College students are among the most articulate and critical segment of American Society—especially where the military is concerned. Whether the student activist movement is a fresh, healthy wind, or an increasingly violent storm of discontent, it is likely to continue, for hundreds of high schools are warning colleges that they haven't seen anything yet—wait, they warn, until the current high-schoolers arrive on campus!
Youth has always had a privileged status in America, and youth culture has magnified in importance today. The world of youth has great significance for the armed forces; for war itself is largely a young man’s game. The vast majority of persons entering the military are young. Training establishments are designed for the young.
Students and intellectuals are frequently lumped together. For one thing, they form perhaps the most articulate and critical segment of society. They have been the carriers of successful revolution on occasion. We object to certain aspects. So do others; Lenin and the Bolsheviks, for example, never trusted intellectuals. On the other hand, as many have pointed out, it is the intellectuals and students that we are counting on to revolutionize Soviet society, if it can be done at all.
Student culture is highly communicable internationally. This international intercommunicability explains something of the universal appeals of Castro’s Cuba for the youth of the world. Communist or whatever, it was a revolution successfully accomplished by young men. It is difficult to disagree with former Presidential Press Secretary Bill Moyers, that the generation in control never realized that it was necessary to go all-out early and repeatedly in explanation of the Vietnam War. And as it turned out, the universal catalyst in turning off the international young has been the U. S. presence in Vietnam.
The student activist role in domestic protest is very large, of course, for many reasons. A factor easy to identify is sheer numbers. University students numbered only half a million in the 1930s; but, by the end of the 1960s, they numbered seven million; and, by 1980, they will number 11½ million. To a lesser extent, the same phenomenon is significant in foreign capitals; there are 70,000 students in the city of Rome, 200,000 in Paris; 400,000 in Tokyo.
It is not difficult to identify a range of additional characteristics to explain youth’s prominence in political protest: one is the frustration of the status of student, the increasing number of years in which youth must remain marginal men between dependence and full citizenship. As Max Weber observed, one’s political activity is largely dependent upon the requirements of one’s job: students can be quickly assembled in mass and they can afford to take large blocks of time off. They have fewer prior commitments and few responsibilities; it is a phenomenon that today’s youth movements are suspicious of affiliation with established political parties, so that youth are free to adopt what Weber called “the ethic of absolute ends” instead of “the ethic of responsibility.” Also, universities are usually run by liberal persons inclined to want not to punish young people.
Much of the activism is a fresh wind, and healthy. It is not without ominous elements, however, such as the hard-core activists who are contemptuous of democratic procedures, whose relentless excesses may indeed lead to repressive backlash.
The structure of international politics has played a significant part in providing a context for the antiauthoritarian, anti-government, anti-institution movement. In the 1940s and the 1950s, the Cold War dampened critics; in general, each side defended its society. U. S. universities were packed with G.I. bill veterans of the War—a very stable social group. But with “the end of ideology,” so to speak, about 1955, the Communist block loosened. Khrushchev attacked Stalin. China split with the U.S.S.R., and then solidarity loosened on the other side, in the West. Western liberals who had felt suppressed spoke out in criticism of their own societies. In other countries, including developing countries with close ties to the United States, intellectuals in those countries somehow held the United States responsible for their disadvantaged status.
Personally, I would throw into the recipe for current dissension another phenomenon that became pervasive in the 1950s: the Communist style of human and national interchange: the language of insult, the reiteration of vicious propaganda, the exploitation of democratic methods to subvert democratic systems, the lies, the trumped-up situations, the misstatement of motives. This became a style widely copied by fanatical power-seekers at every level.
