation of Marine leaders skeptical of Berger’s plan to downsize and technologize the Corps. These pen-wielding warriors, some on active duty, fire bursts of power at the plan’s critics, doing their part to burn out resistance to Force Design 2030. They have become General Cummings’ little instruments of official policy.

But who is encouraging active-duty military folks to speak so freely and publicly about what essentially is a political issue?

The usual suspects, no doubt. Washington-based think tanks, councils, institutes and blogs are using military personnel as hucksters for doomsday scenarios and high-margin policy choices. The objective is to notch wins for corporate clients and political patrons, not prudent decision-making.

Fundamentally, the debate surrounding Force Design 2030 is about the future: where will America fight next; how will America fight; what strategies and resources will be necessary to prevail. Because no one has the answers, different factions will put forward arguments and theories, which ought to be heard by the American people in the ordinary course of politics. Expertise in military tactics does not confer special authority to decide foreign policy, distribute taxpayer money or manage our country’s collective security problems, all of which should be done with the consent of the governed.

In a time of declining trust in the military, everyone should “do more to resist civilian leaders’ efforts to involve it in partisan politics,” says Risa Brooks, author of Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment. The army of scribes selling Force Design 2030 should practice self-restraint, aiming their pens at what they have seen and done in the operating forces, rather than joining a political debate barely disguised as military policy.  

Citizen Soldier believes in life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.