Perspectives on the Military

One of the things that differs most in the various countries that I’ve lived in is the armed forces – their size, purpose, reputation and impact. I think these differences are rather revealing and carry lessons for humanity.

I was brought up in the UK, a large traditional military power, indeed one with an empire, albeit rapidly declining. The top brass are very much part of the establishment and retain sizeable influence, for example in the continuing MI5 inspired gibberish that makes its way into The Economist every so often. The military is considered a worthy career, and remains segregated, with most officers recruited from military families and the posh schools: I endured a series of military recruitment lectures at school and we were all forced into playing toy soldiers. As a matured, sadly the reality of the UK military became dominated by a hopeless endeavour in Northern Ireland. That latest humiliation has had the beneficial side effect of inducing some humility into military strategy.

In Sweden, the military was rather an oddity in this deeply pacifist non-NATO nation, and were almost an extension of the police as a civil defence corps, despite the proximity of Russia and the aggressive behaviour of its submarines. As a result, the police and the military became genuinely polite and service minded, never abusing power and with high female penetration before anybody else.

The Norwegians were more proud of their military history, so a military career was more popular there, with a strong bent towards guerrilla defence and external peace keeping. There remains a confidence that not even the Russians would find it easy to invade Norway.

With their scale, geography and history, the Dutch have no such confidence, merely a goal to be strong professional allies to its partners and in its global peace keeping role, where, like Norwegians, they more than pull their weight. It is an unusual career, and one more likely chosen by someone also considering an NGO than someone looking for combat.

No doubt my perception would be different if I had lived in a state where the military often runs the country, or where surveillance is common, or where there is a history of coups. Pakistan, Thailand and Russia come to mind, as does much of Africa. Sadly, China, which achieved much of its growth without resorting to excessive domestic intolerance, is rapidly sliding, as witnessed by the disgrace in XinJiang.

Then there is the US. Here the military is revered. Since 9/11, that reverence extends to what are called first responders, mainly meaning the service and police. It is taboo to criticise these institutions, or their members or veterans, whose image is one of courageous service to a free nation. It is a wonderful marketing coup, and I believe it is very damaging.

The military are major investors in TV advertising. Occasionally in the UK, there would be recruitment commercials, which are fair enough, but in the US it goes much further, a very questionable use of taxpayer money. The military are very smart in sponsoring a lot of sport, consumers of which are a good target audience for them. Sponsorship enables commercials and other brand benefits, and, whether spontaneous or ordered, that extends to endorsements by players and commentators. There may be a segment in an NFL game where a player thanks the military for defending our country and our freedom that makes our great game possible. Commentators spout the same stuff, just more frequently.

What rubbish! It is ridiculous to suggest that the NFL would not exist without the military. Ireland has no real military, but hurling and Gaelic football thrive. Soccer is strong even in Russia. Venezuelans are quite good at baseball.

I have no problem with the use of commercials to encourage recruitment. I have little problem with the branding of military people as driven by service, even though that is only marginally true; most join primarily for the superior pay, training and pensions. But I have a big problem with the relentless branding of the military as defenders of liberty and the American way of life, without whom everything would collapse. That is dangerous nonsense.

I believe a society with military attitudes and approaches is usually a worse society. There are several reasons and manifestations for this.

Most obviously, military spending crowds out other spending. The US invests 3.5% of GDP on its military, despite have almost no obvious threat to its shores (yet it still labels the spending defence and somehow we swallow it). True, some of the money goes on wages to people needing jobs, some on equipment that keeps other honest souls gainfully employed, and some on innovative research. But what an inefficient way to spend so much money! Imagine if the jobs were carers, the equipment on education and the research into health. Instead, much gets blown up on battlefields or spent treating unnecessary veteran illnesses.

Next, military decisions are usually bad ones. The track record of the uber-resourced US military since 1945 is truly lamentable, from Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Shockingly awful policies have been executed terribly with disastrous consequences. They are always fighting the previous war with out-dated methods. If you include the CIA, the track record becomes even worse and immoral. We are led to believe that building ever more nuclear bombs has been the reason that we haven’t all been destroyed by nuclear bombs.

More subtly, military attitudes usually lead to bad places. The first step usually identifies enemies and the home team, to give a purpose for all the resources. Enemy threats are simplified and exaggerated, to the extent that we were led to believe that all Russians were evil. Military thinking always simplifies, and that is toxic when it comes to the home team. They overlook that borders are not fixed, that alliances can be subtle and change, and that personal loyalties are complex, as in the case of immigrants or a diaspora, not to mention white nationalists or homosexuals. Even a nation can be a fluid idea, but a military attitude hates ambiguity and encourages simplified boxes – almost always in a counter-productive way. Having defined friends and foes, a military mind set will set a goal of control, subservience or elimination rather than tolerance or inclusion or learning.