Some of the dynamism of this strong current movement is creating domestic and international constraints on our foreign policy and our military policies. A Britisher, Robert Conquest, writing in the New York Times Magazine in May 1970 commented, for example, that Europeans were beginning to react counter-productively to those self-appointed American spokesmen, especially professors, who have one message for foreign audiences: how repressive, sick, corrupt, and criminal American society is, and how universally detested this country is. He quotes a Czech student who spent time in the United States and noted how totally ignorant are American students and spokesmen about really sick societies. American students he had met, said the Czech, were “pampered children of your permissive, affluent society, throwing tantrums because father gave them only education, security, and freedom—but not Utopia.” Students, he said,
“. . . bitterly resent society because it does not treat them as the fulcrum of the universe . . . They seem to have no idea of the cost or the value of the privileges they receive. What surprised me most is not that they take themselves seriously . . . but that their elders take them seriously. In the West it seems quite possible to grow quite old without having to grow up . . . They haven’t faced up to the fact that you can’t build Utopia without terror, and that before long, terror is all that’s left. We’ve had our fill of Utopia.”
We are all generally sympathetic with the old saying: “He who is not a radical at 20 does not have a heart; he who is still a radical at 40 does not have a head.” Psychologists say that young people today are under pressures from their peers of unprecedented intensity. What is going on?
A relatively mild analysis of what is going on was contained in the Report of the Presidential Crime Commission of 1967:
“In America in the 1960s, to a greater extent perhaps than in any other place or time, adolescents live in a distinct society of their own. It is not an easy society to understand, to describe, or for that matter to live in.
“In some ways it is an intensely materialistic society; its members, perhaps in unconscious imitation of their elders, are preoccupied with physical objects like clothes and cars, and indeed have been encouraged in this preoccupation by manufacturers and merchants who have discovered how profitable the adolescent market is. In some ways it is an intensely sensual society; its members are preoccupied with the sensations they can obtain from surfing or drag racing or music or drugs; in some ways it is an intensely moralistic society; its members are preoccupied with independence and honesty and equality and courage. On the whole it is a rebellious, oppositional society, dedicated to the proposition that the grownup world is a sham.
“. . . The weakening of the family as an agent of social control; the prolongation of education with its side effect of prolonging childhood; the increasing impersonality of a technological, corporate, bureaucratic society; the radical changes in moral standards in regard to such matters as sex and drug use—all these are phenomena with which the nation has not yet found the means to cope.”
This movement has great significance for the military establishment of the future. It is likely to continue at high intensity. Hundreds of high schools have warned the colleges that they haven’t seen anything yet—wait till the recent high-schoolers arrive on college campuses! Nevertheless, there are some signs emerging that the forms of student activism may change, although the objectives of youth, and the intensity of their determination to clear out the attics of society, are likely to continue. But the attics of society constitute a broader subject.
Like all families, the human family has been traveling through the centuries with a mounting accumulation of stuff, much in the attic. Among the stuff is much junk, since our forefathers produced a lot of gimcrackery, primitive objects, and now-outworn concepts. Periodically, families have a tremendous housecleaning, especially by generations with new tastes and newfangled ideas. When they are finished with a major housecleaning, the home style may change extensively from Asiatic to Mediterranean or from Capitalistic to Space-Age Modern. We seem to be living now in a period of furious housecleaning, just possibly, you might say, the most sweeping so far. Out into the dustheap is going a lot of junk, which we will all be better without.
But our forefathers also, selectively, built many solidly beautiful things and profound concepts that are just as good now as they ever were. Some were built in timeless good taste. Some will last forever. Yet, a few of our most energetic housecleaners are trying to throw out of society’s attic some of our best pieces.
Of inevitable concern to authoritarian institutions is the steady erosion of the very concept of authority. For over 400 years, (some say 800-900), despite setbacks, there has been a general transcendence of individuation, as Herman Kahn says, of a culture emphasizing humanistic, antimilitaristic, anti-nationalistic, intellectual, relatively scientific, secular, and hedonistic values.
This mounting emphasis upon the individual has steadily loosened the individual’s ties to his primary group affiliations: family, religion, class and status and occupational connections, political connections, and ties to town or region.
This question of diffusion of power is a particularly interesting one, affecting international structures. Roger Shinn expects that the major “have” nations will increasingly attempt to distribute largesse as a substitute for real sharing of power. This might be counterproductive in the long run. Domestically also, we see a strong movement towards the diffusion of power. The Federal government may centralize more power in some respects, and decentralize more in others.
To some extent, this is attributable to the spread of education. Educated people expect to participate in their own government.
