Cultural Diversity in the Armed Forces

An International Comparison

Joseph L. Soeters, Jan Van der Meulen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134164950
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

This volume explores ethnicity and gender developments in relation to the military.

In some countries, the armed forces have a long history in responding to ethnic diversity, while elsewhere it has come up only recently as a policy issue. An even-handed representation of ethnic minorities in the military is recognized as crucial for enhancing its social legitimacy and professional quality. The same can be said about the integration of women in the military, which during a few decades across the board has grown into more than just another issue of personnel policies. Indeed with regard to gender, the symbolism and sensitivities surrounding core identities are at stake – as with the presence of gays and lesbians in the military.

Written by experts in the field, the chapters cover fourteen countries around the world: the USA, Canada, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, South-Africa, Eritrea, India, Israel, Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands. Taken together, the armed forces of these countries offer a fascinating mix of similarities and differences in the ways they try to manage cultural diversity.

Cultural Diversity in the Armed Forces will be of interest to students and scholars of military studies, sociology, gender and political science.

1 Introduction

Jan van der Meulen and Joseph Soeters

Introduction

Since the beginning of 2006, policemen and policewomen in Western Australia have won the right, while on duty, to wear a blue turban or a blue scarf, with an official badge attached to it. This new measure presents Sikhs and Muslims with an alternative to the standard police cap. The government of Western Australia argued that the police organization should mirror society, in order to enhance ethnic communities’ feeling of being represented. The police union, however, voiced the fear that citizens might resent being confronted with constables wearing ‘exotic’ uniforms.¹

In earlier times a newspaper report like this might have sounded innocent and slightly colourful. Not any more: cultural diversity has become a major theme in the contemporary world, emotionally charged and politically loaded. Whether in terms of ethnicity, religion or gender – in the above example all three of them come into play – core social identities are at stake, touching as well as contesting the basics of collective and individual self-defining. In principle, any message from anywhere on this topic can be recognized and will be unpacked in the context of local circumstances. As a result, we are witnessing, in the words of Berger and Huntington, a pattern of ‘many globalizations’.²

Cultural diversity is not just another topic. Meanwhile, the military are not just another organization – at least, not all of the military, all of the time. The management of violence and threat, the application of force and ultimately the conduct of war are still defining the military’s core business, and, as a consequence, the mainstream of military culture. Whether and how organizational, social and political developments in society at large fit in with this typical, presumably unique, culture can be looked upon as one of the classical themes of military social science. Accommodating armed forces to diversity very much belongs to that theme and has, in fact, gained quite some prominence as a battleground for conflicting views on the best civil–military fit. From the end of the 1990s onwards the optimistic metaphor of a diverse ‘rainbow’ military, reflecting a multicultural ‘rainbow’ society, has been juxtaposed with a rather more gloomy vision of ‘culture wars’ being imported into the armed forces.³

In this volume, ethnicity is one of the two leading types of diversity to be discussed in relation to armed forces from a range of countries around the world, gender being the other. In this chapter we will start by briefly introducing the historical status of both cases within the context of civil–military relations. Thereafter we will argue in some detail why it is proving ever more important for armed forces to aim to recruit and succesfully manage a diverse organization. Clearly, present-day circumstances bring with them difficulties in trying to do so. Multicultural strains are having consequences for society and armed forces. These may be confronting and painful, especially for the members of minority groups themselves.

We do not want to eschew these kinds of uncomfortable experiences and we will discuss some examples. Doing so will give us an opportunity to point out a number of insights and tools that the literature on diversity management offers for dealing with strains of this kind in the workforce. It is our conviction that the application of these insights is quite relevant for the military and for fostering unit effectiveness.

In the last section of this introduction we will give a brief overview of the country chapters that constitute the substance of this volume. We will explain the spectrum of diversities to be addressed in addition to ethnicity and gender.

Ethnic soldiers

While everyone in the United States was arguing about whether a black man could fly an aircraft, in 1941 the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, climbed into the cockpit with a black pilot, C. Alfred ‘Chief’ Anderson, for an aerial look at Alabama. Even after this vote of confidence, it still took another year and a lawsuit before the War Department finally announced the formation of an all-black flying unit. An unwelcome sight to many, these flying personnel broke yet another race barrier and dispelled the myth that ‘blacks can’t fly’.⁴ The story of the so-called Tuskegee Airmen from Alabama – highly successful black pilots in the Second World War – is a historic case about diversity in the armed forces. It testifies to the controversies that surround diversity, the difficulties it entails and the successful ways in which it may be managed in the long run.

