The Volunteer Military: Abstract Idealization?

Great Debates
1

First of all, we need to hop in the Way Back Machine for a little spin to a few weeks ago. We were discussing, I believe, supporting our troops or some such. In any event, the thought struck me of a alternate military structure.

Basically, you have the Defense Force - consisting of all the necessary elements for national defense and emergency response (from NORAD to the National Guard). This serves much like the modern military does - pay for college, in-military training, all that good stuff. The difference is that this force would never be used outside the borders (OK, so maybe write in some provisions that would allow them to aid Canada and such in a national disaster or invasion by… um… someone). Everything else stays the same.

On the flip side, you have the Offense Force. This is basically a barebones skeleton of an army - enough to maintain the equipment and stay prepared. When a case comes where the military would be used in another country, a branch of Offense Force swings into action and mobilizes pre-registered people (much like the Reserves) and accepting volunteers, and only volunteers, for action. The benefits for those who join are the same as Defense, only more - more college funding, more vet benefits, etc.

Bad things: This slows response time a great, great deal. This is actually my biggest concern - in an event like 9/11, we wouldn’t have been able to mobilize and attack Afghanistan within the timeframe we did (and even that was too slow). Resolution: beef up the “skeleton” so that it has some meat - so it can maintain a deployment until it gets reinforced. Please point out other “bad things” - as I pointed out in the topic, I am introducing this as an abstract idealization, not as a realistic alternative. I want to know what works and what doesn’t with it.

Could go either way things: This keeps a tight rope on how and when our military is used. The “military option” would not be constantly there, so international politics would have to play softer. This has the duality of making negotiations easier and harder at the same time.

Good things: Getting rid of the military as much as possible. Making force less of an eventuality. As per the “Invincible Soldier” idea I introduced previously (to brief it, when you are hard to take down, the more people want to take you down, the more dedicated they are do doing so, and the more vicious they will be when they do), this would work to make our international image gentler and softer, ideally reducing the level of standing conflict and making relations easier (if they know you can’t fly over and kill them in the blink of an eye, they will be nicer). Of course, this premise is based entirely on the fact that our “enemies” in the “war on terror” are reasonable people who are acting on rational concerns, which is a position that many of you will not accept. However, my proposition is aimed at the hearts of the general population. It is an easier way, albeit slower, of encouraging change of government and peaceful regional relations.

2

I was carrying part of my bed out the door when something else obvious hit me for the “good” column (er, row. Or whatever).

It saves a boatload - well, several hundred boatloads - of money.

Think of it like this: When is the last time France exerted or had to exert military force? It can live with a relatively small military; there are no threats that anyone is going to invade France any time soon, and it isn’t projecting power. A system like this would be beneficial compared to running a full time military.

3

First off, to be intellectually honest, replace ‘fact’ with ‘opinion’ or ‘my premise’. It’s a subjective view, much like the very opposite.

Second, “it is better to be feared than to be loved,” as Macchiavelli said, and we’re not exactly going to be loved by weakening ourselves. And any sane adversary is going to think twice before attacking us because of our massive retaliatory capability.

Third, and most surprisingly, I agree with your notion that our forces should be cut down by a large amount, maybe seven or eight divisions’ worth. This should come gradually and almost entirely in the Army branch, based on a few principles:

  1. Tougher recruiting standards. More rigorous physical and possibly mental requirements would cull out a lot of recruits over time.

  2. New officers should only come from the ranks of the enlisted men.

  3. To create a disincentive for extensive wars, the gradual removal of troops should touch conventional ground troops, especially infantry. With current levels of technology, the main purpose of generic/mechanized infantry is that of an occupying force; having less such troops to hold land means the impossibility of an occupation like the current one in Iraq.

  4. Few or no cuts should take place in the other branches. The Navy and Air Force are the fabled Big Stick; all that should be left is a lot of practice in treading softly. We certainly benefit from having major offensive capability as a deterrent - no one in their right mind messes with a just and heavily armed cop.

