Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
interesting answer.

although i'm not so convinced that europes situation can be pinned down entirely to political leadership, for the people themselves are far less tolerant of 'justifications' for warmaking, which has an impact on the policy options available to our political masters.
Absolutely right. I should have clarified that the Political Leadership aspect doesn't just relate to the political class, so in a democracy the Political Leadership is also influenced by the will of the people purely due to the nature of the system. There is a general malaise towards war in Western Europe and this feeds into the Political Leadership aspect, but it doesn't (as some seem to have suggested) feed into the 'Men' aspect. There is little difference in the quality of recruits at the start due to that general malaise, it is how the training system indoctrinates them that determines the end product.

likewise, the meforum author notes many of the flaws you point out and still manages to conclude that culture can be deemed at least partly responsible for poor performance in modern warmaking. i.e. those training deficiencies result from, or are exacerbated by, those cultural traits.
Effective military training is designed to break recruits so it can mould them from scratch, therefore by definition it shouldn't matter what background or culture those recruits come from. If you don't train them correctly in the first place, then unwanted traits will undoubtedly get into the system. I don't think it's fair to say one culture is less suited than others though. You could pick out all sorts of traits in Western European culture that make people unsuitable to be in the armed forces, many of which would be exactly the same as those mentioned in the article and probably many others too. The only difference being there is a generally higher standard of training in Western Europe so those traits are generally eliminated and replaced with traits desired for an effective military.