New societies, new soldiers? A soldier typology

ABSTRACT

The term ‘soldier’ is frequently conceptualized as a warrior, a peacekeeper, or a hybrid of both. However, recent changes in the utilization of soldiers in societies have moved the repertoire of possible ways to think, act, and behave beyond these notions. As such, there exists an undertheorized gap between different expectations of soldiers and actual soldier roles. This presents a need for more nuanced and analytically useful conceptualizations of soldier roles. This article provides a more thorough understanding of the soldier role by identifying seven ideal types of soldiers: the warrior, nation-defender, law-enforcer, humanitarian, state-builder, and the ideological, and contractor soldiers. The typology offers an analytical tool with the capacity to maneuver the empirical reality, which is important because how soldier roles are constructed affect how military personnel understand their role in the postmodern world, where identity is multifaceted and negotiable. Ultimately, identity influences how soldiers interact with societies and how societies respond to war, conflicts, and crises.

KEYWORDS:

• Armed forces
• ideal type
• military sociology
• soldier role
• typology
• warrior

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Introduction

With intense and continuous changes to how and when societies respond to war, conflict, terrorism, and crises, scholars have sought to understand the ‘new nature’ of military operations.¹ While the degree of novelty is debatable,² one cohesive determination is that we experience a differentiation and a merging of different types of efforts within modern operations. Simultaneous efforts involving peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, psychological deterrence, border control, and full-scale military operations can occur within the same operational environment. Simultaneously, operations increasingly include non-combat endeavors³ such as humanitarian efforts, disaster relief, and training of foreign forces. As a result, military personnel are serving domestically and internationally, in new ways, in and out of combat.

As military organizations adapt to an augmented use, expectations of soldier roles are changing from a societal and military perspective. Soldiers are not detached from society; therefore, as societies’ and individuals’ understanding of soldier roles meets reality, interpretations and expectations are held to a practical standard. Several commonalities exist between the roles of soldiers and of citizens and contribute to changing a soldier’s role. Most noticeable may be the mediatization of societies. The media is typically quick to declare soldiers who lose their lives in international operations as heroes, constructing the persona of selfless warriors who sacrifice their lives for the sake of national security,⁴ thus influencing current and future military personnel to adopt such an identity. However, this is not always the case. The Vietnam war was widely condemned as unjust, resulting in the harsh treatment of veterans following the conflict.⁵

While media has broadcasted military action for decades, modern technology allows individuals to broadcasting personally, and share military activities without hinderance. Increased access to firsthand accounts, combined with the media’s perspective on soldierly activities, enables individuals to establish a particular understanding of the soldier role. With military operations increasingly focusing on rapid decision-making where determinations are made at the lowest appropriate level,⁶ individual soldiers’ understanding of their role can affect the operational outcome. This enables the expression of varying interpretations of the soldier role, where societal expectations and individual interpretations influence soldiers’ behavior and the conduct of operations in substantial ways.

With the evolution of military responsibility, there is a need to unfurl the ways in which the soldier role can be understood. As Nuciari points out, ‘This new factual situation needs new conceptual frameworks, since the task performed by the military in the various kinds of international missions creates different problems within armed forces that cannot be understood within existing conceptual tools.’⁷ The aim of this article is to develop a conceptual tool that represents the various ways in which the roles of soldiers can be understood. Doing so requires understanding the expectations of soldiers’ roles. In the following, the primary suppositions of soldiers’ roles are exposed and discussed through historical, current, institutional, and social expectations. Then, the methodological, conceptual, and theoretical foundations of the article are presented. Utilizing the various expectations, and conceptualizations, soldiers’ roles are deconstructed and reorganized, resulting in a suggested typology of seven ideal soldier types: the warrior, the nation defender, the law-enforcer, the state-builder, the humanitarian, the ideological soldier, and the contractor. Before concluding, a discussion regarding how the resulting typology can be further developed and utilized to capture changes in and challenges to the roles of soldiers in a rapidly changing society is presented.

Soldier – an all-encompassing concept

The first empirical efforts to understand soldiers’ roles were made during the Second World War through ‘The American Soldier’ survey. Stouffer et al.⁸ examined what motivated ground soldiers to combat the enemy. Their findings included a recognition of the importance of feeling morally obligated to the institutionalized role of being a soldier,⁹ a role that Stouffer et al.¹⁰ described as a person, who under machine-gun fire from a determined enemy, battled on. This description is similar to Janowitz’s¹¹ heroic leader and resembles the depiction of warrior soldiers, in much of the literature in research communities and military establishments. A soldier who seeks to defeat an enemy, is disciplined, aggressive, mentally and physically fit, and the ultimate protector of the state.

According to Wasinski,¹² the term, ‘soldier,’ has been equated to the term ‘warrior,’ after decades of being represented as deindividualized, disposable, and disciplined cogs, who fight and risk their lives in a hierarchical military structure. These conceptualizations are possible through reference to the traditional notion of the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force.¹³ The warrior is disciplined, and battles toward victory regardless of personal safety.¹⁴ S/he is focused on combat, hostility, and masculinity,¹⁵ and portraited as a ‘patriotic, efficient and disciplined man […] who knows what it means to “give” for his country’.¹⁶ In the United States of America doctrine for the Army, the inside cover features a dedication to ‘The Soldier’s Creed and Warrior Ethos.’¹⁷ Soldiers are viewed as loyal warriors, and disciplined team-members, who never quit and never accept defeat. Physically and mentally fit, and ready to destroy enemies in close combat.¹⁸ These warrioresque roles remain relevant, today, and are often equated with being a (real) soldiers.¹⁹ However, as societies have become engaged in military operations other than war,²⁰ the roles of soldiers have evolved beyond those of warriors; thus, fixating soldiers only as warriors proves insufficient.²¹

Janowitz²² addressed how changes in warfare impacted soldier’s role. He contrasted the roles of three soldier types; the heroic leader who ‘seek success in combat, regardless of his personal safety,’²³ the military technologist who, with civilian technological competence, seek destruction through perfecting weapons, and the military manager, who seek to manage the use of force more carefully. Janowitz identified a shift, where victory no longer hinged upon the warrior-like qualities of heroic leaders or technologists, but necessitated leaders who could manage the political and civilian aspects of warfare.²⁴ Janowitz suggested that a constabulary force would exist in the future, and its success would be predicated upon its ability to ‘seek viable international relations, rather than victory,’²⁵ requiring military managers to balance the warrior-like qualities of heroic leaders and technologists.