History offers many more examples of the ways in which multi-ethnic societies have translated and controlled their diversity in the context of armed forces. The demographic composition of the Ottoman armed forces, for example, continued to give rise to heated debates for decades, and even centuries, about whether or not non-Muslim citizens should be allowed (or required) to enlist as soldiers and to go to the battlefield.⁵

In her seminal book Ethnic Soldiers, Enloe depicted an impressive array of cases drawn from around the world. From India to the Philippines, from Canada to Iraq, from the United States to the Soviet Union, from Yugoslavia to Lebanon, Enloe presented a wealth of material. Her multilevel analyses, touching on the use of ‘martial races’, on conscription and the rhetorics of nation-building, on the entwinement of security policies and ethnic organization, and on many more related themes, provide a fascinating read, still very relevant for today’s purposes.⁶

Other books have explored the same themes while adding still more cases, from the multinational Habsburg Army to the French colonial Army⁷ and from South Africa via Singapore to Israel.⁸ In these studies the political implications of ethnic diversity in the military weigh heavy. The ‘Trojan horse dilemma’⁹ lies at the heart of much of the topical literature. That particular theme is not absent in the present volume, though with clear differences from one country to another. Overall, the emphasis in this book is rather more ‘cultural’ than ‘political’, granted that the two angles are not always easy to separate. As we have already hinted, doing that is becoming more and more difficult.

Women warriors¹⁰

The history of women in the military is quite different from that of ethnic minority soldiers and their past. While the latter were abundantly present and often in demand, albeit conditionally, until recently women have been excluded from armed forces. A few notable if not mythological exceptions notwithstanding, it was only in the course of the twentieth century that women started to wear military uniforms. And it was only some twenty-five years ago, on average, that separate female corps began to lose ground to more or less full integration.

Today, in more and more countries women have a formal right to enter all, or almost all, ranks and positions in the military, sometimes including special forces and submarine crews. As more and more positions are opened up, gradually the number of female soldiers is increasing. In quite a number of countries female generals are no longer exceptional. Undoubtedly these developments are having a profound impact on armed forces and on civil–military relations.

This is not to say that full gender equality in numbers and opportunities exists in the armed forces across the world; far from it. Nor can it be argued that the interaction between military men and women on vessels and in bases and garrisons is always developing smoothly. There are simply too many reports of incidents of sexual harassment ocurring all over the world. On a more fundamental level, to varying degrees male identities are still constructed around patriarchism and machismo.¹¹ The notion of an ingrained incompatibility of womanhood and soldierhood is far from having disappeared.

As in the case of ethnic diversity, general developments concerning gender are relevant while one is talking about the military. While the backlash of ethnic tensions looks worrisome, the speed of female emancipation is cause for optimism. In recent decades, gender equality has developed fairly rapidly, and if anything the pace of development only seems to be accelerating. One of the most visible indicators is the degree to which women have been entering the political arena, all the way to the top. With Golda Meir (Israel) and Indira Gandhi (India) as early forerunners, the 1980s and 1990s witnessed a small wave of female presidents and prime ministers, leading governments and countries all over the world. Among the names that come to mind are Margaret Thatcher (UK), Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway), Cory Aquino (the Philippines), Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan), Tansu Çiller (Turkey) and Mary Robinson (Ireland).¹²

Megawathi Sukarnoputri (Indonesia) was one of the first female leaders of the twenty-first century, to be followed in recent years by Gloria Arroyo (Philippines), Julia Tymoshenko (Ukraine), Angela Merkel (Germany), Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf (Liberia), Michelle Bachelet (Chile), Portia Simpson Miller (Jamaica) and Han Myeong-Sook (South Korea).¹³

It is important to realize that the arrival of women in the political arena is no coincidence: a worldwide process of modernization is driving cultural change that encourages the rise of women in public life as well as the development of democratic institutions.¹⁴ Of course, this is also a reminder that modernization is still spread unevenly, and that the position of women in many societies has not stopped being a weak and subordinate one.

