Who is the soldier?

There are 7 ideal types of the soldier, writes Iselin Silja Kaspersen in Small Wars & Insurgencies, that we have to consider if we want to have an analytically useful conceptualization of soldier roles, bc there’s now a gap btwn expectations & actual role /1

Here’s the 7 types:
The warrior
The nation defender
The Law enforcer
The humanitarian
The state-builder
The ideological
The contractor soldier
/2

(“How soldier roles are constructed affect how military personnel understand their role in the postmodern world where identity is multifaceted & negotiable. Identity influences how soldiers interact w/society & how societies respond to war, conflicts, crises,” she writes)/3

She expands & redefines Janowitz’s 3 soldier types produced by the modern changes in warfare: the heroic leader who seeks success in combat; the military technologist who seeks destruction thru perfecting weapons & the mil manager who seeks to manage use of force more carefully/4

Kaspersen thinks the most common conceptualization of the soldier role now is a dualistic vision of warrior & peacekeeper. But that’s complicated bc peacekeeping operations have evolved, integrating increased use of force. /5

She also thinks Krulak’s attempt to get out of the complications by instituting a 3rd soldier role, the “strategic corporal” is as a concept “analytically problematic” as no singular behaviour is characteristic of the strategic soldier. /6

She finds unsatisfactory Haltiner& Kümmel’s “hybrid soldier”, measured on 3 axes: meaning behind soldiers’ actions; where on Huntington-Janowitz scale of protecting civilians from soldiers or civilianizing soldiers you are; motives-patriotic advocates of NatSec or humanitarian/7

“Changes to the role don’t occur in a... vacuum but in a mutually affected relationship btwn sociocultural forces & an individual’s interpretations & actions as soldiers...the soldier-peacekeeper dichotomy is myopic, it inhibits us from grasping the whole array of soldiering”/8

An individual soldier’s understanding of his or her role, or role-identity,is a complex composite, produced through a process of internalizing a specific set of expectations.” /9

Here’s her breakdown of “the warrior” /10

The “nation defender”: /11

The law-enforcer: /12

The state-builder & the humanitarian soldier types: /13

And the ideological & contractor soldier types:/14

I have to muse awhile about these types & roles @ arguments, but it’s definitely an interesting & serious exploration of who “The Soldier” is. 15/15.