Empathy and Eurocentrism

Understanding our enemy enough to defeat them, a primer

Last night I was watching the movie Ender’s Game and it got me thinking for a bit. Now the book had been what all the kids on the block were reading when I was younger, but I never got around to reading it. I was thinking about the quote from the movie:

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him”

What I thought about was the concept of Empathy. Empathy, that dirty word, that word that so often gets tossed around in the government mandated trainings all military folk in the West have to participate in, that word which never sticks. Empathy. Empathy is not sympathy, empathy is understanding. Its putting on someones skin and being them for just a moment in time. To be quite frank, very little of what gets discussed about empathy is of any value. What is of value, however, is understanding how the enemy thinks, and this understanding is what makes empathy a powerful trait for the leader. Empathy is what lets the leader understand the enemy enough to defeat them, and its what allows the leader to perhaps respect the enemy or even to love the enemy.

Eurocentrism is the attitude that European civilization is the prime engine and architect of world history; in other words, it is looking at world history and events from a primarily European or Western point of view. There’s nothing wrong with it as much as its human nature. In Africa there’s Afrocentrism and in Asia they have their own civilizational isms (note that China calls itself the Middle Kingdom in that its at the center of the world and civilization). The point with this is that we in the West perceive from a Western point of view, and how we conceptualize is from the European psyche. When we want to study military history, we study Western military leaders. In the United States, we study MacArthur, Patton, Schwartzkopf, Grant, Napoleon, Marlborough, Belisarius (if you are cultured), etc. Everything we do is from our point of view, and how we strategize comes directly from our Western mythos.

Now we have Empathy and Eurocentrism, why does this matter? If we perceive everything from our Eurocentric point of view, then when we fight people from other places, we are already at a conceptual disadvantage. Case-in-point, analyzing the Russian Way of War and Russian performance and actions in Ukraine. We see time again stories on the news about massive Russian casualties, especially in their officer corps, and we perceive in our Western way that the Russian Army is cooked (nevermind the sensationalized and near yellow journalism nature of the reporting). We forget that the Russians don’t think like we do, they don’t perceive casualties and human rights quite the same as we do. About the officers, we forget that they don’t have an NCO corps like the West, they have significantly more officers than a Western army (because they do things that we don’t do). When they strategize, they look to their Russian cultural mythos, with Russian leaders like Zhukov, Suvorov, Nevsky, etc. If we are to prepare for a potential fight with Russia, then we need leaders who can perceive and understand like a Russian does, we need empathetic leaders who can step outside of the Eurocentric world view. Leaders must read Russian literature, study Russian history, put on the mantle of a Russian.

When we travel further east, the disparity is even greater. Analyzing the Iranian, Chinese, and North Korean Armies will show that they are in fact quite different than armies of the West. Military education cannot remain solely focused on European and American military history, and more so education must be grounded in the reality of today’s armies. We must understand the military cultural mythos that our rivals live in if we are to truly understand them and their reasoning. How many Western leaders can actually name any Chinese military leader? How about a leader from before the CCP (that is not Sun Tzu)? Has anyone ever studied the exploits of Han Xin? The analysis of the enemy is not just a function of the Intelligence section, contrary, every section should analyze their mirrored warfighting function.

Without profound study of the enemy, how can we achieve understanding so that we may defeat them?