Military Review English Edition September-October 2014 | Page 93

WARRIOR SPIRIT

Warrior Ethos, are subject to adjustment based on the
environment in which the soldier operates. However,
when a warrior spirit is common amongst the members
of the military, sets of martial principles become the
foundation of the culture and identity they share.
Unlike previous wars in which the warrior spirit
emerged in only those soldiers who fought directly
against the enemy across demarcated lines, operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan saw the removal of barriers
that separated combat functions from administrative
and logistics functions. In those wars, the concept of
battle lines ceased to exist, resulting in almost every
member of a deployed force being exposed to direct
enemy attack. Consequently, the common threat of enemy action against nearly all deployed members of the
Army resulted in the spontaneous development and
expanded relevance of a common warrior ethos.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies
bridges the gap between spirit, culture, and ethos by
defining the warrior ethos as—
…a code that expects individuals to aggressively engage and defeat an armed enemy in
battle, promoting and valuing traits of moral
and physical courage, tactical skills, emotional
and physical stamina, loyalty to comrades
and determination to accomplish the tactical
mission regardless of personal risk.6
Recognizing the benefits that would result from an
Army infused with a common warrior ethos caused the
Army to codify a description of desired qualities in an
officially sanctioned document. The Army’s Warrior
Ethos was subsequently distilled into four lines within
what was titled the Soldier’s Creed. These lines are: “I
will always place the mission first; I will never accept
defeat; I will never quit; I will never leave a fallen
comrade.”7
After introducing the concept in 2003, Shinseki
included the Soldier’s Creed in the 2004 Army Posture
Statement.8 With the U.S. Army simultaneously fighting two wars that consumed nearly half of the available
force at any given time, the official pronouncement
of the ethos aimed to promote unity, solidarity, and
endurance within an overburdened force in the face of
shared hardships.
In 2007, the Army promoted further this concept
by providing links to information papers associated
with the annual posture statement, giving access to
MILITARY REVIEW  September-October 2014

clearer explanation of the Soldier’s Creed and Warrior
Ethos. Still later, in 2008 , the information paper on the
Warrior Ethos defined it, discussed current and future
Army initiatives to instill the ethos, and outlined why
it was important to the Army.9 That paper demonstrated that the Army recognized both the cultural
shift occurring in a combat-hardened organization, and
also that the spirit embodied in the ethos increased the
effectiveness of the Army and a willingness of soldiers
to embrace personal sacrifice in order to fight and win.
The Army posture on the Warrior Ethos as discussed in subsequent official pronouncements has not
significantly changed since the original paper published in 2008. This suggests that senior Army leaders assumed that the spirit embodied by the current
force was sustainable indefinitely without adjusting
the approach to account for a lack of actual combat
operations.
However, it is noteworthy that while the 2012
Army Posture Statement includes a link to the Warrior
Ethos information paper, neither the terms warrior
ethos nor warrior spirit are used in the latest document.10 The Posture Statement instead focuses on technological innovation, networked forces, and transition
to a leaner, more efficient and adaptive force.

Theoretical Leadership
Leading an Army in transition from combat operations to a garrison environment is not a new problem,
and the contemporary transition is less problematic
than at any other time in history. Not only is the force
comprised of volunteers, but the current military
culture is habituated to the constant introduction of
new technologies to the contemporary battlefield. This
decreases the need of the current class of warriors for
drastic educational leaps to add technological solutions
into the military arsenal.
By comparison, the Army transition following the
draw down after Operation Desert Storm (1990-1991)
appears to have been easier than what the Army faces
today because of the short duration of combat operations. However, despite the seeming advantage of short
duration, it is important to note that manpower cuts
of over 100,000 within a year of the troops returning
home from Desert Storm crippled the force structure
that existed in the immediate aftermath of the conflict
through the early 1990’s.11
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