Oh, for the days before Crecy!
[Jonathan Caverley,
Monday July 25, 2005 at 1:00pm ]
Two Times op-eds today (Monday) on the lack of connection between the people of the United States and their military. Stanford history professor David Kennedy tries to get our attention by calling the professional army “mercenaries”:
World War II veteran/Korean and Vietnam War photojournalist David Douglas Duncan is more succinct:
Analysis: I share their respect for the “Greatest Generation,” am dismayed by the lack of military service by the country’s elite, and think that American voters’ say in how and when their government goes to war is declining. Now I don’t believe Kennedy really thinks we should be spending an extra 4.7 trillion dollars and drafting 25 million people. That said, fetishizing the good old days as a model for today’s modern military is about as useful as longing for the era of chivalry following the Battle of Crecy.
Technology: It would be ludicrous to deny that technology has had an impact on what kinds of personnel a modern military needs to fight. Kennedy acknowledges this and provides his solution, “The ‘revolution in military affairs’ has made obsolete the kind of huge army that fought World War II, but a universal duty to service - perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory national service with military duty as one option among several - would at least ensure that the civilian and military sectors do not become dangerously separate spheres” (note: for a better case for the draft see Phil Carter and Paul Glastris’s Washington Monthly piece).
Modern warfare is a highly technical, capital-intensive profession. Ironically, this also means that any single soldier can have a tremendous impact on how the war is conducted. The "strategic corporal" takes years (and lots of cash) to train. Some argue that it does not take much training to prepare a soldier for occupation duties, but given the potential effect on the mission by things as prosaic as guard duty or checkpoint manning, I am not sure I agree. Phil points out that the Army currently takes on MPs, truck drivers and infantry for two-year enlistments; that doesn’t make it a good policy.
Fewer, better-trained soldiers mean fewer casualties (certainly for the United States, and probably for civilians as well). More Americans dying in battle may increase voter awareness of the issue at hand, but is that the best logic to underpin defense planning?
That said I do not intend this post to be a blanket challenge to the case for the draft. I only suggest that conscription is unlikely to reintroduce voter involvement in the decision to go to war.
Democratic deliberation and the draft: Democracies have been historically just as aggressive as non-democracies in instigating conflict (just not with other democracies). Nor is it clear that drafts dramatically increase the political costs of going to war.
Would an additional 500,000 drafted soldiers (and I’m not sure what we would do with them)--approximately .2% of the population--really mobilize that much more public involvement in the war debate? It certainly does not qualify as mobilization “on such a scale that civilian society's deep and durable consent is required.” It’s hard to say the draft was the primary cause of public opinion turning against Vietnam, given the two and a half years of general support (and much higher casualty rates than Iraq) up until the Tet Offensive. Lyndon Johnson actually thought a draft was a more attractive choice politically than mobilizing the reserves for Vietnam. As for Vietnam-era governing elites, the fact that they many had served in WWII did not prevent our entry into Southeast Asia.
One of the reasons for the draft is to give elites a larger stake in the well-being of those who serve in the armed forces. However, most draft advocates acknowledge that due to either norms or sheer numbers, draftees should choose among military and non-military service. In my limited experience, people generally join the military to improve their lot in life or because they feel a strong cultural norm to serve. The former reason never applied to children of the elite, and the latter no longer seems to either. If we give draftees a choice of service, is the military likely to look any different than it does now? Once again, elites are removed from the equation and the brake on military operations vanishes.
So what's the alternative? Perhaps a better means of getting the public (especially the elite) more involved in the decision to go to war would be to hit its pocketbook in the form of raising taxes (rather than make our children pay for it through deficit spending). Having said that, Iraq War spending is only a fraction of our annual deficit; and borrowing money for war is an American tradition far older than the draft. Nonetheless, I am not sure that nostalgia for the past makes a positive contribution to the debate about the future of democracy and US military operations.
But thanks to something that policymakers and academic experts grandly call the "revolution in military affairs," which has wedded the newest electronic and information technologies to the destructive purposes of the second-oldest profession, we now have an active-duty military establishment that is, proportionate to population, about 4 percent of the size of the force that won World War II. And today's military budget is about 4 percent of gross domestic product, as opposed to nearly 40 percent during World War II.
Some will find it offensive to call today's armed forces a "mercenary army," but our troops are emphatically not the kind of citizen-soldiers that we fielded two generations ago - drawn from all ranks of society without respect to background or privilege or education, and mobilized on such a scale that civilian society's deep and durable consent to the resort to arms was absolutely necessary.
