War, Tribe, and Freedom: A Conversation with Sebastian Junger 

>> HR McMaster: America and other free and open societies face crucial challenges and opportunities abroad that affect security and prosperity at home. This is a series of conversations with guests who bring deep understanding of today's battlegrounds and creative ideas about how to compete, overcome challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and secure a better future.

I am HR McMaster, this is Battlegrounds.

>> Jenn Henry: On today's episode of Battlegrounds, our focus is on Sebastian Junger's observations about war, society and freedom. Junger is a journalist, war correspondent, and best selling author of six books, the Perfect Storm, a Death in Belmont, War, Tribe, and Freedom. Mr. Junger has received the National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award.

His debut documentary film, Restrepo, was nominated for an Academy Award. He is the founder and director of Vetstown hall, which hosts events at which veterans share their experiences serving their country. Todays conversation focuses on what we might learn and apply from three of Mr. Junger's books in war.

Mr. Junger sheds light on the enduring human, psychological, physiological, emotional, and social dimensions of combat. The stories captured in war portray a complex picture of combat that helps civilians to better understand the experiences of those who fight on their behalf. Tribe on homecoming and belonging combines research with Mr. Junger's personal experience to explore how western societies have lost and can regain a sense of belonging.

The stories in tribe reveal the importance of shared responsibility and communal values in society. Mr. Junger's memoir, freedom, reflects on his travels along the railroad lines of the east coast of the United States. The reflections in freedom explore the tension between community and freedom. We welcome Sebastian Junger to discuss the necessity of unity, the importance of the tribe, and the future of American democracy.

 

>> HR McMaster: Sebastian Younger, welcome to Battlegrounds, great to have you here.

>> Sebastian Junger: Thank you very much.

>> HR McMaster: Hey well, there's so much to talk about, I mean, your body work is just phenomenal, but I thought maybe we could begin with your personal story, what drew you to write, what you do write?

And, I was a big fan of perfect storm when it came out, read it right away, recommended to all my friends. But then, of course, when you read war as a professional soldier, I was really struck by your insights into the nature of combat, the nature of soldiers experience, soldiers humanity.

So what drew you to writing about danger and trauma and how people have to overcome the physical natural challenges like a perfect storm or manmade challenges like combat?

>> Sebastian Junger: My father grew up in Europe, he was a refugee from two wars, his father was Jewish. They were in Spain when the fascists came in 36, they fled, and then he was in France when the Nazis came in, they came to this country.

So war was something that was in my mind, from my family, right? It affected my family enormously, and I grew up in comfortable circumstances. I went to college, I majored in anthropology, I was a pretty good distance runner in college, and I wrote a thesis on Navajo long distance running.

I lived on the res for a while, I trained with their best guys, and the act of researching and writing my thesis was just incredibly exciting to me, right? I mean, I was a sort of mediocre student, I came alive when I was doing this thesis. And after I graduated, I did construction for a while and whatever, I was a lost young man.

But I just always thought, maybe journalism's pretty close to what I did with that, maybe I'll get into journalism. And I was a climber for tree companies for a while, I cut my leg pretty badly, I was recovering from that. And this huge storm hit the town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where I was living, and a local boat was lost offshore, I thought, maybe I'll worry about dangerous jobs.

And one of the dangerous jobs I was interested in was war reporting, and there was a civil war on Bosnia in 1993. Terrible civil war, it was a miniature version of Ukraine right now, sort of scaled down version of what's going on with Ukraine and Russia. And so I went to Sarajevo, which was totally besieged and spent about six months in total over there learning how to be a war reporter.

And then eventually, I never, I grew up during Vietnam, right? And family of pacifists, like, I never, few people thought America would be involved in another ground war somewhere, right? Like, it just, why?

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, the 90s, right? Great power competition was over.

>> Sebastian Junger: Exactly. Maybe a nuclear exchange with Russia, but other than that, like, it's not happening.

Why would we boom all of a sudden? 911. And, Afghanistan was a country I was already very familiar with, I've been there in 96 when the Taliban taking over. I was there in 2000, I was with Ahmad Shah Massoud as his forces, outnumbered, fought the Taliban, al Qaeda in the north, and Barakshan, and that he was assassinated right before 911.

I rushed back over there, and I was with the northern alliance when they took Kabul with our us support, obviously. And then I watched as the war sort of didn't go as it might have, right? And eventually I thought, my God, here's a chance to do something I never thought I'd be called to do.

Which is to understand the experience of American soldiers in ground combat in a country like Afghanistan. Crazy, right? I mean, it just never occurred to me, and so I was embedded, and I just was, my mind was just sort of blown by the quality of the soldiers, right?

I mean, I grew up during Vietnam, and the military really got a little bruise, its reputation got a little bruised after Vietnam, frankly. And I was just like, my God, these are the most amazing young people, right? And so I did a year off and on of a deployment in the Korengal valley in eastern Afghanistan.

And, it was a rough year for everybody, and so it was the most me, end with this, it was, I think, the most meaningful in human terms, the most meaningful assignment of my career, right? I mean, just that belonging to that group, the experiences we had, the connection I felt with them totally changed my life.

