Building a Military Culture that Molds Ethical Leaders
In a speech to graduating Air Force cadets, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, South Africa’s minister of defense, told the audience they were about to embark on a career like no other. “You have accepted the highest call to duty any citizen can ever take,” she said in June 2015. “As you pass out today, you join a unique group of South Africans, those who, instead of a normal job, have elected to serve as defenders of your country, its people and its resources.”
But, she added, the true nature of a military professional can be revealed only when he or she is tested and meets the daily hardships and ethical requirements of service. “You have been drenched in these values of honor, discipline and patriotism,” she told the graduates. “But what will they actually mean to you when you return into your world out there?”
What does it mean to be a professional? It is not a simple question. In the civilian world, a professional is someone who is trained in a field and paid to do specific work. A professional carpenter, for example, is different from someone who does a bit of woodwork around the house.
However, the term “military professional” has a more varied meaning. Professionalism begins with training and tactical expertise, but Soldiers say it goes beyond that. It also requires discipline and the ability to endure great hardships without breaking down. Some emphasize a commitment to ethics, and others point to honor, leadership qualities and a constant desire for self-improvement. These attributes and many more are part of the rich stew that makes up the professional Soldier.
There is no simple formula for creating a military professional, but looking across the literature on military training and across the globe at some of the world’s most respected fighting forces, certain commonalities arise.
A Superior Selection Process
In the essay, “Military Leadership Development: A Model for the South African National Defence Force,” Willem Erasmus and Frederik Uys of Stellenbosch University argue that to produce great leaders, their country must start by placing a heavy emphasis on the selection of officer candidates. The researchers point to the fact that applicants to the United Kingdom’s Royal Military Academy Sandhurst spend at least eight days undergoing a battery of psychological, aptitude and endurance tests to determine whether they are accepted. The U.K. has a dedicated organization, the Army Officer Selection Board, that focuses on finding the best-qualified candidates out of a large pool of applicants. Since the rates of dropout or expulsion are low at military academies, it is vital to get the selection process right at the beginning.
“The process is designed to select only those candidates whose intellect meets the required standard and, importantly, whose behavior and decision-making ability hold under conditions of stress,” they wrote.
Mentoring
Part of professional development comes from following the examples of others. In a survey of senior U.S. military officers conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership, the top developmental factor was “positive role models,” listed by 37 percent of respondents.
The U.S. Army Leadership Handbook stresses the importance of forging mentor relationships. It says they do not need to be superior-subordinate relationships and often occur between peers or between senior noncommissioned officers and junior officers. The handbook encourages younger Soldiers to seek out mentors and nurture the relationship throughout their careers.
“Soldiers who seek feedback to focus their development, coupled with dedicated, well-informed mentors, will be the foundation for embedding the concepts of lifelong learning, self-development, and adaptability into the Army’s culture,” the handbook states.
Continuous Ethical Training
Classroom training for professionalism and ethics can go only so far. Commanders have found that it is important to replicate the stress of real-world scenarios when preparing Soldiers to meet ethical challenges.
In his essay “Military Ethics: From Theory to Practice,” Brig. Gen. Benoit Royal of France says that no field exercise should take place without an ethical component. “The aim is to accustom military personnel to embedding these moral reflections within their execution of tactical actions in the field, in the midst of difficulties, under the pressure of time, weather and real stress,” he wrote. “The behavior of a Soldier in combat must be constantly influenced by the spirit and the core values we have taught them.”
Recognizing this, military trainers in the European Union Training Mission in Mali in 2015 emphasized replicating real-world ethical and humanitarian scenarios when training Malian Soldiers. This included simulated checkpoints, command decisions on protecting schools and hospitals, and drills on responding to gender-based violence. The emphasis was a response to criticism that a lack of ethics training in the Malian Armed Forces led to a breakdown of discipline during Mali’s 2012 crisis.
Training cannot end after graduation from a military academy or after basic training. It is widely accepted that skills degrade over time if they are not reinforced and refreshed. According to the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Soldiers lose about 60 percent of their skill proficiency after only 180 days without practice or retraining. “Military training is a continuous process that not only includes the learning or acquisition of initial skills … but also frequent rehearsals and practice,” wrote Abel Esterhuyse of Stellenbosch University. “The daily life of Soldiers, Airmen and Sailors is itself a process of training in which they simultaneously do their job and learn to improve their performance.”
Sharing Knowledge
Professionals in any field have the ability to contribute to the sum of knowledge used by others. This can be done through holding tutorial sessions for colleagues, writing for professional journals, or teaching at a staff college or other institution. This “feedback loop” is one way leaders are able to share best practices learned in the field.
Nigeria, for example, has made it a priority to identify exemplary students to return to its command and staff colleges to serve as instructors or “directing staff.” Candidates are evaluated based on grades, character, charisma, and mental and physical strength. Nigerian Commandant Air Vice Marshal John Ifemeje calls this rigorous process the best way for the system to regenerate itself and mold future leaders.
