As its title suggests, The Soul of Armies is a book about the “organizational essence” of military organizations (Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, 1974, pp. 28–29). It explores how distinct military cultures emerge and how they shape counterinsurgency doctrines and the conduct of counterinsurgency operations. The book argues that military culture is formed in the first “critical formative experience” of a soldier’s military service, which Austin Long labels as “the first war” (p. 25). The core of military culture originating from this first operational experience is then transmitted over time through professional military education, thereby affecting how the military functions and operates. The dependent variable encompasses both the doctrine and conduct of operations, mainly operationalized as the size of operations, the level and targeting of firepower, and integration with civilians. The independent variable, military culture, has two main components: one is outward looking (“strategic”), and the other is about internal functioning (“managerial”). Military culture provides both the means to evaluate information (via a logic of consequences) and forms preferences, values, and identity (via a logic of appropriateness) (p. 17).

Although Long argues that the most meaningful tenets of military culture reside at the service level, subcultures matter too. In his framework, subcultures either resist (“counter”) or follow (“orthogonal”) the core aspects of the broader service culture (pp. 32–34). Long subsequently identifies two archetypes of culture: a maritime archetype, prone to limited warfare and to cooperating with other organizations and civilians, and a continental archetype, which is about total war and the maximum application of firepower. Four cases illustrate the argument: the U.S. Army, the U.S. Army Special Forces, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the British Army. Long studies each of those four organizations’ very “first war”: the American Civil War in the U.S. army case (1861–65), the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Crimean War and the Sepoy Mutiny (1854–59) in the British case. After their first formative experiences, the cases are followed through their major counterinsurgency fronts: the U.S. cases in Vietnam (1960–71), Iraq (2003–8), and Afghanistan (2003–11); the British Army is studied in Kenya (1952–56), Iraq (2003-8), and Afghanistan (2003–11). The underlying empirical prediction is that military culture should matter more in conditions of high uncertainty, particularly when directives are particularly obscure.

There is so much to like about this book. It is at the same time empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated. It conveys a powerful narrative that makes it highly readable. Although it is not easy to craft scholarship on culture, Long ultimately manages to convince the reader about the stickiness of military culture and how it is transmitted across generations of personnel. The book advances a debate that had reached a stalemate in the early 2000s after the seminal work of scholars addressing military and strategic cultures (e.g., Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War, 1997, and Jeffrey W. Legro, Cooperation under Fire, 1995). Long is the first to theorize about the origins of military cultures and to develop in greater detail a taxonomy of archetypes of military culture. The breadth and depth of the book are its strongest features and at the same time its Achilles’ heel. I take issue with four elements of his taxonomy.

First, the dependent variable is somewhat misconceived. It is unclear whether the focus is doctrine or the conduct of operations or both. Although the author acknowledges that “it should be crucially noted that the dependent variable is first and foremost about actual practice in the field” (p. 21), this is not really carried through, and a strong emphasis remains on doctrine. In Chapters 6–8, which deal with the early counterinsurgency campaigns, doctrine is far more in focus than actual practices, although Long does make an attempt to distinguish between doctrine and conduct. The last two chapters (Chapters 9 and 10), however, are largely about the conduct of operations, and the focus on doctrine is abandoned almost completely. In my view, doctrine should not have been brushed aside as a dependent variable, and at the same time, the interplay between doctrine and actual military behavior could have been problematized more. The book could have systematically used discrepancies between doctrines and conduct of operations as measures of the stickiness of culture; for instance, as the author notes, in relation to the U.S. Army’s conduct in Vietnam from 1961–65 (p. 114). It would have been interesting to explore under what conditions a doctrine that does not take into account military culture is subsequently ignored in operations. The other elephant in the room is whether culture increases the likelihood of military effectiveness, which the author alludes to in the conclusion (p. 223). It might look as if the inability of military culture to adapt would make the military less effective, but perhaps surprisingly, this is not what the book finds. Further research should focus much more on the dynamic interplay between doctrine, military behavior, and military effectiveness. Recent scholarship seems to be pushing precisely this line of research (e.g., Cornelius Friesendorf, How Western Soldiers Fight, 2018; Chiara Ruffa, Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations, 2018).

Second, the book falls short of developing a full-fledged new theory about the origins and evolution of culture. Although it makes a much-needed contribution to the ongoing debate on where military culture originates, it could have done more to shed light on how Long selected the first formative experiences. That the American Civil War is the “first war” seems obvious in the U.S. Army case, but it remains unclear why the Spanish-American War would be the “first war” for the U.S. Marine Corps or the Crimean War and the Sepoy Mutiny for the British Army. What are the observables needed to call an operational experience the “first war”? In addition, the book makes a strong assumption about the role of operational experiences in shaping “the soul of armies.” This is probably the result of a case-selection bias that stems from the predominance of U.S. cases, which guide the theory development exercise. Yet, the formative moment for a military is not necessarily a war or an operation; it may be something else, such as its disbandment (Germany after World War II) or the reestablishment of civilian control (France, 1962). In addition, I find it difficult to embrace a theory about military culture that does not include theorizing on the role of civilian decision makers who set the constraints and allow culture to evolve in certain directions. For instance, without Kennedy emphasizing the focus on counterinsurgency in Vietnam (1960, p. 106), we might have had different outcomes and a different conduct of operations. Relatedly, the theory of change should also reflect more explicitly on how new operational approaches and experiences, such as those of the Israeli Defense Forces in the Yom Kippur War, are made sense by the U.S. Army through cultural lenses (p. 171).

Third, the locus of culture is not entirely clear. Although the book argues that service culture is what matters the most, subcultures are important too and may in fact work against the main service’s cultural tenets. For example, the U.S. Army Special Forces’ subculture developed almost fully independently of broader army cultural traits. In the U.S. Marine Corps case, the persistent tension between the “small wars” and the “amphibious operations” subcultures leaves me wondering what actually constitutes service culture.

Finally, I find the choice to focus solely on formal professionalization processes unwarranted (p. 29). Military sociology suggests that informal processes are at least equally important in shaping military cultures, guiding military behavior at war and at peace (Donna Winslow, The Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia, 1997; Anthony King, The Combat Soldier, 2013). Without the support of informal socialization processes, professionalization would not have been as powerful as a mechanism. Yet, processes of socialization into the military profession are underdeveloped. Indeed, we cannot assume that everyone will be equally socialized into the culture. In addition, levels of socialization may vary across services. For instance, the U.S. Marine Corps has a much less hierarchical structure, which may mean fewer tensions across the officer corps.

In sum, greater analytical care and further theorizing could have made The Soul of Armies’ argument stronger. Yet, my four points do not undermine the exceptional contribution of this book, which is one of the best pieces of recent scholarship on military culture. I admire the effort to capture in a nuanced and sophisticated way the “essence of culture” and to describe military culture in all its complexity. Through its wealth of empirical material, it shows not only that culture matters but also how. The Soul of Armies is a must read for all those interested in where the ongoing debate on military culture, and on culture in general, is heading, and it paves the way for a return to the study of culture and of the stickiness of ideas in international politics.