 

>> HR McMaster: Yeah. Well, there's so many things to talk about to pick up on that, this is a great book, War, which I reviewed for Survival magazine when it came out, because I thought you really got it. You understood the warrior ethos. You understood how soldiers overcome, fear, how they overcome fear through confidence and trust in one another and in common purpose, but really affection.

And how a military unit takes on the quality of a family and how soldiers are bound together also by the sense of honor, right? Where you don't want to let the soldier next to you down and you're willing to give everything, including your own lives, for the man or woman next to you.

Could you maybe talk a little bit more about what you see as the common misperceptions? Because, Sebastian, I think popular culture cheapens and coarsens what I call the warrior ethos, what many people call the warrior ethos. That covenant that bonds soldiers to one another and to the society in whose name they fight.

But what do Americans who haven't served, what don't they see about the nature of our armed forces today and the experience of our soldiers, the rewards of service and so forth.

>> Sebastian Junger: So my misperception, right. Was coming out of Vietnam and with a sort of 10, 15 years of a sort of peace to basically peacetime army, a sort of very much in the background, right?

My great misperception was that soldiers were just sort of like well-trained robots, the military had sort of figured out

>> HR McMaster: Automatons, right.

>> Sebastian Junger: Exactly, figured out how to program them so that they would march a machine gun fire and do this and do that and there was actually a sort of loss of human autonomy and within the soldier that's what made them good soldiers, they would just follow orders blindly and blah, blah, blah, obviously not true.

So, when I got over there, what I realized, having been trained in anthropology, was that the motivating energy of soldiers in combat was the bonds with each other. I realized that I was looking at a kind of primordial human experience, right, a platoon, 30, 40, 50 people, that's the size of a typical human survival group for the last hundred thousand years, right?

 

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: And it's just the right amount of number to have sufficient force but maintain personal connections between everybody, it's sort of the sweet spot of a group size a platoon is, right?

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: And I realized, these guys, they're loyal to each other because all their survival depends on it, and that what grows in a group like that is a moral virtue of not thinking about yourself, thinking about everyone else, right?

And that's adaptive, by adaptive, I mean that your survival is augmented by that behavior. Humans on their own are virtually defenseless, we don't have claws, we don't have sharp teeth, we can't run very fast, we can't climb trees worth a damn, right, we're like children in the wilderness right?

In a group, we are invisible and what that means is that if you're part of a group, you have to make the group more important to you than you are to you.

>> HR McMaster: Absolutely.

>> Sebastian Junger: And so, I think what the public doesn't understand is that the ethos in a group of soldiers, particularly in combat, but really even in a support unit, is that the self disappears, not because it was just drummed out of the soldier by the military, by their training, but because that is what humans do in groups when the chips are down, deeply human thing rather than a dehumanizing.

 

>> HR McMaster: Absolutely, the review of the book I actually quoted, we need to rediscover the solidarity that is at the core of what it means to be human. I think your findings are consistent with some other military historians, John Keegan, in the face of battle, he looked at battle in the same geographic area across four to five centuries, from the battle of Agincourt all the way to a World War I battle.

And so, the book is a lot about change, technological change, age of the infantry, age of the cavalry, Asia, artillery, but at the end, he says, what battles have in common is human. The struggle of men and, of course, women struggling to reconcile their instinct for self-preservation with the achievement of some aim over which others are trying to kill them.

And then he goes on to say that battle is about solidarity and cohesion because battle is aimed at the disintegration of human groups. So, I'd like to talk with you about that cohesion, what you witnessed at Restrepo at the Comet Outpost in the Korengal valley, and how you view, from an anthropological perspective as well, that platoon and we'll get to the book, tribe.

But what becomes a tribe and is an organization that is committed to one another, and, as you said, willingness to sacrifice for the good of the team.

>> Sebastian Junger: One of the very interesting things about humans is that we're the only species, the only mammal, where individuals are willing to sacrifice their lives for a same-sex peer.

Plenty of animals will sacrifice their lives for their young, right, and sometimes even a mate, but for a same-sex peer, for me to throw myself on a hand grenade to protect your life, someone I'm not even related to, maybe I met you three months ago in basic training, right?

That's entirely human and it's not because soldiers have been sort of brainwashed and reprogrammed by the military, that's not what it's about. Humans, I think, are wired to understand that if you're part of a group and you're not willing to sacrifice for that group, everyone's survival is in jeopardy.

The only way to survive is for all the individuals to be prepared to be self sacrificing, eat less food cuz there's not enough food, subject yourself to danger or even self sacrifice, because otherwise, the group's not gonna survive. And in my book, Freedom, I talk about the commonalities between underdog groups that defeated a superior force, right.

And one of the other amazing things about humans is that you could actually be a smaller individual or a smaller group and defeat a larger one,

>> HR McMaster: Right

>> Sebastian Junger: Right, the bully doesn't always win, the empire doesn't always win, thank God, or there'd be no freedom in the world, right?

