Defence`s Feeds

United Arab Emirates Enigma Armored Personnel Carrier

Iraqi T-55 Enigma Medium Tank

Welcome to this week’s CCLKOW discussion piece. This time, we are looking at the portrayal and perception of military veterans in the UK and other western countries. In short, veterans are frequently characterised as ‘victims,’ in the media and by the public at large. Moreover, there is increasing concern that they will experience long-term mental health problems in the wake of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. However, veterans are a far more heterogeneous and resilient group than reports seem to indicate. Read the piece and join the discussion on Twitter at #CCLKOW

In the last few years, media reports have suggested that there are an alarming number of British veterans experiencing service-related psychological problems. Commentators have argued that an increasing pool of ex-servicemen and women are falling through the cracks. As operations in Afghanistan have come to a close, numerous authors have expressed the fear that a record number of veterans will present with mental health problems like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD) in the near future.[i] The debate over how best to address their needs and foster a supportive environment for these men and women has become highly politicised. In the process, the veteran has become a hotly contested figure. The popular portrayal of military veterans in the UK and other western countries has only served to further complicate this dialogue.

There is a growing and widespread perception amongst the media and public alike that war is a universally traumatising event and veterans, without exception will be damaged by their experiences. Beginning in 2011, Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft conducted a study to evaluate public opinion of the British Armed Forces. Amongst his chief findings, he reported that, ‘in our poll of the UK public, more than nine out of ten thought it was common for those leaving the Force to have “some kind of physical, emotional or mental problem” as a result of their time in the military; more than a third (34%) thought it was “very common” for this to be the case.’[ii] In a recent article, journalist Max Hastings has also pointed out that, ‘those who have participated in wars are widely perceived not as protagonists…but instead as victims.’[iii] Popular television shows of the past decade frequently depict veterans as broken individuals who can lash out violently at those around them. They are characterised as ‘ticking time bombs,’ who will inevitably experience difficulties in processing their experiences.[iv]

This image is further reinforced when the war in question is unpopular. As historian Helen McCartney has underlined, ‘much of the UK newspaper coverage of the armed forces depicts service personnel as victims, either of failed strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan or of government underspending or MoD incompetence.’[v] In the United States, retired four star General Jim Mattis has also publicly criticized news outlets and politicians for helping, ‘fuel [the] perception that most or all…veterans come back from war traumatized.’[vi] Mattis is but one of many voices within the wider community of American veterans who have expressed concern over public perception.[vii]

On both sides of the Atlantic, the black and white picture that has been presented does not accurately reflect the complexity of the issue at hand and lacks a great deal of nuance. According to a 2014 study conducted by researchers at the King’s Centre for Military Health Research, ‘contrary to many people’s expectations, deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan has not led to an overall increase in mental health problems among UK personnel.’[viii] The authors estimated that only around 1.3% to 4.8% of UK Regulars returning from deployment exhibited symptoms of probable PTSD.[ix] Recent reports also indicate that rates of suicide are lower within the military than in the civilian population.[x] In general, veterans who have deployed on more than one occasion are less likely to suffer from ‘subsequent mental health problems.’[xi] Around 18,000 service personnel are discharged from the British Armed Forces every year. While little research has been done on service leavers in the UK, the American literature suggests that, ‘military service for most people, has a positive effect on…life trajectory.’[xii]

There will be those veterans who experience psychological difficulties as a result of their service and will require help in processing their experiences and adjusting to civilian life. Scholars have identified several groups (e.g. combat veterans, reservists) as at higher risk for mental health problems.[xiii] These veterans and their families deserve to be treated fairly and receive the attention that they require. Be that as it may, the present paradigm of the veteran as victim fails to acknowledge the range of human experience in relation to trauma. Not all veterans are damaged by their experiences of war. Acknowledging this resilience does not trivialize or delegitimize individual suffering. On the contrary, it simply recognizes the complexities of how human beings react to stressful or traumatic events and the difficulties inherent in trying to neatly categorise people into boxes.

