Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 12

following, but soldiers must think differently; the military system fails them. Soldiers, who ought to think
for themselves and act decisively, are disabled by the
military proclivity for bureaucratic hesitancy. They
are deceived and compromised by the cordial hypocrisy that hallmarks military life. The 2012 Australian
Senate Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade References
Committee’s Procurement Procedures for Defence Capital
Projects: Final Report offers an illustration. The report
noted that in the Australian Defence Organisation,
personnel get “bogged down” with too much
paper work … and “miss the important things
going on” … [There are] confused or blurred
lines of responsibility … [and] accountability
that is too diffuse to be effective—the organisation is unable or unwilling to hold people to
account … [As well, people have] little understanding or appreciation of the importance of
contestability and a mindset simply cannot,
or refuses to, comprehend the meaning of “independent advice.”12
This report spells out the officialdom, which dissolves
individual decision. The report makes clear that, inoculated by bureaucracy, soldiers are immunized against
self-reliance; their sense of responsibility is numbed by
rituals of fudging and double-talk.
Yet, responsible independence is critical; for soldiers
to be effective, it is insufficient that they are obedient,
that they follow conventions, and that they abide by rules.
Soldiers also must be conscientious and decisive. They
must answer the call to individual action, which is constricted in the bureaucratic system. Regarded by Jonathan
Shay as “the most fundamental incompetence in the
Vietnam War,” the misapplication of bureaucratic-process
thinking is an institutional failing and the death knell for
autonomous and strategically effectual soldiers.13

Dereliction of Duty
Military enlistment confers not an excuse to be
obedient at all costs, but an obligation to act deliberately for justice. Underlining this idea, philosopher Jeff
McMahan asks rhetorically how establishment by certain people of political or bureaucratic relations among
themselves may confer on them a right to behave in
ways that are impermissible in the absence of those
relations. McMahan asks, “How could it be that merely
by acting collectively for political goals, people can shed
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the moral constraints that bind them when they act
merely as individuals?”14 He illuminates the moral duty
people bear as individuals. These obligations are jeopardized by the modern bureaucracy.
Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster makes the risk plain in his
book, Dereliction of Duty. Considering the Joint Chiefs
of Staff during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, McMaster
describes “five silent men.”15 He describes how the Joint
Chiefs, trapped by an alleged military code in routines
of bureaucratic deference, were acquiescent and persuadable. These men were silent when they should have
spoken, malleable when they ought to have been conscientious and uncompromising.
Analyzing the political calamity of Vietnam,
McMaster describes a uniquely human failing.
Among the many and reinforcing frailties he identifies, the biggest was the craving by the Joint Chiefs
for approval, their need to appear loyal, to fit in, and
to do the accepted thing. Playing along with bureaucratic convention, the Joint Chiefs abdicated their
responsibility to speak up and to exert constructive
influence over the policy they were entrusted to
enact. The generals failed to act with the purpose
and resolution expected of the soldier. Conforming
reflexively to familiar punctilios, the generals perpetuated the dependencies of bureaucratic custom.
Their rococo politesse and invertebrate conformance
embellished military failure.
History provides examples of the failure by soldiers to measure up. In his text Criminal Case 40/61,
the Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Harry Mulisch coined
the term “psycho-technology,” which describes the
bureaucratic engrossment with obedience and the
culpable torpor that sustains bureaucratic habit.16
Mulisch explained how “a dull group of godforsaken
civil servants doing their godforsaken duty” turned
the bureaucracy into a weapon—and an excuse.17 The
polymath Charles Percy Snow underlines the evil that
follows from unthinking conformance:
When you think of the long and gloomy
history of man, you will find more hideous
crimes have been committed in the name of
obedience than have ever been committed
in the name of rebellion. If you doubt that,
read William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the
Third Reich. The German Officer Corps were
brought up in the most rigorous code of
January-February 2017  MILITARY REVIEW