But one of the things that underdog groups have in common, successful underdog groups have in common is leaders that are willing to die, straight-up leaders who are willing to be self-sacrificing and undergo the same deprivation and same risk as the people they're leading. And if you don't have that, you might win if you're part of a powerful group, but you will not win if you're an underdog group, you need leaders that are self-sacrificing and I think what happens in troops in combat is that there's this incredible sort of equalizing of everybody.

It doesn't matter if you're white, black, rich, poor, anything good-looking, not good-looking, whatever, all those things that sort of bedevil us in society, right, disappear and you're evaluated in terms of your level of commitment to the welfare of others.

>> HR McMaster: Absolutely, your sense of honor, you're willing to sacrifice and really, the trust that you have in one another is so important maintaining that cohesion.

Now, a lot of that we try to replicate in combat, right, of course, we teach our leaders to share the hardships and the risk of their soldiers, to lead by example. And then in training, you push units to the breaking point, to failure, oftentimes because you want them to recognize how much they can accomplish together more than any individual.

I mean, the ranger course is all kind of built around that in the United States army, but there are a lot of things you can't replicate in training, and that's the direct risk to human life. It's the harrowing experiences that if you're in combat long enough, you're bound to experience, especially the serious wounding or death of one of the people who became part of your family you loved.

Can you talk a little bit about that, about how units build these bulwarks against kind of the emotional strain and the combat trauma and how they cope with those most difficult and harrowing circumstances?

>> Sebastian Junger: Well, basically, all those intense failures of combat, you have to put on hold until afterwards because they're too problematic in the moment, fear, the grief, all you need to be functional.

And so, it's a little bit like a credit card, okay, I'm not gonna pay for this now, I'm gonna put it on the plastic, and I'm just gonna have to pay a lot more later. We're gonna add 30% to my tab, right, and that's what happens emotionally with soldiers.

One of the big things that they have to sort of put on hold is their feelings of grief when they lose a brother or sister. And I remember there was a disastrous battle, one at the end of 2008 in the AO that the battalion. That I was connected with.

And word came back to the Korengal valley, the company commander, Dan Kearny, gathered everyone, and I can't remember the casualties and what not, but it was a lot, and it was devastating. He was a sister company, right, that we knew all those guys. And Captain Kearney gathered everyone, and he said, all right, I want you guys, we're gonna have a moment of silence.

Pray if you like, moment of silence for the brothers that we lost. They said, I want you guys to grieve, and then I want you to get over it. And then we're gonna make the enemy feel like we feel right now. Right, we're gonna do to them what they just did to us.

And so there's this sort of alchemy where they take the rage and the grief of loss, and they turn it into something basically utilitarian. Right, okay, we're gonna convert that. It's supercharged fuel right now, and we are gonna now go destroy the enemy. So that, I think that's, of course, is, later back home.

Are you gonna have to process, you can't grieve in 1 minute, right. I mean, what Dan Kearney told him to do is not possible.

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: You will do it the rest of your life later, but he gets you through that moment.

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, absolutely, and I think grief work is important as a leader.

And mental, psychological, emotional, and ethical preparation for combat is important. And you're talking about, really, what many of us often say to our soldiers is, hey, we wanna honor the memory of our fallen with our deeds as we continue the mission. But it's also important not to let rage become the combat motivator, because the combat motivator is the mission and fighting for each other.

So can you talk more about that, about what is the role that you think discipline plays and understanding your covenant with your society and expectations, right. Of what your society expects of our soldiers in a democracy.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, I mean, the central commandment of American forces is you do not kill civilians.

You do not kill people who are not bearing arms. If they just put their arms down, you take the prisoner, but it's just as you don't do it. And there's some very good reasons not to. First of all, you alienate the civilian population, and when you do that, you just increase the chance that more of your colleagues are gonna die and that you're gonna lose the war, right.

So there's a pragmatic reason for acting ethically and often, I think particularly sometimes, in conservative media, there's this idea that sort of acting so the rules of engagement are somehow hampering the war effort. If we loosen those up, we could sort of win these wars, right. And, I'm really not sure that's true, I think the rules of engagement, actually, they're designed to protect civilians and keep us from alienating the civilian population.

Cuz once you've done that, just ask the Russians in Afghanistan. Once you've done that, you lost the war.

>> HR McMaster: Absolutely, absolutely, what we'd always have often said is one of our brave rifle standing orders was to overmatch the enemy, overwhelm the enemy in every tactical engagement, but apply firepower with discipline and discrimination, which goes back to Thomas Aquinas, right.

In terms of proportionality, discrimination, it doesn't mean you don't bump up in a firefight and win, because barely winning in battle, as you know, is an ugly proposition.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, that's right.

>> HR McMaster: You don't want fair fights.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, decisive force actually reduces casualties, absolutely.

>> HR McMaster: Absolutely, and I wanted to also talk with you about a little bit about stoic philosophy.

I think there is this tendency in our society today. We're gonna talk a lot more, I think, here, about how your experience, your observations in combat, relate to some of the challenges we have maladies, maybe even in our society today. But there's this Haidt writes about this, about safety is and creating safe spaces for people and so forth, when, in fact, I think in combat, you recognize that you really require a mild form of stoicism, as you mentioned, to compartmentalize and get on with the mission.

