Unit cohesion

Unit cohesion is a military concept, defined by one former United States Chief of staff in the early 1980s as "the bonding together of soldiers in such a way as to sustain their will and commitment to each other, the unit, and mission accomplishment, despite combat or mission stress". However the concept lacks a consensus definition among military analysts, sociologists and psychologists.

Unit cohesion is a military concept dating back to at least Carl von Clausewitz, if not to antiquity.

Several scholars have cited the influence of Sigmund Freud's thinking on theories of unit cohesion. A number of them noted that Freud wrote of breakdown among soldiers, asserting that it leads to panic, insubordination, self-interested rather than cooperative reactions to threats, and "a gigantic and senseless dread".

The later development of the concept is strongly informed by the work of Morris Janowitz, who, with Edward Shils, began writing on the topic in the late 1940s. Janowitiz continued to work in this area in his sociological work, as the disruptive policy of frequently rotating individual soldiers and officers during the Vietnam War came under scrutiny as a large factor behind low morale.

Following the studies of several World War II armies, sociologists concluded that comradely ties between small combat units is a decisive factor in providing good morale, cohesion, and organization framework.

The defeat of the Western forces by the poorly equipped Chinese People's Liberation Army in the Korean War in 1950 further generated interest on the role of "human elements" on modern battlefields. Although Western armies traditionally created ties between soldiers through informal means such as teamwork or shared hardships instilled by discipline, the Chinese army relied on formal methods to assimilate recruits into their units. The assimilation process involved features such as coercive persuasion, surveillance, and political control, while military ranks and physical punishments were abolished to allow closer relations between officers and soldiers. The stringent assimilation methods allowed the Chinese to create high morale and cohesion compared to the Western forces. However, high casualty rates and the lack of modern equipment later resulted in a significant erosion of morale and cohesion as the Korean War dragged on. One of the worst cases of this erosion was the partial disintegration of the Chinese army during the spring offensive in May 1951.

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