Army Fundamentals

ARMY FUNDAMENTALS: From Making Soldiers to the Limits of the Military Instrument

Edited by B.K. Greener

Massey University Press, 2017, 282pp.

ISBN 978-0-9941407-3-9

This collection of essays is very much the proverbial curate’s egg, good in parts. Its first failing, unfortunately, comes with the title. One might think that the Army fundamental would be war fighting, but much of the volume focuses on the military contribution to peacekeeping. That said, there are some useful essays, though the academic writing style can make them heavy reading.

The essays Making Soldiers and The Unmaking of Officers, are among the most useful. In the former, Dr Nina Harding recounts her experiences and conclusions after being embedded with New Zealand (NZ) Army trainees through ‘BASSick’ (not ‘BAYsick’) training. The importance of ‘fully internalis[ing] the soldier identity’ is emphasised throughout the essay, and was fully accepted by both the trainees and the author. The trainees saw this process as ‘building them up’. In contrast, the officer cadet studied by Maike Guesgen could not internalise this identity, and did not complete his course. The experience of the ‘Kippenberger’ commissioning scheme suggests that recruiting potential officers from university students could not replace institutions such as ADFA or the RMC of Australia.

Samantha Morris’ essay Reconsidering Military Identities uses the NZ Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan to consider ‘how military identity is challenged, reinforced or remade by … tasks … not traditionally … core military activities’. She notes that NZ Army personnel involved focussed on two identities, the Anzac identity and one of military professionalism.

The former is seen as ‘ordinary men and women’ stepping forward to complete tasks using their inherent skills in an ‘everyman’ soldier-civilian identity. The professional identity focuses more on a ‘career discourse’, a ‘job rather than a duty or service to their country’. Morris sees humanitarian tasks as the way of the future, with the Anzac spirit modified by the professional one, albeit this could civilianise the military, and challenge military identity.

Peter Greener summarises international perspectives of New Zealander peacekeepers. He stresses the importance of Maori/Pakeha bi-culture to the NZDF’s success operating in a range of cultures. He does note, however, a language problem. It seems that many nominally English speakers had difficulty understanding New Zealanders!

Michael Lauren reviews the record of the PRT in Afghanistan. As does Peter Greener, he gives credit to the Maori/Pakeha bi-culture for the success of the Team. However, he notes the tension with some NGOs, based on their generic suspicion of the military. Non-military groups had a particular suspicion of actions to enhance security. Afghans were, however, more accepting of greater security!

The essays by Beth Greener and Kiri Stevens on Peacekeeping and Masculinities and Jane Derbyshire on Women in the Armed Forces address the role of armed forces in peacekeeping and the place of women in the NZDF.

Greener and Stevens make useful points about the difference between biologically determined sex and gender (a social construct, perhaps with psychological elements). They suggest that NZ soldiers are becoming comfortable with a less masculine approach to their duties. Noting that feminist authors ascribe quite different traits to masculine and feminine genders, they see feminine gender traits as more appropriate for peacekeeping.

Derbyshire dismisses ‘concerns about women’s physical ability and … the necessity of separate accommodation’. She does not make the clear distinction between sex and gender as Greener and Stevens, referring to ‘gender stereotypes’ when she might mean sex stereotypes. Derbyshire considers female traits critical to development of peace and security.

Josh Wineera’s essay complements those by Harding and Guesgen. He sees rote learning, widely used by Western armed forces, remaining important, but not always appropriate. Apparently the change from rote to self-directed learning, under the theory of andragogy, should enable soldiers to ‘think critically, conceptually and even creatively’. It would be surprising had such skills been ignored previously! Wineera describes NZ efforts to use non-rote training methods to make instructional efforts more appropriate for adult students from different cultures.

W.J. Fish, Beth Greener, Harding and Cameron Sigley address the Limits of the Military Instrument. After several pages considering what military forces ‘can’ do, they suggest that while they might potentially have the skills to carry out police work, the perspective of the police indicates that broad experience, which soldiers would not usually have, is also essential.

They note that police and soldiers operate under different ethos; to operate successfully as police, soldiers would have to become police. The role of the infantry, quoted by the authors, ‘to seek out and close with the enemy, to kill and capture him, to seize and hold ground, to repel attack, by day and night, regardless of season, weather or terrain’, is contradictory to the police ethos.

The authors of this collection seem to conclude that soldiers are not necessarily the best peacekeepers, as to the extent they modify their military ethos, they become less effective soldiers, without necessarily becoming better peacekeepers. A possible exception seems to be those soldiers who have a ‘feminine gender’ perspective (some of whom might be biologically male). This might not have been what they expected!

JOHN DONOVAN