-Caveat Lector-
>From www.antiwar.com/bock/bockcol.html
Eye on the Empire
by Alan Bock
> September 2, 1999
>
>
> GI BLUES:
> THE MILITARY IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA
>
> (Note: This is an expanded version of a piece that ran in the Orange County
> Register August 29, 1999 but wasn't put on the newspaper's Web site.)
>
> The twin concerns after almost 25 years of a voluntary military that met its
> recruitment goals with mostly qualified and competent people of the military
> falling short of recruitment goals and suffering morale problems that damaged
> retention rates didn't start with the Kosovo war. But the war highlighted the
> problem and has policy makers in the early stages of casting about for ways to
> solve the dilemma: the U.S. government has committed the military to numerous
> brushfire conflicts around the world even as the military has been downsized and
> made to resemble social workers more than warriors.
>
>
>
> Alan Bock is Senior Essayist at the Orange County Register and a weekly
> columnist for WorldNetDaily. He is the author of Ambush at Ruby Ridge
> (Putnam-Berkley, 1995). His exclusive column now appears every Thursday on
> Antiwar.com.
>
>
> Do we need to improve military pay, especially for enlisted personnel, some of
> whom still qualify for food stamps? Can taxpayers afford enough economic
> incentives to woo potential recruits from higher-paying, lower-stress jobs in a
> booming private sector? Is it time to think about conscription the widely
> resented draft toward which some still cast a nostalgic eye the method used to
> keep the military at full strength between 1940 and 1973?
>
> More fundamentally, do we need to rethink the role of the United States in a
> world without a competing superpower, a role that is growing haphazardly as the
> government lurches from one commitment to another? Is it time to take a fresh
> look at the commitments our leaders have made and scale them back to a more
> realistic level?
>
> Those are among the choices facing military and diplomatic policy makers.
>
> WHAT WE LEARNED FROM KOSOVO
>
> By end of March, only two weeks into the Kosovo bombing war, US military leaders
> were complaining the effort was cutting into an already low level of US combat
> readiness. The Navy had no aircraft carrier in the region because the Joint
> Chiefs of Staff require that at least one of them be in the Persian Gulf at all
> times and some crews and equipment need rest and repair time. The Air Force
> noted that it was already short 2,000 pilots and was cannibalizing planes for
> spare parts. The Pentagon said it was running out of cruise missiles. The Air
> Force asked Congress for permission to convert 92 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles
> into satellite-guided conventional missiles.
>
> Experts early on estimated that it would take 200,000 troops to win a ground war
> in Kosovo. That turned out not to be deemed necessary, but some 30,000 troops
> are scheduled to be deployed there with no date for a pullout. They wouldn't be
> available should there be a flare-up with North Korea, a confrontation between
> China and Taiwan, a decision to step up direct military aid to Colombia (the
> latest policy enthusiasm of drug and other warriors) or a concerted campaign of
> terrorist attacks.
>
> The shortages at least compared to commitments highlighted by the Kosovo war
> are not new. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War
> the US military has been reduced substantially, but not enough that taxpayers
> have noticed a "peace dividend.'' The Navy has 324 ships compared to a Cold War
> high of 600. It had 15 aircraft carriers in 1991 and one reserve but 12 now
> not, given rotation schedules and travel times, enough to maintain a permanent
> presence in the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean and the Pacific as current
> doctrine would prefer.
>
> The Army says it is short more than 10,000 soldiers, the Air Force is short
> 1,400 to 2,000 pilots and lost 45 percent of eligible pilots in 1998 compared to
> 14 percent in 1994, the Navy says it needs 22,000 more sailors than it has.
> During the Kosovo war the Air Force banned all pilots, navigators and support
> crews from leaving the service, affecting about 6,000 Air Force personnel who
> already had approval to retire or leave for civilian jobs.
>
> MILITARY SPENDING DECLINES
>
> These recruiting and retention shortfalls have been matched by reduced spending.
> Between 1985 and 1996 military budgets declined some 35 percent according to
> former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and analyst Peter Schweizer in a
> Hoover Institution report. By 1996 a commitment to a conflict on the scale of
> the 1990 Gulf War would have taken all of the Army's ten active divisions,
> including those deployed in Europe and Korea.
