There Is A Cultural Clash Erupting Within The Military
Recent essays demonstrate a clash
between the military’s conformist culture and shifting millennial expectations.
By
Carl Forsling
Of late, there have been several
articles talking about why officers are leaving the military. The best recommend some solutions.
Others just list problems. There is almost a whole sub-genre of essays (other
examples here, here, here, here, and here) about why individuals leave the military, most of them
written by junior officers.
Clearly a problem exists, but what
exactly is it? Does the military really face an exodus of its best service
members, or are the officers who are leaving the military just whining on their
way out the door? Maybe it’s a bit of both. Most of these essays raise at least
some valid points, but only the best of them also offer up solutions.
Identifying problems without presenting solutions is just wanking dressed up as
professional discourse.
Claims of retention problems can be
hard to break out, because the military has been trying to get rid of excess
personnel for the last few years. If there is a problem with retention in the
armed forces, it won’t be broken out in raw numbers, only in whether the right
people are staying or going. In some cases, especially in specialties in high
demand in the civilian world, we are starting to see some fraying. For example,
the Air Force is in panic
mode over pilot retention. At the same
time, that’s exactly what we’d expect at any time when the economy is growing.
It may not be an indictment of the military itself.
Is the military retaining the right
people, though? Are those who remain in just the bureaucratic stooges who just
couldn’t make it on the outside? Most of the recent junior officer “drop the
mic” essays have a subtext of, “The losers running this shit show don’t
recognize the stone cold awesomeness I’m bringing to the table.” Setting the
narcissism aside, is this a real thing?
For all the talk about how anyone
who can “fog a mirror”
can get promoted, that hasn’t been the case lately. Promotion rates have fallen
dramatically throughout the services (USAF,
USN, USMC, USA). In the Navy, for example, the selection rate for
lieutenant commander is only 65% — put another way, over
a third of lieutenants fail to get promoted. This compares to an 84%
promotion rate five years ago.
Marines face competition just to stay in. Even in private industry, you don’t
always see such a winnowing out of talent.
The question then becomes not “Is
the military competitive enough?” because it surely is. The question is whether
the military is having its people compete for the right things. And that is a
real problem. The military definitely allows some Courtney Massengales through, although that has been a problem since time
immemorial. Careerists do better than those who aren’t careerists; that’s why
they’re called “careerists.” The question is whether the military is unique in
that regard, and that’s something very hard to get an objective handle on.
In any organization, civilian or
military, there are people who seek the most direct path to the top. That’s not
so bad in itself — organizations are supposed to reward hard chargers. But do
the people the organization promotes actually support the goals of the
organization? If the careerists are furthering the organization’s goals, then
careerism isn’t bad. In this case, the military’s goal is winning wars, and
therein lies the rub.
Every person left as wreckage on the
career wayside will claim that he or she is an iconoclastic rebel, who told
truth to power and was stickin’ it to the man, man. In reality, a lot of people
who claim that their talents are neglected are just assholes, not unrecognized
geniuses. Knowing the difference is difficult. Every crank military officer
thinks he’s the next John Boyd.
Most are just insufferable jerkoffs.
The military is a conformist
institution. That’s by design. Militaries have been that way for centuries. In
the Roman legions, there was no room for a legionary to say, “Excuse me,
Consul. Could I suggest a better way to deploy the light infantry?” Most of the
time, that conformism is a good thing. The military doesn’t have the time or
resources to take the musings of every 23-year-old junior officer for action.
However, the pace of change has
accelerated and society has changed as well. The military will never be a
Silicon Valley start-up, but it can learn some lessons from the outside world.
The military can do a better job of evaluating its leaders. Making senior
leaders actually counsel their subordinates, mandating more transparency, and
making ratings statistically controlled against inflation could remove the
perceived inequity of military promotions.
More importantly, the military can
begin a more entrepreneurial approach to assignments and pay, as I have advocated for, along with other writers, such as Tim Kane. The military assignment process is still based around an
industrial-age military organization of the 1800s, not the 2000s.
That aside, the military continues
to run on selfless service. Being in the military means following orders and
going on deployments. All service members accepted that willingly; it’s the
price of admission.
I don’t think that the latest round
of junior officer missives are anything different than the ready room or
wardroom wanking that’s existed for generations, but the Internet has provided
a broader audience to complaints that used to be contained within the JOPA, the
Junior Officer Protection Association. As frequently happens, there’s also a
lesson on responsible use of social media to be had.
The military does need to evolve
with the new millenium. But, at the same time, the “millennial” junior officers
writing these screeds need to understand that unlike their helicopter parents,
the world doesn’t revolve around them. It’s called military service for
a reason.
Carl Forsling is a senior columnist
for Task & Purpose. He is also a Marine MV-22B instructor pilot and former
CH-46E pilot who has deployed in support of multiple combat and contingency
operations.
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