Citizen Soldier
Abstract
In response to a recent essay in the Australian Army Journal, which continued the current debate about ‘Cultural Awareness’, this article examines the place of the Australian soldier in the community.1 It questions whether it is counterproductive to remove the soldier from the very community that could teach him the valuable skills in human relations he needs on operations. The author draws examples from current recruiting and accommodation practices, pre-deployment training, recent operations and current ethical discourse.
With the current thirst for cultural awareness in the operational theatre, and the growing acknowledgment of the gap between that ambition and the reality, the question needs to be asked whether we are doing the mission a disservice by increasingly isolating the soldier from the community, and thereby diminishing his culture.
Colonel Michael Lehmann’s recent article on the subject2 makes the point that cultural awareness includes ‘... an awareness of one’s own culture and the way this influences perceptions of what the “other bloke” is doing’.3 This point reveals an unfortunate fact of the modern soldier—that his culture is manufactured, and likely to prevent him from achieving the depth of human engagement required by the mission. Moreover, that this awareness of one’s own culture is ‘...the baseline against which we often subconsciously consider others’ actions’,4 could be alarmingly predictive of inappropriate behaviour and possibly poor judgment. This manufactured culture is unlikely to dissipate if we continue to maintain several practices.
Recruiting
The main effort for current Army recruiting campaigns is played to non-captive audiences within the community. This is to say the target audience is not, at the time of the message broadcast, demonstrating a previous interest towards military life (like at a career exposition, for example). This means that the Army is relying on the message appealing to the citizen who is otherwise occupied. However, even at this early stage of a potential military career, the message seems to portray a slightly superior air.5 While this attracts an ambitious candidate, it starts to alienate the soldier from the civilian; but it is those civilian traits that we are now saying we need. We even try to give them back to the soldier later in his training. It must also be asked whether this concept of superiority, rather than elevating the position of ‘soldier’ in the community, might actually provoke resentment.
Oddly enough Army Reserve recruiting messages have always emphasised the ‘normality’ of military life, making it possible for the civilian to slip in and out of the role with ease. Both messages claim Army life as a profession, but market one as ‘pro community’ and the other ‘elite’. The interested candidate may well wonder what, other than the environment, makes this job so superior to his own. He may also make the decision to sign up for part time service, lest he lose his civilian identity to this ‘elite’ force. We cannot expect the soldier in theatre to demonstrate any understanding of his enemy’s community, if we strip him of his own.
Accommodating
Current Defence housing policy requires single members to ‘live-in’ barracks for the first twelve months, and then offers a choice to most: to continue living in the barracks, or to find accommodation in the surrounding community.6 Rental Allowance is generally available to single members if there is no suitable live-in accommodation, and because many capital cities are currently experiencing low rental markets, ‘living-in’ is in demand. Because of this situation, single accommodation facilities are springing up everywhere, as seen in the three recent latest barracks redevelopments.7 All three projects include concentration of single accommodation built within the perimeter of the barracks. Population concentration of this kind is always something of a social experiment, and will have different degrees of success depending on the demographic of both the soldiers and the supporting community. Previous onsite initiatives include the building of impressive sports bars within Lavarack Barracks, to curb soldiers’ constant trips into the city. It was a manufactured social scene; the soldiers voted with their feet, and the deserted bars were closed down.
The latest accommodation project is nearing completion at Gallipoli Barracks, Brisbane. What is most concerning about these rather gloomy monoliths is not that they are shut off from the lively, multicultural community right outside the front gate, but that they do not offer the soldier any community inside the front gate. An already overcrowded barracks will put accommodation where it fits; in Gallipoli Barracks, that means near the communal facilities on the main roads. The result is a complete lack of privacy for occupants, affording little or no distinction between the end of the working day and the beginning of leisure. Now, the soldier, returning ‘home’ at the end of the day, has neither retreat from the glare of the barracks population, nor opportunity to commune with colleagues, because he has his own bathroom, kitchenette and fully wired entertainment hub. He does not have to shop, cook, clean, pay bills, walk dogs, or talk to anybody. Thus he withdraws to his virtual life.
This isolation may have worked for the soldier who was sent to ‘seek out and close with the enemy’, but this is the ‘Strategic Corporal’. This is the one we send to the shura,8 who negotiates the water contract, who talks to the parent of the son killed by a roadside bomb, who questions the child who has witnessed atrocities. We are putting the soldier in danger, and the mission in compromise, when we send this cloistered individual to the complex human terrain that is today’s battlefield.
