The Way to a Military Service of the Future
A pacifist’s idea of defending something greater than oneself
By MARTIN REZNY
I’ll be honest, I didn’t go through a mandatory military service. In my country, the Czech Republic, it was canceled in 2005. Starting with my year of birth actually, as that was the year I turned 18.
Suffice it to say, I was glad. I never really thought about it before realizing there’s no reason to anymore. Well, other than knowing that it would be something I definitely wouldn’t enjoy, or agree with on the level of principle.
When pushed, given the kind of stubborn person I am, I might have gone the way of conscientious objector, which would have probably meant some other kind of forced civil service, though at least non-violent.
More importantly though, a kind of service where I wouldn’t be subject to authorities based on the (post)communist macho mentality that made it an inherently toxic, character damaging experience in our past.
I guess there are many men who went through it who would disagree with my assessment, even those who endured the much worse Czechoslovakian full-on communist version, which was also double the length (2 years).
In the view of the more conservative Czech men (and I guess some women, too), mandatory military service is a rite of passage, an experience that turns boys into men, real men. I think this notion is a good place to start.
What Doth (Not) a Real Man Make
First of all, if you’re American, you need to disabuse yourself for now of any concept of military service that you have in America. I’ll get to more voluntary military services later. To put it succinctly, comradeship is not brotherhood.
In a communist military, if you were unlucky, you or your parents were enemies of the state, which meant that you were assigned to a special kind of service that was more of a labor camp-type experience.
But let’s ignore this fundamental inequality, let’s judge the system at its best. If you were a proper working-class comrade, you were entrusted with weapons and treated at least not any worse than any of your peers.
The question is, what’s the kind of man that you were supposed to become? What character traits were you supposed to learn? First of all, unquestioning obedience, followed by orderliness and resilience, but also cunning.
All of these are common in most militaries to some extent, but there were some communist quirks in this particular case:
- Emphasis on ideology meant more punishment for any kind of objection, especially of the ethical kind, making the whole thing harsher.
- Orderliness exercises were more pointless, as one was supposed to learn that absurdity of orders doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow them.
- Resilience was built through needless, health-damaging suffering, to learn that only pussies complain about discomfort (so that you become more tolerant of shortages and mismanagement abundant in a communist economy).
- Cunning, in our Czech version, was not so much military cunning as it was taught in ancient Sparta, but instead an aptitude in cowardly and lazy cheating, hypocrisy, and duplicity — to be good at pretending that you believe the ideology and follow the rules, when you, in fact, do not (given how absurd and self-destructive that would be).
You could get a little bit of a better deal if you entered the military with a university degree. In that case, you would be trained to lead from the start or to perform specialist technical tasks. However, that didn’t negate all the bullshit, just lessened it somewhat, with the ideology becoming more important. Free thinkers were generally not allowed to study at all.
So, who was this “real man” that you were supposed to become? A person who doesn’t question what he’s being told, who would damage himself or hurt others without complaint. A person who would learn to posture, pretend, and cheat, who believes that doing your duty is what defines a good person.
In the process, you might build some muscles or increase your physical endurance. You might also learn how to fold clothes and sheets or shine your shoes. And how to shoot a gun, obviously (again, unless you were only entrusted with a shovel, or shoved into a uranium mine).
Does that sound like it’s worth it? Does it sound like the latter skills are more important in terms of character than the former qualities? Is it worth getting bullied over for years by people who abuse their authority, which they likely got by being communist lap dogs? Why, no, it’s not. It is not worth it.
You may disagree with me still, but I’m sorry. The best argument that can be made in defense of this program by someone who went through it is that it was okay for them and that they turned out fine. Which, like John Oliver says, is the number one argument of people who, in fact, didn’t turn out fine.
It didn’t make you stronger, you were just strong enough to begin with to survive the damage. Or you were not, and so it broke you, or you died. Contrary to what most men think, there are many disciplines that will teach you discipline, if that’s what you value in a man. Just try theater.
Or medicine. Or experimental science. Or, while we’re at it, classical philosophy. It’s true that some of the available options are less heavy on sheet folding discipline, and more heavy on learning disciplined thought, but then again, the quality of your thinking is objectively at least a bit more important than the state in which you maintain your various articles of clothing.
The main sticking point for me is questioning. If I come across as sarcastic now, it’s because the notion that free thinking is not one of the key manly qualities is viscerally offensive to me, apart from it being demonstrably wrong. Any service that’s opposed to thought is doing your character a major disservice. To borrow from the opposition, only a pussy doesn’t question.
