What do Climate Change, DEI and Integrity Have in Common?

By MG Joe Arbuckle U.S. Army (ret)
STARRS Vice Chairman

The below opinion is about the connections between political correctness (PC) programs and the damage it does to integrity among many senior officers.

Some may say those who allow PC social programs to damage their integrity are not well grounded in the fundamental values that are reflected when acting with integrity. Conversely, those who take a strong stand on integrity issues tend to not rise to the top. There is truth in this thinking.

While writing the below paper, I continued pondering why top level flag officers are willing to adopt, and in some cases champion, obviously extremely harmful programs like DEI.

There is more to the answer than just how strongly an officer’s integrity base is built. This is a question ripe for introspection, research, and a major study. Some thoughts about the answer:

—Our military officer professional education system is generally failing in the ethics and leadership areas regarding POLMIL relations, beginning with the academies and ROTC programs. That failure continues through all levels of professional military education. Consider: Milley was commissioned in 1980 and CQ Brown in 1984; what was happening in the late 70s and early 80s during their college years that may have influenced them during the post Vietnam era?

—One factor was the effort in the late 70s & 80s to rebuild a more professional officer and NCO corps (which happened), to include the Air Land Battle Doctrine.

But having commanded three times in the 70s, battalion command in the 80s, and three commands in the 90s, I experienced the infusion of a “zero defects” mentality which often caused commanders/leaders to be risk adverse and be prone to go along with the program or risk career damage.

The zero defects mentality is possibly a big factor with today’s senior officers going along with destructive political decisions; they were shaped by the zero defects culture to avoid career risk and accept the party line.

In the Army, many officers avoided more than one company command because they were high career risk.

Concurrently during this period there was a vast increase in administrative requirements for commanders along with requirements for dozens of routing reports to be assembled/tabulated and send up the chain to multiple bureaucratic levels. Feeding the bureaucracy with reports expanded which created a feeling in commanders/leaders their every move was being watched and graded from above.

—Goldwater Nichols 1986: Designed to solve the inter-service rivalry problem by streamlining the chain of command from the CINC to combatant commanders which was good. But I believe it has done terrible damage to the uniformed military by imposing too much civilian control and authority over military matters beginning within the OSD and within each Service Secretariats.

Expanding authority of the Secretariats gives the POTUS tremendous power over the uniformed military based on the civilians he selects to run the DOD and Services and that is where the PC social programs are rooted.

A huge top heavy civilian bureaucracy has grown and the senior level flags today who were commissioned in the 80s, have grown up under this massive civilian control structure which would likely make them more prone to accept PC social programs that those of us who were pre-GN. My two tours in the Pentagon reinforce this observation— the majority of Pentagon personnel spend most of their time feeding the PPBES system vs actual warfighting prep and handling current ops.

Enough speculating about why the many top flags today go along with harmful PC programs. How to solve it? The source of the problem is politics and therein lies the solution.

Recognizing a political solution is a stretch, what can be done today in our military officer educational system from cadet to field grades to set new standards of behavior among the officer corps to challenge social engineering programs that are harmful to military readiness and good order and discipline?

At the extreme, perhaps making falling on one’s sword over matters of principle/integrity could be made a badge of honor. As we know, all this is difficult to balance with the embedded civilian control of our military system of government.

What we do know is the balance is gone today with civilian social ideological programs like DEI taking precedence over warfighting readiness.

More thoughts in this paper:

Opinion Piece: What do Climate Change, DEI and Integrity Have in Common?

For many, climate change has become a pagan religion with cult-like followers across the globe. Children are being indoctrinated in schools to believe they will die in the not too distant future if people do not take drastic steps to change the climate.

This climate change paranoia is pushed by the leftist globalists who use climate change fear as a tool to unite nations into a world-wide program which naturally funnels into the justification for One World Government including the WHO, WEF, and the UN.

The climate change cult-like movement has sunk deep roots into our education system and government.

It is especially dangerous when forced into our military where climate change is called a “crisis” and being identified as a “national security threat”; the SECDEF called the climate crisis an “existential threat.” A large and costly bureaucratic structure has developed within DoD to develop a strategy, plans and policies to deal with the “climate crisis” and “national security threat.”

The DoD has not defined what constitutes a climate “crisis.” Our nation has had a military since 1775 that has trained, operated, and fought in all kinds of extreme climate conditions around the world beginning at Valley Forge during a terrible winter.