Likewise, the married member is not immune from the cloister. The ‘married patch’ may be further from the barracks perimeter, but becomes its own ghetto, with lack of individual identity and constant turnover of occupants. There is need neither for friendships, nor community responsibility. There is certainly no history. Many short moves make community integration almost impossible. Families and individuals desiring community integration expend much energy, only to be disappointed on both sides. The member is disillusioned that they are not accepted, and the community is disrupted by another fly-by-night military posting. The familiarity of the barrack room and the ‘married patch’ becomes irresistible.
Training
The effect of this isolation has become evident in preparation for deployment. Combat Training Team observations of Mission Rehearsal Exercises reveal that soldiers arrive at the final preparation stage with little understanding of what human interaction skills are required, and scant ability to adapt their style to their audience.9 We sit our soldiers in a classroom and teach them ‘personal liaison skills’, while outside the community liaises like mad. Logically, the next step is to adopt a simulated liaison training tool, like the one currently on trial with the US Army.10 In this type of training, the student plays the part of a US Army officer chairing a local meeting with a group of computer simulated local elders.
In one campaign the student is tasked with understanding why a US built marketplace is not being used. The student must gather information on the social relationships among the characters in the scenario.11
The student must also establish his or her own relationships with these characters and be sensitive to the character’s cultural conventions.12
The argument for the success of training aids like these is the familiarity the student feels for the simulated environment; but the whole point of social relations is that they involve real people with unexpected responses. These responses are influenced by more factors than just reaction to the other person’s comments. To his detriment the soldier will discover that the local elders are flesh and blood. Australian soldiers training for meetings and interviews regularly use role players,13 but too often these come from within the uniformed community. We need to keep asking whether this is the most robust preparation we can give our soldiers for the human task ahead.
Deploying
The Australian Defence Force deployment now comes in three standard lengths: four, six or eight months.14 It is designed to suit the deployed force, rather than the receiving nation. It promotes sustainability, which guarantees a lengthy commitment, but not necessarily a successful one. The cultural awareness reached during such a deployment is limited by the soldier’s time in theatre, access to the community, rules of engagement and location of his accommodation; yet the ‘Adaptive Army’ requires him to be a ‘tactical ambassador ... achieving the appropriate degree of empathy and engagement with the population.’15 Furthermore, we understand that ‘all personnel in theatre (including inter-agency elements and service providers) must be empowered with basic cultural, social and language skills...’.16 Let us address this question of language skills first.
Currently, Operation ASTUTE in Timor-Leste is running out of linguists. Not only has the abundance of Tetum speakers seen ten years ago in the Army seemingly disappeared, but when a speaker is found for a position, he has often not had the required security clearance, specialist training or physical ability for the job. Not having a language is a problem, but having the wrong language is another. Despite the best efforts of Dili-based staff to communicate to locals in Tetum, everyone under 30 years of age (including, importantly, the civilians employed on service contracts) wanted to speak Indonesian. Older ADF staff who had come from the era when the default second language for ADF was Indonesian, suddenly found themselves highly sought after. Moreover, the language that is most needed in Operation ASTUTE now is Portuguese. As the mission turns from security to nation-building, the language best suited to the mechanism of Timor-Leste governance, the language taught to and spoken by Timor-Leste army and police officers, the official language of the country, and the language of the most important bilateral partner—Portugal—is not being cultivated with enough vigour. Thus the Adaptive Army soldier (who teaches himself Pashto while in Timor-Leste) is not empowered with these ‘basic cultural, social and language skills’.17
As financial and temporal pressures force us to restrict the soldier’s training for the war, the cultural awareness gap tends to be filled by specialists in civil-military relations (sometimes at great risk), or resident diplomatic staff, both of whom are in country for longer than an ADF rotation. The approach to deployment may be better served by a custom made length, as it is with a custom made force—but how could we do this?
Despite initial statements of intent regarding duration of deployment, it is very difficult to project the outcome of a force lodgement. We would like to assume that operations such as evacuations, recoveries and disaster relief have an end-state sufficiently well defined to plan an exit date. However, this is not the case for stability operations, humanitarian assistance and nation-building. These are operations for which we are often at the request of a third party, need to plan for long-term sustainment, and need to be prepared to react to an escalation of violence or unforeseen event.18 These are also the operations requiring the deeper level of human engagement we now promote.
