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I don't understand this focus on "warrior ethos" in the modern world, it seems badly misguided.
"Warrior" seems like a better description for gang members than professional soldiers.
Ever since WWI wars between governments have been all about long range capabilities, like aircraft and artillery (and ICBMs in the Cold war). You don't want your artillery man to have a warrior ethos. You want him to be a mix of gym bro, accountant, and auto mechanic.
When governments are fighting insurgencies, or just groups of people, the importance of artillery declines a lot. But I'm still not sure "warriors" are a good description of the type of soldier you need. You need a mix of police officer and diplomat. A "warrior" sounds like a soldier that will rile up the population even more with misdirected acts of violence.
Can anyone charitably explain this "warrior" obsession?
My civilian understanding:
"Soldier" is centered on process, regulation, drill, standardization, War as science/industry.
"Warrior" is centered on prowess, performance, results, war as, for lack of a better term, art, an anti-inductive, chaotic process that cannot adequately be codified.
Soldiers typically generate success by consistently stacking small advantages and snowballing them into an insurmountable advantage.
Soldiers typically generate failure by following the process in situations where the process is a bad fit, or at their worst following a process that is just straightforwardly bad.
Warriors typically generate failure by taking high-risk gambles and losing, and at their worst doing so with "high risk gambles" that are just straightforwardly a bad idea that process would have warned them against taking.
Warriors typically generate success by disrupting the enemy's process, creating out-of-context problems and then capitalizing on the enemy's failure to efficiently manage them.
Look at the American Military over the last few decades, both how it fights and how it sustains itself. Would you say that its biggest problems are coming from following process too loosely, or too tightly? With the caveat that the problem is very complicated, I'd argue the latter. The Navy's current woes seem pretty clearly to arise from a widening gap between process and reality. The Afghanistan/GWOT failure seems pretty clearly to have been a process failure through and through. Failure to anticipate and keep in step with the drone revolution seems to have likewise been a process failure.
This shows up in other fields as well. Take NASA and SpaceX. Which is the better performer? Which fits more easily into "Warrior", and which into "Soldier"?
The people obsessed with "warriors" think we have too much process, past diminishing returns and into straightforward loss, and we need more performance.
I think much more simply, the conception is that "soldier" is an occupation, and "warrior" is a social class. A soldier's execution of his duty is because of the contractual and occupational obligations foisted upon him. A warrior fights because it his nature.
I think this is a fair-enough way to divide "soldier" and "warrior", but a lot of people who are using the term and see value in the term are not using it in this way. Particularly, I think the people arguing that a "warrior ethos" is needed are arguing based on something pretty close to the logic above, and not on occupation or social class. Likewise, it seems to me that they often argue that warrior ethos should be taught/acculturated, not merely located.
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I was composing a response while you posted this, but I think its still relevant for your comment:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3564/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/413729?context=8#context
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Perhaps because of the long range capabilities you describe, governments have ended up fighting insurgents an awful lot. (Obviously insurgencies go back centuries, I am not claiming they are a new innovation caused by the invention of missiles.) Even in Ukraine (a very artillery-heavy war between one of the top #3 military powers and probably one of the top #10 military powers) point-blank combat with firearms is still very relevant. I can't vouch for it, but I was just reading the other day that (despite all the drones, bombs, and shells) about 5% of casualties in Ukraine were caused by small arms fire. That 5% isn't insignificant, it's the last-mile violence that's achieving the political ends of the states in question.
In either context, elan is going to be extremely helpful. The US just got a big geopolitical W in Venezuela because, basically, a bunch of dudes were willing to fly at night in helicopters to seize the leader of a country who knew they were coming in his own army base. Russia might have gotten a massive W at Hostomel due to the elan of the VDV - they were foiled in part by fancy technology (the US SIGINT apparatus, as I understand it) but, at the last mile, the guts of the Ukrainian defenders who were willing to attempt to push them out of the airport, which may have scrapped plans to establish an airbridge, and the failure of the Russian ground troops to link up with the VDV at the airport (which might reflect poorly on their "warrior ethos" or what have you, I am not sure of the details there.)
