On Tactics, page 10
11
MORAL COHESION
In war there are the two factors—human beings and weapons. Ultimately, though, human beings are the decisive factor. Human beings! Human beings!
—General Vo Nguyen Giap
In most ancient Greek city-states, the army consisted of landowning male citizens who would be called to fight during a campaign season, then would return to rural agriculture. They believed that the moral power of a man who had a stake in the state, and hence something to fight for, made for superior soldiers. Even in Sparta, the only state with a standing, professional hoplite army, the warriors were freemen. The Spartans allowed their slaves, called helots, to fight only in extremely dire circumstances. Even then, the helots were promised freedom as an incentive. A preference for free soldiers was unique in the ancient world at the time. Some of the soldiers of the Persian Empire, the great enemy of the Greeks, were conscripts and all of them were subjects. Such conscription and their vast empire allowed them to produce armies that were much larger than those of the Greeks. Their numbers availed them little, however, and the freemen of Greece were frequently victorious over the Persian hordes. The Persians never conquered Greece and were eventually conquered themselves by Alexander the Great leading an army of freemen.
We should not exaggerate the difference between Greek and Persian societies, however. Every Greek city at the time practiced slavery and the Persian army did include free and even professional soldiers. But in this overgeneralization is a kernel of truth: the volunteer soldier who is motivated to fight is superior to the soldier forced to fight. Even the United States has had its difficulties with conscription. The Greeks believed that the moral power of a freeman’s devotion to his duty, his country, and his home was greater than the physical and mental forces arrayed against him. When working together in units, that moral power of the individual free soldier is combined into the moral cohesion of the unit. That moral cohesion, while intangible, has tangible effects on the battlefield.
Even in Roman society, where slavery was a pillar of the empire and its economy, the fighting was done by freemen (although frequently coerced into service by unscrupulous press gangs, they were not slaves). When the empire could no longer produce citizen soldiers in the numbers required, the Romans still eschewed full conscription and hired mercenaries instead. Still, the Roman reliance on mercenaries is usually blamed as a factor in Rome’s fall. Mercenaries lack the moral power of citizens as their services are bought vice volunteered. The Renaissance political and military theorist Niccolò Machiavelli raged against the ubiquity of mercenaries in Italy during his lifetime, and proposed re-adopting a citizen soldier model like that of the early Romans.
Much has been written on the subject of free soldiers versus conscripts and mercenaries. This subject forms a large part of historian Victor Davis Hanson’s thesis in Carnage and Culture, for example. What is important for the tactician is the recognition of the power of moral cohesion. The paltry three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae could not defeat the vast physical power of Xerxes’ army, and they were surely affected by fear at the prospect of their own deaths. But moral forces overrode everything else.
The major strategic theorists agree on this point. In the first chapter of The Art of War, Sun Tzu presents five fundamental factors through which to evaluate war. The first is the moral: “By moral influence I mean that which causes people to be in harmony with their leaders, so that they will accompany them in life and unto death without fear of mortal peril.”1 Clausewitz, frequently portrayed as opposed to Sun Tzu, was just as emphatic: “They [the principle moral elements] are: the skill of the commander, the experience and courage of the troops, and their patriotic spirit.” He even stated, “One might say that the physical [factors] seem little more than the wooden hilt, while the moral factors are the precious metal, the real weapon, the finely-honed blade.”2 In other words, if an army is a weapon, its physical and mental aspects merely facilitate its true striking strength, its moral power. Morale, moral elements, and solidarity all contribute to cohesion, also known as esprit de corps. The moral cohesion of tactical units is the most important factor in their ability to fight and win. The French theorist Ardant du Picq, a major proponent of the power of moral cohesion, wrote, “Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely.”3 There must be some moral element to fuse a group of men and women into a single unit. Of course, J. F. C. Fuller and John Boyd, whose three-part framework of physical, mental, and moral powers is used here, also agree. The moral element of conflict is so powerful that it can achieve victory entirely on its own. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. achieved political goals, in the face of a vast array of violent means on the part of their opposition, solely through the strength of moral example.
The legendary general Hannibal Barca provides us with an example of the use of moral force at the tactical level. In 218 BC, as Hannibal marched his Carthaginian and Spanish forces toward Italy from Spain, the Romans dispatched a force to stop him. The two sides met at the River Trebia in the dead of winter. The Roman consul, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, was known to be aggressive and bellicose. Knowing this, Hannibal used his cavalry force to provoke the Romans into an early-morning attack across the river. Once the Romans crossed the river and approached the main Carthaginian force, a hand-picked and concealed ambush force struck their rear. The cold, hungry, wet, and surprised Romans were routed. Hannibal used his physical deployment to mentally manipulate the Romans into depleting their own moral force by deploying early and crossing a chest-deep river in winter. When the trap was sprung, Roman cohesion collapsed.
It is this cohesion that is a physical expression of soldiers’ moral force. It is well known that soldiers in combat fight for their compatriots. The moral force inherent in the shared risk and responsibility of military units is powerful. Additionally, with the exception of conscripts and mercenaries, some moral force induced each soldier into the ranks: whether patriotism, ideology, duty, or even vengeance.