World War II veteran/Korean and Vietnam War photojournalist David Douglas Duncan is more succinct:
…Perhaps one crucial question was omitted from those polls: "Is any member of your family uniformed and in Baghdad?"
Remembering again World War II and Korea ... Give me yesterday - today!
Analysis: I share their respect for the “Greatest Generation,” am dismayed by the lack of military service by the country’s elite, and think that American voters’ say in how and when their government goes to war is declining. Now I don’t believe Kennedy really thinks we should be spending an extra 4.7 trillion dollars and drafting 25 million people. That said, fetishizing the good old days as a model for today’s modern military is about as useful as longing for the era of chivalry following the Battle of Crecy.
Technology: It would be ludicrous to deny that technology has had an impact on what kinds of personnel a modern military needs to fight. Kennedy acknowledges this and provides his solution, “The ‘revolution in military affairs’ has made obsolete the kind of huge army that fought World War II, but a universal duty to service - perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory national service with military duty as one option among several - would at least ensure that the civilian and military sectors do not become dangerously separate spheres” (note: for a better case for the draft see Phil Carter and Paul Glastris’s Washington Monthly piece).
Modern warfare is a highly technical, capital-intensive profession. Ironically, this also means that any single soldier can have a tremendous impact on how the war is conducted. The "strategic corporal" takes years (and lots of cash) to train. Some argue that it does not take much training to prepare a soldier for occupation duties, but given the potential effect on the mission by things as prosaic as guard duty or checkpoint manning, I am not sure I agree. Phil points out that the Army currently takes on MPs, truck drivers and infantry for two-year enlistments; that doesn’t make it a good policy.
Fewer, better-trained soldiers mean fewer casualties (certainly for the United States, and probably for civilians as well). More Americans dying in battle may increase voter awareness of the issue at hand, but is that the best logic to underpin defense planning?
That said I do not intend this post to be a blanket challenge to the case for the draft. I only suggest that conscription is unlikely to reintroduce voter involvement in the decision to go to war.
Democratic deliberation and the draft: Democracies have been historically just as aggressive as non-democracies in instigating conflict (just not with other democracies). Nor is it clear that drafts dramatically increase the political costs of going to war.
Would an additional 500,000 drafted soldiers (and I’m not sure what we would do with them)--approximately .2% of the population--really mobilize that much more public involvement in the war debate? It certainly does not qualify as mobilization “on such a scale that civilian society's deep and durable consent is required.” It’s hard to say the draft was the primary cause of public opinion turning against Vietnam, given the two and a half years of general support (and much higher casualty rates than Iraq) up until the Tet Offensive. Lyndon Johnson actually thought a draft was a more attractive choice politically than mobilizing the reserves for Vietnam. As for Vietnam-era governing elites, the fact that they many had served in WWII did not prevent our entry into Southeast Asia.
One of the reasons for the draft is to give elites a larger stake in the well-being of those who serve in the armed forces. However, most draft advocates acknowledge that due to either norms or sheer numbers, draftees should choose among military and non-military service. In my limited experience, people generally join the military to improve their lot in life or because they feel a strong cultural norm to serve. The former reason never applied to children of the elite, and the latter no longer seems to either. If we give draftees a choice of service, is the military likely to look any different than it does now? Once again, elites are removed from the equation and the brake on military operations vanishes.
So what's the alternative? Perhaps a better means of getting the public (especially the elite) more involved in the decision to go to war would be to hit its pocketbook in the form of raising taxes (rather than make our children pay for it through deficit spending). Having said that, Iraq War spending is only a fraction of our annual deficit; and borrowing money for war is an American tradition far older than the draft. Nonetheless, I am not sure that nostalgia for the past makes a positive contribution to the debate about the future of democracy and US military operations.
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Instead of making service compulsive for all citizens, we should go the other way around. This way, we hit the double whammy of getting more soldiers who *volunteer* to serve! Moreover, if only veterans can serve, then at least the decisionmakers knows what they're sending our kids into when they vote for war!
If someone is willing to die for America, then he deserves to be a citizen of America.
Tocquville said that America is unique because it is based on an idea, not on geography or kinship. We should complete the revolution by making the citizenship based on an idea instead of geography as well!
There is a danger for militarism, but the basic theory seems sound.
Sounds much like the french legion...