Constabulary forces would require a skill set aimed at conducting supervisory tasks. Janowitz²⁶ and Dicks²⁷ problematized the use of soldiers within the United Nations [UN] peacekeeping operations in the 1960s, as they seemed to persuade soldiers’ loyalty from the defense of a nation toward international duties. Janowitz argued that this change was resisted by the military, as it thwarted their ability to be the ultimate protectors of their state, requiring soldiers to diverge from their true purpose.²⁸ As armed forces grew beyond their traditional purpose, Janowitz argues that the military profession required ‘a new set of self-conceptions,’²⁹ and it was the diversity of skills among individual soldiers, that would enable forces to become a constabulary, and ‘encompass the entire range of military power.’³⁰

In the era of peacekeeping operations, researchers began using the title, peacekeepers, to describe participating soldiers.³¹ Soldiers had to be capable of conducting supervisory tasks within a protective view, exercising non-coercive impartiality, and limiting the use of force to self-defense.³² Similar responsibilities can be frequently observed in the UN commitment to the Responsibility to Protect [R2P] report,³³ and within their peacekeeping operations.³⁴ However, peacekeeping operations became more complex and evolved beyond the initial purpose to assist the enactment of a peace agreement after invitation. The UN refers to ‘new peacekeeping’ as integrating multidimensional counterinsurgency, state-building, and humanitarian aid into peacekeeping operations.³⁵ As a result, today’s terms, peacekeeping and peacekeeper, are characterized by multiple meanings.

One dimension of peacekeeping has become the formation of states, or nation-building. In the years following the Second World War, based on a perceived risk of a spillover effect on other states, the UN introduced nation-building to support the (later re-)formation of states.³⁶ Then, after the Cold War, internal conflicts were viewed as a result of weak governance, whereby the US and NATO initiated nation-building and international stability operations. Costa and Peter define state-building as ‘activities undertaken to help a society recovering from conflict to create new government institutions and strengthen existing ones.’³⁷ An aim to democratize could be added to this definition,³⁸ indicating a delimitation to the type of societies that can expect to host state-building missions.

The multidimensionality of UN peacekeeping missions also provided a foundation for operations seeking to protect civilians. Missions with humanitarian outlooks emerged alongside a growing recognition of increased need for human security as a response to humanitarian challenges. However, Coker argues that the rise of humanitarian interventions since the mid-1990s is due to the military’s response to civil society’s demand for more humane conduct.³⁹ Coker labels the ‘humane soldier’ as ‘a new kind of soldier, not one who has gone “soft” but one who has become, by necessity, more humane.’⁴⁰ Arguing that the changes within humanitarian wars necessitates soldiers with particular roles and identities, Baer suggested establishing humanitarian armies consisting of soldiers who ‘fight and die […] [for] the defence of human lives and basic human rights.’⁴¹ Lischer lists four types of operations, where a humanitarian soldier is relevant: use of force responses to human rights violations and humanitarian crises, and responses to humanitarian crises, and natural disasters, without the use of force.⁴² What Lischer vaguely suggests, by labeling a ‘humanitarian soldier,’ is that humanitarian-motivated operations require soldiers with a distinct type of behavior. NATO’s concept of Crisis Management⁴³ seeks to address this aspect of operational complexity within the security environment. Tasks within this scope of service, as argued by Dunivin,⁴⁴ caused the combat, masculine-warrior paradigm to become outdated, as the use of armed forces expanded to humanitarian support and disaster relief roles.

The investigation to understand how soldiers relate to untraditional operational objectives and emergent roles has continued.⁴⁵ The most common conceptualization of the soldier role is a dualistic division between warrior and peacekeeper.⁴⁶ However, as peacekeeping operations evolved, integrating increased use of force, the warrior-peacekeeper dichotomy blurred,⁴⁷ and introduced new soldiering roles. While the dualistic distinction between a warrior and a peacekeeper has manifested, two responses are common when moving beyond the traditional roles: merging different tasks into either or both the warrior and the peacekeeper roles or calling for a third role to be established.

Researchers identifying an incongruity between the warrior-peacekeeper role and the multitude of tasks soldiers face, have called for the establishment of a third soldier role. This has resulted in fused constructs, demanding a soldier who can successfully incorporate and balance all role expectations within today’s armed forces. Krulak first described such an all-encompassing ideal soldier type, through the term ‘strategic corporal,’⁴⁸ reflecting what Krulak identified as a decentralized responsibility where a corporal’s decisions can alter the strategic outcome. Krulak constructs an image of an ideal soldier empowered to face all modern military tasks without difficulties, equally prepared to engage in a full-scale military offensive, and to deliver humanitarian relief, build wells, and gather information as part of a peacekeeping mission.⁴⁹ The role of the strategic corporal is context-dependent, adjusting his or her behavior according to the situation, avoiding unintended consequences, and driving the mission towards its strategic aim. What identifies the strategic corporal varies according to the situation, and as such, this role becomes transhistorical, and includes all types of behavior. While this ideal soldier type provides an objective to strive towards, the concept is analytically problematic, as no singular behavior is characteristic of the strategic soldier. The concept lacks an ability to reveal behavior that is unlike or like expected responses.

