Introduction
Military is an extension of culture, politics and history. As Eric Ouellet (n.d.) points out, understanding a nation’s military requires that one focus “on the organized violence of armed groups; whether this violence is actual, potential, or symbolic” (p. 30). When it comes to the U.S. and Iran, no two countries could be more different. The U.S. is a liberal, Western democracy with the world’s biggest all-volunteer military. Iran is a Middle Eastern nation that operates under a theocracy and mandates military service for its men. In the U.S., the military is something separate and distinct from civilian life—soldiers are respected and honored for their courage and sacrifice and regarded as heroes for defending the nation; but in Iran, military service is mandatory and there is no clear line between civilian life and the military life as every male civilian has to serve—and this difference between the two military cultures impacts the way they view themselves and their world.
The Central Role of Organized Violence
The central role of organized violence in the militaries of Iran and U.S. is somewhat similar. As Chambers (2003) observes, the central role of organized violence armed forces is to wage war. However, the waging of war is dependent upon international factors, and this is where Iran and the U.S. differ significantly in their cultural perspectives. Iran is largely and isolated country in the wider international community as a result of economic sanctions leveled by the U.S. (Jacobson, 2008). The U.S. on the other hand is engaged often in mission creep with military bases in dozens upon dozens of countries all over the world, and is seen as both aggressor and as protector, depending upon the perspectives of the countries either involved in conflict with the U.S. or looking to receive military support from the U.S. (Adams & Murray, 2014).
As Ulrich vom Hagen (n.d.) shows in “The Spiritual Armament of the German Officer Corps,” however, there is a spiritual component to the role of organized violence and in Iran that spiritual component is Islam, which guides the theocratic-democratic state and informs the nation of its principles and values. In the U.S. the spiritual component is chiefly Christian, but there is a respect for religious liberty in the U.S. that is not promoted in Iran, which is another way that the systems of organized violence differ. Considering too that military service in Iran is compulsory while it is volunteer-based in the U.S. shows that there is also a civic component to how violence is organized in both militaries: and according to the Tehran Bureau (2015) of The Guardian, “in Iran, soldiers don’t get the same respect as they do in America”—which suggests that the system of organized violence in Iran is predicated upon the hierarchical society’s strong social beliefs about duty to the state rather than to the ideals of courage, freedom and heroism cultivated in the U.S.
The Relationship between the Military and Society
The relationship between military and society is much different in Iran than it is in the U.S. In Iran, the military largely seen as a service that few want to engage in but that they must because of the law. According...
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