The problem here is the assumption that that vigorous debate didn't happen simply because the people who should have been engaging it it didn't have a big enough stake. I think that's wrong. The reason the vigorous debate never happened is because of September 11th, pure an simple. Nobody was interested in talking, then. Instead it was time for action. This attitude was correct after December 7th, 1941. Unfortunately it wasn't the right attitude after September 11th, 2001.
I'm certain that the Bush Administration wanted to invade Iraq before September 11th. But I think the chances of them actually pulling it off without the attacks on September 11th would really have been quite slim.
The American approach is rapid political feedback through the ballot box, and it is this system that has broken down. With the gerrymandered seats and the concentration of media in the hands of big business, there was no public blowback. The founding fathers would have been appalled.
Some form of public service may be a reasonable development choice but will not solve the problem that is facing us now.
I thought that through most of American history there was a disconnect between the military and civilian society- the period from WWII through Vietnam being exceptional.
And wasn't Napoleon's rise to power due to the replacement of a professional army by the levee-en-masse?
The political leaders of the day were unable to articulate a clear purpose for the war that provided a satisfactory answer to that question. The answers which were acceptable when we had 100,000 troops and very few casualties were no longer sufficient when 400,000 young men were at risk and losing their lives.
While the mythology of the antagonists over Vietnam focuses on the role of protesters, the reality is they were only the manifestation of the country turning away from the war. They were the agents of the change in popular will rather than the people who caused it.
I don't know whether the articulated purposes for the war in Iraq would have much weight if people knew their own sons and daughters might be forced to fight and die. I think we can see that in the active opposition that is developing around recruitment. We would all prefer that Iraq be a pluralistic democracy in the abstract, but perhaps not at the price of the life of someone you know and care about. Especially when that goal does not appear achievable.
What the Fido and I reasoned was that by using the excuse of the "increasingly complex" nature of war and the need for a "highly trained" Army the folks who wanted to USE the Army - the civilian leadership and most specifically the service chiefs and the Joint Staff - had removed the most fundamental of democratic checks to the military, the participation of the citizenry, and replaced them with "Marius' Mules". That this would provide a new window for military adventurism - it's a lot easier to fight Fuzzy-Wuzzies with Ortheris and Learoyd than with Joe Public. The Legion can do things that the "troupes metropolitains" just can't do, politically...and that, just as the Romans had, we Americans might find that somewhere in our future was our Caesar, and we could wake up to find that were were no longer citizens of the Republic but subjects of empire.
The is not to say that we haven't produced a superbly trained Army - we have. But to concentrate the instruments of military power in the hands of a professional military class, regardless of the need, is to give that class the ultimate authority over civilians.
So let's be realistic about the choice we've made: in order to provide the country with an Army that is unsurpassed in defending the country, we have produced an Army politically isolated and socially distinct from that country that it defends. This IS a potential danger to the country, and we would be well informed to be cognisant of that fact.
You can either have a house pet that barks indifferently well or a savage guard dog that views anything weaker than itself as prey. The war dog is by far the better at protecting the house but is an ever-present risk to maul the children.
That trend, as complex as it was with deeper roots than at first appears, has continued to change and move down another path over the last couple of decades. The new phase of globalization, I argue, has accelerated this change by, among other things, inserting society into the middle of the civil-military relationship. This has and is leading to a disengaged 'warrior class', if you will not to bring parallels to samurai or anything, as the concept of a nation is diluted through diasporas, economic and liberal beliefs, etc.
But that's just my quick two cents...
Sounds quite like what Robert Heinlein proposed in his book about Civilians and Citizens.
I also agree with Ross Williams: despite the mythology, the anti-war movement didn't cause the American people to turn away from Vietnam. It reflected their growing anti-war sentiments.
It's not surprising that military leaders from sergeant to general—focused as they are on mission accomplishment—weigh in overwhelmingly on the side of keeping things the way they are. I'd be very surprised if they were to do otherwise; however, their concerns need to be kept in context. Fact is, the issue is far greater than military efficiency. I also find a lot of merit in the libertarian argument that no one should be forced to serve against their will. There are a lot of issues surrounding a compulsory draft, especially when the general war, fate-of-the-nation scenario is not present. Further, how would one make a draft equitable in a nation of 275 million people? There is no way the military could use all of these young people and I don't want to pay for the rest going out to work on social workers' pet rocks.