Haltiner and Kümmel later coined the term ‘hybrid soldier,’ describing soldiers who successfully transform their role-identities to incorporate all expectations.⁵⁰ They created an analytical tool for soldier identity, consisting of three axes. The first addresses the meaning behind actions, a dichotomy moving between soldiers who place their actions within a larger framework providing internal meaning, to soldiers who either follow orders or act on motives for personal gain. The second axis refers to their debate between Huntington, who promotes protecting military forces against influence from the civil society,⁵¹ and Janowitz, who endorses civilianization, or the integration of military forces into civil society.⁵² The last axis refers to soldiers’ motives, either patriotically advocating traditional defense, or advocating humanitarian interventions and the like, as a cosmopolitan.⁵³ Haltiner and Kümmel’s soldier identity axes reveal the ways in which military and societal changes impact soldiers’ identity; for example, an increasingly individualized Western society places great importance on individuals’ abilities in meaning-making and value orientation. However, while allowing various combinations of their three-dimensional model, the nuances within the dichotomies are not identified. Instead, the model operationalizes the warrior-peacekeeper dichotomy, where the peacekeeper dimension is filled with expectations based on the modern use of armed forces. The axes enable the identification of the degree to which soldiers diverge from the traditional, warrior-like, expectations of soldier roles. However, the ability to identify underlying features caught between the dichotomies, which can have significant value in our understanding of how soldiers act and why, is not fully exploited in their analytical tool.

The call for an all-encompassing soldier is also extended within expectations to the soldier described in military doctrines and strategical documents as identified by Öberg.⁵⁴ Öberg analyzed narratives and practices within Western military design, and discovered that official documents require soldiers to become ‘ideal military designers’ within modern warfare.⁵⁵ These ideal military designers are characterized by creative utilization and the ability to redesign military planning concepts when solving problems along the tactical, operational, and strategic continuum, fraught chaos and complexity. Öberg’s analysis echoes the aforementioned conceptualizations of the soldier role. Articulating the ‘soldier’ concept as adaptive and all-inclusive, mirrors expectations to the soldier role from military doctrines, without delimitation to what types of operations, education, or training, to which the soldier may be subjected. As such, operationalizations of the soldier role can be viewed as symptomatic of today’s complex society, where changing characteristics of war and our inability to understand how to address them has led to the need for an all-encompassing soldier type who can turn ‘the uncertainty of war into an artistic medium to redesign future worlds.’⁵⁶

A different conceptualization of the soldier role was provided by Black in his book Ernst Kaltenbrunner.⁵⁷ Black explored the ideological commitment of Kaltenbrunner to the National Socialist movement and labeled the term ‘ideological soldier.’ While Black used the term ‘ideological’ to reference the racial ideology of Nazism, Arendt defines ideology as ‘the logic of an idea,’⁵⁸ such as different political, religious, or epistemological ideologies. Within ideology, an idea explains the past, present, and future, and with the idea’s inherent logic, certain actions are obvious and essential to moving in the direction of the idea.⁵⁹ Persuasive power resides within an idea’s logical process. O’Brien describes this soldier role as one of his four categories of mercenary warriors, the religiously-motivated soldier who fights ‘only out of religious conviction.’⁶⁰ Drawing on the religious motivations from Orthodox Christian and Islamic Muslim foreign fighters participating on each side of the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chechnya, O’Brian illustrates how religions have served as an ideological motivation for mercenaries to participate in wars. However, the common denominator in O’Brian’s connection between the religiously motivated soldier and mercenaries, tends to be the foreign fighter. While the persuasive power of ideology seems an important aspect for some foreign fighters, any soldier fighting at home in the name of a religious persuasion would be equally ideologically motivated. Therefore, the mercenary typology is not a prerequisite for the religiously motivated and ideological soldier.

Prior to the emergence of the nation-state and its monopoly on the legitimate use of force,⁶¹ when war had not yet become the domain of state-owned forces, societies utilized mercenaries for protection and the conduct of warfare.⁶² Mercenaryism is an ancient profession, in which hired soldiers have fought, alongside other combatants, for material gain, without attachment to the cause.⁶³ Article 47 of the Additional Protocol of the Geneva Convention defines a mercenary as a non-citizen/resident of either party to the conflict, motivated by private gains, taking direct part in hostilities, with no right to be a combatant.⁶⁴ However, conceptualizations of the mercenary, and related terms such as soldier of fortune, foreign fighter, and civilian contractor, has changed along with society. Today, mercenaries are used worldwide, in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most widely known use of mercenaries is that of private military companies, which provided more than half the American contribution in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2011.⁶⁵

Beyond the religiously motivated description, O’Brian divides mercenaries into three categories. The traditional mercenary motivated by material gain, the child soldier growing up in warfare, and the private security official, employed by professional private companies to conduct security operations.⁶⁶ The latter includes private military companies, and established organizations with employees who typically have a background in military service. For the ‘traditional’ mercenary, O’Brian highlights that material gains may be exchanged with motivation from the nature of war, or a deprivation of viable options. Individuals may find themselves driven into mercenary options as adrenaline and thrill-seeking combat junkies, or as military specialists lacking employment options after serving for decades as combatants. Soldiers might realize ‘that they do not fit into civil society,’⁶⁷ or find it hard to reintegrate, making the mercenary option an attractive option or perceived as the only possibility. While O’Brian discusses these issues in relation to ‘traditional’ mercenaries, it is likely that the same would be true for child soldiers. Recruited children, forced or volunteering to fight, are likely to lack skills and social networks beyond those gained through soldiering, making the issues of fitting in or integrating into civil societies even more problematic.⁶⁸ Contracted soldiers are nevertheless serving an integral part in contemporary societies, shaping a society’s ability to wage war.⁶⁹

The abovementioned conceptualizations regard the type of operation as co-constitutive to the soldier role. This view is supported by the findings of Woodward and Jenkings, suggesting that it is the actual practice of soldiers, such as training, exercising skills, and participating in military maneuvers, that is constitutive to how soldiers interpret their roles.⁷⁰ Changes to the soldier role do not occur in an operation-soldier vacuum, but in a mutually affected relationship between sociocultural forces and an individual’s interpretations and actions as soldiers. However, current conceptualizations of the soldier do not adequately differentiate, nor sufficiently grasp the full range of responsibilities soldiers may perform. Returning to the warrior-peacekeeper dichotomy is myopic, as it inhibits us from grasping the whole array of soldiering. Utilizing all-encompassing concepts can serve as an ideal, but lacks important analytical capabilities to unveil issues concerning soldier roles.