Either way, troop quality makes a big difference. You could describe that troop quality by referencing the "warrior ethos," I think, but I am not convinced that is the best way to describe it. I think there's a lot of very good and valid criticism of the "cult of special forces" in the United States, but at the end of the day having a bunch of guys who are acculturated to violence is pretty helpful. Whether or not "warrior" is the correct way to describe them, I suppose, is a semantics question - the word doesn't give me the vibe you describe, but I will cop to being leery of the idea of professionalized soldiery.
I had quite a few responses talking about the definition of soldier vs warrior. So I'm responding to @Shrike, but this is also relevant to nearly everyone that responded to me: @gog, @Mantergeistmann, @PokerPirate, @Grant_us_eyes, @coffee_enjoyer, and @MadMonzer
I think the distinction between warrior and soldiers in my mind is where their capacity for violence comes from.
For a soldier the capacity for violence comes from without. They are trained and drilled repeatedly to enact violence. They are trained to obey orders to a fault, and when the order comes to enact violence they will obey. They'll need an ideology that allows for their violence to be righteous and correct. They will also form tight social bonds with those around them, and protecting them will also allow them to enact violence. When the war ends and they go home their problem will be PTSD. They may be haunted by the violence they enacted, or the violent situations they were placed in. But they can also put the war and the fighting behind them and live normal lives.
PokerPirate quotes a US military thing that I think perfectly describes a soldier's ethos, despite it being called a warrior ethos.
They will obey orders, regardless of how difficult, and they will maintain the group loyalty that allows an easy path to violence.
For a warrior the capacity for violence comes from within. Through either repeated exposure or personality compatibility they are fully capable of enacting interpersonal violence on others. When the war ends and they come home, their problem will be that they miss the excuse for violence. They will seek other excuses for violence. They will have trouble living normal lives, because the desire for interpersonal violence will spill out far more often.
I think within a modern military there is definitely a contingent of "warriors". You definitely want such men in special forces, or in any groups that see heavy close range combat repeatedly. But I still think that mainly what you want is men with a soldier's ethos. After all, a soldier's violence will always be pointed where you want it. A warrior's violence can be pointed anywhere they wish including up the command chain, or at civilians.
Too many warriors in a society is a bad thing. They end up as gang riddled or honor culture hell holes. Where young men are inculcated into violence and warriordom as soon as they get out of puberty. They'll fight each other for sure, but they'll also beat the snot out of all the women and kids around them as well.
I think these are useful and helpful definitions that point to clusters of ideas. It seems necessary to me to center the definitions around capacity for violence. Masculinity is its own thing, and women seem attracted to both soldiers and warriors. Being willing to enact change seems like the wrong definition for warrior, because I think its the tools that matter. The tool of a warrior is violence, the tools of a propagandist are ideas, both are willing to enact change but calling them both warriors seems to darken rather than enlighten.
PokerPirate's quote makes me think this is all just a semantic misunderstanding. If the US military and Pete Hegseth mean what I think of as "soldier" when they say they want a "warrior" ethos then I withdraw any objections. Words are important and I hate euphemism treadmills, but I've learned to stop arguing over such things.
Everything about this Pro-D/Anti-D nonsense is definitely semantic misunderstanding and we're all wasting our energy on the right dressing for this stupid word salad. Let's get back to more interesting material.
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“Warrior” in western countries connotes bearded SOF soldier with plate carrier and suppressed M4 - manly men. I think that’s actually what all this is about. The Fremen debate is not about history, it is a valorization of traditional masculinity in a society where tradmasc is fading, and Devereaux (posts cat pics, plays vidya, skinny nerd, spent his life reading and it didn’t pan out) wants it to be true that masculinity is not advantageous to society (and by extension, to individual men). People here are taking the bait like they would if someone wrote a big article about how akshually curves are hot and therefore fat women shouldn’t lose weight. The argument is really over competing visions of masculinity- it has nothing to do with Rome or Somalia.