>
> Yet the nation's strategic doctrine remained and remains what it had become by
> the end of the Cold War: to be able to fight and win two wars on two fronts
> virtually simultaneously. As of 1996 the Center for Strategic and International
> Studies estimated that the cost of meeting administration goals would be 4.5
> percent of the gross domestic product but the administration was calling for
> defense spending that amounted to about 3 percent of GDP.
>
> Repair, maintenance and spare parts problems abound. In 1988 70 percent of Navy
> ships in US ports were rated in a high state of readiness; in 1998 it was 50
> percent. The Army has waived some training requirements because of shortages of
> ammo, rockets and grenades. Humvee trucks bought in the 1980s were wearing out;
> only 52 percent of the Marines' Humvees were in good repair in 1998. The
> readiness of Air Force fighter squadrons fell from 86 percent in 1992 to 75
> percent in 1998 and the accident rate for Navy pilots was climbing, a problem
> attributed to old equipment and a shortage of experienced pilots.
>
> INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENTS UP
>
> Meanwhile, international commitments have been increasing. The Iraq bombing
> campaign added $200 to $250 million in short-term operating costs as of 1996 and
> ties down 5,900 Air Force personnel, many living in tents in the desert, on
> longer overseas assignments. The Persian Gulf military presence altogether costs
> taxpayers about $40 billion a year. The Army has deployed 34 times since 1990,
> more than three times the number of missions it took on during 40 years of the
> Cold War.
>
> Many of these missions are far removed from traditional military operations.
> Soldiers in the US Southern Command have been sent to 32 Latin American and
> Caribbean countries to help catch poachers, work on conservation projects and
> defend endangered species. The Pentagon budget for nonmilitary operations
> environmental cleanup, drug interdiction, humanitarian assistance increased
> from $3.5 billion in 1990 to $10.9 billion in 1995, according to the
> Congressional Research Service.
>
> In 1997 the administration's Quadrennial Defense Review predicted that the most
> serious security problems would be "instabilities'' caused by poverty, disease,
> terrorism, global climate change and the like. Such missions are said to reduce
> morale because peacekeeping and social missionary deployments require longer
> work weeks and longer overseas deployments than some thought they were signing
> up for, at a time when an increasing number of servicepeople are married with
> families. Not surprisingly, divorce rates among military personnel are on the
> rise.
>
> WHAT OTHER COUNTRIES SPEND
>
> There's another context that puts military spending and readiness in a different
> perspective. In today's world, arguably much safer (though not without dangers)
> than during the Cold War, the United States accounts for 40 percent of the
> world's military spending. We recently spent (according to a 1996 Cato Institute
> policy study by Doug Bandow) nine times as much per year as China, four times as
> much as Russia, and nearly twice as much as France, Germany, Japan and Britain
> combined. On a per capita basis we spend twice as much on defense as France and
> Britain, two to three times as much as Germany and Japan, and more than three
> times as much as South Korea, which lives under active threat from a hostile
> regime but spends less on its own defense than the United States does.
>
> The US and its allies account for 80 percent of global military spending.
> Against what realistic military threat is all this spending and manpower
> deployed?
>
> MORE COMMITMENTS AND DANGERS ANTICIPATED
>
> A White House global strategy for the next century, drafted by the National
> Security Council and obtained last week by the Washington Times, makes a case
> for continuing US intervention in a variety of trouble spots and claims the
> country is facing its biggest espionage threat in history (interestingly enough,
> without even mentioning the Cox report or mainland China's recent antics). It
> also speaks of the threat of attacks by terrorists and "rogue'' states using
> sophisticated biological, chemical or even nuclear weapons.
>
> More missions like those in Haiti, the Balkans and Africa, designed to change
> the behavior of other nations, are anticipated and endorsed.
>
> "We must be prepared and willing to use all appropriate instruments of national
> power to influence the actions of other states and non-state actors, to exert
> global leadership, and to remain the preferred security partner for the
> community of states that share our interests,'' said the NSC report. "In our
> vision of the world, the United States has close cooperative relations with the
> world's most influential countries and has the ability to influence the policies
> and actions of those who can affect our national well-being.''
>
> That's in line with the latest Quadrennial Defense Review, done in 1997, which
> said that without a two-war capability, "our standing as a global power, as the
> security partner of choice, and as the leader of the international community,
> would be called into question.''
>
> Those are general goals that don't offer precise guidelines as to whether the US
> should get involved in this or that future regional conflict. The significance
> of the most recent documents is that they show no evidence of anything
> resembling serious rethinking of the general line that it's important for the
> United States to be the dominant political and military power, that the bias is
> toward interventionism (`to influence the actions of other states'').
