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Notes -
There's something salvageable here, I think.
Simo Häyhä -- the White Death, the deadliest sniper ever -- was an avid hunter all his life. It wasn't his profession, per se; he was a farmer's son. But surely it was in part the desire for meat to supplement a farmer's diet that prompted his hunting and the hunting culture of rural Finland more generally. From there, it turned into a hobby; during his compulsory term in the militia -- which, importantly, does not train snipers -- he won a number of marksmanship competitions. I think it's fair to say that by the time he eventually did receive formal training as a sniper a decade later, he was already an exceptionally skilled shooter. And while he was the best, he was far from the only: Finnish snipers were unusually effective all through the war.
But would that have been the case had Finland not had a hunting culture? It still does to this day, but one could imagine a number of ways it might not: concerns over gun violence, ecological worries, meat getting cheap while other hobbies got more tempting.
Perhaps a more pointed example: Britain's success in the Napoleonic Wars largely came down to its navy, and its navy's success came down to the competence of its sailors. Officers' commissions were bought and sold in the British army of the period, but not so in the Navy: in that branch, they wanted competent officers. To have any chance of achieving the rank of captain, you were expected to start at the age of 12, and there were multiple stages of reportedly quite difficult exams (in that many failed, including boys from very privileged backgrounds) to rise in the ranks. It was by all accounts a fairly miserable and dangerous experience, and one that lasted not the thirteen weeks of bootcamp but thirteen years before one might be offered command over a small sloop. Why did English gentlemen -- and it was generally gentlemen -- subject their sons to that?
And, naturally, it was worse for the seamen, very difficult, high-skill labor for terrible wages (often as not months late) under brutal discipline and with all the dangers of combat. How did they train these men? This was not an easy job. Well, they largely didn't; they just conscripted civilian sailors. The 'merchant navy' was broadly acknowledged as the source of Britain's naval dominance, the core of their national security strategy despite being a civilian institution.
There are other examples I could mention -- English longbowmen, or the horse archers that have already come up a couple times -- but I think the point is clear: not every skill of military relevance can be learned in a few months at the outbreak of war. A society that encourages the development of those skills in civilians have a real advantage in acquiring competent soldiers. Not an unbeatable edge, but there's no such thing; it's substantial enough to consider, at least.
Of course, these skills include things like literacy and math, not central examples of martial virtue. These days, it might well include video games skills as preparation for drone piloting. But other ones are: declines in gun culture, fitness, self-reliance, patience, wilderness survival, persevering in the face of adversity despite bad food and little sleep, and so on are just the sort of thing grouchy old veterans are talking about when they say society has gotten soft.
To stake out the boundaries of this motte: soldiers often have to perform difficult tasks in harsh conditions, some with very high skill ceilings, and if a nation has a well of civilians who've spent years and years performing similar tasks in similarly harsh conditions to draw on, they've got a leg up on nations that don't. This is much narrower than (some) claims about the corrosive effects of ill-defined decadence (not even going to try to steelman the focus on sexual morality; I wouldn't know where to start), but I think the core concept is preserved. It's not 'any and all privation is good, because it makes people tougher,' but it's also not as trivial as 'fighting makes people better fighters.' There's a region where, demonstrably, improving (some) people's circumstances would make them worse soldiers.
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