A Military of the Free and the Brave
Let’s move into democratic societies, then, as military service in this type of regime is inherently much more justified. Presumably, in a modern, voluntary, free army, the priority is not your ideological indoctrination.
Oh it still happens, as it generally helps recruitment to present your country to the young and impressionable as paragon among states, a shining city on the hill, that only intervenes militarily to stop bad guys from doing more harm.
But it is arguably much better when the ideology is effectively optional. It also helps when the military is built on rule of law that requires wars to be at least superficially justified. That there exists a concept of an unlawful order.
I’m sure that the still mandatory military service in the pre-2005 democratic Czech Republic would have been much more reasonable than its communist predecessor. Despite the continuing macho nonsense and bullying.
Then again, however unpleasant it would have been for me to be forced to deal with jocks in a position of authority over me for a year, that by itself would not actually be a deal-breaker. The problems run deeper.
A free, democratic military, including the professionalized volunteer armies, can send you to fight in an unjust war. An argument can be made that ever since World War II, there hasn’t been any justified offensive military action.
The obvious, yet somehow not often discussed ethical issue of going into a military service while knowing that you may end up fighting in an unjust war was pointed out very well by Jimmy Dore on his show. Into the face of a disabled veteran who, while being anti-waging-stupid-wars, still made an argument for why joining the military may be a good choice for some.
The veteran explained that in America, joining the military is a great opportunity to get education and start your career, especially for the disenfranchised youth. What Jimmy Dore pointed out is that if it is at the cost of maybe killing innocent people, it doesn’t exactly sound defensible.
Maybe a democratic country should offer education to everyone who demonstrates a desire and aptitude for it. Maybe it shouldn’t be set up to produce young people who don’t really have any other career options than joining the military. Both of which is true in the Czech Republic.
Unlike the United States of America, my country also doesn’t wage offensive wars of its own. When it enters somebody else’s war as an ally, it typically is in a constructive support function, like by sending a field kitchen, technical specialists, or a unit qualified to train local police officers.
Even though in my country, there isn’t a lot of emphasis on the brotherhood among soldiers or any real admiration of our military by our public, there are still people who volunteer to join it because they’re Czech patriots or believe in some form of military heroism, probably tied to the legacy of Czechoslovakian legionnaires in World War I or pilots in the Battle of Britain.
Overall, it appears that the modern professional volunteer Czech army is one of the better examples of a military that one might want to join. Still, nothing I mentioned so far touches the core of my problem with military service.
Ignoring non-democratic armies, ignoring macho nonsense and bullying, ignoring bad leadership that decides to wage unjust wars, and ignoring that being a soldier is hard at the best of times, my issue is with military’s mission.
What Are You Fighting For
To be clear, my issue is with military as we know it. The one inescapable component of any military service mission, defense, is about as unquestionable as it gets. Much like the civilian concept of self-defense.
When your country is attacked by another country and it’s life or death for the civilian population, then sure, join the military, be a hero. World War II was unique in that it was a world war of defense, against a world invader.
You’re not going to get many of those. Fortunately. If heroism is what you’re after, then you need to realize that true heroes don’t start fights. They finish them. The ultimate sacrifice is noble, when, and only when, it is necessary.
The world today has many problems, but my question is, how many of them can be solved by blowing shit up? That’s not a way to solve climate change, or to prevent or stop pandemics, or to (re)build democracy, and the list goes on.
Similarly to the situation during WW II, these are world problems, but in the face of these problems, the nationalism of contemporary militaries makes them poised to make all of the global problems worse in fundamental ways.
Following national interests, militaries are increasingly bound to engage in wars for resources, which will only create more regions with populations deprived of them, resulting in more migration, which will be more and more suppressed by militaries, resulting in accelerating radicalization and polarization of political systems across the world, resulting in militaries becoming more and more ideological, and now we have a vicious cycle.
Going down this path, there inevitably comes a point when you effectively become the Nazis, or at least Nazi-like, with or without realizing it — dehumanizing your opponents and stealing their Lebensraum, putting them in camps without trial and torturing them, and so on, while feeling justified. After all, you’re just defending your way of life and civilization as a whole.
Also, I like my country, I really do, but what are its interests, exactly? Who really decides what they are? The people, the government, the generals, the intelligence community? When you’re at war under attack is the only time when those interests are clear. Beyond that, they’re never clear.