>
> There's little or no cautionary language about the limits of globalism or the
> necessity to match US goals and resources. Though many have criticized our
> interventions in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and elsewhere, the NSC sees them as
> necessary, almost inevitable consequences of our leadership of the post-Cold War
> world.
>
> Perhaps most interesting, the report mentions almost no actual military threats
> and aside from the possibility of small-scale terrorist attacks (which we've
> been warned about for the last 20 years) no real threat to US territory or to
> civilians who aren't overseas.
>
> Indeed, one of the most fascinating aspects of the Kosovo war was its
> enthusiastic support in certain quarters of "elite'' opinion circles precisely
> because no real US national interest was at stake. Rather than defending
> something so grubby and selfish as a national interest, we were there to promote
> the lofty and hopelessly utopian ideal of multiethnic states in a part of the
> world that has always resisted them. But that was fine. The more abstract and
> ethereal the goal the better some liked it. Perhaps that made it easier to
> overlook then fact that the chosen instrument of humanitarian compassion was the
> cruise missile.
>
> A QUASI-IMPERIAL BURDEN
>
> As Boston University international relations professor Andrew J. Bacevich puts
> it in the August 9 issue of National Review: "Clinton will bequeath to his
> successor a nation that has shouldered quasi-imperial burdens. As evidenced most
> recently by Kosovo, the responsibilities of the `indispensable nation' entail
> the frequent and protracted exercise of military power. The United States
> employs that power not to defend American shores or even to win wars, but to
> make and keep the peace, enforce norms of behavior, and advance the cause of
> globalization that will, we are assured, make the world more stable, more
> peaceful, and more prosperous.''
>
> BRING BACK THE DRAFT?
>
> But the desire to meddle (or intervene benevolently) comes up against the very
> real problem of declining levels of recruitment and retention in the armed
> forces. How to assure the means to reach the lofty ends? Various small policy
> fixes, including better pay, are being proposed and partially implemented. And
> we are starting to hear nostalgic calls ("remember when we had a common purpose
> and the shared experience of forced military service throwing people from all
> classes into the barracks together'') for a return to conscription.
>
> Aside from Northwestern University sociologist Charles Moskos, the intellectual
> godfather of the notion that forced national service is the essence of
> citizenship and community, who never misses a chance to promote any mandatory
> service program of any stripe, hardly anyone says this year that they want a
> draft. A draft "would be harder to do than in the past, and an unfair one might
> do more harm than good,'' says Army Secretary Louis Caldera. "Only as a last
> resort,'' says Rep. Herbert Bateman, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed
> Services readiness subcommittee.
>
> Of course, when a policy wonk says "I'm not for it but we need to think about
> it,'' it usually means "I'd do it in a heartbeat if I thought we could get away
> with it, and if nobody shoots down this trial balloon look out.'' Whether that's
> really the attitude of South Carolina Republican Rep. Floyd Spence, Illinois
> Republican Rep. Steve Buyer, of South Carolina Republican Sen. Strom or of
> California Republican Rep. Randy "Duke'' Cunningham of the San Diego area, all
> have publicly flirted with the idea of conscription.
>
> OR PHASE OUT THE SELECTIVE SERVICE?
>
> Cunningham has vowed to fight a provision quietly placed in a House
> appropriations bill that would shut down the Selective Service System, which has
> been registering 18-year-old males since Jimmy Carter reactivated it in 1979,
> but hasn't drafted anyone since 1973. Republican Rep. James Walsh of New York,
> who heads an Appropriations subcommittee that oversees independent agencies, led
> the campaign to "zero out'' Selective Service, mainly to save the $25 million a
> year or so the registration system costs. Cunningham promises an amendment to
> keep the Selective Service in business.
>
> Currently draft registration serves no useful purpose. Registration was intended
> to generate a large conscript army for a protracted war, such as World War II,
> when the most recent draft program was begun (conscription is not a
> long-standing part of the American tradition and a good bit of American history
> has centered around resistance to standing armies and conscription).
>
> Today's military, however, requires highly skilled personnel able to operate
> advanced weaponry. No longer, as Arizona Sen. John McCain has put it, can you
> "spend six weeks showing a recruit the right end of a gun and send him on his
> way.'' If anything, retention of highly skilled personnel is a more important
> problem than recruitment, and conscription would do nothing to solve it.