4

Well, the military current IS all volunteer. So, its kind of a moot point…they ALL signed up to do whatever the military sends them to go, and do what they ask them to do, either here or abroad. Same goes for those National Guardsmen.

This is of course the worst aspect. And its the same reason conscription isn’t really an option anymore. The modern military (especially the US military) is highly technical, and the training is pretty long. Its no longer just showing people how to march in formation, which end of the gun to point at the enemy, and then send little Johnny out to go forth and kill the Hun. So, it would take at least a year (probably more) to train up your force for offensive operations. Thats a pretty big lead time.

Making a smaller military is actually what the military is currently about. They have been downsizing personnel for a while. The idea is to get more bang for the buck I suppose you could say. Get more out of each formation, each division, each carrier group, while reducing overall personnel requirements. A smaller more efficient force. However, that requires a LOT of very intensive training, and it requires the personnel to stick around for longer periods of time. Personally, instead of your plan, what I think would be a better one would be to give bonus’s to military personnel if they would agree for longer times in service. And up the re-enlistment bonus’s, as well as other pay, while continueing to cut personnel. Go with a much smaller, but much more dedicated and highly trained military. Rely more heavily on SF formations like the Seals, Rangers, SF, etc. Bring more automation to the Navy to cut crew sizes, especially on the capital ships. Stuff like that.

-XT

5

“Good things: Getting rid of the military as much as possible. Making force less of an eventuality. As per the “Invincible Soldier” idea I introduced previously (to brief it, when you are hard to take down, the more people want to take you down, the more dedicated they are do doing so, and the more vicious they will be when they do), this would work to make our international image gentler and softer, ideally reducing the level of standing conflict and making relations easier (if they know you can’t fly over and kill them in the blink of an eye, they will be nicer). Of course, this premise is based entirely on the fact that our “enemies” in the “war on terror” are reasonable people who are acting on rational concerns, which is a position that many of you will not accept.”
This is largely subjective. You have offered no real evidence that a small military is desireable for it’s own sake. You make a number of assumptions that have little to back them up ie “being strong makes you a greater target” and “conflicts would be reduced if we had a reduced military”. Baiscally, it seems like your entire premise is based on a philosophy that because war and violence is bad, a smaller military is more desireable.

In order to determine how large our military should be, you need to consider the nature of the threats against the US. What role we want to have in resolving international conflicts. And, of course, practical matters like how much we want to spend on it.

Our military is largely a result of “arsenal of Democracy” philosophy that was born out of WWI, WWII, and the Cold War. The basic idea is that we should be able to prevent any future Hitler or Stalin from ever being in a position to start another World War. This has worked pretty well so far.

The downside is of course some people don’t want a cop preventing them from killing each other.

I don’t know what the idea force size is. What I do kniow from what’s goign on in Iraq is that sometimes you need a big army. Special operations forces and air power can’t occupy a country. You need guys on the ground with M-16s and lots of them. Part of the problem of Vietnam was not treating it like a conventional war. Troops fly into a village, search for VC and then fly out again. Not surprisingly, the enemy dispurses when they hear the hueys and then reappears once they are gone. That’s the problem with a “lean and mean” force structure. All weapons system, regardless of how advanced, is limited by the fact that it can only be in one place at any given time.

6

Not strictly true.

France has a standing army of ~280,000, not counting their large airforce and navy. (2nd largest navy in the world, if I recall correctly.) Their population of ~60 million, and their defense spending is 2.6% if GDP.

America has a population of 290 million, with a army of (including active reserves) of around 700,000. (Rough guestimation). Our defense spending is a bit higher, at 3.5% of GDP.

A lower proportion of our population is in the army, though our spending is 1% of GDP higher. Eh.

