That's how many 21st century Americans think, but not how I expected Ukrainians to think. I was raised to eat what I was given, and when I became a vegetarian my family thought I was being ridiculous and even mildly offensive. My grandfather would tell me how people could only have moral objections to food because they had never been hungry. I'm sure he would have said "pragmatism" meant that a soldier eats whatever is edible.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

In a sense pragmatism would mean that a soldier eats whatever they can, given that generally, people will do things they find objectionable rather than starve, if one was talking about the individual soldiers being pragmatic. However, what I was referring to was the state or military leadership being pragmatic here, because even if your soldiers will eat rations they object to, they're probably not going to like it, and one can't so easily pragmatically decide to like something. So even if your soldiers dutifully eat whatever they're given regardless of if they'd object to doing so given a reasonable choice, it's still going to hurt morale and therefore hurt their ability to carry out their objectives. Not really arguing with you here obviously, just responding to that hypothetical response you were suggesting someone might give.