Over the next decade, the UK and its allies will undoubtedly continue to face challenges in caring for and adequately addressing the needs of a new generation of veterans. There is evidence to suggest that stigma remains a barrier to those who might wish to seek professional help.[xiv] Furthermore, the military footprint is shrinking in response to cuts in manpower. Consequently, fewer members of the public have ties to those in uniform. There is also a need to continue improving the options available to veterans and their families in connection to services like counseling.[xv] However, this process should not be informed by extreme stereotypes but by a well-rounded and realistic picture of the veteran population. The public should be encouraged to see veterans as they would see themselves, as human beings with challenges to face and reserves of strength upon which to draw. Like civilians, service personnel and veterans struggle with addiction, depression and many other disorders. Equally, they can recover and/or live with those disorders and still have much to offer society. Moreover, they frequently exhibit a remarkable resilience that should be recognized and celebrated.

So the questions for this week are:

Does public perception help or hinder the recovery of veterans who have experienced trauma?

How should the media portray veterans in order to more accurately reflect their experiences?

Is it possible to effectively ‘support the soldier’ without supporting the cause for which they fight?

 

*’Culture of trauma’ is a phrase that appears to have been coined by Ben Shephard, War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 385.

[i] Sima Kotecha, ‘Care for UK Military Veterans is “Flawed,” Medical Experts Say,’ BBC News, 29 Oct 2014.

[ii] Lord Ashcroft, ‘The Armed Forces & Society: The military in Britain—through the eyes of Service personnel, employers, and the public’ (May 2012), p. 15.

[iii] Max Hastings, ‘Veterans and Mental Health in Contemporary Britain,’ Royal United Services Institute Journal 159, No. 6 (Dec 2014), p. 36.

[iv] Ben Farmer, ‘Army recruitment could be hit by charities portraying troops as victims,’ Telegraph (25 Dec 2013), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10531300/Army-recruitment-could-be-hit-by-charities-portraying-troops-as-victims.html.

[v] Helen McCartney, ‘The military covenant and the civil-military contract in Britain,’ International Affairs 86, No. 2 (2010), p. 424.

[vi] General Jim Mattis, as quoted in, Jim Michaels, ‘Mattis: Veterans are not victims,’ USA Today (5 May 2014), http://www.usatoday.com/story/nation/2014/05/05/mattis-iraq-afghanistan-marines-usmc/8632093/.

[vii] David Morris, ‘Surviving War Doesn’t Turn All Veterans into Victims, Sometimes it Helps Them Grow,’ The Daily Beast (18 May 2014), http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/18/surviving-war-doesn-t-turn-all-veterans-into-victims-sometimes-it-helps-them-grow.html; Dave Philipps, ‘Coming Home to Damaging Stereotypes,’ New York Times (5 Feb 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/us/a-veteran-works-to-break-the-broken-hero-stereotype.html?_r=0

[viii] Deirdre MacManus, N Jones, S Wessely, NT Fear, E Jones, N Greenberg, ‘The mental health of the UK Armed Forces in the 21st century: resilience in the face of adversity,’ J R Army Med Corps 0 (2014), p. 1.

[ix] Ibid., p. 2.

[x] MoD, ‘Suicide and Open Verdict Deaths in the UK Regular Armed Forces 1985-2013,’ 27 March 2014; ‘Myth Busters,’ Combat Stress (2015), http://www.combatstress.org.uk/veterans/myth-busters/#VeteransAndSuicide

[xi] James Gallagher, ‘”Violence Risk” after Military Tours,’ BBC News, 15 March 2013.

[xii] Amy Iverson, Vasilis Nikolaou, Neil Greenberg, Catherine Unwin, Lisa Hull, Mathew Hotopf, Christopher Dandeker, John Ross and Simon Wessely, ‘What happens to British veterans when they leave the armed forces?,’ European Journal of Public Health 15, No. 2 (2005), pp. 175-184.

[xiii] MacManus, N Jones, Wessely, NT Fear, E Jones, Greenberg, ‘The mental health of the UK Armed Forces in the 21st century,’ p. 1.

