Tim Bakken - The Cost of Loyalty : Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military

CONTENTS

On the final evening of the academic year at West Point, the computer system collapsed. This incident, in May 2019the third such breakdown in just over two monthscame hours before the last day of classes at what the U.S. Army calls the preeminent leadership institution in the world, and was accompanied by a complete loss of internet connections. The army colonel responsible for the system admitted at the time that the shutdown had a crippling impact on cadets, though he managed to skirt all responsibility. It was a failure on his watch, and entirely not his fault.

In some ways, he was correct. The failure of that system was not his doing inasmuch as the failure of the entire system was not. His denial of responsibility was a sign of the large creeping problem inside Americas military and the schools that feed it. Breakdowns and malfunctions with far greater ramifications had been rampant long before the colonel became the chief information officer, and even before he was a student in the same place, decades earlier.

The colonel attributed the system outages to management, process, and technology failures [and] clumsy maintenance by the Pentagons Defense Research and Engineering Network (the DREN), the greater computer system that supports research and development for the entire U.S. military. After shifting and dispersing blame instead of accepting it, the colonel repeated another dubious and grandiose army mantra, reminding some in the West Point community, We are and will remain the #1 public university in the United States.

This kind of hubris in the face of inarguable failure is neither rare here nor mysterious. It is central to military officers bearing, as they try to project an image of competence, surety, and expertise, optimism over logic. The bragging, however, is not a harmless hooah, the guttural cheer uttered by soldiers to express their camaraderie and enthusiasm. Inside the U.S. military, such mantras and public relations adages can metastasize into falsity that may be used to justify interventions and wars, including those in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

The geopolitical consequences of those wars could not be more significant. Communist, totalitarian North Korea possesses atomic weapons. Communist China fought the Americans on behalf of the North Koreans and supported the North Vietnamese, and China is now the second most influential nation in the world. Vietnam is completely Communist. Afghanistans sovereignty is threatened daily by the Taliban. Iraqi society, heavily influenced by Iran, which is another potential atomic threat, is in turmoil. Arising from the war in Iraq, ISIS is an international threat, including in Afghanistan. The Middle East is more dangerous than when the United States invaded Iraq under false pretenses in 2003. No one knows for sure, but probably three to six million people were killed in these wars, including over one hundred thousand U.S. soldiers. Inside America, the last seventy-five years of military intervention have unleashed a flood of incompetence, hubris, and denial.

I have been living at the headwaters.

West Point has graduated just about every top general in every war since 1861. It has been and remains one of the most critical institutions in America. Now completing my twentieth year teaching there, Ive had a front-row seat to a culture that has led to great losses. Ive observed how the thinking and behavior taught at West Point, mirrored in the other academies, overwhelmingly influences military culture at large and contributes to or creates catastrophes thousands of miles away.

The variables that lead to the militarys failure are numerous and complex, but lack of support is surely not one of them. Public polling regularly shows that the military is overwhelmingly the most popular institution in America. It is the most well resourced, technologically advanced, and highly weaponized force in world history. These immense advantages are a product of Americas democracy, economy, and system of taxation. What America creates, builds, and achieves becomes what its military should be able to create, build, and achieve. Why does it lose?

Along the way, the military, of its own volition, has separated from the civilian society that was supposed to be overseeing it and caused the nation irreparable damage. This separation has occurred slowly, but unabated, since the end of World War II, which, not coincidentally, was the militarys last clear-cut victory. The publics deference toward Americas perceived military prowess solidified in 1945 and, despite seventy-five years of losses, has hardened into place. Under the watch of an executive branch that has ceded more and more authority to military generalswho now on their own often decide whom to attack around the worldand a Congress united by little except the fear of challenging war, the U.S. military has become an island. It has completely severed its culture, mores, and legal system from the basic tenets of civilian society and constitutional government.

After winning several critical Supreme Court cases in the 1970s and 1980s, the military successfully codified this separation into law. The highest court in the land deferred to the generals contention that they needed more leeway to create good order and discipline. As a result, legal and moral authority was delegated to the military chain of command, essentially depriving soldiers of constitutional liberties enjoyed by all U.S. citizens. The institution tasked with defending our freedoms was no longer required to offer these liberties. Within this insular world, unaccountable to outside authority, the U.S. military developed one value that eats away at all others: loyalty.

The militarys disassociation from civilian society has led to an institution that is larger and more independent than some nations, a sovereign entity within America, opaque and secretive. It is led by self-protective officers who can go decades without ever having to reckon with a contrary opinion. Conformity is not only valued but also treated as an end in itself. As in an authoritarian state, free speech, independent thought, and creativity are stifled and smothered. The individual gains nothing and risks everything by engaging in dissent. Compliance equals survival.

In this closed system, the generals do not develop the ingenuity necessary to win modern wars or the capacity to understand whether a war is even winnable in the first place. This leads to a consideration that is almost too disturbing to acknowledge: some generals may indeed understand but remain silent because there is no mechanism in the military for them to express their individual ideas or opinions. Men and women die because other men and women do not have the reasoning, or the ability, or the courage to speak truthfully.

Of course, a computer meltdown at a military academy is not a failed foreign intervention, but it does illustrate a military institution more focused on large machinery than on computer hardware and software, which are the modern tools that will determine success or failure in war. Along with an absence of adequate ingenuity, the conditions for individual and organizational failure are pervasive inside the military: loyalty over truth; isolation; censorship; control over everyone; manipulation of the media; narcissism; retaliation; and callousness. The militarys separation reinforces its worst instincts, especially its penchant for violence. This is a grave matter, and it is present every day at the three military academies. Statistics from studies by the Pentagon and Department of Justice show that women students attending the academies are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted than women students attending other colleges in the United States. The moderating influences and voices of reason that are inescapable in civilian society dont make their way inside the academies.