Next, military methods are usually suboptimal. Hierarchy and compliance are emphasised, priorities that encourage abuse of power, constrain innovation and are slow to recognise and embrace trends. It is a masculine way of thinking that might be good at putting out a fire but certainly doesn’t promote diversity or humanity or challenging shibboleths.

The military approach pervades the rest of society. Nations with a military attitude elect generals as political leaders, usually disastrously. An over-strong military can lead to an over-equipped and intolerant police force. Criminal justice policy can become austere. Trade can be viewed suspiciously. There is a habit of declaring war on all sorts of threats like drugs and doing much harm as a direct result. And majoritarian nationalism can flourish in such environments. All these weaknesses are evident in the USA.

I believe history supports my thesis that military is usually bad, notwithstanding what we are all taught about World War II. Just one example - Hilary Mantel displays the genius of Cromwell as somebody putting trade above war. If you look at nations that have punched above or below their weight over the last 50 years, the degree of military attitude feels like a correlating factor – just consider Singapore or Pakistan, Canada or Saudi Arabia.

So when Trump and NATO bang on about increasing defence spending I am a serious sceptic. Since 1960, global military spending has roughly halved as a share of GDP, and that has contributed to an age of rapid development. It would be a disaster if that trend reversed, but sadly that outcome is all too likely.

Still, at least we’ll be safe if we keep building lots more nuclear weapons. Perhaps.

I wish a joyful Christmas and peaceful 2020 to everybody.

Three Strikes and you are out

The polarisation is so deep in US society that I rarely meet anybody who might consider voting for Trump in 2020. True, one doesn’t brooch the subject of politics in polite society, so I might miss a few lurking MAGA’s hiding in plain sight. But I don’t think there are all that many. This is one of many factors that entrench that same polarisation, because we are not exposed to the other view even if we try to find it. Liberal periodicals are full of articles of brave journalists venturing to middle America earnestly trying to find out what (beyond lazy assumptions about racism) might fuel the other team: few resulting pieces read convincingly to me. I fear the other side don’t even look very hard, because they see liberal bias in everything they despise about establishment culture, and use that as fuel to become yet more stubborn.

I fully acknowledge that I am guilty of my own prejudice in the way I framed that last paragraph. My team are right, yet earnest and accommodating, while the other team just have their heads buried in the sand. They no doubt think the same of me. Such is our predicament.

Still, I tried an experiment of working out how I might use precious moments with someone who might actually be a possible Trump voter but might listen to me. These people might exist; actually I think I know one of them. My theory is that if meet Trumpers we tend to waste our opportunity, because we immediately display disrespect for them and lose our ability to articulate, such is our overwhelming disgust at the litany of the man’s sins. So out spews an incoherent mess that could be summarised as “it’s obvious, you cretin”. Strangely enough, that probably does not help to swing this poor waverer into my column.

So here is the elevator speech. I think there are three strikes. Take them together and the man should be voted out without any balancing consideration.

The first strike is the climate emergency. Isn’t it obvious by now that this is a slow moving wreck for humanity? OK, so the science is confusing and has a wide range of error, and environmental activists can be a bit of a pain in the butt with their cries for us to return to caves and subsistence living (all the time enjoying their comfortably central heated first world lives made possible by fossil fuels). True, if my Michigan factory has just been taken over by some Chinese who have laid most folk off and removed benefits from everybody else, I might have more pressing concerns. True, every politician equivocates and accepts messy compromises and lies and poses and generally fails when it comes to climate leadership.

But Trump is in a category of his own. He is actively stoking the crisis, and doing it brazenly just to spite his elitist enemies. Withdrawing from Paris may have been largely symbolic, but, wow, what a symbol. It might have been just about tenable as a negotiating ploy, if followed up by any sort of negotiation to amend the deal. Instead, we have climate erased from the website, non-participation in any discussion of the subject, and subsidies for coal, condemning his own supporters to early deaths and everybody else’s kids to a constrained life and possibly worse.

We are all a little bit guilty here. Intelligent people still refer to the climate crisis as an afterthought or as one item halfway down a list, rather than the emergency it is becoming. If I had a vote this week in the UK, I would vote green, unless I could be persuaded that my vote might tactically swing a marginal race. Isn’t it time that more of us took this line? But even if we don’t go that far yet, we can’t in all consciousness accept a leader who actively feeds that crisis. Surely that is the big picture in 2020, and any stuff about stock markets and China and abortion shouldn’t obscure that big picture? Strike one.

