CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY the Nature of the British Soldier: Warrior Or
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CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY Revd Dr PJ McCormack MBE, BD, MTh, PhD (QUB), CF The Nature of the British Soldier: Warrior or Weapons Platform a Philosophical Framework Defence College of Management and Technology PhD THESIS ACADEMIC YEAR: 2007 - 2014 SUPERVISOR: Prof R Holmes CBE (2007-2011) Mr N Jones (2011-2014) CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY Defence College of Management and Technology PhD THESIS ACADEMIC YEARS 2007 – 2014 Revd Dr PJ McCormack MBE, BD, MTh, PhD (QUB), CF The Nature of the British Soldier: Warrior or Weapons Platform a Philosophical Framework Supervisor: Prof R Holmes CBE Mr N Jones May 2014 This thesis is submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Cranfield University 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the copyright owner. Abstract This thesis is an examination of how the nature of the British soldier is constructed/ imagined in contemporary British society if a spectrum of meaning is imagined that posits a warrior existing at one extreme and a weapons platform at the other. Located within a philosophical setting and indebted to Charles Taylor’s modern social imaginaries, a number of sub-questions function as the mechanism used to explore the thesis question in the six research chapters which are: 2, Identity and Narrative; 3, Being and Doing; 4, Clausewitz, Trinitarian War and New Wars; 5, Selected Societal Factors (Death, Risk, and Post-heroic and Feminised Society); 6, The Future Nature of Conflict; and 7, Future Technology. This thesis provides a basis by which to evaluate the cultural, practical, philosophical and intellectual pressures affecting how the British soldier is envisaged in the UK social imaginary. It also offers a functional framework to understand those roles British society is prepared to tolerate and validate when deploying and utilising the generic soldier. The main conclusions of the research chapters are contained in the following six propositions: 1. The identity of the warrior requires a narrative of war(fare) validated by the society with whom he/she is in relationship. The identity of the soldier does not necessarily require a narrative of war. 2. The distinction between the warrior and the soldier is best framed in the language of ‘being’ and ‘doing’. For the warrior their ‘being’ is intuited in combat; whereas the soldier requires a narrative that validates the required/expected output. 3. New wars are non-Clausewitzian. Any Western narrative will suffer narrative deflation in the soldier’s daily experience in non-Western operational settings. 4. Post-modern, risk averse, post-heroic societies will struggle to generate a non- apocalyptic narrative capable of tolerating significant casualty numbers. 5. The question of intervention in a non-Western, non-permissive operational setting will examine the depth of liberal values in Western societies. 6. Though pragmatic, the development of robotic weapons stands in contradiction to the authenticity of the warrior and robs the West of the vitality of its liberal values. Contents page Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1 Research Question and Methodology 2 1.2 Literature Review 10 1.3 Synopsis 15 Chapter 2: Identity and Narrative 2.1 Identity 23 2.1.1 Identity in Pre to Post-modern Thought 25 2.1.2 The Construction of Identity in Modern Society 28 2.2 Narrative 31 2.2.1 Narrative: Society and War 38 2.2.2 Narrative: The Military and Society 43 2.3 Conclusions 50 Chapter 3: Being and Doing 3.1 Introduction 62 3.2 Being and Doing: Cartesian or Existentialist 63 3.3 Being and Doing: Combat Motivation 69 3.4 Being and Doing: Existentialist Thought 76 3.5 Conclusions 82 Chapter 4: Clausewitz, Trinitarian War and New Wars 4.1 Introduction 92 4.2 Classic Definition of War 93 4.2.1 Clausewitz and the Nature of War 94 4.2.2 Is War Trinitarian? 100 4.3 New Wars 108 4.3.1 The Role of the State and Politics in War 112 4.3.2 International Law, War and Terrorism 115 4.4 Conclusions 120 Chapter 5: Selected Societal Factors 5.1 Introduction 128 5.2 Death 129 5.2.1 Death as a Cultural and Historical Product 130 5.2.2 Death and the Military in the Twenty-First Century 135 5.2.3 Conclusions 141 5.3 Risk 142 5.3.1 Risk Society 143 5.3.2 Risk: War and Risk 147 5.3.3 Conclusions 154 5.4 A Post-heroic and Feminised Society 156 5.4.1 Post-heroic Society 156 5.4.2 Post-modern Casualty Phobia 160 5.4.3 The Feminisation of Society and the Military 167 5.5 Conclusions 173 Chapter 6: The Future Nature of Conflict 6.1 Introduction 190 6.2 HM Government’s Assessment of Security and Defence 192 6.2.1 Conceptual Framework 193 6.2.2 Reception and Evaluation of Government’s Conceptual Framework 198 6.2.3 