I dunno if this is true, but if it is, it's a bad motivation.
While I do think that at its core masculinity implies a responsibility to be willing to use force to defend the good if necessary - and thus all men have a certain responsibility to embrace the capacity for violence - it's a big world and it's okay if some guys are skinny nerds who read a lot.
Perhaps due to cultural fragmentation fights over these sorts of things will increase or at least run relatively high until there's a decisive cultural break or one side "wins."
I mean, it's a big world and fat chicks get laid all the time too. I don't know that it's irrational for them to want to improve their status despite that fact.
It's also okay to be a skinny nerd iff the situation isn't so bad as to justify the deployment of force at scale and the entire point of the meme is that the growth in the number of such men will make it necessary. He has reason to strike back.
Yeah this is fair.
I guess what grinds my gears is that (as many people in the pro-Devereaux camp have pointed out) the military isn't just comprised of "bearded SOF soldiers" even though the bearded SOF soldiers are an important part of winning the war. I think the correct response (if you're a skinny nerd facing Hard Times) isn't to tear down the bearded SOF guys, it's to go "hey how can I chip in?" That might look like becoming a bearded SOF dude, but it might look very different, and that's okay.
Not everyone can be a 6-foot-2 god of war, but in truly desperate times pretty much everyone can do something. During World War Two they even put teens and seniors in Civil Air Patrol aircraft to spot submarines. This might not be as glamorous as being a fighter pilot, but it is fundamentally an honorable thing to do.
Granted, Devereaux doesn't live in Hard Times. At least not yet. (Admittedly, I am interacting with the Devereaux in Gog's imagination, who might be different from the real deal.) But just because you're a comparatively soft guy living in comparatively easy times doesn't mean you must inevitably tear down hard guys. In fact, if anything, you ought to want them to be harder and tougher to protect your comfort. Which is in fact the way that prosperous nations often go, shifting away from citizen-soldiers to professionalized armed forces, which I think has a lot of practical benefits but potentially also some drawbacks.
Sure, but just as you wouldn’t start quoting cholesterol studies to a woman claiming that skinny girls are akshually unattractive, because you’d grok what she was actually talking about, all this drone-Rome-Ireadhistory debating is missing the point entirely. That’s not what any of this is about. It’s nerds-vs-jocks all the way down.
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You also need him to be willing to man his gun even when outgunned, to keep fighting when those around him are being blown to bits. Now, maybe the soldier mentality and sense of discipline will be enough, like for AD Wintle:
Sure, I'd much rather that sort of "soldier" than a warrior! But you're not necessarily going to get that sort of person in the US Army, and certainly not easily and in large numbers. You're much more likely to be able to get guys who'll want to fight for the sake of fighting, even when they're losing.
There's a follow-up here on cameraderie, and where that comes into play, but it's been ages since I've read McPherson, so I'm not the guy to get into it.
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The United States Military Academy at Westpoint has literally been training artillery men to have a "warrior ethos" since forever. They define it as
I graduated from USNA and I can testify that the Navy/Marines very much try to instill a warrior ethos as well in their officers.
If that's the warrior ethos, then I've had several team leads and CEOs who tried to instill a "warrior ethos" in us software devs. No offense, but it's fairly clearly a warrior ethos in name only, and has little to do with anything that would historically be recognized as such.
Maybe the problem is your conception of the term?
What I observe in this thread:
A - "people wanting a 'Warrior Ethos' is stupid. Why would people want it? Warriors are violent and dangerous, we want less of them."
B - "Because Warrior Ethos is not primarily about being violent and dangerous. It's a term for an approach to handling unbounded chaos that is generally useful in all manners of high-stakes, high-demand endeavors. War is just one of the most high-stakes, high-demand endeavors, so it's the trope-namer."
A - "If it isn't about being violent and dangerous, then warrior is a bad name for it."
