Eliot Cohen is a respected military historian. I have most of his books in my professional library and I was one of his students at the national defense security studies course at Syracuse at the turn of the century. However, I think he wandered off the path in a recent article for the Atlantic titled “The U.S. Needs Soldiers, Not Warriors.” In the piece, Cohen suggests that the Pentagon needs a soldier’s ethos rather than the warrior spirit that Pete Hegseth has vowed to return to the American military establishment. Professor Cohen is implying that the two mindsets are mutually exclusive. I don’t buy into that view. Cohen’s view of a warrior mentality is that it is self-centered and overemphasizes battle and killing at the cost of discipline (self-discipline and general good order and discipline of the force as a whole). He cites Achilles of the Trojan War as an example. Achilles sulked in his tent when his honor was impugned and threatened to kill his commander — Agamemnon — in a dispute over a concubine. He argues that real soldiers have the traits of self-discipline, respect for authority, and professionalism demonstrated by leaders such as Ulysses S. Grant as opposed to the Confederate cavaliers that he eventually defeated. I disagree. The two are not mutually exclusive. Not all warriors are soldiers, and not all soldiers are warriors. The most successful soldiers in history were soldier-warriors. They had an equal respect for both discipline and valor under fire. Almost all were students of the profession of arms as well as being cool under fire. But all were strict disciplinarians. Alexander, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Patton, and even Genghis Khan shared these traits. Each was a careful student of military history — Genghis was supposedly illiterate, but carefully listened to tales of military history as well as studying the strengths and weaknesses of opponents. The famous commanders who utterly failed went too far in either direction. Napoleon and Lee let the warrior thirst for glory to cause them to overestimate their own skill and the capability of French and Confederate soldiers to indefinitely overcome casualties. George McClellan failed because he was a great soldier, but no warrior. He created a marvelously trained army, but was reluctant to commit it to battle. Achilles and the “flower of French chivalry” in the Middle Ages are examples of the extremes to which the warrior ethos can be taken to undermine the common good. French knights were some of the best fighting men in Europe, but their thirst for honor and glory undermined the discipline needed to succeed in three key battles of the Hundred Years War — Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt — they were superb warriors, but poor soldiers. Likewise, the soldierly virtues of discipline and unquestioning obedience to orders can be taken too far as evidenced by the early British defeats in the French and Indian War and the humiliation of the Prussians at the battles of Jena–Auerstedt by Napoleon in 1806. This was caused by rigidity and lack of flexibility on the part of the superbly trained and drilled Prussians. If Achilles and French knights are the poster boys for an overemphasis on the warrior ethos, Sergeant Garcia is the caricature of soldiering taken to its extreme. Readers of a certain age will remember Garcia as the fumbling nemesis of Zorro in the Disney TV series of the late 1950s. Overweight and consumed with the minutia of military drills, Garcia follows orders from his tyrannical superiors even when he knows them to be wrong. Good soldiers avoid such extremes and find a balance. So then, what in the Pentagon’s warrior ethos is missing that Hegseth wants to reinstate? When a military organization begins placing nonmilitary goals ahead of warfighting, some degree of warrior ethos is lost. When climate change is viewed as much of a threat to national security as Russia and China, something is lost. When race and gender are valued more than competence in the promotion system, something is lost. When young Christian white men with conservative views are viewed as a threat as serious as Islamic terrorists, something is missing. Hegseth was a victim of the latter. He wants to fix things, and that is what terrifies the progressive incompetents who have run the Pentagon for too long. Cohen believes that Hegseth is unqualified to be defense secretary because he has no experience leading large organizations. Could he do worse than Robert McNamara, the former Ford CEO, who was — with the exception of Louis Johnson — demonstratively the worst secretary of defense in history? Cohen admires Grant who was drummed out of the Army for alcohol abuse and failed at every civilian endeavor he ever attempted. Before being appointed as a brigadier general of militia, Grant had not managed an endeavor larger than a general store. He grew into the role, and ended up successfully leading a military organization that was — for its time — every bit as complicated as the Pentagon is today. Both Hegseth and Grant had run-ins with demon rum, but as junior officers, they realized what was wrong with the military of their respective eras and set out to effect change when given the opportunity. When the chance arose, Grant succeeded wildly. My point is that Hegseth deserves the chance to show what he can do. READ MORE from Gary Anderson: Marine Corps Commandant Tells a Whopper Sanctuary Cities Are in Insurrection Generals Should Win Wars Before Declaring Victory Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps colonel who served as a special advisor to the deputy secretary of defense. He lectures on Alternative Analysis at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs The post The Latest Absurd Defense Question: Warriors or Soldiers? The Nation Needs Both. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.