Another aspect of the diffusion of power is the dissatisfaction felt with the undesirable by-products technological progress—the arms race, smog, water pollution, sonic booms, radioactivity, urban sprawl, disturbance of the balance of nature. These are increasingly seen to be, as Emmanuel Mesthene points out, attributable to individual decision makers, whether tycoons, corporations, or government agencies. More and more, it appears that autonomous power will be taken from individual decision-makers and arrangements evolved which will see that secondary effects and by-products enter into decisions in advance.
Some prognosticators shun the concept of unrelenting change. Gunther S. Stent, a professor of molecular biology at Berkeley, says that the end of progress in all artistic and intellectual disciplines is now in view. The solutions of most solvable scientific problems are now envisioned (the rest are uninteresting or are seen to be impossible). If nuclear war is avoided, the future approaches as a kind of technological Polynesia. There will be a universal diminution of the will to power, with enough “drivers” to keep the rest comfortable.
Lest this opinion be dismissed too quickly, one might reflect that most communications problems now appear to be technically solvable. We have successfully completed 2-way communication with Mariner IV, over 134 million miles.
On the other hand, Arthur C. Clarke is one who envisions continuous change. For example, he foresees a complete communications console, with access to data banks, in every home. Most needs for commuting to offices will be eliminated. Thus traffic and highway problems may diminish. One profound implication is that direct democracy would become feasible for the first time since the Greek city-states. Every citizen could vote electronically on selected issues, consistent with the trend toward the diffusion of political power. Such a development would have radical impact upon theories and structures for representative government. Erosion of the role of the family will make further impacts. Bruno Bettelheim reports his appraisal of the kibbutzim in Israel, where children are raised communally, with parental visits once a week. He found the children very calm, happy, and peer-oriented; on the other hand, they tend to be not adventurous or creative. As measures are adopted to restrict childbirth, and as the parental role becomes increasingly usurped by other agencies of future society, children may be increasingly regarded as creatures whose tailored upbringing should not be left to the vagaries of chance parental competence or incompetence.
Another imponderable change has to do with communication. The increase in literacy; the proliferation of magazines, books, TV, films, pamphlets, etc.; the elimination of social and legal restraints concerning subject matter; the powerful effect of television—all of these aspects piled on top of the competitive, particularly partisan political, aspects of our society almost guarantee that we are going to be inundated with words. Pope Paul recently expressed the opinion that the growing deluge of words makes people increasingly superficial and passive about trying to separate the truth from the half-truth and non-truth. McLuhan has had some shrewd insights into the effects of this deluge, but unfortunately, his mode of speech serves mostly to increase the obfuscation.
In glancing back for a moment over even these few broad predictions of cultural change, one is aware of the pervasive trend towards more open societies, towards greater concern for every individual on earth.
As Vietnam has gradually become the apparent catalyst for international resentment of the United States, the domestic catalyst has been black civil rights. Here the contrast between stated American ideals and partially ugly reality has stood out most dramatically.
At this point, it is well to look more closely at some potential impacts of youthful and broader dynamism upon the armed forces.
War itself, as a tool, a process for the accomplishment of social objectives, is undergoing radical revision. Insofar as the concept of maximum, unlimited war is concerned, war is increasingly seen to be not really inevitable, and not conceivably in any national interest. Even limited war is no longer carried on in traditional adversary form; conflicts seem to center upon internal conflicts, with other nations being drawn in either through coalition with one side or through great power sponsorship involving collective interests.
A lesser aspect is the loss of uniqueness of certain distinctions and benefits the military used to enjoy—for example, medical and dental care that was all-purpose. Now Medicare is spreading to encompass all citizens. This is fine—the point here is only that some special attractions historically enjoyed by the military establishment are no longer special.
All these factors tend to intermix military professionalism into civilian life and tend to civilianize the military. In The Professional Soldier, Morris Janowitz listed other developments which, while on a less cosmic scale, seem relevant in this context:
(1) The lessening difference between military occupational specialties and civilian counterpart skills.
(2) The shift in officer recruitment from elite groups.
(3) The shift in significance of leader career patterns; the rise of the military manager type and the changing status of the heroic military leader.