See here, also.
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In the US, we have a common trope of the C-suite executives hiring "leadership training" from former Navy SEALs. So it doesn't surprise me that you've had them trying to instill warrior ethos in software devs.
And to say that the US Army's idea of a warrior ethos "has little to do with anything that would historically be recognized as such" seems ridiculous to me.
Also the ubiquity of business books claiming inspiration from Sun Tzu.
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If you've got fallen comrades in software development
Probably you need better electricians or
Maybe you actually ARE warriors.
We don't, but I guess that American Artillerymen haven't had any in quite a while either. Doesn't matter though, because we still do regular drills for what to do in case someone keels over.
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Does carrying a mate, who's had a few too many, count as not leaving behind a fallen comrade?
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Claiming that ranged combat is somehow not 'combat' has been a past-time of certain people since the classical age, and possibly prehistory.
And once you see sudden hypersonic death, seeing a recon drones no doubts becomes as visceral as a guy entirely covered in other people's blood sprinting at you with a gigantic polearm.
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Depends how you define the term 'warrior'.
Wikipedia: 'A warrior is a guardian specializing in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based warrior culture society that recognizes a separate warrior aristocracy, class, or caste.'
Okay, fine. When you think of the term 'warrior', one figure that comes to mind is the Samurai; landed lords, skilled in warfare, but also educated in politics as well as more intellectual pursuits. Knights, in the European tradition, were likely similar.
(And, yes, I'm sure there's people more educated in this that could correct me. I'm not going for historical accuracy; I'm going for modern perception.)
So when people say they want a Warrior when it comes to killing, they're saying they want their killers smart, intelligent, with a broad depth of education and eclectic skill.
To use a more immediate, modern example, Mike Vining comes across as pretty smart cookie, and if you called him a warrior, I doubt many would argue.
The issue is that a modal modern soldier is a bit more like a squire, or a wakashu/kosho in the Samurai tradition, than a person of eclectic skill. The most important thing for many is that they keep their equipment in running order, follow SOPs diligently and keep accurate records.
Of course, you have fighter pilots and SOF that exercise the kind of unstructured problem solving your referencing. But even that makes the point -- we need 25 aircraft
squiressupport crew for each plane. And for them, it's more about being a virtuous mechanic than being a warrior.Maybe one way to square the circle is that the goal of the organization and the virtues that make it possible are not always the same. The tip of the spear accomplishes the goal, but the determinants of success are in creating, fielding, maintaining and supplying it.
Well, yes.
But there's an arguement to be made that even the common grunt wants to be a Warrior, despite not being one. It's an aspirational goal.
A minor example thereof, from what I've heard, is that the special forces operationg during the GWOT had relaxed grooming standards to better fit in with the locals(long beards and whatnot). And the common grunts bitched about it cause they wanted to look like the high speed low drag guys, and people in charge gradually relented.
So, yeah. You're going to have the bulk of your army/military be common grunts. But that doesn't mean they don't want to be a Warrior as opposed to said grunt.
Aspirationally sure.
But even then, maybe they valorize the warrior types, the determinant of the overall mission success is their ethos as soldiers.
I guess i don’t object to the claim about what they want, i object to the implication it has on what makes a successful/lethal military.
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To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love, pure and chaste, from afar
To try, when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause
What is dreaming the possible dream?
Eat, shit, sleep, die.
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The steelman, in my view, is that a “warrior personality” is required to make positive changes in a nation which result in more wellbeing, especially longterm positive changes involving non-intuitive and complex moving parts. Trivial examples are “courage to tell gay men to stop having sex early in the aids epidemic”, “courage to tell people not go to Chinatown early in the coronavirus epidemic”, “courage to research the social contagion model of transgenderism”, “courage to tell the teachers’ union that the phonics approach is superior” —all of these trivial changes require an aggressive man who can bear social reputational costs, ie a warrior. But there are even greater and more important social changes, with issues pertaining to IQ, TFR, and genetics. Someone with a non-warrior personality will never even ask these questions, whereas we need men who will ask the questions and then follow-up with an aggressive campaign to conquer all the relevant organizations so that the truth actually prevails against sweet but poisonous lies and errors.