Oversight
To ensure accountability, many militaries create an oversight position called the military ombudsman. This person, outside of the chain of command, is charged with investigating and proposing solutions for institutional or individual problems in the armed forces. Civilians or Soldiers can bring complaints to the ombudsman without fear of reprisal.
In 2012, South Africa established the office of the ombudsman for the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and fielded 500 complaints in its first two years of operation. “My office is an independent and impartial watchdog that holds the SANDF to account, much like the media does with government,” said Ombudsman Temba Matanzima, a retired lieutenant general. “[It] is an independent, impartial third party that conducts an investigation in a fair and objective manner to ensure an accountable and transparent government.”
Retired Col. Emile Ouedraogo of Burkina Faso, an expert on military professionalism, observed that the best type of oversight is always that of a commander toward his troops. When commanders are separated by distance or do not closely supervise their subordinates, it leads to a breakdown in discipline. This phenomenon is referred to as a “gap in the chain of command.”
“A functional chain of command is a prerequisite for any military institution,” Ouedraogo wrote. “It reflects good leadership and discipline and promotes accountability.”
Merit-based Promotion
A recurring complaint in certain militaries is that promotion is tied to bloodlines and personal alliances instead of merit. Examples are countless, but Ouedraogo said the upper echelons of several prominent African militaries are filled with members of a single ethnicity, religion or regional affiliation.
“Officers under such a chain of command are more loyal to the president than to the constitution,” he wrote. “This practice undermines the professional standards of the armed forces while pitting the armed forces against one another on an ethnic basis.”
But it’s not just ethnic-bias that can be a problem. In many militaries around the world, promotion is based on years of service rather than achievement. This eliminates an incentive to excel and could actually lead high-performing officers to leave the service in frustration for not being recognized.
Professional militaries tend to have clear guidelines outlining the criteria for promotion and rules about Soldier pay, career trajectories and resource allotment, according to Natasha Ezrow and Erica Frantz, authors of the book Failed States and Institutional Decay. These standards help build bonds of trust between fellow Soldiers and with the military institution.
Ethical Documents
Professional militaries typically have a solid foundation of ethical theory enshrined in documents that instruct Soldiers on how to behave. Examples of this include the Military Covenant in the British Armed Forces and the Innere Fuhrung (Self-Directed) in Germany. For lower-ranking Soldiers, Royal of France believes it is worthwhile to have an easy-to-remember honor code that synthesizes more complex messages. For instance, the U.S. “Soldier’s Creed” is only 121 words but includes references to professionalism and loyalty to country and to fellow Soldiers. The repetition of such creeds can reinforce the importance of core values in the mind of a Soldier.
“This approach to inculcating moral values is often ritualized, but it is also directly comprehensible at even the lowest ranks, and by Soldiers on the ground, facing the complexity of combat action,” Royal wrote. The creed allows a “military organization to highlight what is considered essential ‘ground truth.’ ”
Many militaries, including the SANDF, require uniformed officers to sign a code of conduct swearing to eschew corruption, remain loyal to their country and be steadfastly nonpolitical.
Fair Payment
It might sound obvious, but one of the main incentives to corruption and unprofessional behavior for Soldiers is lack of timely or sufficient pay. Soldiers who cannot support themselves through their salaries or who see higher-ranking officers enrich themselves are more likely to resort to unethical behavior.
Dan Henk, a military researcher who studied the Botswana Defence Force (BDF), noted that the BDF’s fair payment practices offer little incentive for Soldiers to break the rules. “BDF personnel are well- and reliably paid, affording a middle-class standard of living for officers and relative comfort for other ranks,” Henk wrote. “BDF personnel can retire at the end of twenty years of service with a reasonable pension. The regularity and adequacy of remuneration significantly reduces the incentive for graft that has afflicted many other African militaries.”
Civilian Authority
One of the hallmarks of a professional military is its refusal to be politicized. The legacy of military interference in politics in Africa is a long and damaging one. According to Ouedraogo, 65 percent of Sub-Saharan countries have experienced a coup. Worse still, once the first coup occurs, it becomes increasingly likely that a second or third will follow.
Coups are not only damaging to governance and the democratic process in these countries, they are also damaging to the economy. Countries that experience military coups have a slower gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate than countries that do not. For example, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Nigeria each saw their real GDP decrease by 4.5 percent or more after coups.
“Military-led governance is likely to be ruinous for a country’s economy,” Ouedraogo wrote. “Instability deters investment and development. In contrast, non-resource-rich states that have realized the highest levels of sustained growth are almost uniformly those with few or no coups.”
Political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote that professionalism is the main factor that prevents the military from interfering in politics. In his book, The Soldier and the State, he argued that a well-functioning military should be allowed to cultivate expertise free from outside interference or political considerations. This, he wrote, will lead to greater autonomy, greater subservience to civilian rule and greater professionalism.
Esterhuyse said a professional fighting force should never get involved in politics, regardless of the temptation. “Armed forces are often seen, and regard themselves, as being above politics — apolitical in nature — since they are the repository of the national interest,” he wrote. “They guarantee the security and integrity of the state, not that of the government of the day.”
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