The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Norms and Perceptual Lens 131
away,” nor is it the heroic or best among them who survive. Sacrifices at this
level can be made because the Marine, and the decision to put him in harm’s
way, are part of accomplishing the mission, and accomplishing the mission
is what keeps the Corps alive.
Clinical Paranoia
Terry Terriff identifies organizational paranoia as the key driver of Marine
Corps culture. 82 He is in good company. Ricks, during his time in Devil
Dog quarters, came to the same conclusion: “This abiding sense of vulnerability,
and the consequent requirement to excel to ensure that survival of
the institution, is the central fact of Marine culture.” 83 As did O’Connell:
“Perhaps the most recurrent theme in the Marine Corps of the early Cold
War was a notion of being under siege from without, both by enemies in
combat and by other forces in the executive branch of the U.S. government.”
84 The Corps’s fight to survive is the primary plot line of Krulak’s
First to Fight narrative. He details the Corps’s tenuous existence and its
last- minute pullback from the brink of extinction—not once, but multiple
times over the course of its history. 85 Marine paranoia is not unfounded,
but Terriff usefully distinguishes why their paranoid perspective merits the
label “cultural”: “What distinguishes the organizational paranoia of the
Marine Corps as a cultural trait, rather than simply a reasonable response
to environmental conditions, is its pervasiveness and persistence, even when
there is no one out to get the Corps, and the propensity it creates to perceive
any and all challenges, real or imagined, significant or insignificant, as
putative threats to the very survival of the Corps as a service and to react
accordingly in a forceful manner.” 86
Norman and Cooling believe that this trait has served the Corps well.
Paranoia has been a healthy force “driving the Marines to constantly evaluate
their competence and direction against the challenges and opportunities
associated with emerging and future operational environments.” 87 The
Marines’ own anthropologists credit paranoia as the impetus for its institutional
drive to excel and perform at a higher level than the other services. 88
Hoffman points out that the Marines’ lack of settled domain means they
have reason to be concerned with their legitimacy as an organization—“a
Marine Corps is a luxury for most countries”—and agrees that this institutional
paranoia usefully promotes innovation. 89 Terriff argues that paranoia
prompts the Corps to be forward- looking and on its guard so as to not be
rendered obsolete by changes in the strategic- military environment. Further,
it is keen to make sure that its forward- leaning adjustments to the strategic
environment do not overlap so much on the functions of other services that
it is seen as redundant. Those sensitivities are most pricked when comparisons
are made to the US Army. 90