Methodology

Situated within the interpretivist paradigm, this article creates abstract bottom-up driven constructs of the soldier role based on the reservoir of possible ways to act, think, and behave. As such, alternative, yet possible, interpretations of the soldier role are provided.⁷¹ Viewing social roles as recognizable behavior, driven by internalized role-expectations, expectations that can drive soldierly conduct emerge as the phenomena of interest. Giddens states that ‘generating descriptions of social conduct depends upon the hermeneutic task of penetrating the frames of meaning which lay actors themselves draw upon in constituting and reconstituting the social world.’⁷² Several factors contribute as frames of meaning, creating expectations of the soldier role. As the aim is to understand the repertoire of expectations that are or may become acceptable ways to respond for soldiers, the selected data sources needed to reflect both historical and current, as well as institutional and social, expectations. To account for institutionalized expectations, strategic and operational doctrines used by the United Nations,⁷³ the US,⁷⁴ and NATO,⁷⁵ were included. Doctrines, guiding armed forces in their conduct by directing education, training, and operations, shape soldiers’ roles as the process of internalization is influenced by soldierly undertaking.⁷⁶ However, doctrines do not include societal expectations expressed in literature and culture. To account for historical and social conceptualizations and expectations of the soldier role, research literature on soldier roles and role-identities from the Second World War until today was included.

The data was analyzed iteratively, moving between data and ideas until a typology of soldier roles was developed abductively and reflexively. This process involved identifying expectations of the soldier role within the data and create abstracted categories, where some expectations were grouped together. This process resulted in several abstract categories, such as use of force, purpose, aim, autonomy, logic, enemy, responsibility, viewpoint, analytic capacity, and focus. These abstract categories were then deconstructed, scrutinized, and reorganized until only a few higher-level abstract components remained within the data. These components are motive, meaning, and behavior, which address the why, what, and how, respectively. The content within each concept was then consolidated abductively to create ideal types that demonstrate a unified notion a hypothetical soldier can invest in. The logic within each ideal type rests on the belief that an ideal soldier will act in meaningful ways based on ‘the ‘correct’ way to act, given what someone wants to accomplish’⁷⁷ in a given context. To exemplify, a soldier who aims to defeat an enemy will act differently from one that seeks to deliver humanitarian aid. However, both act in meaningful ways as soldiers in their context.

To be, or not to be, a soldier?

A common understanding of the term ‘soldier’ is military personnel within state armed forces including reservists. However, several non-state actors, such as paramilitary forces or private military companies, perform similar functions. To allow the typology to be relevant for soldiers’ roles in state and non-state armed forces, the term ‘soldier’ is used broadly, to include any person who meets the following two criteria: 1) drafted, working, or volunteering in a state, paramilitary, or non-state armed actor, 2) who themselves, or by others are, identify(-ied) as a soldier. Another common understanding of the soldier is their participation in combat functions, excluding soldiers performing combat-support functions, such as logistics and intelligence. However, the ideal types move beyond function and consider the motive and meaning behind actions in which a hypothetical soldier can invest to understand his or her role. All soldiers understand their roles in one particular way at any point in time; thus, the typology should be useful to understand soldiers in any position.

The relevance of the soldier typology for non-state armed actors must be noted. While doctrines and associated literature mainly address state armed forces, three aspects demonstrate why the resulting typology is relevant for non-state armed actors as well. First, non-state armed actors have been and continue to be used within international operations alongside state-armed forces. Secondly, state armed forces often include non-state armed actors, such as paramilitary forces, within intrastate conflicts. Thirdly, doctrines and research literature are as readily available for non-state armed actors as state-armed actors. Therefore, it is likely that non-state armed actors glean from the same literature as state-armed forces for education, training, and operational protocols.

Roles and ideal types

For the purpose of this article, roles should be understood as social positions that are recognizable to others through characteristic patterned behaviors.⁷⁸ The role of a soldier should not be confused with the function, such as being a rifleman, driver, medic, or squad leader. Rather, it is the action that a soldier can, correctly and logically, perform as an occupant of that social role. Expectations pertaining to a social role are the main motivations for how a soldier performs his or her role. However, expectations to a social role are often too broad, vague, and diverse to explain how someone should behave within a role; rather, they should be seen as a reservoir of various acceptable ways of behaving.⁷⁹ This is especially true for the role of a soldier, given the numerous expectation described above.

Roles, socially constructed, mutually affected, and shaped by the interplay between expectations and experiences are influenced by the past, the present, and by societal and individual factors. An individual soldier’s understanding of his or her role, or role-identity,⁸⁰ is a complex composite, produced through a process of internalizing a specific set of expectations. Understanding soldiers’ role-identities provides an ability to predict behavior,⁸¹ as soldiers with unique role-identities will perceive situations differently⁸² and act accordingly. Organizing expectations into a typology of different abstract soldier role concepts can function as a benchmark to juxtapose soldiers’ role-identities, allowing unveiling tendencies over time.

One way of constructing such abstract role concepts is through ideal types, which are pure constructs of one side of a phenomenon, synthesized into an analytical construct.⁸³ By enhancing the central properties of one side of a phenomenon or one side of the soldier role, ideal types can be theoretically constructed to help us grasp the outside world. Contrary to how one might perceive the concept, the ideal type is not a depiction of a perfect soldier. The ideal type constructs do not seek to be true representations of any soldier, nor do they seek to normatively state how a soldier should be. This is important to note, as the complexity of any role-identity is likely to embody features from several ideal types. What the ideal types seek is to provide nuanced theoretical constructs of what it can mean to be a soldier, and how the soldier role can be understood. The goal is to devise a set of analytical tools that may serve as a resource to reveal the complexity of a soldier’s role-identity.⁸⁴

Results

The resulting typology consists of seven ideal types, each created through three components of expectations; motive, meaning, and behavior, the why, what, and how, respectively. The result is presented in Table 1, where characteristics for each component are highlighted within each ideal type. The first component includes expectations for why a soldier acts as s/he does, or for what Haltiner and Kümmel referred to as the motive behind action.⁸⁵ The second component includes expectations regarding what the soldier seek to accomplish through acting as s/he does, what Haltiner and Kümmel called the meaning behind action.⁸⁶ The last component consists of expectations for how a soldier acts, thinks, and behaves in a meaningful manner, given the motive and meaning. The table is followed by a description of each ideal type, listing examples for typical motives, meanings, and behaviors of a soldier who embodies typical features of a particular ideal type.

