Armchair Military: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Armchair Generals (and Admirals) are those persons who decide to critique and/or run military operations from the comfort of their - ah, well, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|chairs]]. This shouldn't be a surprise. There are two possible interpretations:

 

While the idea of a General who valiantly leads his troops from the front line has some basis in reality, in modern battlefields it is a common case of [[Hollywood Tactics]]. If the guy in charge of your army dies in the first volley, chances are you're going to lose. And even if he doesn't die, fighting with the army is going to make it much harder for him to tell what's going on or relay orders.

 

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== Anime and Manga ==

* In [[wikipedia:Patlabor 2: The Movie|Patlabor 2: The Movie]], the civilian government and police act this way, undermine their control over the military, and allow the terrorists to attack Toyko.

* In ''[[Maiden Rose]]'', every administration that we see has its own armchair military. In Vol. 2 the brass from Taki's country are particularly [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|obstructive]] and serve as a contrast to the type of frontline leader Taki is.

* The original ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'' plays with this in the form of Gihren Zabi, the son of Sovereign Degwin Zabi, and Supreme Commander of Zeon's forces. A definitive [[Non-Action Big Bad]], Gihren has, unlike his brothers and sister, never seen combat. He's also a totally ruthless [[The Sociopath|psychopath]] who has no problems with throwing away the lives of his soldiers. At the same time, however, Gihren is also reasonably competent, organising the war effort, leaving the tactical and operational decisions to his siblings, and holding the country together through his genuine skills as [[Rousing Speech|an orator]]. It's not until near the end of the war that some of his strategic mistakes actually begin to catch up with him.

 

* By definition, the Battle Commanders in ''[[Tiberium Wars]]'' have to command in this way, standing far off from the battlefield and issuing complex, often micromanaging orders to their units in the field. Both of the Commanders, however, get brushes with front line action and are no slouches in personal combat, and the GDI Commander, Karrde, deliberately goes out into the field with his troops and commands close to the front to earn their respect.

 

== Film ==

* Marshall Murdock in ''[[Rambo]] 2'' was an armchair general.

* Some movies show generals in British High Command during [[World War II]] as heartless armchair generals.

 

== Literature ==

* ''About Face'', an autobiography by Colonel David Hackworth, proposes that the war in Korea and Vietnam was undermined by academic 'experts' and military commanders with no understanding of what was happening in the field.

* David Halberstam's ''The Best and the Brightest'' is about the decisions of America's military and foreign policy experts under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that led to the US getting bogged down in Vietnam.

* In [[Dan Abnett]]'s [[Gaunt's Ghosts]] novel ''Straight Silver'', the high command is explicitly described as regarding the war as a chess game, with all the pieces having fixed moves. They were also incapable of seeing that their strategy had been tried three times and failed all of them.

* Played with in ''[[Ender's Game]]'' by [[Orson Scott Card]]. Ender realizes he was {{spoiler|sending real pilots into battle while he himself stayed safe, thinking it was all a simulation.}} It's both a plot point and the basis of the sequel that, had he known, he couldn't have done it. The first sequel is spent trying to make up for what he has done.

* Admiral James Cutter in ''[[Jack Ryan|Clear and Present Danger]]'' is depicted this way.

* In ''[[The Regeneration Trilogy]]'', set in [[World War I]], this idea is always in the background as the death toll goes up. The main character, British poet [[Historical Domain Character|Siegfriend Sassoon]], is very bitter about his superiors' ignorance of the soldier's suffering.

* The men responsible for organizing the Battle of Yonkers in ''[[World War Z]]'' were armchair military types. Their list of blunders included putting soldiers in hazmat suits that made it difficult for them to reload, not paying attention to the fact that they were fighting an army made entirely of ''infantry'', therefore giving their tanks the wrong kind of ammunition, bringing bridgelayers, not securing the area or taking advantage of higher ground, digging trenches when they weren't needed, using a really big airstrike on just the front ranks of the enemy, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's torn to shreds by the man being interviewed in the story, saying that most of the inappropriately chosen stuff [[Suicidal Overconfidence|was there for purely PR reasons]].

* One of Bill Mauldin's cartoons had [[Old Soldier|scruffy veteran infantryman]] Willie fasten a map of Europe to the remnants of a brick wall; sitting on the ground in front of it, he began drawing movement arrows and the like on the map, possibly trying to figure out where the brass intended to send him next. The caption was his friend Joe calling him an "armchair strategist!"

 

* In ''[[Star Trek]]'', almost anybody in Starfleet Command has been away from the sharp end for far too long.

** In the ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "The Maquis", Sisko complains that his superiors back on Earth will never understand the grievances of the Federation colonists because Earth is a paradise.

** The best example, however, is the IOA. They make a lot of decisions that aren't logical at all, such as, in ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', ordering a preemptive strike on the Replicator homeworld of Asura when the Replicators hadn't even made any hostile moves towards the Atlantis Expedition. This causes the Asurans to retaliate by sending a laser satellite that drives Atlantis off of the planet it's on, leaving it stuck in space for a while. And they repair the damage done to their cities ''very'' quickly, making the entire attack ''a waste of time and resources''.

*** It's frequently pointed out in later seasons of SG-1 and Atlantis that the IOA, when faced with a difficult decision, will deliberate until after the deadline so that someone else can make the decision and they can criticize it. While the operating principle behind the IOA is sound (civilian oversight of military operations), they are so incredibly ineffectual as to be criminally negligent.

* ''[[Blackadder]] Goes Forth''. Played horrifically straight in the [[Tear Jerker|Finale]].

* Arnold Rimmer from ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' tries to justify his claim that he is a potential military prodigy despite his tendency of cowering in a corner whenever a fight happens.

 

== Video Games ==

* The trope name is often used as an insult for obsessive strategy types in online shooter games like ''[[Team Fortress 2]]''. "All hail X! Our fearless armchair general!"

* ''[[Brütal Legend|Brutal Legend]]'' has an achievment called "Armchair General". It can only be obtained if the player {{spoiler|wins a battle by only giving orders.}}

 

== Web Original ==

* A frequent target of the satirical ''[http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/ spEak You're bRanes]'' blog is people who go onto news blogs and smugly lecture on military tactics, warfare and the need for martial solutions to social problems while simultaneously making it clear that they're both lacking in military experience and as far from the fighting as it's possible to get. Fittingly, the tag used to identify examples of these people is 'Armchair Generals'.

 

== Real Life ==

* The clash of ideas between General Shinseki and Donald Rumsfeld, Shinseki's ideas were based off traditional military tactics on how to control a country such as Iraq while Rumsfeld's thoughts were [[Ass Pull|pulled out of his ass]]. Rumsfeld simply didn't understand that defeating Iraq's military was the easy part, controlling Iraq's people enough so Iraq could be rebuilt was the difficult part.

* As a lighter example of [[Interservice Rivalry]], the US Air Force is frequently referred to as the "Chair Force" by the uniformed personnel of other branches. Airmen with a self-deprecating sense of humor have also been known to toss the term around themselves. Ironically, in the Air Force, it's ''only'' the officers who are supposed to get shot at - unless one is in Combat Control or Pararescue.

 

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