The moral cohesion of even the most enthusiastic and loyal units can be broken if poorly handled and adroitly attacked—especially if they lose. Eighteenth-century military commentators defined soldierly courage as “bravura” and believed that it could be severely shaken by battlefield losses.4 Whereas achieving victories enhances troop morale, defeats diminish it. Logistics also plays a part in the maintenance of morale. U.S. Marine Corps doctrine correctly states, “By displaying economy, adaptability, fairness, flexibility, and innovation, a logistics system can foster the sense that those in charge know what they are doing. In other words, good logistics reinforces the moral authority of leaders.”5 In short, when leaders take care of their troops, those troops will fight harder for their leaders. Modern military units frequently state that mission accomplishment is a unit’s first priority and troop welfare is its second. This is false. Troop welfare that forges the moral cohesion of the unit—and thus its combat effectiveness—is a prerequisite to mission accomplishment. This is not to say that troops should be coddled. Challenging, realistic, and even painful training contributes to confidence and trust and thus to moral cohesion.
The morale of his troops was something that Napoleon, for example, took for granted when he ignored logistical constraints. The French Grande Armée that marched into Russia in 1812 was completely shattered by constant Russian attacks, their long retreat, the Russian winter, and starvation; this was true even after they had won the Battle of Borodino and seized Moscow. An eyewitness describes the remnants of the French army as they try to cross the Beresina River into French-controlled territory:
Because of the horrors the crossing of the Beresina will live long in the memory of soldiers. For two days the crossing continued. Right from the beginning the troops surged over in disorder, for in the French army order had long been abandoned, and already many found a watery grave. Then, as the Russians forced back the corps of Victor and Dombrowski and everyone surged across the bridge in wild flight, terror and confusion reached their summit. Artillery and baggage, cavalry and infantry all wanted to get over first; the stronger threw the weaker into the water or struck him into the ground, whether he were officer or no. Many hundreds were crushed under the wheels of the cannon; many sought a little room to swim, and froze; many tried to cross the ice and were drowned. Everywhere there were cries for help, and help there was none. When at last the Russians began to fire on the bridge and both banks, the crossing was interrupted. A whole division of 7,500 men from the Victor Corps surrendered together with their general. Many thousands were drowned, as many more crushed and a mass of cannon and baggage was abandoned on the left bank. This was the end of the second period. To the Russians it brought over 20,000 prisoners, 200 cannon and immeasurable booty.6
The above description is a stark example of an army that had lost all cohesion due to defeats and insufficient attention to troop welfare. In The Human Face of War, Jim Storr described exactly what moral cohesion means to the tactician: “At what point is combat resolved? It is not when all the individual one-on-one fights are resolved. Rarely if ever is all of one side killed, incapacitated or made prisoner. On reflection we see that the normal condition for tactical success or defeat is the collective withdrawal of participation. . . . In general, defeat occurs when the enemy believes he is beaten. . . . Defeat is a psychological state.”7 Inflicting enough pain and discontent on the enemy so that his belief in his own defeat is stronger than his moral cohesion to his unit is the first goal of tactics.
Moral force is typically termed morale but it is far more than a simplistic idea of the level of troop happiness or motivation. Effective, challenging, and realistic training contributes to troop morale because it builds confidence and a sense of community within the unit. Cohesion and élan or esprit de corps is another part. It is also not strictly an ethical meaning, although ethics plays a part.
In 1921 U.S. Marine Corps Major Earl “Pete” Ellis wrote the following concerning counterinsurgency operations based on his combat experience fighting insurgents in the Philippines: “In so far as the Marines are concerned, they believe that in every case where the United States has taken charge of a small state it has been actuated by purely altruistic motives. The layman doubtless thinks that the troops themselves give little thought to this phase, but then he does not realize that upon this very thing the fighting morale of the individual is founded and that it forms the basis for the conduct of all military operations” (emphasis mine).8
The point Ellis makes is that the strategic basis for a particular war permeates down to the lowest level, the tactical. The soldier or Marine who views his cause as just and ethical will have higher morale, and this will thus affect his enthusiasm, his discipline, and his tactical decisions. Units engaged in the pursuit of moral aims have higher moral cohesion. For tactics to appropriately serve strategy they must align with strategic imperatives, and the nature of those strategic imperatives affects the quality of tactical units. Both strategists and tacticians must understand the moral connection. Ellis recommended clear strategic guidance be provided to troops to ensure moral cohesion and morale, and to shore up ethical decision-making in combat.