What is your sense of how the Epictetus Aristotle saying, focus on what you can control and then just recognize that they're gonna be elements outside of your control?

>> Sebastian Junger: I mean, I think modern America has this sort of weird idea that we have, that we sort of have the right to be completely comfortable at all times.

We don't have to be hot, we don't have to be cold, we don't have to be tired, we don't have to be worried, certainly not scared, right. None of the things that have been part of the human experience for 200,000 years or whatever, wherever you start to beginning of humanity from that, somehow we should be spared any form of any of those things, right.

And so, of course, it does a lot of harmful things, including, I think, causing real harm to the environment, because, of course, there's a huge carbon footprint to keep us perfectly all, perfectly comfortable all the time. But in addition, the way people get through things that are scary, things that are hard, that are unpleasant, is by bonding together and uniting to confront the problem.

And you just go look at what happened on the Gulf coast of Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. That society came together, society with some racial tension in it and all kinds of other things. Katrina hit boom. Everyone is in it together, right. And restaurants were cooking up the food that was rotting in the refrigerators and feeding the people, and, it was extraordinary.

And the people on the coast of the Gulf coast of Mississippi, and I have good friends there, said that they, afterwards, they actually missed the aftermath of Katrina, insane.

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: Right, londoners missed the blitz. And so one of the things that you get with this sort of, like, very too comfortable society that we've created and now are insisting on is that we're, I think, we at risk of becoming kind of babies.

So acting like children, basically, we lose.

>> HR McMaster: Words are harmful, right. It's be afraid of words.

>> Sebastian Junger: Everything, yeah, yeah, you shouldn't have to experience any adverse condition whatsoever, including rhetorical, right?

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: So we look and ultimately we lose each other because the way you get through difficult things is by collaborating with other people, other minded people.

And so I think it's an enormous human loss. And, the sort of all the sort of, in some ways, the coddling of identity. Identity is important, it's interesting, it's good, it's all kinds of things, but the sort of coddling of identity whereby you can't even criticize another person in any way.

It's just not human, right.

>> HR McMaster: Where the idea that you should judge the person next to you in a military context, in a civilian context, by the color of their skin or by their identity category, whatever it is. Rather than by what's in their heart and what's in their soul and what they bring to a team and the degree to which they're empathetic and, I mean, it's just, it's kind of a ludicrous proposition, in my view, and contrast starkly with my experience in the military.

But I'd like to talk to you then about what you've seen as these really formative experiences in the military and where you build that cohesion and what you've witnessed as soldiers leave the army, for example, and then rejoin civilian society. I think what you did in the book tribe is phenomenal.

In drawing out that contrast and what it tells us about the nature of combat and the cohesion of units, but also what it tells us about our society. And maybe, Sebastian, talk a little bit about how we're more connected to each other than ever, electronically, and we seem more disconnected from each other than ever, psychologically and emotionally.

 

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, well, I'll just start there. Obviously, electronic communication does not, in fact, make people experience closeness. There is some kind of connection, right? There is an exchange of ideas.

>> HR McMaster: I'm glad we're in person today.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, it's obvious. I mean, mental health declined during COVID because everyone was connected electronically.

I mean, that obviously, it's not the same thing. Obviously, there's a human loss there. And the lie that's been foisted on us, that electronic communication is basically just the new way, and it's just the same as in person. There are very powerful, wealthy companies making enormous amounts of money off that lie.

And the suicide rate, the depression rate in young people, particularly young women, is through the roof, right? I mean, that money is being paid for with real human lives because of that lie, right? So what I would say, like you asked about what I sort of learned in combat about this stuff.

So two things two things that come to mind. One of them was a young man, Brendan, his name was, whom I'm so very good friends with. He said, there's guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other, but we would all die for each other. If you can figure out how to be part of a group where your commitment to everyone else is not based on your feelings for them individually, but on a shared valuing of what the group represents, you'll be doing well.

And maybe a neighborhood watch group. It may be whatever. I mean, whatever it is, it does not matter. And we live in a more or less safe society. The group you find will probably. The stakes will not be as high, undoubtedly, as it was in combat. Don't worry about it.

You need to be part of something where its value is transcends all your individual concerns, right?. And then the other thing, that amazing thing that I overheard. We were coming back from a really intense combat, 24 hours combat mission. And we were coming up this last. We were exposed to gunfire.

We're coming up this last ridge line, and we were in a bad, very, very vulnerable position, right? We had to get to the top of this ridge till we got there. Not a good situation. And one guy started falling out. These guys are carrying 80 pounds of ammo and whatever.

 

>> HR McMaster: No, sorry, 110 pounds.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, exactly.

>> HR McMaster: Rucksack.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, and I was thinking, I'm just glad it's not me falling out because I would hate to slow down a platoon. God, the one thing you just do not want to do as an embedded journalist is impair their operation in any way whatsoever cuz someone could get killed right?

