Ukraine

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.