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Military ideals . . . are all founded in hard military experience; they did not find expression because some admiral got it in his head one day to set an unattainable goal for his men, or because some general wished to turn a pious face toward the public. 1
-S.L.A. Marshall
THERE IS A LOT going on in the military ideals arena today. Not within recent memory has there been such a frenzy of workshops, conferences and study sessions within the services aimed at redefining core values.2 This process is intended to remedy recent ethical lapses in the services, head off future ones and put character development on a firmer footing. Nor is the ferment confined just to ethics. If the post-Cold War era forced a radical reappraisal of the nation's grand strategic position, the information age is revolutionizing the nature of war itself. Revised Army principles and guidelines to accommodate these new strategic and warfighting realities are hot topics in today's military journals. The current "value updating" or "value reaffirmation period" is absolutely essential so we as a profession can ensure that our operative values-our military ideals-continue to provide for the nation's security.
This article assesses where the services stand today along the broad spectrum of military values and ideals. On the theory that we can better determine where we ought to go if we know where we have been, I will trace a few defining historical precedents along the path of US military value evolution. With the continuities from past to present thus established, we should gain a clearer picture of where it is wise to cling to the old and where we may venture to take up the new.
There is no single authoritative document setting forth US military ideals, nor is there even an acknowledged corpus of such documents.4 Nor, for that matter, is there an authoritative statement of what constitutes military ideals. For clarity's sake, there are several groupings that appear to be valid subsets of military ideals, recognizing that meaningful discussion will not always accommodate rigid compartmentalization along such analytic lines. Military ethics certainly fall under the broad umbrella term and we should also include ideals in operational matters, such as the conduct of war itself.5 Ideals of...