So it was another soldier who was falling out, just having a bad day. And his staff sergeant came up to him and said, you don't have the right to be smoked.

>> HR McMaster: Yeah.

>> Sebastian Junger: You don't even have the right to be tired. And civilians are like, what do you mean the rights to be tired?

It's a physical state. It has nothing to do with. Not true, right? The human mind can overcome an awful lot of things and until you physically collapse, I don't wanna hear about it.

>> HR McMaster: There's always salt and less than attack man, you know, and that's why the word sergeant, I think, is one of the most beautiful words in the English language.

 

>> Sebastian Junger: You got that.

>> HR McMaster: Staff sergeant said, okay, dig a little deeper. And then the drive to not let your fellow words down is, I think I Immensely important. One of the things I'm worried about these days is at least reports of a reduction in standards, right? Physical standards, other standards.

With this idea that really you need diversity is defined as, like anybody who wants just gets in to the warrior club, when in fact, I think it's immensely important to maintain those standards. And to not judge people by any kind of identity category, but judge them by their courage, their toughness, their sense of honor, their willingness to sacrifice as we're talking about.

Do you see this kind of, across society in general, is this tension between, you know, kind of a DEI orthodoxy. We're all for equality of opportunity, right? We're all for diversity. We want our armed forces to reflect our society. But I'm concerned that there's a drive to lower standards even in an area where the stakes are life and death.

 

>> Sebastian Junger: Right, I mean, there is obviously a moral good, a social good, and promoting open access, diverse access to the workplace in all forms. I mean, I totally get it. I think there's a lot of jobs within the US military that don't require you to be able to do 30 pull ups.

I mean, come on, let's be real. But I think you have to be very careful where the stakes are life and death. Like with the fire department, for example, urban fire department, for example.

>> HR McMaster: We're carrying a hard ten pound pack at 14,000ft.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, exactly, exactly. There should be, if you really want to be like gender blind, identity blinds, you actually will not change the standards.

You will say, this is what the job requires.

>> HR McMaster: Absolutely.

>> Sebastian Junger: If you don't have good eyesight, you can't be a pilot. I'm sorry, that has nothing to do with being discriminating against people with their impaired eyesight. It's just that's what the job requires. But likewise, like there are physical standards for the sort of combat infantry roles.

 

>> HR McMaster: Yeah.

>> Sebastian Junger: And for the fire, if the fire department, you have to be able to carry an adult down 20 flights of stairs over your shoulder with all your gear.

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: Some women do that? Of course they can, right? They're amazing. A woman just set them the world record for 5000 meters at 14 minutes.

The lady was running 430 miles, right?

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, of course we've had women graduates of ranger school.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, exactly.

>> HR McMaster: Without lowering the standard.

>> Sebastian Junger: But if you lower the standards, what you're doing is endangering everybody and you're unconsciously signaling, look, this sex is typically can do this, this sex act typically can't.

So, I mean, you're actually, in an unfortunate way, typifying typecasting women in a weird way by lowering the standards is actually a kind of, there's a kind of hidden insult in that and hidden disrespect. Personally, my, what I would say is that all jobs in the military and in society basically are honorable and needed and worthy and thank you for your service to everybody that's keeping this great nation going, right?

But there's a very, very small subset of jobs that require physical strength and you have to be able to demonstrate that you can do it. And that's why they wouldn't allow me in a ranger group, right? I mean, I'm 61 years old. I'm something that's not happening, right?

It's not cuz they're ageist. It's because they're realists.

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, right, exactly. And, I think the whole team's important, obviously, from cyber to logistics to signal to every, I mean, everything. Like the army doesn't operate just based on entry platoons, and other close combat specialties the physical standards are very important.

I want to also talk with you about reintegration into society, right? You have this family that's very cohesive. And then you follow soldiers as you come back into society with all the electronic connections and everything. And I love the book freedom as well. Where you went on a hell of a long walk, with three friends, and you walked the railroad tracks.

And you said, at one point, you talked about, which I was a little bit skeptical of, that you rediscovered the solidarity that is at the core of what it means to be human. But you said that you did it by digging yourself into the side of a riverbank.

 

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah. Right.

>> HR McMaster: Well, and I'm teasing you a little bit. But I mean, I think it was just a wonderful book about how getting away from all of the noise, all of the hectic parts of life with people who you trust and respect, can help you rediscover the kind of intimate human relationships that so many people seem to be missing.

 

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing about the railroad lines, and officially, I can't recommend doing this, is that there are these swaths of no man's land, and it's illegal, right? It's illegal to be out there, it's trespassing, and it's a weird environment. It's not the wilderness and it's not society, it's this weird gray area.

And I was in a group with three other men and a dog, and we were really marginal. And we walked through 15 degree temperatures in the middle of the winter, 100 degree temperatures in the middle of the summer. Over the course of a year, we walked from DC to Philly to Pittsburgh along the railroad lines.

And the cops were looking for us. There was all kind of weirdness, right?

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, I remember there were people offering you meals or warning you of thunderstorms that are coming up, cuz you were encountering little fringes of society.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, exactly.

