The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war provide even more evidence of an army steadily losing ground because of a toxic combination of abysmal morale and corruption throughout the ranks. The tight coupling of corruption, low morale, and military failure has played out several times since World War II—in Cuba, in Vietnam, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, to name a few. Policymakers would do well to pay attention.
I learned about the importance of morale in Vietnam when I investigated fragging, an internecine conflict in which troops turn on their superiors (the word “fragging” refers to fragmentation grenades, the weapons of choice when enlisted men try to kill their superiors). I explore fragging and morale in more depth in an article about my investigation published by the Saturday Review on Jan. 8, 1972, entitled, “This article has been indexed from Lawfare
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