The Kinder, Gentler Military
By Mitch Berg
See if you can see what’s missing from this Op-Ed by Barbara C. Crosby this Monday in the Strib:
A friend of mine, whose son was just notified that his National Guard unit will have its tour in Iraq extended, asks, Why aren’t there massive protests against this misguided war? She remembers the Vietnam era and the sustained protest movement of the time.
Of course, only a tiny portion of the American people ever protested against the Vietnam war.
But I digress. While “a genuine memory of what happened in this nation during Vietnam” is indeed missing, that’s not what I’m shooting for.
Easy answer: No draft. Indeed, the antiwar movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s was dramatically subdued by President Richard Nixon’s replacement of the existing draft with an annual lottery that, in effect, cut in half the number of young men who were vulnerable to conscription. Later, the nation adopted an all-volunteer policy for the armed services.
It’s an “easy answer” – and wrong, as far as it goes. It’s true, we don’t have a draft – but then, a minority of those who served in Vietnam were draftees, and the majority of the protesters were on deferments.
Now our nation is at war with terrorism, and the volunteer army is stretched to the limit, even with a questionable reliance on National Guard units. So should our policymakers reinstitute the military draft administered by the euphemistically named Selective Service?
A few members of Congress say yes, and perhaps they are right. A truly universal draft would diminish the current system’s disproportionate burden on low-income and minority communities. And, no doubt, a return to the draft would heighten opposition to the current military strategy in Iraq.
And for the first time, Ms. Crosby skirts perilously close to…not the truth, but a truth.
Conscription – the draft – forces a nation to be very conservative about the wars they fight. If a war doesn’t have very broad, popular support (like World War II, which was largely fought with draftees) or involve the nation’s survival (all Israeli males serve), draftee armies are very blunt instruments that tend to fight poorly (see the Russians in Chechnya) and/or with draconian enforcement from above (the Russians in Afghanistan).
My own proposal is that our nation consider instituting a universal draft of nearly everyone between ages 18 and 65, male and female, except for parents of minor children.
Admittedly, the oldsters in this group (and I’m one) can’t do a lot of heavy lifting (unless we’re talking ideas and such), but we could work on nation-building endeavors, such as microfinance projects or educational programs.
Can we see what’s missing yet?
Of course, the designers of a new draft would have to be creative in order to minimize central bureaucracy. One idea is to rely, as in the past, on local draft boards that would randomly call up eligible individuals until a board’s quota was filled.
Something else is missing here. No, not the big kahuna thing I’m really looking for – but I have to wonder if Ms. Crosby really knows what she’s talking about. She seems to be mixing up “the draft” – a lottery that picks and chooses what it needs – with “universal service”, like in Israel or Switzerland, where everyone between ages 20 and 50 (and sometimes older) serves in the reserves, civil defense or some other area.
They are very different ideas; the “draft”, as it was practiced in the US from the forties to 1973, was inherently vastly more unfair than the “disproportionate burden on low-income and minority communities” Ms. Crosby kvetches about; upper-middle-class kids, from families with money or influence or savvy, routinely got deferred or found less-dangerous ways to while away their eligible years.
Universal service – where everyone who’s medically able serves 1-3 years in the regular military and then a number of years in the reserves, like in Israel and Switzerland (and in some ways Norway), whether your parents are plumbers or Senators. The CEO’s son drives the tank commanded by the farmer’s kid; the mayor’s son loads bombs onto a plane flown by a bus driver’s son.
They couldn’t be more different, with one exception; they both impel a nation to be much more conservative about using the military. Most heavily-draftee or universal service militaries are only notionally able to serve outside their own nation’s borders (nations like Israel and Germany can only send their special forces and all-volunteer elites like paratroops and fighter pilots overseas, usually only for very brief periods or with immense support from the US).
Talking seriously about a universal draft might cause us to question our current reliance on the youngest adults to bear so much of the war burden… Maybe we should send tough grandmas to war at an equal rate.
And this is just stupid. Fighting – and having a reasonable chance of surviving against an enemy that really does want to kill you (something few Democrats recognize in the current world situation) takes springy knees and sharp eyes and keen ears, not to mention the ability to be taught to do something utterly unnatural to you. Ask any drill sergeant who is easier to turn into a soldier, an 18 year old or a 25 year old…
I hope the nation also would consider an ongoing requirement that every 18-year-old put in two years of public service either in the military or in a community development program. Such a move could vastly expand VISTA and the Peace Corps, which in turn might do much to improve conditions that spawn hopelessness (and prime the terrorist recruitment pipeline) in the poorest parts of the world today.
Would volunteers “improve” jihadist hatred of everything the West stands for – indeed, be proof of it? – or would they be merely hostages on the hoof?
In such a scenario, special incentives may be necessary to ensure that enough young people sign up for military duty.
Here’s one: make serving the nation an honorable profession, or at least a time in one’s life where one is part of an elite brotherhood set apart from the rest of society by a code that outsiders just don’t understand.
