Tribalism Will Be the Death Of the Military Services
Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, U.S. Army retired
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Historically, the prospect of a belt-tightening defense budget has fueled interservice squabbles. Such internecine conflict has proved uniformly nonproductive. When the service staffs fight each other for a bigger share of a smaller budgetary pie, it usually ends up exacerbating irresponsible funding cuts, with no service emerging better off than before the infighting began, and an overall erosion of essential military capabilities.
In an age when competition and warfare span every physical dimension, creating more interdependencies among the services than ever, the proposal to beggar one service to save another is simply irresponsible.
Trust Undermined
To start, interservice fratricide undermines the trust and confidence of the joint force. In the past, when Congress ignored growing threats to cash “peace dividends,” cooperation between the Army and Navy sunk to a nadir. When war came again, they relearned the lessons of jointness at tremendous expense—military failure and excessive body bags.
https://www.ausa.org/articles/tribalism-will-be-death-military-services
