Finding Fresh Meat For The Grinder
If fewer people than ever are willing to serve, what does that mean, then?
By now, readers can probably sense civil-military relations is a topic of great interest to me. Someone who has played a major role in educating me and influencing my thinking on the topic is Charles Dunlap, currently a Duke University academic in law and a retired United States Air Force Deputy Judge Advocate General (JAG). In other words, when he left the service as a Major General, he was the second-highest-ranking military lawyer in the Air Force.
He is most notorious (I say that with great admiration) for an essay he penned in 1992 for the Army War College’s academic journal, Parameters, titled “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012.” From the title alone, you can sense this was a deeply controversial piece and is still a major talking point in civil-military relations debates 30 years after publishing. I won’t say anything more about the essay (though I may talk about it in future posts), as it constitutes a whole different rabbit hole. But if you’d like to go down said hole on your own time, here’s a link to the entire essay.
Today, I’d like to talk about a guest post published on Dunlap’s blog, Lawfire. It’s written by Col. Mike Samarov, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.) and concerns the military’s increasingly critical recruitment crisis, with focus paid specifically on the Army. It’s not a long essay, but there’s a lot in there that requires a bit of unpacking and raises points meriting serious discussion.
Samarov challenges what’s become an instinctual response every time the military reports difficulties in recruitment: bring back the draft. He disagrees and explains succinctly why it’s not a good idea:
Why the Draft Won’t Work: There is no reasonable way back from the AVF. Relying on a conscripted force isn’t the right answer for the U.S. today. The wealthy and powerful will almost certainly find ways out for their children. This will leave the economically and politically disadvantaged primarily liable for service.
Most draftees will not want to be in uniform. This will almost certainly increase the levels of misconduct, malingering, drug and alcohol abuse, and absenteeism to levels that the Department of Defense (DoD) hasn’t seen in decades.
Memories are short, but there’s a reason why conscription was abandoned in 1973, even as the military reserves the right to re-implement it via Selective Service. Not only was it unpopular, the manpower quality was inconsistent. This is what happens when you draw upon the entirety of the population to staff what’s ultimately, on the sharp end, supposed to be a professional force. It’s nice to think most people, the able-bodied, anyway, are capable of fighting and winning wars. The Founders certainly thought that, which is why they preferred a nation of militiamen over a standing army, which they also feared could be used to establish tyrannical governance like they once saw in Britain.
But the reality is, only a select portion of society is up to the task of fighting, winning, and, most important, surviving wars. It doesn’t really matter how many people you send into battle if most of them end up dead. Loss of life is certainly a part of war, but minimizing it and still accomplishing your objectives is the idea. That requires committed professionals in it for the long haul. Not short-term conscripts who, at best, view military service as something they need to get over with so they can get on with life. While conscription seems like a cheap way of obtaining manpower, on the whole and in the long run, it’s a more expensive system, ultimately returning less on investment. At the risk of over-simplifying the dichotomy, you can either spend less per soldier and more on the force overall due to its larger size or spend more per soldier and less on the force overall due to its smaller size.
Then there’s the argument that the draft ought to return for social reasons. This is an argument peddled by high-profile establishment voices like James Fallows and Thomas Ricks, lamenting the “civil-military divide” and the fact such a small percentage of the population shoulders the entire burden of fighting our wars. I always found this argument spurious and never found the “civil-military divide” bit convincing. For one, there’s always going to be something of a divide between those who exercise violence on behalf of society and society itself. People whose job it is to kill are never going to view the world in exactly the same way as those who are intended to be isolated from violence.
More important, critics of the existing arrangement never seem to be able to explain why such a divide is a bad thing. Obviously, if a military diverges too far from society, it could view itself as superior to those whom it protects (which is Ricks’ argument), but nobody seems able or willing to explain where this would lead, perhaps because the implications are too frightening, i.e, coup d'état, military dictatorship, etc. I’ve never heard anyone on any side of the argument say we should worry about a military coup occurring in this country and I agree this isn’t a likely scenario now nor for the foreseeable future. This isn’t to say a divergence is a good thing, but it’s to say a divergence alone in no way indicates civil-military relations are unhealthy or the republic is in mortal danger as a consequence.
