The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

274 Conclusion
service culture is at odds with efforts to improve on and invest in future
full- spectrum counterinsurgency operations, especially those emphasizing
nation- building and civic action. A pervasive Marine perception is that a
strong focus on training for nation- building operations threatens to diminish
the core feature of Devil Dog identity as an elite fighting force and that
counterinsurgency professionalism may compromise Marine core competencies
in the area of amphibious operations.
A Vietnam- era essay that the Gazette honored with an award highlighted
these sorts of identity worries and organizational paranoia about
pursuing civic action. Its Marine author acknowledged the likely strategic
advantages of civic action but worried about the impact on the identity
image of the nation’s premier fighting force. His striking and historically
inaccurate perceptual lens was that past Marine practices regarding civic
action were of a limited and temporary nature. Entirely eclipsing the decades
of nation- building engineered in the Caribbean, he argued that the sort of
civic action demanded in Vietnam would represent a “significant departure”
from Marine Corps practice and “trespass into an area generally accepted as
the domain of the US Army and civilian governmental agencies.” More worrying
than service territoriality was the impact that pursuing such soft tactics
would have on the Marine Corps’s blood- makes- the- green- grass- grow
image and recruitment: “Excessive attention to humanitarian programs will
ultimately result in a change in the service image beyond that which is conducive
to the procurement of fighting men. Under these circumstances the
Marine Corps could be attracting men who would be of greater service to
the Peace Corps.” Based in instincts to protect Marine warrior identity and
fueled by the organizational paranoia endemic to the Corps, his comments
reflect an internal conflict between preservation of the core identity of his
service and the “soft tactics” that seem to be aiding in mission accomplishment.
His summary statement on the matter is to try it out carefully but
withdraw “from civic action involvement if such steps are determined to be
in the best interest of the nation and the Marine Corps.” 61 Marines will do
civic action “windows” if it is assigned to them but will prefer to keep it on
the down low.
Marines in Iraq pursued civic action and “key leader engagements” on
a regular basis but were not immune to worries about the impact on image.
Devil Dogs prize the reputation of aggressive violence that precedes them
and see it, appropriately, as a force multiplier in its own right. Consequently,
enlisted Marines in Iraq obeyed orders to distribute humanitarian aid but
were often keen to note for the record that they were not the “soccer ball
force.” It is not without solid rationale that Marines instinctively protect
their warfighter image: Establishing identity credentials as the “best fighting
force in the world” is no mean feat. Marines ultimately lent their support to
civil- military operations in the 2006–7 turnaround era because their leadership
demanded it, and it was producing mission success. Maj. Daniel Zappa,