One last note: while reaching top positions, not only in politics but also in business organizations, women might very well be able to display a new sort of leadership – feminine leadership – that is both ‘tough and tender’.¹⁵ Of course, the kind of difference this makes cannot be taken for granted and may need decades rather than years to really take effect. In the same vein, whether and to what degree female leadership would change the armed forces is not self-evident. Apart from that, however, it seems very unlikely that the military will not be influenced more and more by the general developments we have just depicted. In fact, as we will now argue, these are some of the very reasons why the armed forces should go on to invest in ‘diversity’.

Managing diversity

Diversity management in work organizations has been on the (reseach) agenda for about half a century.¹⁶ More recently, these insights have also been applied to armed forces, setting off specialized research and literature in addition to the more politically oriented works we discussed above.¹⁷ Generally speaking, the importance of addressing diversity seems rooted firmly in most armed forces, and the lessons from literature, as well as from experience, are learned more or less on a day-to-day basis. Still, it makes sense to formulate somewhat more precisely where the relevance of cultural diversity lies. Why, again, is it so important for armed forces to incorporate this issue in their human resources management? In our view, there are at least six major reasons, some of them echoing observations we have already made in this introductory chapter.

The first reason relates to what has famously been called by Castells ‘the power of identity’.¹⁸ Although it has often been said that ‘the end of ideology’ has arrived, civil movements are on the rise, including freshly formed or already established minority groups stressing and cultivating their collective identity. Increasingly they have begun to demand their rights of citizenship, for example with regard to education, the labour market and political organizations.¹⁹ This demand does not exclude the armed forces. Women and ethnic minorities, whether immigrants or indigenous groups, as well as gays, lesbians and other identity groups, want to exert their right to enter any position in the military. They want to have a fair chance to reach the higher ranks as well as positions in technologically sophisticated branches and special operations units. In sum, empowered by identity politics, these groups are demanding basic civil rights, demands that the military cannot afford to resist.

Second, seen in a broader context, these rights and claims remind the armed forces of the necessity to create and preserve sufficient legitimacy among their stakeholders in society: politicians, the general public, churches, unions and employers, to list a number of the most important ones. Traditionally, the general belief has been that the military workforce should mirror the workforce in society, or – as in the case of conscription – the (young) male population at large.

By ensuring a more or less equal representation with respect to socio-economic class, political conviction, religion and region, the armed forces in many countries around the world were able to become national institutions par excellence. On the one hand, the representation of all parts of the population has been looked upon as a mechanism for controlling the armed forces. On the other hand, in this way the military have been able to fulfil a nation-building role by educating and ‘nationalizing’ the poorer, less developed people, including those who happened to live on the peripheries of their society. Thus, since the time of Napoleon the armed forces have functioned as ‘the school of the nation’. Through their army experience, ‘peasants became Frenchmen’, as the famous saying goes.²⁰

This development has been observed not only in Europe and North America, but also in countries as different as Turkey, India and Brazil. Nowadays, the armed forces, whether following the conscription or the professional format, can contribute to their legitimacy if they once again fulfil this role of national institution. Since minority groups in society at large are often relatively deprived in terms of education and job opportunities, the armed forces can help by positioning themselves as a vehicle for social mobility. By doing so, they strengthen their own legitimacy.

The third reason for paying serious attention to diversity is a consequence of the professionalization of armed forces. In more and more countries, allvolunteer forces have replaced conscript armies, a process that brings with it a number of serious challenges. The automatic influx of personnel, taken for granted under the conscript system, has been superseded by a laborious process of recruiting and contracting soldiers and officers. In m...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Diversity in the Armed Forces of the United States
• 3 Diversity in the Canadian Forces
• 4 Indigenous Integration into the Bolivian and Ecuadorean Armed Forces
• 5 Diversity in the Brazilian Armed Forces
• 6 Diversity in the South African Armed Forces
• 7 Diversity in the Eritrean Armed Forces
• 8 Diversity in the Indian Armed Forces
• 9 Diversity in the Israel Defense Forces
• 10 Ethnic Diversity in the British Armed Forces
• 11 Diversity in the French Armed Forces
• 12 Diversity in the German Armed Forces
• 13 Diversity in the Belgian Armed Forces
• 14 Diversity in the Dutch Armed Forces