The strangest aspect of the argument used by those who support the return of the draft is their nearly exclusive focus on World War II and what a unifying experience it was for the nation. In reality, conscription has always been unpopular throughout American history and it wasn’t always easy getting people to serve. After all, you are forcing people to fight and potentially die in a war! War is socially destabilizing to start and, during Vietnam, the draft played a role in tearing the country apart. That was at a time when most Americans were proud of their country; at time like now, when the social fabric has almost completely unraveled, why does anyone believe conscription would be a good thing for the country?
More:
A drafted force’s commitment to training and tactical performance will also almost certainly be less than a similarly constituted volunteer force. The U.S. operational focus is primarily and correctly overseas. Forward deploying draftees — especially in high-risk specialties to high-risk areas — will be massively controversial.
I kind of, sort of, disagree with the idea that our military’s focus ought to be primarily overseas. If it isn’t apparent now, by next decade, using the military on American soil or focusing on places much closer to home won’t be so unthinkable.
But I digress - Samarov is correct in saying a military which deploys and fights overseas requires higher levels of professionalism and specialization. A draft aims to put as many men as possibly under arms, not necessarily to put our best and brightest under arms. The only real reason to build a massive armed force is to either defend the homeland from foreign invasion or to conquer the world. The U.S. isn’t at risk of the former and, even if it were, the state of the nation is such that I don’t think we’d even put up much of a fight. As far as the latter, despite American foreign policy being described as “imperialistic,” if we’re trying to conquer the world by force, we haven’t done a very good job of it, nor have we really put forth a serious effort.
First, the Secretary of Defense, Service Secretaries, and Service Chiefs must go to Congress and the President and ask for help. Ultimately, the American People through their elected representatives must own this problem.
The President and the leadership of both parties in Congress should agree to talking points about the benefits of volunteering for military service. Congress should pass and the President should sign funding for advertising to counter the myths that make military service unattractive.
Again, read Samarov’s post, but missing from the entire debate is the question of why we need such a large military in the first place. It calls into question the mission of the military and whether we’re even using the force appropriately. Unfortunately, questioning U.S. foreign policy has become remarkably absent from policy-making circles, as if our globalized, interventionist stance were sacrosanct and off-limits for criticism.
But if this recruiting shortfall continues for longer than a fiscal year, the question would need to be asked: do we keep trying to police the world, or should we wake up and adjust to reality’s dictates? It’s easy to be cynical and think our political leadership would ultimately put on the blinders and continue trying to ignore the problem, but life does have a way of delivering reality checks.
If, for example, China attempted to take Taiwan, the military would likely use the event to underscore the urgent need for additional recruits. But what if the public didn’t respond? What if they maintained that Taiwan’s fight for freedom was ultimately their fight to win and not that of America’s sons and daughters? There are serious implications with respect to the U.S. failing to come to Taiwan’s aid, but my point is that, from a recruiting perspective, the military would lose legitimacy as an institution if people don’t sign up. In losing legitimacy, it would force us to question whether the military needs to be as big as it is, doing as much as it does, if ultimately it doesn’t have the people to do the job. Again, life finds a way to deliver reality checks.
Third, the Army must make recruiting its top manpower priority. This will involve re-prioritizing its highest quality personnel from assignments that they want to recruiting duty.
Success on recruiting duty should become a necessary gateway to resident Professional Military Education (PME), desirable duty stations, the best units, and command or command sergeant major selection.
Later, he says:
Fifth, the Army should place as many top-quality Soldiers as necessary on the street until the present crisis is over. We should treat this situation just like the Iraq surge… except that ending the current crisis will probably take more time — perhaps 3-5 years. This will create challenges for the Army’s operating forces. Unfortunately, this is unavoidable. [emphasis mine]
This is where Samarov’s post starts to go beyond my ability to speak credibly on the matter. But from a civilian’s perspective, the idea that personnel of the highest quality ought to perform recruiting duties sounds counter-intuitive. Not because recruiting isn’t an important task - it most certainly is - nor is recruiting a job so easy, a caveman could do it - it’s not - but because the military is, first and foremost, a warfighting organization. The idea the best and brightest in uniform ought to be diverted towards replenishing the ranks suggests winning wars isn’t the top priority or that there aren’t any wars to win. Again, it calls into question the legitimacy of the institution and whether the military should even be so big in the first place.