Table 1. Soldier typology

Ideal Type	Motive behind participation. Why?	Meaning behind action. What?	Recognizable behavior, thinking and acting. How?
Warrior	Heroically conducts a job. Functions as a tool for the state or non-state actor.	Victory through defeating the enemy.	Aggressive, use of force to kill, disciplined, physically and mentally fit, risks own life, masculine, follows orders. Views self as lacking autonomy.
Nation Defender	Patriotic and nationalistic. Believes in state sovereignty. Morally obliged.	Defends nation against threat.	Use of force as necessary to reestablish sovereignty. Does not intervene or breach states sovereignty. Acts autonomously toward reestablished sovereignty.
Law-Enforcer	Cosmopolitan. Believes in the rule of law.	Creates or reestablishes peace.	Predictable behavior governed by predefined rules. Diplomatic and impartial. Holds no autonomy. Restricted use of force.
State-Builder	Democratic peace. Believes in strong government institutions and democracy.	Avoids spillover effect and emergent conflict.	Use of force restricted to reciprocal reaction. Mentors, educates, and trains host-nation actors from a local perspective.
Humanitarian	Humanitarianism. Believes in the intrinsic value of human life.	Eliminates human suffering.	Risks own life to protect the lives of others.
Ideological	An ideological conviction. Believes in the idea inherent to the ideology.	Achieves what lies imperatively within the given ideology.	Self-driven autonomous agent acting towards the idea inherent within a given ideology.
Contractor	Pragmatic. For material/personal gains, or best/only option.	Undertake what the employer seeks in a satisfactory manner.	Ad hoc attachment to operation and/or mutual contractors. Opportunistic or only option. Reluctant to risk life.

The warrior ideal type

The warrior functions as a tool in a hierarchical power structure to conduct an actor’s will. The warrior follows orders through the chain of command and assumes no agency or responsibility for actions conducted under authority. The warrior’s motive is to fight heroically on behalf of his superior. Viewing war as a conflict of wills, the presence of an enemy or opposing other is imperative for the warrior; engaging in operations without an identifiable enemy entail meaningless actions, as the aim cannot be to defeat an opposing other. Thus, the warrior seeks victory through the defeat of an enemy.

In aiming to defeat the enemy, behavior characterized by aggression, toughness and an excessive use of force becomes meaningful and acceptable. Warriors greatly emphasize their discipline to justify taking orders to kill and risk their own lives. To the warrior, it is a job; following orders in the hierarchical chain of command is imperative to achieve victory. Political or ethical considerations are not considered by the warriors; rather, the warrior will think that if s/he does not complete the job, someone else will. The warrior never acts independently, but remains true to the hierarchical chain of command. The warrior is skilled in military tactics and the use of force, and places great emphasis on the robustness required to succeed. Both physical and mental strength are imperative aspects of being a warrior, as signs of weakness in either area indicate that one is not suited to be a warrior.

These characteristics of the warrior align with several societies’ images of masculinity, which is also often aligned with being a soldier. The Israeli society’s combat soldier provides a good example of soldiers whose identities are similar to the ideal warrior type.⁸⁷ Israeli combat soldiers described the importance of discipline, to control emotions, and to acquire not only a physically fit body, but one that is suited for military combat.⁸⁸ To be disciplined to sacrifice their autonomy, ‘and obey one’s commanders […] “You simply have to say O.K., you, the army, can do whatever you want with me. I … in the end, I will make it. Even if I’m the last one, I will get there and succeed.”’⁸⁹ Further, the act of risking one’s life was highlighted as providing satisfaction, as they were given a chance to pass ‘the biggest test of all […] [and] receive recognition for heroism […] [or] as rewards in and of themselves’.⁹⁰

The nation-defender ideal type

The nation-defender is a patriotic soldier, morally obliged to defend the nation from external and internal threats. The nation-defender understands war as a breach on a nation’s sovereignty, and victory is achieved when the nation’s sovereignty is reestablished. The nation-defender has successfully fulfilled his or her purpose when the enemy, state or non-state actor, no longer poses an immediate threat. The nation-defender will not deploy outside the nation’s territorial borders, as the loyalty lies within the defense of the nation.

The nation-defender is characterized by a self-sustained motivation to remove enemies from home territory. S/he feels morally obliged to reestablish sovereignty and will use necessary force to do so. The nation-defender willingly takes orders and accepts a hierarchical authority, if the orders are consistent with protecting the nation. However, the nation-defender will insubordinate in cases where s/he determines that orders are not in accordance with defending one’s nation. The nation-defender will dismiss international interventions, as well as preventive or preemptive war, where the necessity for military action to prevent threat can be questioned. Equally, a nation-defender will disobey orders and turn to resistance with a perpetual wish to defend the nation if one’s nation-state surrenders.

