McMaster Article Analysis
McMaster’s article addresses the topic of national security culture and social policy. National security culture is a set of values shared by everyone in an organization that determines how people expect to think about and approach security. Having the right security culture will help reinforce a responsive security workforce and encourage the wanting security behaviors. Social policy refers to the ways societies globally meet human needs for security, health, education, and work. The author argues that an actual test to ascertain valid wartime strategy is by asking platoon leaders to explain to their service members the risks or sacrifices one must make for an operation outcome to be worthwhile. The wrong approach renders fruitless, making warrior ethos seem destructive where the proper intention of fighting becomes a way of making war. Destructive personnel, draft policies, and unsound strategy during the Vietnam war within the military deteriorated trust. Army, civilian leaders, and the American people’s trust disintegrated due to the war’s discontent. Unethical conduct and lack of discipline in military professionalism were due to drug abuse, officer corps lack of confidence, and racial and social tension.
The article informs how warrior ethos is essential and should be deployed by the military as it bids warriors to warriors. As Paul Robinson remarks in Military Honour and the Conduct of War, “honor motivates people to fight in different ways: positively, through the desire to display virtue and win honor; and negatively, through a desire to avoid dishonor or shame.” A warrior expects to take risks, make sacrifices, protect the innocents, and defend their comrades to accomplish the mission. The author suggests that fighter ethos is ongoing through the change in artillery, techniques, the need to grow self-assertiveness, and having a compatible team member to resist the test of battle as it is timeless. The knowledge and just intention give a warrior the willingness to sacrifice and have the ability to tame fear. Warriors engage in the battle to look out for one another. “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” as Nietzsche suggests. Americans know little about war and warriors because fewer are connected to military professionals and are unfamiliar with the warrior ethos. Fragile and traumatized creatures are what warriors represent; the illusion of warriors as victims who enjoy no invention over their future is a prejudicial delusion of warriors and the warrior’s ethos. Preserving the warrior ethos is the role of all Americans and requires effort to better understand war and warriors by studying military ethics and history. As George Washington observed, the most effective way of preserving peace is to prepare for battle. Revitalization of military and diplomatic history is significant as social-science theories lean-to prune the involved occasion of events and disguise the culture.
The author uses evidence in the article by observing John Keegan in The Face of Battle for five-century, his classic study of combat in a similar geographical area. Human behavior is struggling to integrate their survival instinct. The study of battle is a study of solidarity and disintegration. War directs toward human group disintegration. Servicemen’s ethos is inherent to maintaining the solidarity of one’s “human group,” which kindles the spirit and combat skills required to disintegrate the opponent. On July 4, 1775, Gorge Washington, at the siege of Boston, issued a general order to his troops directing that “all distinction of colonies will lay aside, so that the same spirit may animate the whole, and the only contest be, who shall render, on this great and trying occasion. The essential service to the great and common cause in which we are engaged.” President Abraham Lincoln, 90 years later, prompted the living, ensuring those who fell in the battle of Gettysburg “shall not have died in vain.” The evacuation of the Saigon embassy in 1975 and Kabul airport in 2021 goes beyond negated image as it summons the lost war in Afghanistan and Vietnam. The American experience in Vietnam wakes the risk of warrior ethos today. The author suggests president Joe Biden’s recent visit to area 60 of Arlington national cemetery in April 2021. The president went to honor the fallen soldiers from the war in Afghanistan but did not know how many veterans as well as families fought and died in Afghanistan and their impact on their families and country. The contrast between Biden’s words from Robert E. Lee at the cemetery grounds seized the family during the civil war and Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg nation would remain dedicated to the excellent task remaining. The structuralist trend believes warriors deserve pity. Instead, leaders should follow through politically and merge the military with other arms of national power to secure an exemplary outcome.
The author’s writing style is expository writing, as he aims to explain and inform the reader about the topic of the warrior ethos. The key feature of this writing is non-fiction and has no opinion or agenda. The author’s main aim is to give the necessary information as it should be. This type of writing is also referred to as informative writing as it aims to inform the reader of some particular things that need facts and figures to back up any item claimed in the report. The author’s article is well organized. Every point he makes has some form of evidence that helps the reader know what he is talking about, providing essential detail about the topic. The author also uses reference quotes to convey the correct information for the reader to have evidence and a clear picture of what he is trying to inform and educate—making it easy to follow up on the entire article with ease.