So I have no solutions. I don't like the growing divide between the military and the rest of the populace. You can see this with the hoo-rah right-wing attitudes present in too many military personnel. I don't like seeing that in a nation that's pretty evenly divided on current issues, the military comes in something like 85% support of one side. Cross-section, reflection of America? America's Army? I also don't like the fact that the privileged in our society are seemingly off the hook for "bearing any burden or paying any price." If nothing else, taxes should indeed be raised. A lot. It really irks me that these guys think nothing of passing humongous debts onto the next generation. You want to do these things, Mr. President? Pay for them.
Finally, one thing that doesn't get much treatment these days is the fact that military service often results in better citizens. Read the memoirs of many successful people: two or three years in the military in their youth fostered life-long love of country and fellow Americans. It's for that reason that old dogs such as me have traditionally been a significant "shadow" factor in military recruiting efforts. What a shame that this is all too often not the case anymore.
OK this is correct. It's odd though how the true scabs that are forever now in the wallets of the conventional US military servicemembers get to continue the non-stop raiding of our only-too-willing taxpayers' piggy-banks. Don't you think it suuuuuuucks that the employees of Erinys get big $$$$$ money while the conventional US military servicemembers get paid very little ?????? The employees of Halliburton, Titan , Bechtel , Dyn Corp , K. B. R. , they get
huge amounts of money and the members of the conventional US military servicemembers get paid very little indeed. Now, the international community of nations are possibly seeing how the Americans spend big amounts of money for this Iraq War and those same nations are quite willing to watch as we do !!!!!!!!!!!! No one with any power is seeking to get American leaders off their complacent asses and get them asking , pleading ,and begging the other countries of the world to pitch in their own citizens' piggy-banks to this Iraq War. Funny that. ------------ Timothy
While the Mercs get 100k salaries, as opposed to the soldiers' 20-30k, which seems eminently inequitable, you have to keep in mind the disparities in support the Mercs get as opposed to the soldiers.
A soldier has instant fire support (artillery and air power) at his beck and call, and if he is wounded, he is on a flight to Ramstein within hours. He does not have to pay too much for his own life insurance. He does not have to pay for his weapons and ammo and body armor. He eats for "free". The military provides him with "free" training.
A merc has none of that. _Soldier_of_Fortune_ recently advised job seekers to look for medic (EMT) support from their employers. If a company does not employee competent medics, they are advised to stay far, far away from that company. Too many operators have bled to death because of incompetent medics and the sub-quality Iraqi hospitals. A PMC does not have to help its operators to maintain their skills. It hired them to use their skills, not to train them. Some of them might charge their operators for their ammo expended. And PMCs definitely do not have artillery support. The Blackwater Little Birds are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Sheerakahn, et al:
Yes, I am calling on the Starship Troopers Political Theory, for the lack of a better name for it. If the military estrangement from the society is a problem, an easy solution would be to make the military *the* society by giving voting rights only to veterans.
Although America has been one of the greatest political experiments, it has yet to shake one of the most outdated institutions: citizenship by inheritance and geography. An American can be a citizen simply because one of his parents is a citizen. Of course he is not going to value his political duties/rights very much. He didn't have to fight for it. It is simple psychology: He is only going to value that he has fought hard for. I am not going to elaborate on the various virtues of a service-for-citizenship political system, since Starship Troopers the book and various essays have explored them all elsewhere.
By making service the universal requirement for citizenship in the US, we give a reason to the rest of the US to serve their country: To have a say in their government. We may fudge around with the service itself, but that does not change the benefits this service requirement would bring to this country.
To those who insist that a draftee army is not militarily effective: I agree that certain MOSs might require long term contracts (4-6 yrs) such as supply, pilots, maintenance. However, the individual replacement personnel system this US Army had destroyed just about any advantages the US Army achieved from its contract volunteers. A line battalion can lose up to 50% of its soldiers every year as soldiers report in and ship out. Can you imagine any company surviving with 50% annual turnover? And I don't think you can compare the military effectiveness of the US Army against the culinary effectiveness of McDonald's.
Thankfully, the Army is moving toward Unit Manning. In fact, Unit Manning is conducive to a military draft. The unit cycle is 3 years. If we make the draft term 3 years plus boot camp, that gives our future citizens time to complete a cycle with his brigade. Since we expect most first term contract volunteer soldiers to leave at the end of their terms anyway, a draftee army with a unit manning system would be just as effective as a volunteer army.
And remember, under a service-for-citizenship system, the draftee army is, in fact, composed of volunteers!
