Eliot Cohen is a respected military historian. I have most of his books in my professional library and I was one of his students at the national defense security studies course at Syracuse at the turn of the century. However, I think he wandered off the path in a recent article for the Atlantic titled “The U.S. Needs Soldiers, Not Warriors.” In the piece, Cohen suggests that the Pentagon needs a soldier’s ethos rather than the warrior spirit that Pete Hegseth has vowed to return to the American military establishment. Professor Cohen is implying that the two mindsets are mutually exclusive.
I don’t buy into that view.
Cohen’s view of a warrior mentality is that it is self-centered and overemphasizes battle and killing at the cost of discipline (self-discipline and general good order and discipline of the force as a whole). He cites Achilles of the Trojan War as an example. Achilles sulked in his tent when his honor was…
The Latest Absurd Defense Question: Warriors or Soldiers? The Nation Needs Both. – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator
