Since our nation’s birth, our military has retained its same basic structure. It is split into four branches: The Navy, Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps. Each branch is somewhat independent, and they are able to carry out most of their missions without the help of the others. However, it is not uncommon for branches to work together (especially Marine Corps and Navy) in what are called joint operations. Each branch is in charge of its own domain, and has its own jobs, values or mission, and their own system. It has worked this way for over two centuries, and has readily adapted to every threat facing our nation. This adaptation has allowed our military to stay effective and efficient over such a long period of time. However, there is still the question of whether major changes need to be made to our military. Especially now, with these seemingly unending conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now possibly Syria, many people are seriously considering the restructure of our military. They see our current system as fiscally ineffective and unfit to handle the enemy at hand. The proposed changes are extremely diverse, ranging from minor tweaks, to a complete do-over.
“Room for Debate”, a section of the New York Times, opens up the door of discussion for different controversial topics to those with extensive background in the area and a lot of knowledge pertaining to the subject. In 2014 they started the discussion at hand, “What Would the American Military Look Like if We Could Start from Scratch?”, and many posts followed from people of all different backgrounds: political science professors, defense advisors, retired soldiers and more. Within the myriad of varying responses, three stood out to me in particular, not because of their specific views, but due to their utilization of rhetoric. First, Thomas Donnelly’s displays a decent use of rhetoric, utilizing a great deal of logos and pathos, but falls short when it comes to ethos. Caitlin Talmadge’s post again, fails to use ethos effectively, but also has faulty logos, and minimal pathos. Lastly, there is John Nagl’s piece, which equally incorporates the three components of rhetoric.
First, the more average argument; a piece titled “A New U.S. Military Would Be Similar to What We Have Now” written by Thomas Donnelly. In this piece, Donnelly fails to develop his ethos. Although his career, as known from his biography, does involve the study of security in some way, he does not hold any prestigious position, and he has also not been involved with the military. The most obvious evidence of ethos is his very confident tone. For example, when discussing military futurists who wish to invest in ‘transformative’ technologies, he calls their theory “entirely incorrect”. By using such authoritative diction, he gives the reader the sense that he knows what he’s talking about and there is no doubt in his mind. His confidence does give him credibility, but it does not make up for the lack of clear ethos in the rest of his piece.
Mr. Donnelly certainly utilizes logos well in his piece, but not in its general form of statistics and numbers, but rather logic. He talks about the uncanny amount of money that has been poured into technology for communication and yet he still refers to war as a “murky business”. So, Donnelly is suggesting that those billions of dollars could have been used elsewhere with a much greater yield. He backs this up with his idea to slow the spending on the development of technology. He justifies this thought by referencing the “cold war force”, or tech that was developed in the 70’s and is still in use today. He claims that ground war hasn’t changed significantly enough to warrant large-scale funding, that the cold war era tech is still sufficient for use. He describes land war as “compelling the enemy — the human adversary — to do our will” regardless of the time period. According to Mr. Donnelly, ground war will not change significantly until human nature does. Donnelly’s argument and logic here are impeccable, making sense to the reader and appealing to the exigence of the topic.
Donnelly’s use of pathos does not occur until the end of his piece. This might seem less effective than an even spread, but when you really look at it, his strategy is ingenious. He uses mostly logic throughout his entire piece, and really stays away from evoking emotion for the most part. But at the end he mentions President Reagan, a president loved by the masses, which likely won over a lot of readers who may have been on the fence. By supporting President Reagan’s mass production and purchase of military equipment, he is almost associating himself with the president. This also acts to strengthen his ethos in addition to leaving the reader with a good taste in their mouth after reading the piece.
The second and weakest piece on the topic is Caitlin Talmadge’s “Today’s Military Should Be Smaller and Cheaper”. Talmadge’s piece not only lacks a development of her ethos, but it also fails to evoke much, if any, emotion, and most importantly, has weak fundamental arguments. Although she does not do it within the main bulk of her piece, Talmadge does develop her ethos within her biography. The fact that she is a political science professor at a prestigious university such as George Washington University says enough about her, let alone her co-authoring of “U.S. Defense Politics: the Origins of Security Policy.”