The characteristics of the nation-defender align with many soldiers’ identities within different societies’ processes of nation building, or their transitions toward modernity. For parts of the Argentinian army in the late 1980s, defending Argentinian soil was viewed as more important than defending the political regime.⁹¹ These soldiers regarded themselves as safe guarders of their nation, an apolitical domain, best defended through permanent values and not through changing political regimes.⁹² For Norwegian soldiers, a claim has been made for their identity to rest upon being ‘homeland defenders’ through primarily identifying with ensuring the defense of Norwegian territory and building the nation.⁹³ A phenomenon within the Norwegian Army is soldiers who, throughout their professional lives, do not participate in international operations because they self-identify as nation-defenders. A role that excludes partaking in international operations abroad. A different, but related, aspect of a nation-defender is epitomized by soldiers who participate in international operations on the basis of maintaining a strong attachment to allied forces to ensure support in the event of an invasion of the homeland.⁹⁴

The law-enforcer ideal type

The law-enforcer understands world peace as a shared responsibility, regardless of citizenship within a cosmopolitan world order. Taking on this responsibility, the law-enforcer contributes to create and reestablish peace in international and national operations. Following the rule of law is imperative for the law-enforcer who succeeds when conflicting parties come to an agreement to cease fighting.

In striving to create and reestablish peace through the rule of law, tasks such as border control, monitoring, and interposition are typical for the law-enforcer. Predictable actions, governed by a set of predefined rules and regulations, characterize the law-enforcer’s behavior. As such, the law-enforcer does not act as an autonomous agent. Rather, they hold a legal autonomy, authorized and obliged to act on breaches of agreements, by adhering to rules and regulations that ensure predictable behavior for any law-enforcer. Through this predictable behavior, the law-enforcer creates operational legitimacy, both from conflicting parties and the international community, as a reliable neutral party through foreseeable and neutral actions. The use of force is not aggressive, as the law-enforcer holds no enemy, but is, rather, an impartial actor. However, the law-enforcer may use force as stated within their set of predefined rules. Law-enforcers regard breaches of such rules as a disruption to their ability to be neutral, and a propellant toward becoming a part of the conflict.

Soldiers within Western armed forces have arguably already begun a socialization and learning process towards cosmopolitan orientations.⁹⁵ For example, German units have adopted military training that mainly consists of ‘exercises in de-escalation and diplomacy,’ where combat exercises are secondary.⁹⁶ Soldiers within these units report their primary motivation for deployment to be ‘the meaningful tasks’ where they ‘focus on diplomacy and civil-military cooperation, methods of de-escalation and […] strict “Rules of Engagement” which only permit the use of weapons in clear cases of self-defence.’⁹⁷ Swedish soldiers also emphasize characteristics of the law-enforcer to characterize their roles, identifying as ‘excellent peacekeepers’ who are ‘better […] at staying neutral and impartial’ than other nations, and able to establish trust and following regulations.⁹⁸

The state-builder ideal type

The state-builder regards failed and fragile states as posing an intranational and international risk, which they seek to diminish through the (re-)formation of government institutions and democracy. Believing democracy and strong government institutions reduce the risk of internal unrest and international instability, the state-builder seeks to empower institutions within a democratic government to be responsible for their own security challenges, thus reducing the spillover effects, including terrorism, crime, and conflict.

Empowering local actors, the state-builder is characterized by actions such as mentoring, educating, and training host-nation actors. Pedagogical skills and the ability to empathize with a local perspective are imperative to success. The state-builder regards the use of force a property of the local actors and will never initiate it, unless as a purposive reciprocal reaction to an antagonist, for the purpose of aiding the process of building a state. The state-builder has succeeded when local authorities act independently, and government institutions manage their security autonomously.

Training of local armies and police, and mentoring and developing of ministerial institutional capacities have been central to the US-led Coalition in Iraq and the NATO-led operation in Afghanistan.⁹⁹ Soldiers within several Western nations and private military companies have cultural awareness and pedagogical skills as an integral part of their deployment and pre-deployment training.

The humanitarian ideal type

The humanitarian places an intrinsic value on the lives of human beings and seeks to eliminate human suffering. Protecting civilians from suffering during war, conflict, and crisis is the humanitarians’ purpose. Equally important as war and conflict are crisis situations that threaten human lives, such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, heat waves, and tsunamis. The humanitarian soldier will deploy at home and abroad to counter human suffering.

With a purpose to protect civilians and eliminate human suffering, the humanitarian soldier is characterized by an imperishable willingness and a strong moral conscience to risk their own life to protect the lives of others. The humanitarian soldier will respond and deploy to defend citizens against military and nonmilitary threats, with or without military means. The humanitarian soldier typically counters threats by delivering humanitarian aid such as vaccinations, food, or medicine. However, the type of actions the humanitarian can perform to deliver assistance and eliminate human suffering, often at personal expense, is unlimited. If a particular action serves their purpose, the humanitarian soldier regards this action as the appropriate and acceptable way to act.

Danish and Swedish female soldiers have been known to focus on human security in the NATO led operation in Afghanistan, through a ‘sense of agency and “doing good” beyond borders,’ contending that ‘all humans have the same rights.’¹⁰⁰ Privileging ‘the human security and universal rights […] over those of the Afghan state or clan,’ reveal favoring empathetic cooperation above traditional characteristics of soldiers.¹⁰¹

The ideological ideal type

The ideological soldier holds an ideological persuasion and believes in the idea inherent to the ideology. Their purpose is to achieve this idea, which can be the internalized ideology of an external actor such as indoctrination from a state, or an ideological soldier’s own personal belief. The idea serves as a driving force, moving the soldier toward what emerges as the inevitable direction of the idea. The ideological soldier understands war as a sphere of influence where one actor seeks to impose his or her will on the other. The ideological soldier will seek to impose and possibly assimilate others into his or her worldview.

The behavior of the ideological soldier is characterized as being value-oriented and self-driven, acting as an autonomous agent towards the idea. Having the ideology as an inherent part of the self, the ideological soldier is not subjected to orders. Instead, the ideological soldier acts as a self-sustained entrepreneurial figure, an autonomous agent whose actions are guided by the ideology s/he righteously imposes on others. Being personally motivated by the ideology, actions are private acts. However, actions can be in line with a larger unit, but the ideological soldier may also act alone. Actions can be deemed righteous or erroneous by others, based upon the sphere the soldier acts within. However, to the ideological soldier, actions are situated within a predefined belief system that are only judged in relation to their ability to cause movement towards the idea.

