THE HEADLONG RUSH TO BEND the American military to the dictates of gender politics has slowed for the moment. This welcome break is owed to the year- end report of a federal advisory panel chaired by former senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker. The panel, created in response to egregious sexual- harassment scandals at Army training bases, concluded that it makes no sense to mix young men and women in basic training as is presently the practice in all of the services, the Marine Corps excepted. The result of such gender integration has been “less discipline, less unit cohesion, and more distraction from training programs.” The Kassebaum Baker report thus provides political cover to permit the Army, Navy, and Air Force to reconsider — and revitalize — their approach to training recruits.
More broadly, the committee’s findings lend credence to the notion that the combustible mixing of young men and women can complicate efforts to create effective military organizations — an insight self-evident to common folk, but rank heresy to political and academic sophisticates who insist that gender is simply a “construct.” On that score, conservatives are right to endorse the report. But in crucial respects, there is less to the Kassebaum Baker report than meets the eye.
Indeed, however commendable its core findings, the report, read in its entirety, serves primarily to underscore the impoverished state of public discourse on issues related to national security. Given a political class fairly obsessed with redressing female grievances, real or imagined, the American defense establishment can hardly ignore the subject. Indeed, irksome though it may be, negotiating an accommodation between military necessity and the vagaries of politics, however harebrained, is a democratic imperative. Yet any thoughtful consideration of what the committee calls “our gender- integrated all-volunteer force” ought to occur in a context broader than that of domestic politics. Two elements in particular should frame the discussion: U.S. strategy in the aftermath of the Cold War and the character of modern warfare. On these matters, the Kassebaum Baker panel is silent.
To be sure, the committee report acknowledges the need for military forces that are “disciplined, effective, and ready” — but it offers no specifics about what those forces are expected to do. It notes that the United States is “redefining its threats” and that the services are “revising their missions,” but gives nary a hint as to what those threats and missions might be. It credits technology with “changing how and when America defends its interests,” but does not comment on the operational implications of such developments. Most strikingly, the report avoids altogether any mention of violence or battle or war.
The point is not that an advisory committee on “Gender-Integrated Training” should assign itself responsibility for defining strategic priorities or articulating a vision of future warfare. Rather, it is that the cramped perspective and antiseptic language of the Kassebaum Baker report illustrate the reigning American preference for averting our eyes from the nastier things that the armed forces will actually be called on to do.
The insistent protestations of politicians to the contrary notwithstanding, the United States today has shouldered the responsibilities of a global hegemon. To the extent that some approximation of peace prevails in the post- Cold War world, it will do so courtesy of American power — at least such is the predominant view within the foreign-policy establishment. The rules defining that order will, it goes without saying, largely reflect the values and preferences of the United States.
Yet the Pax Americana will not be self-regulating. Turmoil and instability will embroil some parts of the world. In others, malcontents motivated by either perversity or principle will defy the rules. The chief function of the American military will be to quell disorder and discipline the mischievous.
For these purposes, a quick surgical strike or a brief intervention employing limited force might often suffice. If the past is any indicator, however, occasions will almost certainly arise that see American forces engaging in large-scale warfare against a formidable adversary. In the century now about to conclude, the United States found it necessary to do just that on five separate occasions, mobilizing its young men for great crusades on distant shores. All but one of those conflicts resulted in gut- wrenching combat, horrifying devastation, and painfully heavy losses.
The Gulf War is the apparent exception, supposedly pointing toward a new paradigm of armed conflict that Americans are uniquely well suited to dominate. The allure of this paradigm is that it seems to offer a painless way to translate American military power into continuing American political dominance. The United States not only defeats its adversary but does so in such a way that the sacrifice, devastation, and disconcerting social consequences that have been the historic byproducts of warfare shrink to insignificance. Indeed, it is this very prospect that has boosted the claims of those eager to remove barriers limiting the roles of military women. Push- button wars render the hyper-masculine warrior ethos obsolete. At least so it appeared in the jubilant aftermath of Desert Storm.
Yet it has become increasingly clear that the exception proves the rule. Saddam Hussein survives, taunting the United States with the knowledge that success in 1991 came cheaply in part because it was incomplete: The Bush administration balked at paying the price that a genuinely decisive victory would entail.
Getting rid of Saddam once and for all is likely to require that the United States (with minimal allied assistance) renew its assault on Iraq, driving on Baghdad to secure an outcome to the war more to our liking. Little evidence exists to suggest that Americans have any more stomach for such an enterprise now than they did in 1991. But Saddam is precisely the sort of malcontent that an effective hegemon cannot afford to tolerate. A second Gulf War fought to the finish is precisely the type of conflict that U.S. forces must be prepared to fight and win. The governance of the American military — including questions about the relationship between gender and the capacity of a combat force to sustain fighting power and of a nation to withstand the burdens of war — ought to be undertaken with the prospect of just such wars in mind. In that regard, the Kassebaum Baker committee comes up well short of the mark.
A. J. Bacevich is executive director of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.
