Carl von Clausewitz offered his “paradoxical trinity” as a tool for thinking about wars and their various manifestations. His trinity was:
Composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone.
As a practical matter the United States and the West today pay little attention to the first component of this trinity. True, some analysts are willing to see “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity” playing a role in the behavior of some of our enemies — the Islamic State and al Qaeda, for instance. However, when it comes to looking at our own forces and operations, we like to imagine that “primordial” violence plays no role because our violence is calibrated and precise, hatred is tantamount to racism, and enmity is merely a matter of politics because all people are fundamentally the same.
One American defense analyst wrote in 2006, for instance, that:
Combatants are trained in the skill to kill and the will to kill, but discouraged against the thrill to kill. … The will to kill involves those psychological preparations that respect human life, but that in war focus on survival and self-preservation. The thrill to kill, however, is psychotic. It’s rejected by war, but embraced by terrorism. The thrill to kill represents the cowardly insanity of terrorism and hate.
This sort of opinion is a relatively new phenomenon, however. Consider this 1943 U.S. Army document brought to my attention by my colleague Dr. Kevin Woods. It was written by Pvt. Frank Sargent of the 34th Infantry Division and came to the attention of his division commander, who liked it so much that he sent it up the chain. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower liked it so much that he had it published for the U.S. forces under his command in North Africa. When Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall saw it, he “ordered it distributed to the Army at large.”
Sargent’s work has a rather soporific title: “The Most Common Short-Comings in the Training of Battalion and Regimental S-2 Personnel, and Some Suggestions to Overcome These.” However, starting on page 15 he discusses “psychological preparation for combat.” He notes that American soldiers arriving in theater “never had any reasons to hate anybody.” A lack of hatred, he says, induces carelessness and heightens fear of the enemy. He writes:
We are prone to regard the Italians with a mixture of contempt and pity. But the boys I knew, who were blown to bits by Italian hand grenades would not think so. If they could come back to life again they would not feel pity for the poor, coerced Italians; they would go after them until they had killed every last one. So would the medical orderlies I knew, who wanted to treat German casualties and lost their arms by booby traps.
Sargent says that “hate is like gin. It takes a while, and then, suddenly, it hits you.” In words reminiscent of George C. Scott’s in Patton, he goes on: “after you see bodies, or what’s left of them, piled up for burial; when you realize they are after you, too; when it finally connects in your mind that moral code does not exist in this way, then you will begin to hate and want to retaliate.”
Why does this document seem so shocking today? Perhaps Clausewitz can help us with the answer. He associated particular entities with each of the three parts of his paradoxical trinity. Reason and policy he associated with the government; chance, probability and the creative spirit he associated with the general and the army; and “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity” he associated with the people. Sargent, for his part, said “until John Doe learns to hate, he will be no good.”
Today, however, we have largely removed the people from military affairs. John Doe, that everyman who represents all American males, does not join the Army any more. Nor does Britain’s Joe Bloggs or France’s Jean Dupont, or Germany’s Max Mustermann. Western militaries are small professional organizations in which only a small slice of the population serves. Perhaps professional soldiers can live, function, and succeed on the battlefield without hate. Perhaps modern, Western militaries don’t need hatred because their members are more distinct and more disconnected from vast swathes of the population than they were in a nation mobilized for war. But if so, the question that remains is whether the era of Clausewitz’s “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity” has truly come to a close, or whether we’re only in an interlude, sooner or later to once again need to hate in order to win our wars.
Mark Stout is a Senior Editor at War on the Rocks. He is the Director of the MA Program in Global Security Studies and the Graduate Certificate Program in Intelligence at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Arts and Sciences in Washington, D.C.
Ramon Nadal 
W Pitt 
Gigi 
dbb 
If you think Soldiers (who actually fight) don’t hate, it has clearly been far too long, if ever that you have been among combat patrols. Paranoia and hate are inevitable in an Army that doesn’t understand its operational environment where “friends” and enemies look exactly the same until an ambush is initiated. Also, fear of “the other” is alive and well in our society (consider shows like 24 where every muslim that appears on the show turns out to be a terrorist). I think that proves the theory that many do believe it (hate/paranoia) is necessary to fight wars, if not win them. However, just because we no longer have the draft, I would argue that soldiers do still reflect American society because America “produced” us and just because we chose to serve doesn’t cheapen the fact that we represent America. I think if anything, it enhances our reflection of the nation.
Tolstoy called one of the sections of War and Peace “Narodnaia voina” (People’s War). This is the war of the partisan and it is the land of hate–hatred for the invader, hatred for the other. I am not very sure we are well prepared for such fights. Clausewitz witnessed thatsort of war during the campaign of 1812 and sought to invoke it as a member of the German Legion forming Landwehr units in East Prussia in early 1813 before the King of Prussia decided to turn on the French. The border war in Kansas-Missouri was an American example of such “people’s war,” including the burning of Lawrence and the murder of 160 unarmed men.
You posed an interesting (and potentially vital) question there at the end of your essay.
What would be YOUR offered answer?
Hey Tyrone. Thanks for the question. My view is that it is unlikely in the Western world that we will return to that because I think hatred is useful in recruiting and motivating mass conscripted armies and I think that era is over and not coming back. So that’s my prediction (and my hope).