>> HR McMaster: But you're kind of on your own.

 

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, we encountered a guy who had put his revolver in his back pocket and backed up and sort of watched us. I mean, there was all kinds of freakiness out there, right? But the point was we were enormously free from society, right? Like, as I say in the book, every night, we were the only people who knew where we were.

We were sleeping under bridges and abandoned buildings and in the woods and whatever. We were the only people who knew where we were. We were utterly unaccountable to anyone, right? Enormous freedom. But we did not have freedom from each other cuz we all needed each other to make this work on a physical level.

We needed to make a fire, we needed to get water, we needed to kinda keep guard sometimes. And so there's this ancient human tradeoff. I can't survive without the group, so I owe my life to the group. But I don't wanna be part of a group that's gonna be oppressive to me.

It has to be a reciprocal agreement, right? And so that balance is the one that people are constantly looking for. How do I be part of a group that's big and strong enough to protect me, but will not oppress me?

>> HR McMaster: Right, right.

>> Sebastian Junger: That's the trick.

>> HR McMaster: Well, and that's the story of our revolution.

It's the story-

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, exactly.

>> HR McMaster: That you tell, and we've often had to fight for freedom. I love the one-word titles of your chapters, right? Run, fight, think. And it's in the run part where you're digging the side of the bank, right? And you talk about how you're bound together by the simplicity of the situation you're in, the hardship of the situation, and proximity to death, right?

And I think this relates to maybe the discussion we've been having about safetyism and how important it is, I mean, at times to have to fight to survive, to go through hardships. But in the fight chapter, you talk about how important it is to fight for freedom. And could you say a little bit more about that?

I mean, even the etymology of the word freedom goes back to fighting. And then you tell this great story about the Montenegrins in the late 90s.

>> Sebastian Junger: 1600s.

>> HR McMaster: 1600s.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah.

>> HR McMaster: Fighting off the Ottoman Empire. And I think about the analogies to Ukraine today, where we see incredible valor on the part of the Ukrainians who are fighting for their freedom.

So could you talk about the theme of freedom, and especially this idea that you have to fight for it?

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, I mean, throughout history, human history, people have had to defend themselves against larger groups that would enslave them or kill them, right? And that's been going on for a very long time.

And if you wanna remain free and have your families and community remain free, you have to figure out how to defend yourselves. And that's been true in the human drama. That's been true for hundreds of thousands of years. And if you can't do that, you will not be free, right?

History is filled with examples of sort of dominant groups that just rode roughshod over everyone else, killed all the men, enslaved the women, whatever, awful, awful, awful stuff. And the Montenegrins, outnumbered 12 to 1 by the Ottomans, managed to defend themselves and defend their dignity and their freedom.

And the fact that humans, either individually or in groups, can defeat a larger foe, totally unique to humans and among mammals. And it is the thing that allows us freedom. But to be able to do that, you have to be committed to the group, right? The Montenegrins themselves would not have defeated the Ottomans if every individual Montenegrin fighter was like, well, I'm willing to fight, but I'm not willing to die.

 

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: Right, absolute commitment. And so when you look at the Ukrainians, they don't have an option, right? It's either fight and defend their country or be subjugated by a pretty predatory regional power, world power. The Russian soldiers, they're not fighting for the safety of their families, for their freedom, for their dignity, for their democracy.

I'm guessing it's quite hard for them to articulate why they're fighting. Other than they got drafted, they need a paycheck, they were in prison and now they got offered deal, though. Very prosaic motivations, right? And you could see it on the battlefield. I mean, the Russians have a huge numerical advantage, and yet by any sort of tactical measure, they're losing.

They're losing because they have a huge advantage and they're not winning. And all the smaller power has to do, they don't have to win, right? They have to not lose long enough for the great power to just get sick of the amount of effort and blood and treasure that they are spending on this project and pull out.

Like the Taliban did not defeat the United States, right? We lasted 20 years, we decided it was no longer in our interest, and we left.

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, I'll tell you, I'm really sick about it. I know you are too. I feel like we defeated ourselves. We had a series of fundamentally flawed strategies and approaches to the war that were inconsistent.

We never really put into place a sustained, long-term approach to the war. And it was that short-term approach, I think, that lengthened the war, actually, and made it more difficult. And you mentioned in that chapter, too, I forget which. I think it's in the fight chapter. You talk about winning, right?

And you talk about how a boxer, when you get in the ring, you're in it to win. And boxers, even before a match, I like to use a statistic where those who allow themselves to smile instead of have kind of a stern and determined countenance, lose statistically cuz they're mind is not in the game to win.

And Sebastian, this phrase drives me crazy, responsible end, when they were talking about Afghanistan. We wanna bring this, and I used to box. I never got in the ring and said, I just wanna bring this fight to a response end, cuz you're gonna get your ass kicked in there.

We talked about this with Richard McCaw of the All Blacks in the last episode. But can you maybe share your views on war and determination to win?

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, I mean, I think when someone's facing an existential threat, the determination to win is rooted in survival. And so you don't have the right to be smoked.

You don't have the right to be scared.