France does have quite an active intervention force that you may have heard of: The Foreign Legion. Following the conclusion of hostilities in Croatia, my cousin joined up. He has since been to The Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Djibouti, etc. He loves it, but he’s sorta weird. Still, they intervene like mofos, just in places most of us have never heard of. France also has the Force d’ Action Rapide, composed of 3-4 divisions, but the Legion sees more deployments, from my understanding.

They also have a large navy, featuring a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (that sometimes works!). They will be buying more carriers in a joint venture with the UK. It’s all about the power projection.

Maybe you are thinking more in line with a Swiss or Israeli army? Keep most of the forces as reserves, with a core of units that are manned all the time. It may sound like a good idea, but those countries do not have global responsibilities. If you are going to keep large groups of forces in Europe, Asia, ME, etc, you need a large standing army, no two ways about it. Recruits take too long to train these days to expect them to go to war before 6-12 months of training, and too many reservists=too much disruption to the economy, (of the reservists, at least.)

It will warm your heart to know that we are reviewing our overseas deployments. In the future, most large overseas bases will be replaced with huge warehouse of ‘stuff’. In times of need, soldiers would be flown to the warehouses, who can then get their stuff more quickly than if they had to bring it with them from America, and more cheaply than if the US kept those forces overseas for prolonged periods of time.

My personal vote for cutting back the military is to scale back our nuclear forces. If we didn’t use them on 9/11, we never will. Save enough to hit all of the major cities of Europe and Asia, and scrap the rest. A dozen Ohio-class SSBN’s should do it. (Each has about 120 warheads, depending on configuration used.).

7

I think your “rough guestimation” is way off.

8

The authorized strength of the Army is 499,000, with about 650,000 Reserve and Guard troops that can be called up. Of which, we have called up about 150,000, giving us a total of about 650,000 active duty troops. I erred on the side of caution, and bumped that up to 700,000.

9

My apologies. I was skimming and thought you meant the entire military. Mea culpa.

10

According to LINK (my bolding):

11

Yep. I am sticking with army comparisons, since I could only find reliable (and in English) figures for the French army, so I excluded the other branches of their armed forces. I also don’t have numbers for the French airforce (other than numbers of aircraft, which isn’t very usefull.) It bears mentioning that the French still use conscription, though that should be phased out by 2008. That plan has hit some snags where it pertains to technical types.

On page 10 of this .PDF, you can get a more detailed breakdown of force levels. About 2.3 million, counting all active and inactive reserves.

12

I get the impression that if you volunteered for the “Defense Force” you would not be sent on “Offense Force” type operations. I’m not sure what the point of that distinction is… I can never recall meeting anyone that really wanted to join the military (for all the benefits mentioned) but decided not to because of the whole being sent off to kill or be killed angle. I don’t think having this distinction would affect voluntary enlistment rates, and I think most people who want to be in the military have a “Serve your country” mindset anyway, and are willing to do what’s asked of them… so you’d get a lot of people volunteering for the “Offensive Force” anyway.

NOW, to make the Defensive Force compulsory, and the Offensive Force voluntary…

13

I think if the media would show real up close and personal photo’s and video’s of the war and what can happen, a lot of people might have second thoughts about what war is really like and about joining up. We’ve seen a few “torture” photo’s recently, and while these have upset many, they don’t show what real torture is (and it is unlikely that we could ever get pictures of real torture anyways).

But there also haven’t and generally aren’t many photo’s of people getting pieces of their bodies blown away, bleeding to death, etc. At least in this country, the media generally moves the camera away from anything like this. Also, there have not been many shows on the thousands of soldiers who are laid up in military hospitals trying to recover from their injuries (I do remember Hardball doing one). I think we need to stop making war look like a pretty video game.

14

Wasn’t Eisenhower’s strategy to have more or less inadequate/barely adequate conventional forces? THe idea being to avoid adventurism except where absolutely necessary. Of course the idea back then was that anywhere we did commit troops was almost by definition a critical interest and therefore, should our conventional forces be defeated we would be left with only one recourse . . .

That was back before the Soviets had anything like nuclear parity.

