By Mark Stout
Carl von Clausewitz offered his “paradoxical trinity” as a tool for thinking about wars and their various manifestations. His trinity was:
Composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone.
As a practical matter the United States and the West today pay little attention to the first component of this trinity. True, some analysts are willing to see “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity” playing a role in the behavior of some of our enemies — the Islamic State and al Qaeda, for instance. However, when it comes to looking at our own forces and operations, we like to imagine that “primordial” violence plays no role because our violence is calibrated and precise, hatred is tantamount to racism, and enmity is merely a matter of politics because all people are fundamentally the same.
One American defense analyst wrote in 2006, for instance, that:
Combatants are trained in the skill to kill and the will to kill, but discouraged against the thrill to kill. … The will to kill involves those psychological preparations that respect human life, but that in war focus on survival and self-preservation. The thrill to kill, however, is psychotic. It’s rejected by war, but embraced by terrorism. The thrill to kill represents the cowardly insanity of terrorism and hate.
This sort of opinion is a relatively new phenomenon, however. Consider this 1943 U.S. Army document brought to my attention by my colleague Dr. Kevin Woods. It was written by Pvt. Frank Sargent of the 34th Infantry Division and came to the attention of his division commander, who liked it so much that he sent it up the chain. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower liked it so much that he had it published for the U.S. forces under his command in North Africa. When Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall saw it, he “ordered it distributed to the Army at large.”
Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks
Reblogged this on Starvin Larry and commented:
Good read-well worth the couple minutes it takes to read the whole thing.
How would you answer the question asked at the end of the article?
To answer this question from the end of the article: Whether the era of Clausewitz’s “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity” has truly come to a close, or whether we’re only in an interlude, sooner or later to once again need to hate in order to win our wars.
When you have to answer any question about HOW wars are fought, you have to ultimately look a the leadership with both LINE OFFICERS (The Brass actually in the field) and the Desk flyers at the Pentagon(Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sec Defense, etc.) What is their philosophy and what are they teaching our troops both in Basic Training and on the Line… As you may know, there has been a HUGE “brain drain” in the military since no-bama took over, he has systematically fired or forced into retirement some of the most EXPERIENCED Leaders our Military had to offer..because of that now we have a whole generation of Officers graduating Annapolis and West Point who are getting no real mentorship when they get into the field..this effects morale and also the entire war fighting mentality. The bottom line is you have an entire generation of military officers who have been taught that POLITICAL COORRECTNESS and MULTI-CULTURALISM are more important than ingraining hardcore WARFIGHTING mentality into your troops, sailors and airman…They are more worried about not offending muslims and women when they deploy to a hostile country than they are about winning battles and killing the enemy.
History proves my point: take a look back in Military history and see when we had men like Chesty Puller, General George Patton and Curtis LeMay leading the way…THE TROOPS WERE MOTIVATED BECAUSE WE HAD REAL MEN LEADING THE WAY WHO COULD CARE LESS ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT ABOUT THEM, THAT’S WHAT WE NEED AGAIN IF WE ARE TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
Once ISIS and the other musloids start blowing themselves up and killing innocent people here-then people will wake up,get pissed off,and fight like men,like warriors.
That’s for us mere citizens-the military will take just a little longer,there’s still some NCO’s who ain’t worried about all this PC horsepucky,they’re worried about their guys being successful.
Hopefully,there’s enough of them to “train” the LT’s coming out of West Point and Annapolis-then the LT’s can send real world ideas and tactics up the chain of command. Maybe some experienced guys will come out of retirement that are higher ranking officers to fix our military.