Strike two is the mess that is US foreign policy. All of the risks to Americans (and everybody else) have become graver as a direct result of Trump, with absolutely nothing on the positive side of the ledger. Start with the underreported story of nuclear proliferation, especially with Russia. Treaties have been left to rot, with the obvious consequences of loss of trust and proliferation. Of course Russia cheats and must be stood up to, but it is a dereliction of duty to just complain, then shrug, then walk away and spend. That only leads to accidents and eventual crisis.

Then look at everywhere else there are nuclear weapons. The Iran policy has only strengthened Iran (and Lockheed Martin’s sales to the paragon that is Saudi Arabia), the North Korea so-called policy has just encouraged the boy, and strengthened China, and the India policy has rekindled Kashmir and made war with Pakistan more likely. These are not mere human rights disasters; these are direct threats to world peace. Bullying Europeans into buying more weapons will only make matters worse.

Then there is China itself. I hear people say that it is good to stand up to China. Well, that is true, China is rising and leaders need to find a way to accommodate that safely and justly. China’s actions in Xinjiang are despicable, and its trade behaviour required moderation. But what has Trump achieved, in three whole years? The answer is nothing but destroying trust, reducing prosperity for everyone, enabling human rights abuse and reducing the long-term competitiveness of the US. For three years we have had posturing and threat but no proposal and no progress. My guess is that there will be much-trumpeted deal during 2020, timed for electoral effect, but that it will not address any of the structural issues, simply requiring China to buy more US stuff. Meanwhile, China builds influence through belt and road and an independent lead in next generation technology. Strike two.

Strike three is probity. This is about the standing of the presidency and key institutions, their ability to earn respect in the world and to maintain democracy and justice against periodic threats. It also relates to wider society, in establishing norms of decent behaviour.

It is fun and even fair to elect somebody who challenges the establishment, is blunt and occasionally disrespectful and who upends conventional wisdom. Elites can be smug. But Trump is a wrecking ball, one that ultimately damages everything he touches. Even among ardent supporters, few would deny that he bullied Ukraine towards a partisan goal, that he has openly demeaned women, that he pays scant regard to truth, that he blows his dog whistle cynically, that he undermines congress by blocking subpoenas, that he has multiple financial irregularities, that he uses key meetings as photo opportunities, and much else.

Institutions can withstand such an assault, with good luck, for four years, and might even emerge reinvigorated. But to risk four more years would be reckless in the extreme. We can all see it. Strike three.

So those are my arguments. I will try to avoid getting into the weeds of other areas, despite all the evidence and temptations. Healthcare, gun control, inequality, and all the departments with no competence and less policy are open targets. But perhaps then the discussion would get ambushed into risks relating to Elizabeth Warren or abortion or something about the stock market.

It is better to stick to the big picture. What are presidents for? Where do they have lasting influence? They must lead in the face of generational issues, they must conduct a sound foreign policy and they must defend the very institution they have been elected to lead. Nobody can realistically defend Trump in any of these three areas, and these are the areas that ultimately matter.

Would any of this speech work, even were I to get a chance to engage in a serious conversation with somebody leaning towards re-electing the man? I doubt it. Nobody wants to listen to someone so obviously representing the smug elite, and foreign to boot. But I have tried. I am ready.      

Home Field Advantage and other Lazy Assumptions

An amazing thing happened in the baseball World Series finals this year. The amazing thing was not that the Americans finally worked out that World Series is a ridiculous title for a tournament with just one token Canadian team playing in a sport that nobody out of the US, northern Latin America and Japan and Korea have any knowledge of. No, that lazy assumption persists. The amazing thing was that the away team won all seven matches. In over 1000 play off series, that had never happened before.

I would like to claim that the amazing thing is that most pundits thought this was amazing. Because home field advantage in most sports has been vanishing before our eyes, while we still make the lazy assumption that it is a large factor.

Here is a bit more evidence. In the NBA finals, the away team won five of the six games. In the NHL finals, five of the seven games went to the visitors. This year in the NFL, the home team has won just 53% of games, with 100 home wins and 90 away wins.

Soccer has a similar tale to tell. Here, I managed to find some historical comparisons. In the last thirty years, home wins in the premier league have declined on average from about 52% to about 42%. Thirty years ago, a home win was about 25% more likely than an away win, but now it is less than 10% more likely. A hundred years ago, home teams won over 65% of games.

It is not too difficult to identify several possible causes for the collapse of home field advantage. Many of the reasons that home advantage used to be significant have been offset in one way or another.

