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Chapter 8 concentrates on how MACV assessed the organizational effectiveness of U.S. Army units serving in Vietnam in 1970. Did officers sense there had been a deterioration of combat effectiveness over time? Much of the Vietnam War historiography comments on the supposed deterioration of troop performance due to drug use, racial tension, and a breakdown in discipline. This chapter investigates how MACV measured such performance. It further asks if it was even feasible for the U.S. Army to withdraw from Vietnam while simultaneously maintaining its overall combat effectiveness.

This chapter examines the ways in which the laws of war applicable between nations were justified, adapted, and sustained in a civil war, and then looks at the regulations designed to produce an orderly and effective fighting force. The codes of war that covered the law of conduct in war (ius in bello) were of three kinds. First, the laws of God, nature, and nations covered the conduct to be expected of reasonable, moral men. Their authority crossed national and confessional boundaries, but it particularly behooved Christians to observe them. They were equally relevant to Catholic and Protestant, English and foreigner. Second, the laws of war, professionally specialized and largely customary, were also international, although there might be local variations of detail. Both the laws of God, nature, and nations and the laws of war were uncodified and unwritten. Only the third category of rules, those covering internal army discipline — the articles or ordinances of war — constituted a body of written law.

This chapter examines how Civil War officers governed the rank and file. It demonstrates a clear pattern of interactions between officers and privates that began in a very small number of regiments and spread to include seemingly most regiments in the Union army during 1863. It shows that discipline in the Union army became more stringent over time and that its severity was targeted on the post-1862 conscripts. The reason for this was their widespread distrust of the conscripts, bounty men, and substitutes. A core group of volunteers fought for the cause; thousands of other Union soldiers fought because they had to. Without the overwhelming force used against them—on the transports south and on the battlefield—they would not have fought. The use of force and the conflict among officers, roughs, and immigrants changed the Union army. By 1864–1865 it looked more like the antebellum regular army, which had long reflected the social divisions of civilian life.

This chapter explains how propaganda and discipline functioned. The Antonescu regime worried about soldiers' motivation, so the General Staff increased propaganda efforts and enforced strict discipline. Because of Romanians' ideological beliefs, most soldiers accepted army propaganda messages about holy war, defending European civilization, German–Romanian comradeship, and the threat of Judeo-Bolshevism. However, soldiers were increasingly less convinced by army propaganda’s promises of final victory, especially in the aftermath of Stalingrad. The Romanian Army maintained strict discipline through various means, the most notorious being corporal punishment, but also including penal, capital, and financial sanctions. The General Staff transformed an old practice, the rehabilitation of officers through bravery in combat, into an extensive new system that provided the Romanian Army desperately needed manpower. The Romanian Army’s propaganda efforts and strict discipline reinforced its solders' motivation in the holy war against Judeo-Bolshevism.