The U.S. will most certainly fight another war someday and large numbers of people will have to wear uniforms again. Institutions always have one eye towards the future, but when the public doesn’t see the need to take up arms and wear uniforms, you can’t sell them military service. The U.S. has always done its best recruiting when the need for troops was obvious - think the day after Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Otherwise, military service is something people tend to avoid, which is precisely why it has to be sold to them in the first place.
Personally, I think the military’s recruiting woes are, in part, self-inflicted. The politicization of the force is highly concerning and I think this is driving away the demographic most likely to consider military service in the first place. As Rod Dreher has explained on more than one occasion:
People have to work, but they don't have to work in the military. Why join up when your senior commanders think you are a bad seed for being white, male, Christian, and/or conservative, and they might send you overseas to fight in the forever wars to extend the American empire, and to make the Donbass safe for Raytheon and RuPaul's Drag Race, chicks with dicks and CRT? At some point, you've got to realize that it's a scam, that you are being asked to risk your life to fight for an imperial order that thinks your law-abiding, church-going, palefaced right-wing self is the problem with America.
While certainly true, I think the recruiting shortfall is also a sign of where we are as a country. Military service isn’t the only expression of love and devotion to the country, but it’s certainly one of the greatest. When people sign up, they’re expressing a willingness to leave everything they know and love behind at the risk of dying on a battlefield far from home so that home will continue to exist. Certainly, not everyone serves with this mindset, but the very sentiment is what military service symbolizes.
If fewer people than ever are willing to serve, what does that mean, then? Does that means Americans are falling out of love with their country and fellow countrymen? If we are, then what? After all, as I explained earlier this year:
These attitudes don’t bode well for the future of this country. Many, myself included, would point out that the likelihood of the U.S. being invaded by a foreign adversary is low, but that’s not the point. A country where such a large and, possibly, increasing number of people unwilling to fight and die for it is a country that won’t defend itself from anything, period. Not from the tidal wave of illegal immigration coming over the southern border. Not from the cultural revolutionaries who harbor genuine malice towards this country (they work in the media, the universities, and even our government) and are destroying our national memory and demoralizing the populace. Not from the anarcho-tyrants who, instead of governing us, unleash violent predators upon society in the name of social justice.
You cannot defend what you don’t love. You will not die for something you don’t find redeemable or worthwhile. It’s that simple and I challenge anyone reading this to tell me why I’m wrong.
Of course, there’s a big difference between willing to defend your country, which most Americans still say they are, and willing to serve at the state’s pleasure, which Americans are increasingly unwilling to do. People who don’t want to serve in the military do so for different reasons and conservative, right-wing Americans who don’t see it worth their time to work for an institution that’s becoming increasingly belligerent towards them are also the very people who’d still take up arms to protect this country from foreign invaders.
On the other side, left-wing Americans were more disinclined to serve in the military to start and are also the people who’d elect not to take up arms in defense of the country. There are many reasons why, but the Left generally doesn’t see America as worth defending. Again, if you see America’s history as so tainted by racism and slavery as to be irredeemable and that colors how you view every aspect of this country, why would you risk your life for this country? It makes no sense.
Perhaps it’s better these people not defend the country. It’s just a shame there are far too many of them to begin with. America may be far from becoming like Belgium, where a recent survey revealed 60% of Belgians were unwilling to defend their country, but the fact Americans are mostly willing to defend the country while doing so only on their terms represents something of a regression in our development as a nation. We began as a nation of citizen-soldiers and maybe we’re returning to that.
But here’s the thing: more militiamen may have fought and died for this country than professional soldiers, but militias were seldom a militarily effective force. Not only could they be incompetent, they could also be unreliable. The fact is, militias require the same as professional troops in order to be effective: strict discipline, order, and organization.
Historically, do you know how societies imposed such qualities in its citizen-soldiers? You guess it: The draft.
It’s hard to believe we’d return to conscription - I don’t think we will. But when it comes to implementing social control, forcing people to wear uniforms is among the easiest ways of doing it.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
If you liked this post from We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here, why not share? If you’re a first-time visitor, please consider subscribing!