Conclusions 202 6.3 Future Conflict: Themes and Expectations 202 6.3.1 Trends and Drivers 203 6.3.2 The Western Way of War Confronts Adaptive Adversaries 207 6.3.3 Hybrid Threats 210 6.3.4 Intelligent Adversaries and the Spectre of Urban Warfare 213 6.4 Conclusions 217 Chapter 7: Future Technology 7.1 Introduction 228 7.2 Future Technology: A Context 229 7.3 Examples of Battlefield Technology 235 7.4 Man and his Use of Technology 243 7.5 Conflict: Some Legal Issues in Using Robotic Weapons Platforms 248 7.6 Conflict: Ethical, Philosophical and Practical Implications of Using Robotic Weapons 253 7.7 Conclusions 259 Chapter 8: Analysis and Discussion 8.1 Introduction 274 8.2 Using the Philosophical Framework 278 8.3 Six Propositions 280 8.4 Analysis 280 8.5 Concluding Comments 289 Annex 1 294 Bibliography 297 Table of Abbreviations AFS Armed Forces & Society AiTR Automated Targeting Recognition BAR British Army Review BJS British Journal of Sociology CMC Crime Media Culture CSIS Centre for Strategic and International Studies CSP Contemporary Security Policy DCDC The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre DS Defence Studies DSA Defence and Security Analysis EA Economic Affairs EBW Effects Based Warfare ed Editor eg exempli gratia, for example FT Financial Times GPMG General Purpose Machine Gun HWJ Historical Workshop Journal IA International Affairs Ibid In the same work IBS Irish Biblical Studies IDF Israeli Defence Force ie id est, that is ISAF International Security Assistance Force ITQ Irish Theological Quarterly JBQ Jewish Biblical Quarterly JCS Journal of Classical Sociology JME Journal of Military Ethics JSS Journal of Strategic Studies JSP Journal of Social Philosophy MOD Ministry of Defence NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NEC Network Centric Warfare No Number OODA Observe, Orient, Decide, Act OOTL Out of the Loop PDA Project on Defense Alternatives PhD Doctor of Philosophy Degree PSQ Political Science Quarterly RUSI Royal United Services Institute SPCK Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Them Themelios UK United Kingdom UN The United Nations Vol Volume Chapter 1 Introduction British combat operations will end in Afghanistan in 20141. Although UK Forces have been deployed continuously in the country since 2001, the primary focus for the British Army since 2006 has been Helmand Province, in the south west of the country. ‘At its peak, in Helmand alone there were 137 UK bases and around 9,500 UK troops’2. British operational deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been both costly, in terms of ‘blood and treasure’3 and controversial, in terms of legitimacy and popularity4. In contrast to other operational deployments5, the ferocity of the fighting involving UK Land Forces, first in Iraq and more significantly in Afghanistan, combined with significant casualties over a prolonged period of time, has generated intense public discussion on why British soldiers have fought and died in a country that to many has little to do with the UK6. In contrast and as part of the Government’s response to unprecedented flooding across large swathes of Southern England7, thousands of soldiers were deployed in support of local/ regional agencies8. Images of British soldiers filling sandbags and building flood defences in parts of the UK help illustrate the spectrum of activity that may be required of the British soldier. From high intensity war-fighting operations in Afghanistan where from 2008 through to 2011, 308 British military personnel died in service for their country9, to thousands of soldiers serving their country by helping stem rising flood waters. In British Military Doctrine, ‘Fighting Power’ is that ‘ability to fight; to engage combat. It consists of a conceptual component (the ideas behind how to operate and fight), a moral component (the ability to get people to operate and fight) and a physical component (the means to operate and fight)’10. Every soldier in the British Army does the same phase 1 training before undertaking specialist phase 2 training appropriate for role. The concept of the generic British soldier, for the purpose of this thesis, resides in the common syllabus of 1 universal phase 1 training. There is however, the expectation that the British soldier can move, whenever required, seamlessly from filling sandbags for flood defence to high intensity combat operations, with the death and casualties involved in this type of operation. It is possible that policy makers might sleepwalk into a context where they ask or expect soldiers to move seamlessly from tasks in support of local UK authorities (UK Resilience) to combat operations in an intervention of choice but face the situation where soldiers are either unable or unwilling to perform that role; or to put it simply, a situation might arise where British soldiers choose not to fight.