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: Survival is on the line. Not just your survival, but the survival of people that are very, very vulnerable, right? The children, the civilians in your community, the children. I think when you have an expeditionary war 8,000 miles away, it's hard.

Harder, just on a visceral human level, to sort of feel that, like, I mean, if you're American soldier fighting in Baghdad. I can imagine the soldier thinking, wait a minute, what's this have to do with my family? Like, my family's fine, they're that in human terms. I mean, there's a geostrategic logic to it that I actually didn't agree with, but there was one, right?

But for the soldier, if you are, and they've shown this in Israel during the Yom Kippur war, Israeli soldiers were literally fighting on the sort of the outskirts of their own towns.

>> HR McMaster: Sure, yeah.

>> Sebastian Junger: Right, that's a very different kind of motivation, even from incursions into Lebanon.

And the trauma rates from incursions into Lebanon were higher because the logic of having to fight was different from fighting on your hometown against an invasion from, like, three neighboring countries.

>> HR McMaster: I think we're getting it almost like the true tested strategy, I think, is can you explain to soldiers in an infantry platoon how the risks they're going to take on a mission.

How the sacrifices they may be called on to make are contributing to an outcome worthy of those risks and sacrifices. And our regiment had the good fortune of having what we needed to accomplish the mission in a portion of Iraq in 2005 to 2006, where we defeated al Qaeda, we saw life return to our area.

And when we came back for the debriefings, there was a statistical anomaly that our post traumatic stress levels were way down. And I think it really had to do with the change we had seen that we had achieved that word, the outcome, and we had also made it a point.

I briefed every flight that went home with a video of what we had achieved. And two weeks before we came back, I took my end of tour leave, my mid tour leave at the end of the tour, and had briefed all their families on what they had achieved.

 

>> Sebastian Junger: Amazing.

>> HR McMaster: And I really think that that is one of the most important bulwarks against post traumatic trauma. Or any disorders associated with post traumatic stress, is to understand that you've been part of that worthy endeavor'. And, I mean, I wonder if you might say if you were to our afghan veterans, because I believe it, that that was a noble endeavor.

I believe that they rescued the Afghan people from the hell of Taliban rule from 96 to 2001. They removed the Taliban sponsorship of al Qaeda, who committed the largest mass murder attacks in history on 911. They showed the Afghans a path that they could take, alternatively, I don't believe in a terrorist organization like the Taliban wins in the long term.

And I think that we've set conditions for a return of some kind of form of governance in Afghanistan that is not the Taliban. But what do you say to the veterans of the afghan war who I know are struggling now with the sacrifices that they and their fellow soldiers have made and this self defeat.

I think it's a self defeat and I surrender, essentially.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, I mean, it's a very complicated thing, I think, in sort of human terms. I think one of the things that is probably very, very troubling to many veterans is that they left. They worked closely with Afghan interpreters and all kinds of Afghan nationals who then got stuck there, many of them got killed.

And I think there was a sense of betrayal of our allies and our Afghan brothers, as it were, that was just mortifying to people that have been in combat with these people. And I think on some level, American soldiers sort of knew, well, we're not going to be in Afghanistan forever, right?

We're not forever forever, at some point we're gonna pull out. I think what was sort of mortifying is that the successive administrations, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, in my opinion, all fumbled the sort of, like, broader policies in that country. And one of them, one of the biggest ones, the biggest one, I think, was addressing corruption.

The huge amounts of money that we pumped into that country were virtually unmonitored. The Afghans were virtually unaccountable for the money that we were giving them to do things with. And it just supercharged corruption, and corruption was the main driver that got Afghans to allow the Taliban in.

And for the first place, the Taliban promised to clean up corruption in 96, I was there, and they let him in to clean up corruption, and we left that unaddressed. And so I think as long as we were not ignoring that piece of the puzzle, no amount of efforts by our amazing military was gonna do anything except keep the floodwaters at bay till we pulled out.

And had we really been determined to change that society, which we had the power to do. Bush wasn't interested, Obama wasn't interested, no one was interested. I happen to be a Democrat, but in that sense, the Democratic presidents and the Republican president, all of them completely failed on that level.

And I think that's what led to the disaster

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, war is a contest of wills, and we lost our own will, I think, to see it through. And you're right, obviously, about the corruption and the weakness of the state and security forces that resulted from that. But I'd like to end on a bit of a higher note here, right?

We've talked about a lot of the problems in our society today. Maybe the lack of confidence is our common identity as Americans. Our American tribe seems to be quite fragmented. Lack of confidence maybe even in our democratic processes and institutions. A curriculum, I think, in much of the academy and secondary schools, even, that teach young people that their country might not even be worth defending.

I'm talking about various post colonial and critical and post modernist theories that have become, have infected, I think, a lot of the curricula in the humanities. And I think just a sense that we've lost our agency, this tendency to put structural or institutional in front of every problem as if that we don't have the ability to work together to build a better future.

So based on your extraordinary experience and training and observing of human nature our society of units in combat, what can we do to improve our country?