What we have found in this long period of high operational tempo is that having completed a dozen or so rotations, we find ourselves still there with the same force. This has fortified our deployment cycle mastery, but perhaps not achieved the optimum result in theatre.19 It certainly has required an intense period of lead-up training, followed by a standard deployment length, regardless of job.20
This perhaps does not give the soldier sufficient exposure to the nations culture to do the tasks we now require of him. On the other hand, there are other Australians in theatre who do seem to have a deeper level of human engagement. These workers have developed their understanding over longer, less intense, sustained periods of time. They are the contractors who work month on / month off; and the diplomatic staff and non-government organisation representatives who live and work in country for a number of years. They are certainly reliant on someone else for security, but they maintain the duration of the mission by deploying accompanied by their families, or fly home regularly to see them. In Operation ASTUTE, The Defence Cooperation Program goes someway to solve this problem. The ADF members posted to this program live in country longer, are embedded within Timor-Leste Defence Force, may in some instances be accompanied by their families, and are beginning to address the language gap. Their supporting force, however, is isolated from them by a strict rotational model. By designing the deployment to fit the mission in the manner of contractors and non-government organisations, we depart from the primary function of the armed force and start to enter the domain of other agencies;21 however, the tasks we now ask of ourselves must cross those inter-agency boundaries.
Inter-Agency Operations
It is through our relationships with other agencies that we can get a head start on understanding more of our own culture, and how to work with others. Working with other agencies is a free gift in terms of developing human communication skills, by being around people whose jobs exist wholly within the community.
Domestic Event Support Operations (DESO) provide great opportunities to practice this. As stated by Brigadier Andrew Smith, the characteristics of DESO include the forces being ad hoc, and almost always acting in support of leading civil agencies.22 This means inter-agency standard operating procedures need to be put in place quickly. Good standing relationships between key personnel within the agencies, a common vocabulary, and a history of working together will assist this. National Security Advisor Duncan Lewis suggests making this ad hoc arrangement more formal, with inter-agency secondments, and a possible Security Academy.23
Despite civil primacy, Army leads the way again and again in DESO because of our strength in rapidly effecting operational teams of virtual strangers through common language and procedures. During Operation TESTAMENT24 it was immediately apparent that Army’s decision cycle was spinning much faster than those of other government agencies which were not used to working in such a time critical environment. Army tasks were successfully completed with minimum but sufficient planning, effective communications and timely logistics. The reason for this success was largely due to the operations proximity to the previous DESO, Operation DELUGE,25 and the personnel chosen for the job. In fact, the lead security agency for Operation TESTAMENT, the New South Wales Police Service, specifically requested Army personnel who had worked on Operation DELUGE to work in their Joint Operations Centre. Like DESO, the success of long-term engagement in regional nation-building operations is true inter-agency operations coordinated at government level.
The second personnel success during Operation TESTAMENT was achieved through the use of Reservists. The more successful Reservists were the ones whose civilian roles were associated with one of the agencies working on the operation—they could speak both languages. The less successful Reservists were the ones who were performing a role foreign to both their civilian and Reservist professions—they could speak neither language. Here is a situation where the soldier’s experience as a citizen must surely shine; however, the least successful regular Army members were those who had no inter-agency experience, and very little concept of community events.
Even greater was the Reservist role on Operation ASTUTE. The Combined Operations Liaison Team (COLT) was an essential unit within JTF631. These ADF Liaison Officers were dispatched to organisations such as UNHQ, UNPOL, Timor-Leste Police, Timor-Leste Defence Force, Australian Federal Police and international non-government organisations. These officers were mostly Reservists on full-time duty, trained in civil-military relations and from a similar civilian profession, which gave them a common vocabulary with their host agency. The COLT model works well and can teach us lessons in cultural preparation and operation.
The Role
The role of the soldier as citizen is by no means a contemporary or easy issue. Classical authors make the important connection between citizen and soldier within a democracy.26 Modern philosophy sustains the dialogue of that relationship between Church, State and Military and since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, there has been constant ethical debate about the moral obligations of the soldier in a war among the people.
In defining a ‘good citizen’ today, we would probably echo classical sentiments with words like ‘responsible’, ‘ethical’ and ‘just’, and we can probably say that there is an expectation from the public that servicemen will uphold these values, as will others in public service. Dr Tom Frame sees a distinct difference between the way the soldier and the police officer are perceived by the Australian public.27 These reasons revolve around the degree of influence the police, as opposed to the soldier, has on their lives. The police officer is visible every day, because his domain is local crime, and it is widely agreed that he should fight it. The soldier’s domain is, by and large, outside Australia, and it is much debated whether he should be fighting it or not. The soldier is an instrument of government, but also politics, and he is certainly not as visible to the community as he once was.
