U.S. Right-Wingers Keep Confusing Culture War With Actual War

Some conservatives in the United States have recently developed a bizarre tendency to uncritically consume foreign military recruiting propaganda. In 2021, Sen. Ted Cruz circulated Russian propaganda in an attempt to malign U.S. military recruiting efforts, and Fox News host Tucker Carlson is on the record complaining that the U.S. military is “more feminine” in comparison to the Chinese military’s “more masculine” nature. Most recently, Sen. Marco Rubio picked out an officer’s brief participation in a shipboard spoken word event as evidence that the U.S. Navy’s internal priorities are misplaced while the People’s Liberation Army Navy trains for war.

In an attempt to score points in a culture war, a select group of pundits and politicians—very few of whom have served themselves—appear to be interpreting these propaganda videos as indicators of combat effectiveness. Whether the videos feature shirtless men doing pushups or glowering paratroopers dropping from the skies, there’s a desire to see the United States emulate these warped displays of apparent masculine prowess—but this would be a mistake.

Anyone consuming these videos needs to understand what they actually are: a farce. Much like the U.S. Marines who slew a lava monster and battled chess pieces in recruiting commercials in the 1980s and ’90s, the soldiers in these videos are almost certainly paid actors. The real Russian military is a mostly conscript force typified by abuse, sexual assault, and working conditions that would make Upton Sinclair faint. Meanwhile, its fellow authoritarian, “no limits” partner, China, has a military that is rife with corruption, hidebound with Communist Party-driven structures that preclude original thought or tactical creativity, and that hasn’t seen actual fighting since 1986—and no full-scale war since 1979. In combat, many of its soldiers will die for the simple reason that they are not allowed to think.

This is not license to ignore the threat posed by either military, but it should be clear that neither is an organization that any Western force should look to emulate. Whatever faults the U.S. military may have, its training is envied, sought after, and emulated (often poorly) around the world. China and Russia rely on scripted training with limited combat value. Much of their training is used to repress their own people.

For U.S. politicians to hold them up as superior is to favor political point-scoring in a facile culture war over U.S. military effectiveness. This not only is dangerous to U.S. national security but also actively undermines Americans who have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution and do so with dignity and respect for their fellow service members.

So-called emasculation features heavily in popular far-right criticisms of the U.S. military—in spite of the fact that women have served in and alongside the military since the founding of the United States, flown combat aircraft since 1993, and been formally allowed in ground combat roles since 2013. Thousands of women have earned Combat Action Badges during combat operations in America’s wars, and hundreds have been decorated for valor under fire.

I have personally served with women who flew into the hottest battles of Iraq to evacuate wounded Marines, tracked Chinese submarines in the Pacific Ocean, and conducted some of the most sensitive and dangerous intelligence missions in recent history. I have deployed with transgender shipmates who did their duty day in and day out in demanding and dangerous environments. I am not unique in knowing remarkable service members who are not heterosexual men; gay men, in particular, have been training and serving in the U.S. military since its founding.

The only time Russian forces have faced U.S. combat troops since 1920 was in a 2018 battle near the city of Deir Ezzor in Syria. A combined group of 500 soldiers, composed of Russian and Syrian combat troops and backed by tanks and three dozen other vehicles, advanced on a U.S. outpost containing less than one-tenth of their total strength. Over the course of a four-hour battle, which brought together the full spectrum of U.S. capabilities, from ground forces to electronic warfare and uncrewed weapons to combat aircraft, U.S. forces eliminated several hundred of the attackers without suffering a single loss of their own.

Strangely, the ability to do shirtless pushups or jump though flaming hoops did not decide the battle. Rather, professional and highly trained personnel of all states, communities, sexual orientations, and genders came together to form a devastatingly lethal response and kill their enemies.

We have seen this again in Ukraine, which has wisely taken in volunteers from all walks of life and diverse backgrounds to form a military capable of defending its interests. Again, some American observers elect to criticize the Ukrainians for releasing videos of young personnel dancing on social media while falling over themselves to praise the so-called manly Russian military and its cultural values. For starters, the idea that a force typified by mass crimes against humanity, including slaughtering mothers and infants in hospitals and waging campaigns of terror, rape, and murder in occupied zones, could be culturally admirable is shocking and should be rejected with disgust by every American.

In terms of combat effectiveness, Russia has again been shown to be shockingly inept. The Russian paratroopers slavered over by far-right pundits have suffered incredible losses in exchange for very few gains. The Russian government now deploying armor fit for a Cold War museum to fight against a diverse force of Ukrainian baristas, IT professionals, and poets who have embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces so completely as to shock the entire world. Neither heterosexuality nor the XY chromosome is an indicator of combat effectiveness or strategic acumen.

To recruit from a diverse population, the military needs to highlight that its culture accommodates and celebrates diversity. U.S. service members deserve to be proud of who they are. Their identities matter. We should not allow them to become embroiled in this absurd culture war, by either side. Politicians do not need to engage in saccharine “thank you for your service” hero worship, but they do owe those in uniform respect for their basic human dignity and for their willingness to serve.

Members of the military should not be held up as objects of derision, nor should they be singled out to highlight the imagined superiority of regimes actively pursuing genocidal campaigns against minorities and mass murder of noncombatants. Using the military like this is a gross abuse of power, taking advantage of the fact that active-duty personnel cannot publicly push back against this malign treatment by members of government.

It may shock some to learn that many of the most vociferous critics of an inclusive military never elected to serve themselves. It is hard to imagine that individuals who feel so strongly about who serves in the military somehow never managed to find their way to a recruiting office during the past two decades of ongoing conflict. Instead, this chickenhawk caucus prefers to spend their taxpayer-funded time tweeting feverishly about how letting women and LGBTQ+ personnel serve their country has somehow made the United States weaker.

Not only is this approach a poor cultural critique, but it is also a facile argument that ignores empirical evidence. The fact is, a more inclusive U.S. military has made the United States better. A modern military defined not only by physical strength but also by technical acumen and mental agility—including a diversity of viewpoints, backgrounds, skills, and abilities—makes the United States’ all-volunteer force the deadliest military in the world. Elected officials should have more important things to deal with than fetishizing authoritarian militaries, but if they must do it, they should leave U.S. service members out of it.

If there is something making U.S. forces less ready, it is the lack of ready platforms and materiel needed to face a peer military challenger—an issue squarely within Congress’s remit to rectify. Politicians should spend more time thinking about real war and less about culture war.