Ideology is found to be one of the main motivator for foreign fighters joining the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS] from the US, Canada, Australia and most member countries of the European Union.¹⁰² Ideology is also one of the main reasons why individuals join groups such as Hamas, Hizballah, and Fatah to fight. These individuals regard themselves as rightful soldiers who take part in a ‘people’s struggle’ who ‘believed in the justice of our cause’, where ‘Nothing is illegitimate’ and for some even resulting in a wish for martyrdom.¹⁰³ Similar characteristics have also been identified within young Nazi soldiers who were indoctrinated from a young age, and deprived of proper critical and independent thought.¹⁰⁴

The contractor ideal type

The contractor offers his or her services as a soldier, either for personal or material gains to the highest bidder or based on a perceived or authentic lack of options to the best/only bidder. The contractor’s purpose is to conduct any mission or operation in a satisfactory manner in the eyes of the employer. Contractors motivated by personal gain might indulge in risk-seeking behavior, if the sensation of survival or mastering fear provides them with rewards, and therefore becomes a part of their personal gain. However, contractors will generally seek to bypass situations where their own life or health can be jeopardized, because the operational outcome is without significance for the contractor.

The contractor is characterized by capitalizing on a set of skills, also norms, acquired from previous soldiering experience, either from state or non-state actors. As a contractor, s/he holds an ad-hoc attachment to both operations and fellow soldiers. While attachments may become temporary fixated, through employment in a private military company, their loyalty is pragmatic. The contractor is always open and motivated for more rewarding or better options as a contractor.

Former child soldiers, capitalizing on a set of skills, are known to be hired as contractors. With relatively high salaries, money, combined with a feeling of independence, has been shown to motivate former child soldiers to become and continue being contractors.¹⁰⁵ Similarly, the skill-set acquired while employed within state armed forces were highlighted as their most important resource for British contractors.¹⁰⁶ Several private military companies also emphasize professionalism as an integral part of their companies. Through employing military elite veterans, who can combine ‘military support, consulting or combat services’ with humanitarian or warrior identities, these companies reflect the pragmatic and ad-hoc attachments contractors have in their roles.¹⁰⁷

Discussion

Previous research has moved our understanding of the soldier role away from a unidimensional construct. However, their resulting frameworks are limited. Amid the modern operational theatre, where soldiers are used in new ways, a framework with a broader analytical capacity is necessary to understand soldiers’ role-identity. The soldier typology offers this by providing a more nuanced method to predict and/or understand soldiers’ behavior in previous, current, and future operations.

This ability is important because how a soldier identifies influences how they perceive and act in a situation, regardless of the intention given in an operation.¹⁰⁸ Furthermore, performing a role distant from ones’ own role-identity can cause role strain, which can affect decision making.¹⁰⁹ Through comparing and contrasting soldiers’ role-identities and/or role performances (as they report them) in relation to the ideal types, it becomes possible to identify how soldier’s role-identity aligns with and/or diverges from role requirements in particular operations. Unveiling what type of operational endeavors soldiers and armed forces are, or are not, suited to engage in can reduce the risk of soldiers experiencing role strain, produce knowledge to guide and direct the making of soldiers, sustain inadequate responses, and in turn increase chances for operational success.

The typology, explicating the possible ways the soldier role can be understood and performed, can also serve as an educational tool allowing soldiers to become aware and gain a broader understanding of their, and others, role-identity in relation to operational requirements. Recognizing this can by itself offer soldiers, armed units, and decision makers an ability to adopt strategies to overcome individual and collective challenges. Furthermore, the typology initiates an overall discussion on the use of armed forces within todays’ complex society, where a soldier’s role-identity is multifaced and negotiable, and role requirements are multiple.

For the typology to become a useful theoretical tool, the typology must be subjected to reality and further developed through empirical data. As society and armed forces continue to change, the typology might allow unveiling characteristics beyond the ideal types, indicating the presence or development of additional types. Expressions deviating from the typology should be considered possible indicators of other soldier roles, prior to being considered as indicators of societal change. The typology is as such not static, but open to extensions, developments, and adjustments as new dimensions are identified, allowing the typology to offer ways to explore societal and military changes and challenges to the soldier role.

Conclusion

The soldier typology presented in this article improves our understanding of the soldier role. Conceptualizations of the soldier role were reorganized into a typology of seven ideal types. Each ideal type operationalized through synthesizing motive and meaning and enhancing the logical meaningful behavior a hypothetical soldier would undertake to achieve a given purpose. With this typology, it becomes possible to begin maneuvering the empirical reality and compare reality with the ideal types. This is a rather important analytical capability, considering the move toward a postmodern society with postmaterialist values and attitudes, as well as individualism, where individuals’ expressions of identity are in focus.

As occupants of soldier roles, soldiers must unfurl the various role expectations they face. This is a serious undertaking, as the way soldiers understand their role in today’s postmodern world, where identity is multifaceted and negotiable, influences how they will perform their role. How society and soldiers construct the soldier roles are critical as it affects soldierly conduct; particularly, how soldiers interact with society and how societies respond to war, conflicts, and crises.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Iselin Silja Kaspersen

Iselin Silja Kaspersen is currently a PhD candidate at Nord University, where she serves on the Social Sciences faculty. Her research focuses on the roles of soldiers and the use of armed forces. She holds a MA in Peace and Conflict Transformation from the University of Tromsø, and a BA in Public Health and Health Promotion from the University of Bergen. Prior to her studies, Iselin worked for the Norwegian Armed Forces as a forward observer.

Notes

1. Mabee and Vucetic, “Varieties of Militarism.”

2. Newman, “The ‘New Wars’ Debate.”

3. Haltiner and Kümmel, “The Hybrid Soldier,” 75–82.

4. Mann, “The Making of Military,” 665–6.

5. Ryan, “Democratic Duty,” 19.

6. Smith, The Utility of Force, 98.

7. Nuciari, “The Study of the Military,” 42. See also Taulbee, “Reflections on the Mercenary,” 150.

8. Stouffer et al., The American soldier.

9. Williams, “The American Soldier,” 161.

10. See note 8 above.

11. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier.