The country ends up being forced to more clearly define its critical national interests and pretty much rule out anything but verbal condemnation of humanitarian crises.

15

Yet, oddly, people come back from deployment, get to their End-of-Service and still re-enlist. There is something inherently odd about the motivations of people who join and stay in the military… and it rubs off. You might get some people who reconsidered permanently, but I think most people would reconsider their reconsiderations, and end up joining anyway.

What would really screw enlistment is if recruiters were utterly honest and up-front about the hours and working conditions. You can “never happen to me” about the threat of death and dismemberment… doing mind numbing repetitive work every day, no end in sight? Nope. No getting around it or fooling yourself. You’re definitely going to end up doing that in the military at some point… and a threat of death and dismemberment starts to seem like it might be a pleasant diversion.

16

Obvious important deployments of the french military during the last ten years include the first Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan. Limited and more importantly very late in Rwanda. Currently, besides peace keeping operations, like in Kosovo, french troops are deployed in hot spots in Zaire, Ivory Coast and Afghanistan (limited, in Afghanistan to special forces, AFAIK. Plus trainers for the Afghan army).
I don’t think France is a good example of what you’ve in mind, since it’s precisely one of the very few countries which maintains an army able to project forces (the others being obviously the US and the UK, possibly Russia, but I’m unconvinced).
I can’t think of any country which would looks like what you’re proposing. A lot of countries maintain an army which is essentially intended for defensive purpose, the Swiss army being an obvious example of that, but still there’s no “opt in/ opt out” clause for the soldiers. And it can still be costly. Japan spends an awful lot of money on its army which is suposedly not an army, but still is top notch, for instance.
Your proposal is indeed appealing. But most probably totally impractical. You can’t begin to train the soldiers when you intend to send them somewhere, or you’ll have to wait for some years. So instead, you would need to have a permanent “offensive” army, with its members allowed to “opt out” of a given war, and then reorganize what is left. The only realistic option would actually be to have an army solely geared towards defence, like the german army until the recent years.

17

Such photos aren’t lacking. I sometimes make a point of looking at them just to make sure I’ve at least a blurry grasp of what I’m hearing/talking about (and yes…I really look at them for this purpose, not out of morbid curiosity). The medias just (generally) don’t broadcast the awful stuff. I think it would be a good thing if they did.

18

Probably more than that. Military service in France was 12 months long, and the military didn’t think that these troops were fit for deployment in oversea operations. They would occasionnally take in some volunteers from the conscripted pool for foreign operations, and some conscripts (generally signing for a longer service with some advantages) served in operationnal units (paratroopers, alpine troops, etc…), but this was marginal, on the overall, apart probably in the navy.
The “projectable” forces were essentially all professionnals. The conscription army was intended mainly to fight in Germany when the Warsaw pact’s tanks would roll in there. They were undoubtefully trained and able to operate in almost all functions of a modern army after their 12 months, but not at the same level than professionnal soldiers.

19

Hee-hee-hee!

My sister was a “Coastie” (US Coast Guard). Her recruiter showed her pictures of boats and told her that living in the barracks would be just like living in an apartment. She once told me her reaction was “Boats! I’m going to drive boats? I like boats! Where do I sign?” She also compared her experience in Basic Training to that of Private Benjamin in the movie of the same name.

Honesty in recruitment? A difficult goal. You may have the same success in requiring honesty in car sales. Of course, if you could station retirees near the entrance to tell these kids (and a lot of them are kids) they could give them the low-down on what they are in for. Not that I’m recommending they be talked out of enlisting, but they really ought to have an idea what they are letting themselves in for. At least I had the advantage of having a friend and a neighbor who were both in the Army. They told me about their basic training experiences, and when I joined the AF I was better-equipped to put up with it (and AF basic training isn’t as bad as what they had told me to expect).

–SSgtBaloo

20

The Coast Guard gets in more firefights (with drug runners, etc) than the Navy, from what I’ve heard.