I'll second the point made by Ret Army Guy. Trying to force an exceedingly large number of trainees through the military would appear to be self defeating.
There you have it. The philosophical underpinnings for the new Caesar. Who decides what is appropriate service to one's country? Those who have the ability to enforce their ideas of service of course. And there is a neat end to the grand experiment in the notion of egalitarian democracy and inalienable human rights. You earn your rights by service. And if the people who aren't serving and haven't served don't agree, they have no right to participate in decisions anyway. There is simply no need to respect or consider their opinions.
"All political power comes from the barrel of a gun."
I suppose the only tangible response I can add is the effect of BRAC upon the American populace. BRAC, in its' many forms, has concentrated American military power in the South and West, and the current round of BRAC does nothing except accentuate this trend.
The Army has a single base in Northeast - Ft. Drum - after this round of BRAC. Ft. Monmouth is scheduled to close. You still have a few Reserve and National Guard bases - Ft. Dix and Ft. Indiantown Gap come to mind in the Northeast, but the active Army has literally no presence north of the Mason-Dixon line. Is there a correlation between the lack of recruits from the Northeast and the virtual absence of the Army in the same geographical area? It sure seems like it.
The concentration of the Army in the south (I'll concentrate on the Army because this is what I am most familiar with) has led to the following. After BRAC, the Army will have more Heavy Units of Action in Texas than the rest of the Continental United States combined (minus the National Guard UA's). Granted, there is a lot of maneuver space in Texas at Hood and Bliss, but to have the better part of three divisions concentrated in one state seems somewhat self defeating to me.
The trend since the late 80's has been to consolidate bases that share common tasks. As such when bases go due to the BRAC others grow due to increased consolidation. As such, cost of real estate comes into play. It's cheaper in the South and West.
And let's not forgot the costs of environmental restrictions. There's more of them in the comparitively over-populated and polluted North East.
Most soldiers/sailors/marines/airmen on a typical base are married and live off post and not in housing. They get a stipend for quarters. That stipend is adjusted for cost of living where they live. It's generally cheaper in the South and West.
I wondered if anyone would understand the analogy, good to see someone did.
Heinlein's thoughts are not new, and in fact, are quite old, so much so that it has reflections in the old Roman Republic, but that is another subject.
The hole in the bottom of the "starship trooper" model of civilian vs citizen is that it establishes a caste system of the haves vs the have nots.
Though attractive, this is model is repeatable throughout history from Europe, through the Middle East, right into Asia and the same end result always sprung up: An inequitable caste system which politically and socially enfranchised one group while disenfranchising the rest.
And given the penchant of have's to really give it to the have-nots in spades, regardless of the attractively verbose documents that speak lovingly long sentences about the value of all citizens, the reality is quite different.
Overall, it looks great on paper, but in practice it would set up a segrationalist social policy that no good will come out of it. The thing is, I'm surprised the Republicans haven't brought it up with the caveat that their present ruling hierarchy is exempt.
I am all too familar with why the Northeast is on the hit list within the BRAC process. I understand that most military personnel live off post after they reach a certain rank.
But I also am alarmed at the lack of representation of the US military in the most populous area of the country. With all the money the Pentagon spends on a myriad of different programs, I think some economic inefficiancy would be well worth exposing the general populace of the Northeast to the military living in their backyards.
Now, not having a military presence in the area is not the only reason why their are recruiting shortfalls in the Northeast. There are plenty of good jobs available in the DC-Boston Megalopolis. The political climate is decidedly liberal in this area as well. Both are major factors to take into consideration as it relates to military recruiting.
I think that eliminating more bases from the Northeast is another negative factor when trying to recruit people from this area. And I don't think that is healthy for the Republic as a whole.
Eliminating them hits the community in that it takes out its connection to the military, and it hits the military because people that want to serve have to travel farther to do so on their weekends ultimately effecting recuiting and retention.
Still, it seems to me that opponets of the war kvetching that recruiting is down in earas that they're most influential in if like pleading for mercy on account of being an orphan while on trial for murdering your parents. The military doesn't want to go back to the dicipline problems they had back when they used draftees. In combat they've found that volunteers are 3 times more likely to stand &fight than draftees. You want more people up north to enlist? Then help recruit. The only folks I've seen calling for a re-enstatement of the draft have been the folks who've been opposing out efforts at every turn. You'll forgive me for doubting their motivations.