This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Warrior-Maverick Culture The Evolution of Adaptability in the U.S. Marine Corps Connable, Alfred Benjamin Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 29. Sep. 2021 Warrior-Maverick Culture: The Evolution of Adaptability in the U.S. Marine Corps A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Department of War Studies King’s College London In Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Ben Connable 2016 1 Abstract U.S. Marines place great pride in their organisational heritage and culture. But 240 years after its inception, the Marine Corps had yet to offer a precise description of its organisational culture. Instead, Marines argued that their culture cannot be understood, and observers of the Corps used the term “magic” to describe the Marines’ norms. This thesis identifies the existential centre of the Marine Corps’ culture: it is success-driven adaptability that results from externally and internally influenced dualisms. Marines are expected to succeed, but are presented with a series of unresolved dualisms as “tools” to achieve success. They are simultaneously expected to be top-notch warriors—courageous, self-sacrificing, and tightly disciplined—and also maverick individualists who think independently and are prepared to disobey orders when necessary. Each Marine is required to negotiate these dualisms in every situation to find a way to succeed. The norm for adaptability exists in the nexus between the simultaneous, unresolved expectations for warrior and maverick behaviour. This mostly informal norm for adaptability is central to the Corps’ success in and out of war. Unravelling the Marine Corps’ evolutionary embrace of adaptability revealed strong connections between the “internal” Marine culture and the popular literature, films, and other artefacts that constitute “external” culture. Warrior-maverick dualisms are equally present in both internal and external culture, and there is evidence that external culture both influenced and has been influenced by the evolving Marine Corps culture of warrior-maverick adaptability. This finding is reinforced by the near total absence of official efforts to reinforce the norm for adaptability for nearly 50 years (1940-1989), even as adaptability became the organisation’s dominant norm. Evolution of the central element of the Marine Corps’ culture took place primarily at the grass-roots level and in the cultural artefacts that reflected and influenced the development of Marines’ cognitive schemas. These findings suggest a modest shift in the way military change analysts examine organisations: future studies should seek to incorporate both external cultural influences and a deeper understanding of the collective value of the individual experience in the formation of military organisational norms. 2 Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... 2 Figures ......................................................................................................................................... 5 Tables .......................................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1: Understanding Marine Warrior-Maverick Culture ................................ 7 The Marine Corps’ Central Cultural Characteristic Goes Unexplained .......................................... 8 Organisational Norms, External Culture and Military Adaptation ................................................ 15 Cognitive Schemas and Cultural Norms ................................................................................................... 23 Schematic Tension and Adaptability: Warrior-MavericK Interplay ............................................. 27 Chapter 2: External Cultural InFluences on Marine Adaptability .......................... 31 Culture Described ............................................................................................................................................... 31 Archetypes and Culture’s Influence on Adaptation ............................................................................. 33 Duelling Archetypes and the Framing of Marine “Magic” ................................................................. 38 Real Marines, Marine Fiction, and the Dualistic Warrior-MavericK Loop ................................. 45 Chapter 3: Warrior...Marine ............................................................................................... 49 Warrior Archetypes and Warrior Ethea ................................................................................................... 51 Comparative Warrior Traits and The Marine Warrior Ethos .......................................................... 53 The Five Marine Warrior Norms ................................................................................................................. 56 The Power of the Group to Influence Adaptability .............................................................................. 59 Discipline and the Drive to Succeed ........................................................................................................... 65 The Discipline Dialectic and Its Reflection on Adaptability ............................................................. 65 The Drive to Succeed ......................................................................................................................................... 69 Chapter 4: Maverick...Marine ............................................................................................ 72 The Complex MavericK Archetype: Cattlemen, Outlaws, TricKsters, and Rebels ................... 75 The Ronin Myth and the Two Sides of the Successful MavericK .................................................... 82 The “Insider MavericK” Marines and the Irreverent, Professional Generals ............................ 85 Chapter 5: Adaptability Emerges—1916-1941 ........................................................... 92 Pivoting from Small Wars to Industrial Wars and Back Again ....................................................... 93 Belleau Wood ‘Devil Dogs’ and the Myth of the Warrior Automatons ........................................ 95 The Small Wars Years and the Run Up to WWII: 1919-1941 ....................................................... 101 3 Chapter 6: Adaptability Evolves—1941 to 1965 ...................................................... 108 World War Two: Adaptation Survives and Evolves in Conventional War .............................. 109 Post-War, Korea, Then the Return to Distributed Operations (1945-1965) ......................... 118 Evolution of Adaptability from 1941-1965 .......................................................................................... 127 Chapter 7: Adaptability Ingrained—1965-2001 ...................................................... 130 Vietnam 1954-1972: Deepening Standards for Adaptability ....................................................... 130 Adaptability Ingrained: Adoption of Manoeuvre Warfare ............................................................. 145 Capping the Evolution of Adaptability: “Chaos” in Iraq .................................................................. 151 Chapter 8: Marines Explain the Magic ......................................................................... 155 Survey of Marines: Purposes and Methodology ................................................................................. 155 MaKing a Good Marine: The Marine Archetype and Its Influences ............................................ 158 Why Does Adaptability Matter for Marines, and What Does it LooK LiKe? ............................ 170 Survey Data Strongly Correlate with Hypothesis and Analysis ................................................... 181 Chapter 9: Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 182 Small Wars Norms ........................................................................................................................................... 183 Unresolved Dualisms and the Informal Norm for Adaptability .................................................