Is gaining more territory or direct access to resources in the interest of my country? I don’t know about that, we have done pretty well so far with our current amount of land, and trade, but many military-minded people seem to think so. Better us than them, right. After all, we’re more civilized.
Well, except that attacking other countries to steal their stuff is the very definition of a barbarian, an uncivilized brute, so doing that to safeguard civilization seems self-defeating to me. I also don’t believe that undermining other countries is generally in our interest, given that we will still have to live on the same planet with them, and whatever hell their regimes become.
In the grand scheme of things, fighting only for your country is a losing strategy for everyone in the long term. Not necessarily losing in a sense of resulting in the end of human civilization or life, but losing in a sense of how much we all could have had if everyone helped everyone else instead.
Fighting only for your country is something one does out of fear, it’s a position borne of weakness and cowardice — you aim to minimize risk for yourself (the way you perceive it, at least). You’re too afraid to care, to share, to trust. So you tell yourself there’s no other way, that trying to do the right thing is just too hard and dangerous. What would you think about a guy like that?
It’s not very manly, is it. Not very brave. Not something that you need to have the right stuff for. The image I get is a neurotic squirrel hoarding a few acorns, ready to bite anyone who gets too close, dreaming about having enough strength and courage to steal all the acorns of all other squirrels. It’s pathetic.
Back in the feudal days, I’m sure it made complete sense. We were pathetic back then as a species. Our knowledge and understanding of our world was puny, mostly based on sheer fantasy. Our communities were small and fragile, unable to comprehend or deal with disease, barely able to feed the population. The less able you were to make, the more you needed to take.
We’re not like that anymore. Or at least we don’t have to be. I’m actually a very mission-driven person, and my hunch is that many of the so called millennials are too. The issue is not that we seek to avoid service. It’s that the contemporary (archaic) idea of military service is not only not inspiring, it’s exactly not what the world needs right now. We need a new mission.
Something Greater Than Yourself
When thinking about an example of what a military service could be at its theoretical best, there’s only one thing that comes to mind, Starfleet. Yes, I’m aware it’s fictional, and while plenty inspiring, not particularly well defined.
Let’s take the general idea, then, and attempt to flesh it out, bring it as close to our Earthly reality as possible. Starfleet describes itself as a humanitarian armada. It’s not a government, that would be the Federation as a whole.
It does operate in space, but so do the starship troopers. That’s not the important part of the definition, at least not in any core, practical sense. It wouldn’t be enough to create our type of military in space, a Space Force.
If a Starfleet unit was bound to a planet, it would still be itself. The more important questions are those of recruitment, nature of orders and chain of command, mission objectives, prime directives, those sorts of things.
For starters, the service is voluntary, so it’s similar to professional democratic armies in that sense. The one drawback of that, also mentioned in the Jimmy Dore interview, is that draft at least sucks enough to make the public oppose wars that aren’t necessary. A volunteer army is more likely to wage unjust wars, at least in any democratic country, second only to a mercenary army.
The reason that Starfleet doesn’t fly around space picking fights is that violence, of which it is eminently capable on a cosmic scale, is firmly intended to be the last resort, not the first. Starfleet will try everything else first.
It will always open with diplomacy and never give up on it. It will offer solutions to problems using its science and engineering corps, arguably the centerpiece of this armada. It will try to identify issues that push others to war and fix them, so that any motivations leading to conflict are removed.
Even in our world, the militaries are perfectly capable of providing disaster relief or building infrastructure, which could prevent unrest and conflicts especially in areas where natural disasters caused famine or lack of drinking water, which are common real causes of the radicalization of local politics.
Sometimes, we actually do that, and thus help stabilize regimes and build alliances. That’s also coupled with defense, of the infrastructure or relief efforts. That could become more of a priority for any military.
The only real military unit that I can think of that’s close to defense-only by design are the UN peacekeeping forces, but that’s the full extent of their mandate. Starfleet officers carry weapons and their ships are effectively weapons of mass destruction, so they will defend themselves and anyone who asks for protection, but there’s much more to their mission than that.
They don’t go to places to “civilize” them, to replace local culture with theirs, with the sole exception of not tolerating, well, our type of warmongering militaries. Meaning that if your “culture” is wanting to destroy other cultures, they won’t annihilate you, but they will do what they can to deter you from attacking anyone else. While never giving up on a diplomatic solution.