Hatred occurs in big wars and when you have different racial or ethnic groups fighting. The most savage battles of WWII were the Marines fighting the “Japs”. In our small professional Army of today we are engaged more in gladiatorial combat. During my combat tours in VN I don’t recall ever hearing soldiers in my infantry company speak about “hating ” the NVA. Our job was to kill them, not hate them. In 1993 I had the good fortune of going back to “Nam” with Col Hal Moore (my battalion CO) and others and spending ten days with the commanders of the units we fought against at the IaDrang battles. I learned to respect their dedication and soldierly qualities, which is , generally, what happens after each war.
I don’t know as if I will ever respect the Afghans that we fought against. I can’t think of one redeeming quality besides their ingenuity. We had to stop giving kids things like water and treats because the containers would end up being used as pressure plates. Other than that, they were a cowardly bunch that didn’t care if their own people were the victims.
The hatred is still there, it is just not institutionalized and harder to find. This is largely due to the changes in the U.S. Armed Forces over the years which has greatly reduced the percentage of the force made up of infantry or others who are likely to personally engage with the enemy in efforts to destroy them.
The primordial violence of Clausewitz’s trinity is still relevant. Enmity played a large role in the U.S. response to the September 11th attacks. Of the range of policy options available to the U.S., at the time, I am sure that the application of diplomatic sanctions against the Taliban regime was not at the top of the list. Also, there were some items in popular culture that spoke to the mood of the people, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” comes to mind. I think there was some enmity from the American people over the attacks. I think the issue you discussed arbitrarily narrowed the part that the will of the people play in warfare. Granted, the American people never hated with the intensity or scope of our enemies, but to say that enmity hasn’t played a part of our conduct of the war is not an accurate assessment.
Gates,
“Granted, the American people never hated with the intensity or scope of our enemies……”Perhaps you’re giving us too much credit…..or not enough, as the case may be. Ask the native peoples of North America, Black Americans, the Vietnamese, or the Japanese if Americans know how “to hate with the proper vigor” as Lt. Gatewood noted in the film Geronimo.
Considering that for Clausewitz, War consisted of (at least) two Nation States fighting over competing political outcomes, it is important to consider how fighting a non-state actor (insurgency) could alter his paradigm, especially as it concerns hate. In conventional war, the goal is to impose your will over the enemy by overcoming his army and making his will irrelevant. This conveniently is unconcerned with ideology. Conversely, counterinsurgency (as one type of unconventional warfare) has the goal of changing (instead of overpowering) the will of a population to support its government as opposed to seeking to overthrow it. In many cases, counterinsurgency efforts are forced to take ideologies and religions of the focus population into account because using hate as a boost to war fighting could have counterproductive consequences when the population and insurgency look the same. There is much talk about abandoning counterinsurgency because it has fallen out of Americans’ graces after 13 years. However, as Clausewitz said, “the first, the grandest, and most decisive act of judgment which the statesman and general exercises is rightly to understand in this respect the war in which he engages, not to take it for something, or to wish to make of it something, which by the nature of its relations it is impossible for it to be.” (Book One, On War)
The answer to the question asked in the last paragraph is that the American military is too concerned with putting women in combat roles by lowering the PT standards,making Navy uniforms “unisex”,making all soldiers act and speak only in the politically correct way,issuing absurd rules of engagement that favor the enemy,and on and on.
ISIS,Al-Queda,Boko Haram,AQAP,et-al are the ones who have and use the hate.
Today’s attacks in France are merely a preview,the same thing is going to move across Europe,then the same type of attacks will begin in the U.S. as the jihadists are being imported by the current admin as fast as possible.
Once the attacks begin here-the hate will be found among American soldiers and citizens.
I agree with your last point, France is not a uniquely vulnerable country, it is like the rest of Europe and the attacks are just as likely to happen anywhere else in the west. I think the hate has always been there, it will just surface at times like this, and increase, which is a natural reaction.
Great article. Could our lack of hatred (I concur that the lack is there) contribute to our ability to win battles but lose recent wars? (If we concede VN, Iraq, and Afghan at least as non-wins). Keep an eye on the Qods Force, Hiz, Russian, and Syrian coalition COIN against ISIS. They might win; if so, we had better rethink our own IW doctrine, and reassess the hate factor. The Paris carnage was breaking as I wrote this–more to my point: AK’s backed up by hate, no doubt.
I’m sure that at an individual level hatred exists among current day troops its just not-PC to spell it out in a blunt way.There might also be something about the current intensity of combat compared to previous wars.Western losses have not been higher than colonial campaigns of the XIX century and way below the big wars.Its a lot easier to hate an enemy that wiped out a brigade in a matter of days than one which killed a dozen or so troops from a battalion over a one year period.Current day wars should not be compared with the big wars of the past since the scale difference is so big as to be borderline ridiculous they’re closer to the colonial wars fought by relatively few in number professional soldiers or in the case of the US the Indian wars also fought by a professional force sort of.Long campaigns with few big battles but lots of skirmishes ,ambushes and few casualties on a day by day basis.