The soldier and community need to be, in fact, mutually supporting. The presence of the soldier promotes the fundamental questions of human existence—’what is justice, is anything worth an ultimate sacrifice of life, what or whom shall I serve, is killing ever permitted...?’28 The community, as a voting body, decides on a government which will use the army in domestic and foreign policy. The community also ultimately produces the individuals for the army, and therefore has a responsibility to cultivate the optimum candidate. ‘Armies do not provide the main influence on their soldiers,’ says Jim Wallace. ‘Society will have had him for at least 16–19 years longer.’29 The soldier is in some ways their investment.
The problem lies in the separation. Exclusion is necessary for security, safety in training and indoctrination, and has been for thousands of years. The soldier has to play both roles simultaneously: soldier and citizen. He must live under two sets of codes: a military law and the civil law. The Reservist is often touted as the dual professional, but the regular soldier is perhaps more so. This is not an easy duality. It is why we have a Department of Veteran’s affairs. It is why we have transition seminars for separating personnel. It is why Returned Service League clubs thrive. Exclusion is necessary. However, we must now ask if we can breed robust humanity in such an environment. With a fairly narrow arc of dissent in the barracks, how well can we expect the character of the soldier to develop? The soldier must ultimately be prepared to sacrifice his life, but without a clear idea of what he is sacrificing it for (that only he can decide), then he becomes the extremist form of the professional soldier—the mercenary.
Exclusion has revealed only glimpses of the soldier to the community. The moments are fleeting, ceremonial and often tragic. They include ramp ceremonies for the return of bodies, ANZAC day parades, brief visits by leaders, and sometimes atrocities. The community also witnesses the soldier alleviating a natural disaster. For a century, embedded journalists have increasingly enabled the community to see the reality of the soldier on operations. The saturation has now reached ‘participatory’ level. These images carry the risk of placing the soldier in a confusing context.30 In Tom Frame’s words, ‘Even those who have never worn a military uniform are now war veterans ... television has made combatants of them all.’31
The absence of the soldier from the community is having an effect on the way the young generation perceives the Profession of Arms. With the recent resurgence of interest in Australian military history and ‘battlefield tourism’, and without contemporary role models, there is a real fear of creating a ‘digger mythology’ based on images of Gallipoli, rather than today’s fight.
The Attitude
At the beginning of the current operational frenzy, the Australian Defence Force placed a high regard on understanding other cultures. Being able to speak a language, witnessing ceremonies and rituals, and knowing appropriate methods of communication enriched your life and gave you an advantage in your career. Sadly it has started to be replaced by a disdain, a kind of cynicism, even by persons who have not yet deployed. Relying only on the (traumatic) experiences of those who have returned, soldiers are deploying with ingrained bias, an Arabic phrase book and hoping for the best. What chance does the operation have? And what closed camp allowed this before he deployed? If he is the tactical ambassador, then he is answerable to his nation and his community.
If we make small changes to the status of the soldier in society, the performance of the soldier will follow. These changes start at recruiting: time to stop elitism. Let us allow and enable the soldier to live in the community, in some cases in the neighbourhood which raised him. The more he sees of his neighbours, and the more they see of him, will make the human aspects of his job easier. It may also strengthen his purpose. Let him train with real people of different ages, creeds and emotions. Let him live on deployment, amongst the people, for sufficient time to understand them. Let him make a comparative and social study of the environment in which he lives and in which he fights. If he is resolved to fight, he needs to know why.
It is a somewhat hardened army, hardened not by horror and atrocity, but perhaps by losing itself in a gargantuan coalition force, that returns from the battlefield now.
It would be a pity if the spirit of the innovative and cunning Australian soldier was suffocated by this disengaged military machine. That spirit needs to be supported by both the Australian Defence Force and the community, so that we remain the force of choice, rather than just another force. Moreover, we need to review our insistence that the soldier, because of the unique nature of his duties, must be protected and isolated from the community.
About the Author
Major Cate Carter has served as an Australian Intelligence Officer for fifteen years. She has recently returned from Timor-Leste as the J2 of the International Stabilisation Force, and has been posted to the 16th Aviation Brigade, the Defence Intelligence Training Centre, Land Warfare Development Centre, Deployable Joint Force Headquarters, and the 1st Intelligence Battalion. Currently undertaking graduate studies in International Relations, Major Carter is currently posted to Army Headquarters working in the area of Network Enabled Warfare.
Endnotes
1 Gender specific pronouns are used throughout the text to represent my target group of the Australian Soldier being male and aged between 18 and 30. This by no means omits the wider demographic of Army personnel from being affected by my conclusions.