The moral power available to the tactician on the battlefield is thus partly out of his control. The moral constitution of the troops available is intimately connected with the moral justification of both their presence on the battlefield and the actions they undertake. Two concepts from Just War Theory, a school of thought with origins leading back to Roman jurist and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, are relevant: jus ad bellum and jus in bello.9 The first, jus ad bellum, is translated from Latin as “right to war.” This is the right to go to war for a legitimate reason, such as self-defense. Additionally, jus in bello—“right in war”—pertains to the justice of actions undertaken to win the war. Concepts like using proportional force and preventing the harm of non-combatants matter both to the strategist and to the tactician. Violations cause feelings of guilt and shame in the ranks, thus diminishing moral power in future battles. It is vitally important for the tactician to realize that war crimes, overly harsh tactics, or targeting civilians actually hurt his ability to succeed in battle. Beyond the practical reasons for tacticians to be concerned with these concepts and their centuries-long presence in military theory, they should be concerned because they are enshrined in international law. The illegality of weapons such as chemical and biological agents is a tangible result of theory and ethics.
The connection between the ethics of the war’s purpose and the permutation of that morality through strategy down to the tactics was forgotten by a later generation of Americans. Jim Frederick, author of the book Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death, blamed the war crimes committed by the platoon in part on incoherent strategy: “To some degree, the travails of Bravo Company are a study of the tactical consequences that flowed from flawed strategy. . . . There was no coherent strategy for how they were supposed to accomplish these feats [fighting the insurgents]. There was confusion about whether they should emphasize hunting and killing insurgents or winning the support of the people who were providing both passive and active assistance to the terrorists. This confusion flowed from the Pentagon, through the battalion’s chain of command, all the way down to the soldiers.”10 Strategic confusion produced low morale that in turn contributed to the unit committing war crimes. It is both a moral and tactical imperative for the tactician to prevent such events.
Effectiveness at the moral level of tactics thus begins with effective, ethical, and coherent strategy. Poor policymaking and muddled strategic thinking at the highest levels directly affect the well-being of the troops at the lowest levels and their ability to accomplish their assigned missions. Maintenance of the morale of troops is a long-term prospect and moral fortitude must be cultivated at every level, from corporal to commander-in-chief. Again, we see how strategy permeates tactics: troops engaged in an ethical struggle for a righteous political goal will be inherently stronger on the moral sphere. Of course, morality can be relative. The troops must at least believe they are fighting for a moral purpose. Confederate and Wehrmacht soldiers, for example, fought tooth and nail for vile causes. While many of them were surely committed, still others were misled by their leaders and focused on the defense of their homelands from perceived aggression. Moral cohesion is not entirely dependent on the morality of the cause.
Another aspect of the moral element is leadership. In the words of strategic theorist Colin S. Gray, “For morale to be high [and thus moral power enhanced], every level of the military hierarchy needs to be able to trust the personal integrity and the professional competence of the levels above it.”11 It seems patently obvious that soldiers will fight harder and longer, and thus better, for leaders they trust and respect. It follows that we should select leaders based on their ability to establish this relationship with those they lead. If that senior leader fails in this key task by losing the trust and respect of his subordinates, those subordinates will consequently under-perform. Yet those punished for the senior leader’s failure—through promotions delayed or denied—are those subordinate leaders he assesses.
History is replete with examples of the inspired and inspiring leadership snatching victory from defeat by enhancing the morale of troops. During most of the Hundred Years’ War, the English were initially dominant when facing French troops, so much so that the French king, Charles VI, was forced to promise his crown to King Henry V of England after his crushing victory at Agincourt in 1415.12 The peace, however, did not last and the war resumed. In 1429 the French city of Orléans was besieged by English troops and the French were unable to relieve it, until a young woman known as Joan of Arc appeared. Joan was a seventeen-year-old peasant who believed she was sent by God to win the war for France. She convinced the French to allow her to lead an attack on the English. After personally leading an attack on the English lines, Joan punched a hole through to the city and then, in further fighting and despite being wounded, forced the English to lift the siege. The French troops had been demoralized after decades of failure against the English but the moral example of one girl reinvigorated the French armies, who then began rolling back English positions. The English king Henry VI was only seven years old in 1429 and thus England was in no position to recover the initiative. Joan’s actions at Orléans prevented a united English and French monarchy forever. It is a testament to her military leadership and effectiveness that when English allies captured her, the English burned her at the stake. That a young woman could lead veteran armies, tip the scales of a war, and become such a threat to England solely with inspirational leadership demonstrates the power of moral example. The idea that Joan of Arc innately understood tactics or was receiving instructions from a deity is preposterous. But the French troops believed fervently that she did, and that belief contributed to create moral power that they had lacked.
One of the best examples of the moral power of leadership is Mustafa Kemal at the battle of Gallipoli in 1915. The future Atatürk, father of modern Turkey, was present at the battle on the Turkish side as a heretofore undistinguished officer. On 6 August 1915 the British landed additional troops on the Gallipoli peninsula, opening another front in the already three-month-old battle. The landing was timed to coincide with an offensive from the troops that had already established a beachhead on the peninsula. Despite the fact that the British offensives throughout the peninsula were desultory and lacked aggression, the Turkish lines strained at the new pressure and many key positions fell to British and especially Australian units. The top German army advisor to the Turks, General Liman von Sanders (the Germans and the Turks were allied and Sanders was more in command than he was an advisor) urged the Turks to counterattack for three days. Finally, on the night of 9/10 August, he relieved the Turkish commander and put Mustafa Kemal, then a division commander, in charge of the entire Turkish defense.
