As the Army found itself caught up in debates about a ‘kinder, gentler military’, Army leaders reacted by emphasising cultural change. Part of this cultural shift came from the bottom up, as commanders in elite combat units showed a new interest in the psychology of killing and brought in consultants to lecture their instructors on how to more effectively inculcate a willingness to kill. Much of it came from the top, though. General Eric Shinseki controversially mandated that all soldiers would wear black berets as their working headdress to symbolise a new Army culture, and he commissioned a study on the ‘warrior ethos’ and begin to enshrine that ethos into Army doctrine and training. This warrior ethos – the idea that all soldiers are de facto heroic and potential Rangers – had the goal of democratizing notions of soldiering within the Army. However, not only did the warrior ethos require all soldiers to psychologically orientate themselves towards combat, but one of the unintended consequences of the decision may have been to help to put the American soldier a little higher on the pedestal of public opinion and inadvertently widen the gap between soldier and citizen.

Ritual violence in the form of regulated types of close combat had been widespread in western Africa, even on the battlefield. The arrival of Europeans along the coast and an invading Moroccan army equipped with firearms in the sixteenth century challenged more ritualised approaches to combat in many areas of western Africa. In the savannah regions however, ritualised close combat in the form of martial contests remained important as military training that continued to be effective on the battlefield. In western Sudan, competitions of wrestling, equestrian acrobatics and fencing prepared elite males for battlefield combat, which was dominated by cavalry heroics. In the savannah regions of Angola, fighters performed danced combats to pay tribute to rulers, to develop combat skills crucial for the battlefield and to exercise their king’s leopard-like power over life and death on the battlefield. Elements of these ritual violence traditions were carried to the Americas where enslaved Africans and their descendants armed themselves with these practices even under slavery.