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, I think there's a lot of things going on there. I'm sort of flashing on our Afghan ally, Ghani, President Ghani of Afghanistan, leaving, fleeing that country, leaving vulnerable Afghans behind with two satchels full of cash, $40 million worth of cash, something like that.

Clearly a completely corrupt man, right? And I think Americans look at their own political leaders, and it's not quite as crass as that, it's not a helicopter filled with $40 million. But I think they see a lot of self dealing by politicians, by powerful people in this country.

Self dealing that leaves the common man, the common woman behind. And that very popular song, rich men, North of Richmond, I think, speaks to this idea that the powerful and the elite on both sides of the aisle are serving themselves at our expense. If you were Afghan, would you fight for Ghani as his helicopter was lifting off with $40 million in cash?

No, he wouldn't, why would you? It'd be crazy, right? Well, likewise for Americans, would you fight for these people? They're enriching themselves by pretending to lead the country. I think the divisions in this country were created and exploited by political leaders, right? I think Americans, with some exceptions, but I think basically, Americans want to sort of be unified, and they're being told that looking for unity is foolish.

 

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: It's almost unpatriotic to think that the other side is actually moral and well intentioned and has the good of the nation foremost in their mind as well. It's almost thought of as, Unpatriotic to think that about the other political party. And I blame that squarely on the politicians, not all of them, but just enough.

So what can we do, right? Other than throw the pastors out?

>> HR McMaster: We do have the agency where we can vote.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Three things you can do to feel like you're part of this great nation, right? On an individual level, the nation doesn't need you, you're just a tiny person.

You need to give blood. I survived a medical emergency a few years ago, abdominal hemorrhage, killer, killer situation. I survived because I got ten units of blood from people that donated their blood, right? You have to give blood cuz one day you will be me in the With doctors trying to save your life.

That will be all of us eventually. You need to vote, the nation needs you to vote, right? If you don't vote, you are giving up on the entire idea of democracy, one of the most powerful, ennobling ideas ever created by people, right? Human dignity is that the dignity is the core of that idea.

You have to vote and finally serve on jury duty, don't try to get out of it. The jury is the only thing keeping one person, one sheriff, one prosecutor, one president, one what have you from deciding the fate of another person. It's jury duty that keeps us ultimately from tyranny and oppression and you have to be part of it, or you lose the right.

You really should lose the right to have a jury judge you if you are ever unfairly accused or fairly accused of a crime. So you do those three things, you will feel like you're part of this amazing place. And then finally, I would say, as on a policy level, I think mandatory national service would be an amazing thing for this country.

I don't mean military service.

>> HR McMaster: Right.

>> Sebastian Junger: I mean mandatory national service for 18 months or whatever. When you're a young person and with a military option, great, no problem. But you should be able to serve your country by teaching school children and providing daycare in stressed urban neighborhoods and whatever.

Wherever the needs greatest, we have these amazing young people who can fill those needs. You do a great thing. You would give people an experience of what a varied country this is, right? Rich, poor, white, black, religious, not religious, the whole gay, straight, I don't care, we're all Americans, right?

You would put people in the context of the great variation of this democratic nation, and it would also make them feel like they're part of something greater than themselves.

>> HR McMaster: Yeah.

>> Sebastian Junger: And that leads to what feels like a meaningful life.

>> HR McMaster: And for our younger viewers, I would encourage you to join our military.

There have been efforts on part of, I think political fringes and both parties to try to politicize the military. I think the military has been resistant to that.

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah.

>> HR McMaster: The military is not woke, it's not extremist. It is a place where you can get a lot of responsibility,

 

>> Sebastian Junger: Yeah.

>> HR McMaster: Overcome challenges at a very young age, and then go on to serve in other capacities. You have to do 34 years. You can do just a few years. And you've seen so many veterans go on like we're today here at a Veteran Fellowship Program at the Hoover Institution.

With veterans who are serving again in another capacity, doing something positive for their communities. So I think they always fellowship. I would put you in the ranks of a servant of the nation, because what you've done is you explain to the American people the experiences of their sons and daughters when they went to fight in their name.

And I can't think of a more noble service to have done. And I can't tell you what a big fan I am and what a privilege it's been to be with you, and I'd love to give you the last word to our audience.

>> Sebastian Junger: Thank you so much.

My father came here from Europe as fascists were overrunning Europe and trying to overrun the world. He told me he came here, and he stayed here because he knew fascism never would follow him to this country, that this country would always remain free and would fight for the freedom of others.

And in my lifetime, that has been true. I expect it will always be true. It makes America for all of its flaws and failings, right? And we can talk about those, it's an important conversation. It makes it one of the most noble endeavors in the history of humanity.

I'm incredibly proud to be part of it. I never had to serve in the military, never chose to serve, but I feel like I served in other ways that wound up being helpful and important to people and makes me incredibly proud. Thank you for having me on.

>> HR McMaster: Sebastian Junger, thank you for helping us learn how we can build a better future from generations to come.

 

>> Sebastian Junger: Thank you.

>> HR McMaster: Thank you.

>> Jenn Henry: Battlegrounds is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.