Voice The Decay of the Profession of Arms
Voice The Decay of the Profession of Arms by Major Matthew Cavanaugh, Foreign Policy’s Best Defense
The Profession of Arms is decaying (weakening or fraying — as opposed to a relative decline), and the primary causes are neglect, anti-intellectual bias, and a creeping, cancerous bureaucracy.
Permit me to explain, to diagnose the patient's condition, in order to arrive at a common understanding of the illness. Let's begin with the Profession of Arms: This is society's armed wing, principally charged with guarding the safety and interests of that society. In some way, every political entity must use force or at least threaten to use force for it to survive in the international system. The members of the Profession of Arms are the custodians of the specific military knowledge that enables national survival. As Don Snider has put it, these commissioned members have one critical function, which is to successfully provide "the repetitive exercise of discretionary judgment[s] … of high moral content." In essence this is military judgment, which today is decaying and being compromised through apathy, disregard for intellect, and a mammoth bureaucracy…
