When a senior European general in Brussels says that the EU’s military ambitions do not include being “in the war-fighting game,” he displays a European military strategy and culture turned away, since World War II, from the possibility and the necessity of decisive victory, its strategic possibilities and human costs.
A fundamental difference with the strategy, and therefore the military culture, of other countries can be measured with this phrase.
The interests of the United States will be advanced. But within an organization dependent on teamwork and intended for violence against other similar organizations, using this tool to its greatest advantage seems necessary for successful operations.ĢCurrent military literature, speeches by high-ranking officers and testimony before Congress, all express this military cultural strategy as a “non-negotiable contract with the people of the United States to fight and win, and win decisively, the nation’s wars.” The strategy of military culture is in the word “decisively.” The enemy will be forced to do or stop doing, what it had not been willing to do or stop doing before. Expressed like this, military culture-essentially the meanings attached to death and destruction and the threat of death and destruction-can seem like a sinister attempt at the manipulation of people’s lives and ideas. This culture from above can either successfully help keep the diverse institution organized and transmit back up the line of command the reassuring messages of shared values, or the culture of the upper echelons can lose its hold on the younger men and women down below. Eventually, it meets the diverse emotions and loyalties of very different individuals with very different experiences. This culture from above originates among a handful of senior officers with a similar education, career and professional experience that started in Vietnam and traversed the American military’s darkest days in the 1970’s. Both are diffused by highly self-conscious leaders and repeated by others, over a complex system of military communications where they stimulate and motivate the sensibilities of individuals throughout the entire military organization. 1American military culture is deployed from the top down along a hierarchical chain of command.
0 kommentar(er)