The erosion of authority has both institutional and individual implications, of course. The old autocratic commander, who ran his outfit as though it were a personal fief, has been declining for some time. But many aspects of the same philosophy linger on in long-established customs and regulations. Many of them—such as command influence over the military justice system, and arbitrary administrative decisions—are being highlighted and modified. The Armed Forces are already taking certain steps to cope with unprecedented manifestations of youth movements and general social activism—the Pueblo incident, My Lai, the Service club scandal, underground newspapers, coffee shops, the length of hair, selective objection to a particular war, and many others. Sweeping changes are being made in the system of military justice; race councils are being established; junior officer councils are being established; upper class hazing has been eliminated at Annapolis; consideration is being given to legal representation before administrative boards which make difficult decisions as to what kind of discharge papers to award a man. Over a year ago, the Chief of Staff of the Army encouraged his commands wherever possible to stick to a 40-hour week (one of these days, somebody is going to sue a Service for time-and-a-half pay for overtime).
This overlap of civilian life into military life is a legitimate impact. A similar incursion is the activity of the press in covering the activities of the Armed Forces. Here, while the principle of the free press is subscribed to heartily by everyone, in and out of uniform, the impact of communications media is to some degree overwhelming, disruptive, and confusing.
The point here is that great institutions, especially authoritarian institutions such as the Armed Forces, have barely begun to learn how to cope with this deluge, which largely misrepresents them. Much study will have to go into the effort of re-indoctrination of society concerning the functions of the Armed Forces, and into the effort of defending themselves against relentless, massive misrepresentation. Mentioned here are only a couple of possible lines of investigation, which are admittedly farfetched: one is to encourage the press, as has been done a thousand times, to seek to present balanced news, the good with the bad, the large number of law-abiding events as well as the small but dramatic acts of lawbreaking; the ten-thousand American incidents of war that did not result in My Lais as well as the handful that did. The other farfetched possibility is that of a Service defending itself forthrightly when it becomes some Congressmen’s favorite whipping boy—possibly Congressional designation of one member who is entitled to rise on the floor and set the record straight whenever a Senator or a Congressman makes headlines with a distorted account of anything done by the Armed Forces.
In whatever form the Services may emerge, there are decades ahead in which the Armed Forces will have to explain and defend themselves imaginatively. Perhaps they should seek to sponsor talented novelists, playwrights, poets, and essayists, who could weave themes that tell it like it is within works of good literature.
Another impact of the increasing visibility of Armed Forces is the reverse aspect—the necessity for the Armed Forces to keep their skirts scrupulously clean.
Recruitment will be affected by the anti-authoritarian surge of our times, and by the competitive inducements that abound in an affluent society. Certain research into ghetto conditions indicates that predilections to violence may be intensified simply because of the compression, to below minimum levels, of physical space available to individual human beings. These factors seem likely to influence the living conditions, e.g., barracks, provided by the Services for their members.
As some aspects of civilianization impact upon the military, it seems inevitable that some provision will be made by the Armed Forces to permit the achievement of greater responsibility by selected individuals at younger ages. By the age of 35, certain individuals in almost every other field and profession are eligible for appointment to at least moderately high position.
The increasing interrelationship between military and civilian influences in the military establishment may generate a kind of mixed career for some individuals, during which they might take up uniformed status in alternate assignments but also be eligible for intermittent, civilian, executive appointments in the Department of Defense, or even other government departments.
As organizations become bigger and more complex, embracing a greater number of specialists, we may see more and more specialists turning for their standards of performance, and giving greater loyalty, to their professional associations rather than to the organizations which employ them. We see something of this today among medical officers and lawyers within the Services, but this impact is probably in its earliest phase.
Also, as organizations become more complex and specialization becomes more intense, we will probably see greater pressures for intermediate specialists; even now, many small communities would be satisfied with a resident medic at the level of qualification of the Navy’s rated corpsman.