The non-warriors will waste trillions of dollars in educational funding if the alternative is shamefully insisting that IQ is real. They would be fine seeing 10% of youth cut off their genitals if the other option means promoting a novel etiology and answer to gender dysphoria. They would be fine with American TFR going down to 0 and literally no descendants of Americans left if they otherwise have to question feminism and women’s rights. So it is very beneficial for a society to find a way to produce “warriors”.
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I very much agree with you - see Brett Devereaux and the Angry Staff Officer on why modern America, or basically any civilised society (going back to Athens and Rome) needs soldiers and not warriors.
Interesting military history question - who were the last warriors not to get their arses kicked by soldiers?
People who talk about "warriors" either aren't aware of the warrior/soldier distinction, or are hinting at the cluster of wrong ideas that come when you think of yourself as a Spartiate and your political opponents as upjumped women and/or helots. Devereaux calls this cluster the "cult of the badass" which is why I have occasionally used the term "badass" snarkily in the thread.
I expect that in the US context it began with not wanting to use "soldier" to describe someone who fights land battles for pay in the organised service of the state of which they are a citizen because it annoyed the Marine Corps.
As I think about it more some of the confusion with the warrior/soldier distinction might be that soldier is a legal term and warrior is not. And almost no one is careful with their language.
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Probably the Mapudungu, who maintained independence from modernizing Latin American states on the pampas slightly longer than the Sioux or Commanche did vs the USA.
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I personally blame Dave Grossman, who created the wolf-sheep-sheepdog paradigm. Okay, that might be giving him, specifically, too much credit, but it seems like in the GWoT era, the Army and Marines both started to absorb the idea that military personnel, and especially combat arms, and especially especially Special Ops Dudes were an inherently separate and special class of people. This probably felt justified to a degree, given the way you had an all-volunteer military fighting a permanent war while the civilian population was completely tuned out. Easy enough to buy into the idea of a special martial elite when you come home and there's no visible expression of the nation being at war.
This was hardly universal - I know plenty of current and former military who make fun of this mindset - but it definitely caught on with a lot of people.
(as an aside, while I agree with the sentiment and the overall point, the ASO article is pretty sloppy on some historical details, e.g. longbows did not materially contribute to the decline of armored knights on the battlefield)
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This is the common motte-move of just setting the definitions of the terms as an "I win" in advance, in this case by taking everything modern society likes about the military and putting it in the "soldier" bucket and taking everything we dislike and putting it in the "warrior" bucket. I'm comfortable throwing out Devereaux definition (which quickly gets bogged down in epicycles, as when he has to introduce the "mercenary" as a third type one paragraph later) and using ordinary language. Realistically, if you look at how people use the words, and look at successful modern soldiers, they're someone who can be a soldier when things are going smoothly and a warrior when the chips are down - when you're in the Ardennes surrounded by krauts, you want a "warrior mentality". Any combat vet who is not a lib blogger will tell you something similar, that's just what the words mean. /u/coffee_enjoyer is largely correct about what people mean by a "warrior mentality" politically, but it's also worth noting that a lot of the actual tip of the spear guys sign up in hopes they will get their warrior moments (and often end up having unpleasant encounters with reality/the VA).
Happens commonly in Africa, not unrelated to their low quality of soldiering. Otherwise, the Arab Revolt is a good example, given its centrality to all this Fremen stuff.
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The Taliban.
My read is that Pushtunwali was a warrior ethos and the OG Taliban were soldiers (they were recruited from seminaries, and 1990's-era Taliban propaganda claimed they were theology students first and fighters second) beating on warriors when they conquered Afghanistan the first time. But a good candidate answer - clearly the Taliban had become less soldierly and more warrioresque by 2021.
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