However, for someone with such an impressive background, you’d expect a more sound and thought out idea for how our military should be structured. She thinks the best way to organize our military is by mission rather than service. So, rather than Air Force, Navy, Army and Marine Corps, it’d be “armored combat, antisubmarine warfare, air superiority, counter-terrorism” and so on. At first this may seem like a somewhat logical breakdown, but upon further inspection it becomes clear that this division is unnecessarily complex. The entire point of each branch of our current military is that they can operate independently of each other. For example, the Army doesn’t need to involve the air force every time air assistance is needed because they have their own aviation program. If it were to follow Talmadge’s proposed structure, they would need to conduct a joint operation to get almost anything done, which would only add to the complexity of a mission. Another reason her idea is utterly illogical is the infinite amount of branches we would have. Following her plan, our military could have tens, even hundreds of branches. And suppose a new type of threat arises: In that case an entirely new branch would have to be made in just to fit the needs pertaining to that threat.
Not only does Ms. Talmadge’s piece lack a basic use of rhetoric, she also fails to even utilize the exigence to strengthen her argument. In fact, you could say that the exigence hurts her case. Not once throughout her piece does Ms. Talmadge propose how she would keep the military’s spending down. This is especially detrimental to her argument because her proposed reconstruction would be unbelievably more expensive than it is today. She does not say anything about scaling down each branch, or about research and development spending as the other two did. Overall, Ms. Talmadge’s negligence towards the cause of the entire argument takes away from the relevance of her piece.
Lastly, Talmadge does not utilize pathos in her piece as much as she could have. The only instance where the use of pathos is evident is when she says “This intransigence is frustrating, but it is not a moral failing.” That word, “frustrating” really makes the reader think. It tells them that the system could be better than it currently is, and makes them feel almost disgusted that it isn’t. Other than this, Talmadge does not use pathos to her advantage. She could have very easily told of a specific failure of a mission due to the current structure, or talked about the risk of American lives, and yet she did not. It is for this reason, along with a very weak argument, that Ms. Talmadge has the most ineffective piece of the three.
Lastly, John Nagl, author of the article “A New U.S. Military Would be an Army of Advisors”, suggests that we need to focus more on leading local armies and fighting forces overseas rather than committing our own men to do the fighting. Right off the bat, Mr. Nagl develops his ethos just from his background. Nagl is an Army veteran of both Iraq wars, and is currently writing a memoir about the theory and practice of modern war called “Knife Fights”. His clear knowledge of the functions of the military gives him a good deal of credibility and grants his ideas legitimacy.
Mr. Nagl also uses a great deal of pathos throughout his piece, although at many times it is not obvious, and takes some thinking. The first example we see is when he says “The United States has an extraordinary ability to defeat any conventional armed force on the planet.” This statement gives the reader a sense of pride in their nation, and in turn opens their mind towards the rest of the article. Mr. Nagl also ingeniously weaves together the uses of pathos and logos. He appeals to the emotions of the reader and mends them with logic and reason. He says “It’s far better to have our friends and allies fight our terrorist and insurgent enemies than to do it ourselves.” The pathos in this statement comes from the thought of keeping our own men and women safe, which is very powerful for those who have served, or know people who have. It’s also a logical statement, because he goes on to explain how our allies in the area know the language, culture and geography better than we do. Overall, Nagl’s use of logos and pathos as one tool makes his argument almost impenetrable.
From these three analyses, it should be very clear that it is not necessarily someone’s view on an issue, or even their background that determines the effectiveness of the argument, rather how they use rhetoric. As shown in the pieces written by Mr. Donnelly and Ms. Talmadge, a logical argument and strong use of logos in general can either make or break the argument. Moreover, Nagl’s piece is a great example of how pathos, more specifically national pride can only add to any points, and emotionally please the audience.