Still on the subject of organization, we are aware that a great deal of the modern outrage of the individual is reaction against the bigness and impersonality of big organizations. No one wants to be treated like a number on an IBM card. By this time, we all have had at least one experience of protesting some error to a big company and suddenly realizing with a chill that we have been conversing only with a cold computer. Well, for one thing, big organizations and big government are going to get even bigger. A great subsystem—say, a logistic-support system from the Zone of Interior to the battlefield—may be completely controlled from the United States. Will we want, or get, resourceful, innovative persons to serve in such subsystems?
Current activism does not seem containable within the familiar classic theme of anti-militarism, which has a long history in the United States. It is a force of unprecedented scope and strength. One evidence of its effect is its impact upon the prestige of the military profession among military families. Always before, the Armed Forces were able to depend for an important share of officer replacement upon the sons of the military—admittedly, a form of elite recruitment, if you like. However, one hears today, more frequently, statements from military families that they would not encourage their sons to take up military careers. In the 1969 edition of Brassey’s Annual, the chief of the British recruiting service mentions this phenomenon as spreading within old British military families. Surely, if this trend were to accelerate, it would represent a very special impact of cultural change upon the military.
Will the Services be able to adjust? Of course; there can be no doubt about it. Some ingenious suggestions are already being made. One proposal is that, in view of their lethal missions, and spiraling manpower costs, the Services seek the smallest streamlined units possible, to be manned with the fewest possible people. Another approach to cope with egalitarian unrest was suggested in an editorial in the Army Times to the effect that military posts might be divided into three principal areas: working areas, living areas, and service areas. The commander would run the working areas authoritatively; but the living areas, for example, might be run with minimal supervision conducted by a sort of consensual arrangement.
One weighs all these possible changes and many more, ponders their potential impact upon the Armed Forces, and returns to the fundamental function that armed forces are supposed to perform for society, and repeats an age-old empirical question: In view of all the changing factors in the social context, is the probability of future conflict diminishing?
One hesitates to respond affirmatively with any great confidence. Consider the conflicts that are likely to arise in connection with territorial claims that will accompany exploitation of the oceans and the ocean beds. The revolutions of rising expectations among many have-not states have hardly gotten underway, and there are other seedbeds of future conflict now germinating. Hence, it does not seem reasonable to take an optimistic view towards the incidence of comprehensive peace. Conflict, unfortunately, is still likely. The values endorsed by the military to cope with its missions will remain valid.
However, the hierarchies of military values may suffer change among themselves. It seems inevitable, also, that the organization of the Services, their methods and procedures relating to people, will undergo perhaps the most extensive changes they have ever undergone. In fact, change will probably be endemic in the Armed Forces for the next decade, as social change in American society gathers momentum.
It is sometimes argued that long-range planning is pointless, for we cannot predict the future. Of course, we cannot predict it with certainty. But, at least along selected lines, we can appraise the major alternatives. In my opinion, we shall have to engage in long-range planning along selected, critical lines, even conditionally, lest short-range planning leaves us in undesirable, but irretrievable, intermediate circumstances.
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A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy in 1940, Colonel Wermuth is completing a doctorate in political science at Boston University. After 32 years in the Army, including service as commander of units up to include a combined-arms brigade, as chief of staff elements at SHAPE, USArEur, and OSD, and as military assistant to the Chairman, JCS, he retired in 1966. Author of numerous publications, Mr. Wermuth is an advisory scientist with the Advanced Studies Group, Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Since developing this article, he has undertaken leadership of a contract project for ONR in the same general field.
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Use Discretion
While undergoing refresher training, a Fleet tug was conducting a tow-and-be-towed exercise. The towing phase was completed and all hands in the rigging party assembled on the forecastle ready to make the connection as soon as the other ship sent over her hawser.
As the second phase of the drill progressed smoothly, the unoccupied personnel had edged their way closer to the riggers, anxious to see what was happening. The CO, watching from the bridge wing, told his talker to tell the forecastle talker to pass the word discreetly for unnecessary personnel to stay clear of the rigging party.
Standing just behind the FTG observer, the forecastle talker acknowledged his instructions and in a loud, clear voice announced, “Okay you guys that ain’t doing nothing discreetly, move back.”
—Contributed by Lieutenant L. W. Lonnon, U. S. Navy
(The Naval Institute will pay $10.00 for each anecdote published in the Proceedings.)