2 Colonel Michael Lehmann, ‘Military Operations in the 21st Century: A Cultural Cringe?’, Australian Army Journal, Vol. V, No. 3, Summer 2008.
3 Ibid., p. 16.
4 Ibid., p. 23.
5 Recent themes include ‘Have you got what it takes?’ ‘Challenge yourself’ and ‘Rise’.
6 PACMAN, Chapter 7, Part 3, Div 1: ‘Suitable living-in accommodation’, Department of Defence, December 2009.
7 Single Living Environment and Accommodation Precinct accommodation projects have been implemented at Holsworthy Barracks, RAAF Amberley and Gallipoli Barracks. When finished, they will include 1395 individual, self contained rooms, each with ensuite, meal preparation area, internet, phone connections, car park and secure storage facilities. More information can be found at <http://www.woodsbagot.com/en/Pages/SingleleapPhase1H01sworthyEnoggeraRAAFAmberley.aspx> and <http://www.defence.gov.au/id/sla/sla_forumQ&A.htm.SingleleapFAQs>.
8 ‘Shura’ is Arabic for consultation and contextually refers to a meeting between tribal elders in the Afghanistan Area of Operations.
9 Battle Command Wing of Combat Training Centre (CTC) writes, conducts and observes Mission Rehearsal Exercises for all deploying units as part of force preparation. Discussions with Operations staff from CTC throughout 2007 and 2008 revealed various cases of soldiers’ lack of understanding of host cultures or the need to adapt their own behaviour to suit.
10 ELECT BiLAT is a simulation tool currently on trial with the US Army. Designed for a recruiting purpose, it has been adopted by soldiers preparing for deployment to the Middle Eastern theatre, and anticipating bilateral negotiation.
11 ‘ ELECT BiLAT’, Institute for Creative Technologies, <http://ict.usc.edu/projects/elect_bilat>, accessed on 7 February 2009.
12 Ibid.
13 The Defence Intelligence Training Centre has extensively used paid civilian actors to play roles in security interview training; and Australian Intelligence regularly uses linguists (civilian and uniformed) to play roles in tactical questioning training.
14 The standard deployment for formed bodies has now been extended from six to eight months. Staff officers deploying individually as part of a headquarters generally deploy for six months. Aviation units and Reservists deploy for four months.
15 Head Capability Development Army, ‘Adaptive Campaigning 2009–Realising an Adaptive Army’, Version 19, 7 November 2008, p. 20.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 The 11 February 2008 shooting of Timor-Leste President, Jose Ramos Horta, was one such event where deployed Australian forces assisted in both the evacuation of the president and security operations immediately following the incident.
19 In General Sir Rupert Smith’s essential reading, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, Penguin, London, 2005, p. 374, he says, ‘In international affairs we tend to place the highest priority on what we do rather than on what will achieve our ultimate object.’
20 An exception to this is the Australian Army Aviation deployment, which is structured around aircraft deeper maintenance schedules which are not performed in theatre. This is still a deployment to suit the deployed force, rather than the supported nation.
21 DFAT, AFP and AusAID, are examples of other agencies that have a primary task of liaison, training and mentoring nation populations during humanitarian operations.
22 Headquarters 7 Brigade Training Publication, Domestic Event Support Operations, Version 2, 30 July 2007, p. 8
23 Duncan Lewis, Keynote address, Chief of Army Exercise, (CAEX08), Brisbane Convention Centre, November 2008.
24 Operation TESTAMENT was the name given to the ADF support to World Youth Day (WYD08), held in Sydney 15–20 July 2008.
25 Operation DELUGE was the name given to the ADF support to the APEC Conference, held in Sydney, mainly 2–9 September 2007.
26 Socrates, Aristotle and Plato all wrote about the characteristics of the good citizen, and the relationship between the city and the military. See Plato’s Republic, Wordsworth Editions, Ware (Hertfordshire), 1997, about the role of the ‘phulakoi’ or guardians of the city.
27 Tom Frame, Living by the Sword? The Ethics of Armed Intervention, University of NSW Press, 2004, p. 199.
28 John P Hittinger, ‘The Soldier and the Citizen: Lessons from Plato and Aristotle’, Joint Services Centre on Professional Ethics Conference, 1995, <http://www.usafa.edu/isme/> accessed on 5 February 2009.
29 Brigadier (Retd) Jim Wallace, ‘Torture – Whose Fault Really?’ The Canberra Times, 10 May 2004.
30 Dan Baschiera, ‘Defence Force “should help fight fires’”, The Age, 11 February 2009.
31 Frame, Living by the Sword? The Ethics of Armed Intervention, p. 53.