Which doesn’t mean empty words, by the way. Starfleet diplomacy is not telling warmongers that they’re naughty and that they really ought to reconsider. It’s about persuading the other side, in practical terms, that peaceful coexistence will be more beneficial to everyone involved.
Once you understand what science can do, there are two basic ways to go about it. An old-school militarist would decide to pursue weapons development above all, hoping that they will gain a technological edge to destroy or subjugate everyone else and steal their stuff. Cue a world war.
Someone might look at that and conclude that it was the war that brought all the technological development, that it is a net gain. Net gain to nothing, maybe. It’s not a net gain to what a period of peaceful development would do.
The second way to go about technological development doesn’t ignore weapons development, to ensure sufficient deterrence, but it focuses on areas that improve the quality of life and survivability of the whole species.
At the end of a world war, you will have big bombs and fast planes, among ruins. At the end of a peaceful development where everyone pooled their resources and lost none, you will get a computer in every pocket, in thriving megacities, for starters. Beyond that, who knows. End to aging, successful global geoengineering, and maybe a couple of colonies in space.
There’s no reason you can’t have a military-like service dedicated to the furthering and defense of that. That’s what’s inspiring about Starfleet. It’s still dangerous to be a Starfleet officer. There will still be violent conflicts. But you won’t be fighting for scraps for you, you will be fighting for abundance for everyone. Sure, this goes contrary to some people’s politics. Petty politics.
In the hypothetical Star Trek, the evils of our present are not gone. There are terrorists, criminals and prisoners, secret cabals, militaristic regimes, and cosmic terrors beyond even the Federation’s reckoning. A whole mirror universe of genocidal fascists, for that matter. And critics who have a point.
The chain of command also isn’t without issues. While Starfleet captains are the paragons of Federation ideals, admirals much less so, as they are faced with all the tough pragmatic decisions. You can’t get rid of moral dilemmas.
The reason it still works better than our militaries is that a) captains spend a lot of time on away missions out of comms range, and therefore have strong autonomy, and b) Starfleet is much less heavy-handed in punitive court marshalling, assuming the captain can defend their actions, including disobeying orders, on ethical grounds. Less obedience, more questioning.
Something also tells me that Starfleet doesn’t really do gulags or Guantanamos, or other places where to throw people with conscience, like conscientious objectors or whistleblowers, without fair trial. Not respecting basic human (or alien) dignity is definitely optional for any military.
Because that’s my point. We can have a military that has ethical goals and procedures, that respects individual conscience and dignity, and that aims to serve the whole species, not just one tribe. You don’t need a world government for that, just an alliance of states or people of good will.
Like in a world war, but not a world war against someone, a world war for something for everyone. Today, this is prevented by traditionalist inertia, archaic concepts like fixed citizenship determined by birth, and yes, the warmongering powers to which this is an existential threat.
Remember, the fascists lost the world war they started. The peacemongers won. Cooperation and freedom of thought won. Respect and diplomacy won. We just stopped there, and relegated the logical continuation of a world alliance for peace and prosperity into the realm of fiction and fantasy.
We didn’t have to do that. We can resume this “war” at any moment, assuming enough people are willing. Maybe by baby steps at first, but the internet is really the only prerequisite. For global coordination, that is. The main obstacles are division and dystopian depression. The newest weapons of the tribal warmongers, often posing as the opposite. But that’s for another article.
Regarding the internet culture war between nationalists and the so called progressives, I would just say for now that Starfleet-like military is not supposed to force everyone into a single (presumably leftist-progressive) ideology or some sort of One World Government. Look at the show.
Starfleet operates in a universe filled with different governments, which it may try to persuade to join the Federation, but it wouldn’t force them to do so. Some join, some remain neutral, some are opposed. Among the “enemies” of Starfleet are not just warmongers, it includes capitalists like the Ferengi.
Starfleet only uses violence in self-defense or defense of someone who asks for it. It doesn’t do preemptive strikes. It doesn’t do propaganda or disinformation campaigns. It doesn’t do terrorism, including terrorism as a terror state picking on weaker states. It makes mistakes, but who doesn’t.
Overall, this is a mission that I, and I imagine many of my peers, could get behind. This is the kind of military service that would be worth it. This is what’s in our best interest, including that of any particular people of any country, ultimately in the long term. It may never become a reality, but there’s nothing about reality that precludes it. If it ever does become a reality, well, sign me up.