12. Wasinski, “On Making war Possible.”

13. Weber, Economy and society, 136.

14. Stouffer et al., The American soldier; and Janowitz, The Professional Soldier.

15. Dunivin, “Military Culture.”

16. Grassiani, “Between Security and Military,” 89.

17. ADP-1, The Army.

18. Ibid., inside cover.

19. Heatherly and Melendez, “Every Soldier a Cyber.”

20. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Doctrine.

21. Coker, Humane warfare.

22. See note 11 above.

23. Ibid., 32.

24. Ibid., 424–5.

25. Ibid., 418.

26. Ibid.

27. Dicks, “National Loyalty, Identity.”

28. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 419. See also Haaland, “Still Homeland Defenders,” 546, 542.

29. Ibid., 418.

30. Ibid.

31. Moskos, Peace Soldiers.

32. Ibid.

33. R2P, The Responsibility to Protect.

34. UN, “United Nations Peacekeeping Operations,” 21.

35. Ibid.

36. Heathcote, “United Nations and Nation-Building.”

37. Costa and Peter, “UN support,” 189.

38. Dobbins, “NATO’s Role in Nation-Building.”

39. See note 21 above.

40. Ibid., 96., italics in original

41. Baer, “The Ultimate Sacrifice,” 320.

42. Lischer, “Military Intervention,” 103.

43. NATO, “Crisis Management.”

44. See note 15 above.

45. Dicks, “National Loyalty, Identity”; Moskos, Peace Soldiers; Halverson and Bliese, “Determinants of Soldier Support”; Battistelli, “Peacekeeping and the Postmodern’; Campbell and Campbell, “Soldiers as Police Officers”; and Gustavsen and Rafoss, “Soldiers without a war?”

46. Moskos, Peace Soldiers; Halverson and Bliese, “Determinants of Soldier Support”; Franke, “Warriors for Peace”; Franke, “Duty, Honor, Country”; Hedlund and Soeters, “Reflections on Swedish Peacekeepers”; Broesder et al., “Can Soldiers Combine Swords”; Ruffa and Sundberg, “Breaking the Frame”; Franke and Heinecken, “Adjusting to Peace”; and Nuciari, “Coping with Diversity.”

47. For a through tracing of this process, see Findlay, The Use of Force.

48. Krulak, “The Strategic Corporal.”

49. Ibid., 21.

50. Haltiner and Kümmel, “The Hybrid Soldier.”

51. Huntington, The Soldier.

52. See note 11 above.

53. Haltiner and Kümmel, “The Hybrid Soldier,” 77–8.

54. Öberg, “Warfare as Design.”

55. Ibid., 498.

56. Ibid., 502.

57. Black, Ernest Kaltenbrunner. Ideological Soldier.

58. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 469.

59. Ibid., 469–72.

60. O’Brien, “Privatizing Security, Privatizing War?” 56.

61. Wilson, “Foreign Military Labour,” 12.

62. Taulbee, “Reflections on the Mercenary,” 145–8.

63. Adams, “The New Mercenaries,” 103, 106; Taulbee, “Reflections on the Mercenary,” 148; and Wilson, “Foreign Military Labour,” 14.

64. International Committee of the Red Cross, “Article 47. Mercenaries.”

65. Avant and Nevers, “Military Contractors,” 88.

66. O’Brien, “Privatizing Security, Privatizing War?” 55–7.

67. Ibid., 56.

68. Gates, “Why Do Children Fight?” 29–30.

69. Avant and Nevers, “Military Contractors,” 94–5.

70. Woodward and Jenkings, “Military Identities.”

71. Blaikie and Priest, Social Research.

72. Giddens, New rules of sociological, 155.

73. UN, “United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.”

74. See note 17 above.

75. See note 43 above.

76. See note 70 above.

77. Swedberg, “How to use Max,” 187.

78. McCall and Simmons, Identities and Interactions.

79. Ibid.

80. Ibid.

81. Granberg and Holmberg, “The Intention-Behavior Relationship.”

82. Buijs et al., “Warrior and Peacekeeper Role.”

83. Weber, “Objectivity ” in social science, 90.

84. See note 78 above.

85. See note 50 above.

86. Ibid.

87. Sasson-Levy, “Individual Bodies.”

88. Ibid., 304–5, 309.

89. Ibid., 309.

90. Ibid., 310.

91. Navarro, “Looking for a New,” 59.

92. Ibid, 65.

93. Haaland, “Still Homeland Defenders,” 546, 542.

94. Enstad, “Doing One’s Job,” 408. Enstad notes that ‘Somehow, the act of buttoning your shirt properly in the Iraqi heat constitutes defense of the cold Norwegian North’.

95. Haltiner and Kümmel, “The Hybrid Soldier,” 78.

96. Tomforde, “Motivation and Self-image,” 579.

97. Ibid., 582, 579.

98. Hedlund, “Self-Image Among Swedish,” 10, 11.

99. Hammes, “Raising and Mentoring Security.”

100. Bergman Rosamond and Kronsell, “Cosmopolitan Militaries and Dialogic,” 182, 173, 174, 181.

101. Ibid., 181, 182.

102. Benmelech and Klor, “What Explains the Flow,” 20.

103. Post, Sprinzak and Denny, “The Terrorists,” 179, 181.

104. Bartov, “The Conduct of War,” S42.

105. Denov, “Social Navigation and Power,” 205–6.

106. Higate, “Cowboys and Professionals,” 334.

107. Joachim and Schneiker, “All for One,” 254.

108. Granberg and Holmberg, “The Intention-Behavior Relationship”; Buijs et al., “Warrior and Peacekeeper Role”; and Ruffa and Sundberg, “Breaking the frame.”

109. Buijs et al., “Warrior and Peacekeeper Role”; and Ruffa and Sundberg, “Breaking the Frame.”