>
> THE REAL VALUE OF VOLUNTEERISM
>
> Few commentators ever mention one of the truly useful aspects of a volunteer
> military: the reality check it imposes on policy makers with a yen to remake the
> world. If you can't raise enough military forces through persuasion and
> incentives to carry out your policies, maybe it's time to check whether or not
> those policies are realistic or desirable.
>
> Hardly anybody wants to look at it that way. Study the literature and news
> stories on military recruitment and retention problems and you'll find a lot of
> discussion of the role of the booming economy in holding down recruits. If a
> young person can earn more with less danger and hassle in the private sector,
> many will take that option. And many recruits attracted by a "be all you can
> be'' ad campaign, having received valuable technical and organizational
> training, take their skill and knowledge into the civilian marketplace rather
> than re-upping. The administration is responding by improving military pay and
> benefits and a $268 million TV ad campaign.
>
> You'll also hear about the increasing gulf between civilian life and military
> culture and there might be some mention of lower morale due to more extended
> overseas deployments. Occasionally somebody will note that the current Commander
> in Chief doesn't exactly command respect and undying loyalty from military
> types.
>
> But you'll almost never hear that young people, including those who joined the
> military a few years ago, are underwhelmed to disgusted by the kind of missions
> they are likely to be asked to perform.
>
> SUSPICION ABOUT THE MISSION
>
> If you listen very long to current or recent military personnel and you'll hear
> numerous anecdotes about people in the military who can't wait to get out
> because they no longer believe in the kinds of missions they're assigned to.
>
> Ted Carpenter, defense and international relations expert for the libertarian
> Cato Institute, told me the services do exit interviews when service members
> decide not to re-enlist. While he knows of no systematic study of these
> interviews, he says they're showing an increasing incidence of people who are
> willing to tell others that they're getting out because they no longer believe
> in the mission.
>
> There's little question that a booming economy and changes in the culture are
> important factors in the military recruitment and retention problem. But any
> approach that ignores the strains on morale and pride imposed by imperial
> overstretch sending would-be warriors on policing, conservation,
> "nation-building'' and social welfare missions with vague objectives and fuzzy
> timetables will miss what might be the most important reason the military is
> having trouble attracting recruits.
>
> The military may seem kinder and gentler these days, but it does impose
> hardships and involve danger. People will endure hardship and danger if they're
> proud of what they're doing. They're less eager to do so if they're indifferent
> or ashamed.
>
> STRIKE BACK AT THE EMPIRE
>
> An intelligent approach to the military recruitment problem should involve a
> fundamental rethinking of American policy not just tinkering with pay and
> benefits something that really hasn't happened since the Soviet Union
> collapsed. The world has changed in fundamental ways and the potential dangers
> are different than in the 1980s.
>
> Do we want the United States to be an imperial power, ever ready to put down
> those who violate current norms of what passes for civilization, to punish
> ethnic cleansers, to step in to prevent instability or put down insurgents, to
> mold the rest of the world to fit into the patterns envisioned by US policy
> elites as molders of the new world order?
>
> Do we really need a military capable of fighting and winning two major regional
> conflicts simultaneously? Or do we want to have a military devoted to defending
> the homeland, able to deploy overseas in a real emergency, but with a bias
> against intervening in the affairs of other countries?
>
> Do we want, in short, a military appropriate to an imperial power or a military
> appropriate to a free republic? A military appropriate to a free republic could
> be even smaller than ours is now, but prouder and more focused on beneficial,
> even noble missions.
>
> Even in an economy more prosperous than what we're enjoying now and wage
> earners without stock portfolios can imagine and would welcome such a boom it
> would have little trouble attracting volunteers with a sense of pride and
> mission in performing essential duties
>
> MILITARY FORCE LEVELS
>
>
> Branch
> 1990
> 1995
> 1998
> Recruiting Goals
> Shortfall
> Army
> 746,220
> 521,036
> 491,707
> 80-90,000/yr
> 10,000/yr
> Navy
> 604,562
> 463,701
> 381,203
> 60,000
> 22,000
> Air Force
> 535,233
> 400,051
> 363,479
> 33,800
> 11,000
> Marines
> 196,652
> 171,946
> 172,632
> 41,000
> 0
<<The above is in chart form at the site. A<>E<>R >>
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