Sort of like what we have today, in a military that actually does the job.
Another approach would be to require all young citizens to go through both military training and nonviolent conflict resolution and serve two years as members of the military or peace brigades.
I’m not sure what the best approach is.
Obviously.
Ms. Crosby seems to think that military is like high school – a captive audience that needs to be exposed to a bunch of abstruse concepts for their own good, as judged by society.
It’s not. It’s an arm of the government that tries to kill, maim or drag to the bargaining table by force those who would do us harm. It’s a specialized trade, with skills and standards that occupy mens’ lives for decades in the learning. The professionals that make up the backbone of our military, the greatest on earth, devote their lives to learning the craft and art of war every bit as much as any other professional – and their lives depend on it more than most.
And that is what’s missing from Ms. Crosby’s piece; any sense of what a military is for, and why it exists. Is it a social program? A vehicle to engineer society?
Because Ms. Crosby certainly shows no understanding on any other level:
This policy shift makes sense if we are truly serious about fighting a War on Terror and improving global and domestic conditions.
Actually, as noted by people who differ from Ms. Crosby in knowing what they’re talking about, draftee armies are the worst instrument for fighting that kind of war.
January 24th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
The Israeli military is probably the most well trained on earth, so it’s conscript nature is not an impediment.
No, because each conscript spends three years in the service before joining the reserves, and they have the motivation of being surrounded by 100 million people who want to kill them.
But did you notice last year, when they had to go to war against Hamas after 20-odd years of relative peace, how the Israeli Army had a real hard time fighting? The Israelis level of motivation has changed a lot since the imminent threats to their survival passed.
Since you are PB under yet another name, feel free to ask people you might know in the service about how the conscript German Army has fared since their motivation – a Russian army across the border – evaporated. Once the best army on the Continent, they are considered (by people I know in the US military) to be largely a joke today.
The British Army is probably the most skilled at the NCO and down level, because they place such importance on advancement through the ranks. Our own military, which you said in the past is the type of “professional” army necessary to manage a respectful relationship with indiginous personal, in fact didn’t do so in nearly all of Iraq.
Mistakes were indeed made. And questions need to be answered about how well the US military learns. But isn’t it reasonable to believe that any mistakes our military made in Iraq would have been multiplied if we had draftees in country?
As well, training, in and of itself is primarily a replacement for experience, so the reality is that large, conscript armies, with a great deal of experience, have shown time and again that they are just as capable in combat, as less experienced, but well-trained armies.
Yes – frequently at a cost that this nation would be unwilling to accept today.
January 24th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
National Guard and Reserve troops may be mobilized for the duration of a conflict plus six months. If the Administration were willing to fight the war in Iraq, as though it were a war, there wouldn’t be a shortage of troops.
Secondly, I, for one, have no desire to serve alongside a conscript.
Thirdly, war is politics by other means. If von Clauswitz has taught us nothing else (and hopefully he has also taught us that no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy), it is that war is but politics by other means. The claim that a “political solution” is needed, as opposed to a military solution, is a red herring designed to avoid the difficult problems that need to be faced. A “political solution” cannot be implemented in an insecure environment, which hinders the creation of a civil society and free association necessary for the creation of a democratic society.
January 24th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
“Barbara Crosby is an associate professor specializing in leadership and public policy at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.”
Barb sounds like the prof I had in college who couldn’t answer a student’s question about Eisenhower’s role in WW2. She said she didn’t find military history very interesting. The class was “America’a World Role since 1900”.
Indeed, the antiwar movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s was dramatically subdued by President Richard Nixon’s replacement of the existing draft with an annual lottery that, in effect, cut in half the number of young men who were vulnerable to conscription.
The first lottery was held in 1969. Draft boards were given quotas of draft-age men to select, and prior to the lottery they selected by age, oldest first. This meant that before 1969 (all things being equal), your chances of being drafted increased every year until you passed age 26. Student deferments (“II-S”) were only good ’til age 24. The high water mark for US troops in Vietnam came in 1968, after that there was an accellerating draw down of American forces in SE Asia.
I wonder if Crosby considers herself a member of the reality based community?
January 25th, 2007 at 9:09 am
“the majority of the protesters were on deferments”
Including the women? Photos in the history books show an awful lot of women, I might even say half the crowd, in the pictures of war protests (although sometimes it was hard to tell back then, I hear).
January 25th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Damn. It’s the old “I found an obvious exception to something you said, so your whole point is invalid!” ploy again.
Drat!
So do you know what the Israeli and Swiss systems of conscription are about, Rick?
January 25th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
So, Rick, if they were involved with someone with a deferment does that make also give them a strong interest in the system?
But, as Mitch points out, the discussion is somewhat off the main topic.
Still, it is interesting that it is consistently the liberals who want to induct people into the service to the government. Perhaps it’s that mindless subjugation thing they want to get going, or perhaps its more related the same reasons that liberals want to have the government do charitable work since they give less than conservatives.