H.R. McMaster
It is likely that many Americans were perplexed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s September 30 convocation of all military flag officers (generals and admirals) to speak mainly about a topic that may seem esoteric: the warrior ethos. The warrior ethos is foundational to combat effectiveness and ethical conduct in war. But it is important to view Hegseth’s call to strengthen the warrior ethos in context of the American military’s role under the Constitution. While the Secretary is correct in rejecting and correcting the Biden Administration’s effort to push reified, post-modernist philosophies on the military that are destructive to combat effectiveness, it will be important for civilian and military leaders to understand that the warrior ethos is, in part, a covenant between our citizens and those who serve in their name to “support and defend the Constitution.” And that covenant depends largely on keeping a bold line in place between our military and partisan politics.
I have long been concerned about the erosion of the warrior ethos. In 2014 I had the privilege of giving a speech at Georgetown University commemorating Veterans Day. In that speech, I defined the warrior ethos as:
a covenant between the members of our profession comprised of values such as honor, duty, courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. But our warrior ethos also depends on our military’s connection to our society. That is because when we are valued by others we value ourselves. Ultimately, as Christopher Coker has observed, it is the warrior ethos that permits servicemen and women to see themselves as part of a community that sustains itself through “sacred trust” and a covenant that binds us to one another and to the society we serve. The warrior ethos is important because it is what makes military units effective. It is also important because it is what makes war “less inhumane.”
I believed that the warrior ethos was at risk because fewer Americans were connected to our professional military; fewer Americans understood what was at stake in the wars in which we were engaged; some were arguing that victory over an enemy or winning in war was an old idea that is no longer relevant in today’s complex world; some were advocating for simple, mainly technologically based solutions to the problem of future war, ignoring war’s very nature as a human and political activity that is fundamentally a contest of wills; and popular culture had watered down and coarsened the warrior ethos.
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