What suddenly constitutes an existential climate crisis? Answer: politics. Leftist politicians have labeled it as a crisis and our military is supporting the climate change social agenda and accompanying hysteria.

If climate change is indeed a crisis and a threat to national security, then logically we should be able to martial military forces to combat the climate change threat. Obviously that is not possible. The climate has been changing in fairly predictable cycles for billions of years and will continue to change with or without mankind.

The actions listed in the DoD climate change plans deal with reacting and adapting to climate change, which we have done successfully for 248 years. The only thing in the DoD plans to possibly deter climate change is the reduction fossil fuel use in favor electricity which, at best, will have only a minuscule effect on the climate.

Climate change has a common denominator with DEI. The military top leadership supports DEI and it has also adopted the climate change crisis mantra. Both are politically driven–the common denominator is politics.

DEI is a spin off of CRT, which is firmly rooted in Marxism, that divides people into identity groups mostly based on race, and pits them against each other based on oppressors vs the oppressed identity groups. By design, DEI is divisive.

Those who do not recognize these roots simply have not studied the issue, opting instead to believe a blatantly refutable narrative invented by academics who not only have never served, but whose very ideologies are antithetical to the concept of team cohesion which is based on total trust and confidence in each other — the core component of a strong fighting force.

The top military leadership has adopted the DEI political agenda and is actively pushing it down through the ranks as being virtuous. The same holds true for the climate crisis being proclaimed as a national security threat.

The climate change crisis found in DoD’s national security plans apparently is designed to appease climate activists and politicians.

As with DEI, the top DoD leadership is enforcing social agendas that have nothing to do with warfighting readiness. In fact, they harm it by taking DoD’s eye off the ball, its reason to exist, which is to fight and win our nations wars.

If senior officers today are asked questions about strictly military matters like the number of aircraft, ships, and combat vehicles that are operational or questions about deployment capabilities, etc., an honest answer will most certainly be provided.

But, if the same senior officers are asked is “wokeness” effecting recruiting, or if DEI is harmful to unity and teamwork, or if the covid vax is illegal, etc., the answer will commonly be a distortion of the truth or a falsehood.

The result is damaged integrity today among many senior military officers which can be traced back to one source—politics. This politically correct (PC) influence began in earnest in 2008 with the Obama administration and has ballooned under the current administration.

It is the politically driven social programs that put military leaders into an integrity box.

If they tell the truth careers are ended; therefore, many jeopardize their integrity and make statements and take actions in support of things like DEI which has as a false theme “diversity is our strength”. Over time, it appears many convince themselves such programs are acceptable to justify their own actions.

Then, there are others who are ideologically aligned with DEI, climate change, and support such PC programs without reservation. This is evident with many at the top of the DoD.

Conclusion:

When politics coming from the administration and its civilian appointees are forced into the military, the first and most damaging casualty at the top is often personal integrity.

When senior officers know they will not be promoted or selected for key positions unless they support harmful PC agendas and they do so, their integrity is damaged.

How do those senior leaders who place value on integrity rationalize such an action? Those who adopt the PC agenda apparently convince themselves it is the right thing to do based on perceived loyalty to the CINC/President, seemingly over the Constitution.

Others appear to “go along to get along” thinking they can stay within the system and make a difference. Which category is the most corrosive, those who buy into “political correctness” or those who just go along to get along?

As with any ideology, the most dangerous are those who buy into the political narrative and become true supporters of things like DEI and climate change. They are the ones, for the most part, now at the top of the military chain of command.

Integrity is the first casualty of extreme politics in the military. The term extreme is used because politics have always influenced our military based on who the CINC/ President appoints into top DoD civilian positions. The difference today is political agendas like DEI and climate change do great harm to our military.

The greatest damage from all this PC infusion into our military is war fighting readiness. Every social engineering program does serious harm to warfighting.

Our military must get back to its roots with equal opportunity for all and meritocracy to guide how people are treated.

Putting service members into various categories of identity groups like race, and labeling some as oppressors and others as oppressed, is toxic to the warrior ethos which is based on total trust and confidence in each other for their very lives.

It is time to eliminate the massive bureaucracies costing untold millions of dollars; largely staffed by DoD and contractor civilians, that have grown and become the the power base for social programs like DEI, climate change, suicide prevention, etc.

It is time to again hold commanders responsible for the health, morale, and welfare of their personnel without PC bureaucratic organizations dictating to commanders how to treat their people.

We must take the extreme politics out of our military; let our military do what is does best—train as one color blind, meritocratic, homogenous team to fight and win our nation’s wars.