Playing at home was traditionally an advantage for a number of reasons. One was a home crowd that could gee up the home team while intimidating the away team. This can be intensely practical: in the NFL, a home team will enjoy a silent stadium when on offence, allowing for voice signals, but the crowd makes a din while the away team is on offence to make such signals impossible.

Then there are peculiarities of the venue. Even in soccer, where the pitch dimensions are rather uniform, Lee Dixon claimed it helped to know exactly where he was on the pitch by such things as advertising hoardings. In baseball, the field itself has strange dimensions and odd corners that must favour those familiar with it. It is more extreme in cricket, in which the home team actually prepares the pitch to suit their own team. I remember a game in the 1970’s when England prepared a pitch for Derek Underwood that was so biased that the opposition declared on 130-9. That is another lazy assumption – that the English are fair players.

Then there is preparation. In the NFL, it is always claimed to be a disadvantage to west coast teams to play one o’clock games on the east coast, effectively ten in the morning for their bodies, after a long flight. The travel itself takes up a chunk of possible training time. It is noticeable that home teams tend to win NFL games played on Thursdays, when the ratio of preparation time between the two teams would be most extreme.

Travel carries other risks. Players might not be so disciplined. Sleeping in a strange bed is always tougher for the first night. And then there is skulduggery. It wasn’t long ago that most of an England rugby team mysteriously acquired food poisoning just before playing South Africa away in a world cup game, and hotel fire alarms have a weird tendency of waking up visitors in the middle of the night.

Examining all of these partial causes of home advantage in turn, it is possible to see how that advantage has eroded over time. Most important is money and conditioning. Nowadays, teams have the resources to travel in style and stay in luxury facilities. Training and conditioning routines have matured so that teams can be made ready to produce peak performance at the time of the match. Regulations are better, skulduggery is harder, and pitch conditions are better and more uniform. Home advantage may have flipped, because trainers and medical staff can keep closer tabs on their players when on the road.

The crowd is still partisan, but not as it once was. At English soccer games, the away fans are often the most vocal, while many of the home supporters are either silent, or absent in the hospitality areas, or actively barracking their own team. How anybody can play well in Chicago, New York or Philadelphia escapes me, and indeed those cities often get the teams they deserve.

There is a tactical element as well. In soccer, attacking used to be more productive a strategy, and the home team is still expected to commit more players forwards. But for many teams now playing without the ball has become the most effective way to win. Leicester were brilliant trail blazers for this strategy when they won the league despite having the least possession in the whole division. They just soaked up pressure with men behind the ball and counter-attacked at pace when the opportunity arose. Most teams play a variety of this strategy now, but at home their fans expect more aggression.

As a result, playing at home can be a positive disadvantage, especially when teams are struggling. My own team, West ham, have been in a terrible slump, and it did not surprise me that the rare good result recently came in an away game against a good team, when they did not try to dominate possession. Being away also took pressure of players who had been sensing the intolerance of fans at home.

This all explains why home field advantage has been eroded. It also explains the situations where it is still strongest, for example midweek NFL games, or games very long distance travel to places with poor facilities like Russia (and also that teams often struggle in the games in short weeks immediately after such ventures). Home advantage still also persists when there is less money sloshing about and in less mature sports and events – it did not surprise me that Spain won the recent tennis Davis Cup at home, helped by a new tournament format with lots of quirks.

I find the persistence among pundits in failing to recognise a changing world instructive, because the same tendency exists elsewhere. We are often slow to recognise changing circumstances and too slow to challenge our assumptions. In soccer, the mantra of possession took the glaring counter example of Leicester to influence coaches. The power of statistics in baseball only became accepted once Oakland and others had demonstrated its effectiveness – this trend still has further to run.

What about outside of sports? Nobody expected the right wing of politics to move from the rich to the poor until Donald Trump and others came along, and in the current UK election old assumptions still colour commentary and even party tactics. An impeachment trial of public opinion was expected to move in decisive bands and based on facts, but nowadays everybody gets their news from their own bubble so new tactics are required.

In business, I believe that the advantages of scale have shifted. Scale used to be about production and distribution efficiency, but that has no value in most service industries, while network effects of communication and customer habit have become important. In most management situations, I believe scale is a positive disadvantage, since it works against agility.

What about warfare? The US always seems to be one war late when it comes to tactics. Last week’s Economist essentially torpedoed the value proposition of Aircraft Carriers, but still most powers want to build them, rather than spend somewhere more effective.

Assumptions die slowly, and we can all benefit from challenging the assumptions in our lives, whether we are a sports coach or a politician or just somebody trying to be a better parent. A good way to start a challenge is identify what factors cause an assumption to be true or false, and then examine trends that might influence those factors.