[xiv] Amy C Iverson, Lauren van Staden, Jamie Hacker Hughes, Neil Greenberg, Matthew Hotopf, Roberto J Rona, Graham Thornicroft, Simon Wessely, and Nicola T Fear, ‘The stigma of mental health problems and other barriers to care in the UK Armed Forces,’ BioMed Central Health Services Research 11 (2011), pp. 1-10.

[xv] MoD, ‘Annual Medical Discharges in the UK Regular Armed Forces 2009/10-2013/14,’ 10 July 2014.

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A while ago – I lose track of when – I wrote about something on KoW which I’d clumsily called hypercompetition. I don’t claim anything particularly original about the notion, but I heard it blaring out of my radio last week under the guise of something now called hybrid war. 

The problem of the conspiracy theory accusations or difficulties with hypercompetition seem to have been politically overcome with the perception of threat provided by Russia in Ukraine. Prior to this a notion that Russian funding of things of influence might be problematic was bracketed under the heading of ‘conspiracy theory’. Money likes to travel.. and in this globalised world money is colour blind.. let it come from wherever it comes. That sort of thing. And it’s not to pick on the Russian money, certainly not in the way I think about this hybridity or hypercompetition. It strikes me that there is rather a large number of states and significant networks of influence leveraging influence.

There are several underpinning follow-on questions:

1) Is this is a paranoid view of the world? Does it too close to conspiracy theory? Two responses: 1) a wise friend of mine noted that all IR theories are merely a myopia or conspiracy built upon the exponent’s preferences. So, this is merely a dissenting voice. As those mainstream conceptions were when they were mooted.

2) Is Western Europe just really bad at this form of warfare or influence? Following media reportage, it would appear that we’re under siege from many external sources. That we’re the timid supplicant… flotsam bounced around by nasty ‘forren’ types. I’m not convinced we’re bad at the prosecution of this kind of activity – afterall, if 500 years of imperialism hasn’t taught us something we should give up and cower at home. However, we seem very bad at countering it at home. Part of this might be the Bronwen Jones line of the coloniser being eventually colonised, but I think our weakness and vulnerability actually stems from the near universal acceptance of a narrative that, for instance, says that third country investment in our core infrastructure is ‘just the market’ rather than representing something political. Afterall, the restrictive rules on FDI in other countries means that we’re not aligned to a brand of universal thought on this. The underfunding of European universities – for example – means that the sector arguably has taken to servicing global elites and seeking out international (non-EU) money (from all sorts of places) that helps to tailor intellectual agendas and allows for foreign-domestic political debates/fights to be had on EU soil, away from the more problematic political environments of those students. This is the sort of political activity that gave European governments the creeps in the 1920s, and whilst the positive externalities of internationalisation are clear to those who work in universities – as anyone engaged in Horizon2020 funding, or in finding research partners in the US will tell you – there is a potential darker side that administrators seem unkeen to think about. Whether these networks pose a risk or not would require the right question, the right data and fine judgments. And of course it might be that we are fine exponents of exporting our own norms…

So, should we be worried about this hybridity as it pertains to Russia. Well, Russian money has traveled, and London’s housing market is partly inflated and propped up by it. Money has traveled into think-tanks and research efforts, and into infrastructure. Leveraging influence is not solely a case of invest and nice things will follow. But it helps. The Economist – which has become increasingly shrill on this issue – plotted Russian connections to European political parties to more than suggest that hybrid war threatened the fabric of the continent and the European project in particular. But most of the scaryness seems to be because of the word Russia, rather than the pattern of behaviour, which is a logic of neoliberal economics and PR/influence. Can we unpick or understand the complex influences on our politics (both organisational and ideological)? No. Should we pay attention to the fine documentary by Adam Curtis, Bitter Lake...? Yes, well worth a watch.

So, I would say this, wouldn’t I… but there is much in the concept of hybrid war. But we are only at the start of really understanding what is meant by it, and a country mile off understanding how to counter it. Particularly when countering it will rely upon a challenge to neoliberal orthodoxies.

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