The Downside Of A Professional Military

Forty years ago, as the traumatic debacle of the Vietnam War was reaching its penultimate stage, two waves ripped and later roared through the American public and the government. The first of these was of lesser importance--the replacement of the complex and easily abused system of classification and deferments which had made the Selective Service System a model of abuse with the far more fair in appearance lottery. The second, the wave which broke to great applause as the last American troops were leaving Vietnam, was the replacement of the conscript army by an "all volunteer force."

The senior echelons of the American military were all in favor of doing away with the draft. The prevailing view was--and is--that large, relatively low skilled forces were obsolete. Rather, the changes in military technology required and allowed smaller forces of much better trained, longer service troops.

The politicians in D.C. were also enamored with the notion of an "all volunteer" armed force. The denizens inside the Beltway had learned during the long years of Vietnam that the political will of the American public was inversely proportional to the number of "boys next door" who came home in fiberglass boxes. A similar equation was seen to have existed regarding opposition to the war: The draft, and only the draft, bred opposition by both potential draftees and their families to the war which required conscription.

As long as the country was at peace, or, worst case, fought only very short and low casualty wars, the "all volunteer" force in practice seemed to provide all the advantages predicted in principle. The Army and Marine Corps became organizations of people who wanted to be there. The changes in all forms of military technology assured that these (relatively speaking) manpower light forces had combat power aplenty. Lean, mean, and equipped very well to move, shoot, and communicate, the ground combat forces of the US were proportionately far more potent than their much larger predecessors had been only a couple of decades earlier.

At the time of discussion and implementation, there were a few voices opposed to the return to the old American concept of a vocational armed force, particularly a vocational ground army. This negative view focused primarily upon the probable consequence of an army which was increasingly divorced from the society which gave it birth and whose political institutions told it whom to fight, how to fight, and where to fight.

Among the critics of the "all volunteer" idea were those who argued that such a "mercenary" force would make it easier for presidents to send the troops and for congresses to support their dispatch. Analogies were constantly drawn between the "all volunteer" force and the old frontier army or the colonial forces of the US in the Philippines or Great Britain throughout the world. Critics of this school argued that the US would be in search of enemies, preferably small but possessed of critical resources. This position has some merit as events of the past twenty or so years have shown.

A far more trenchant criticism was offered by analysts who foresaw protracted interventionary wars. Given the small size of any affordable American ground combat force (a term which includes both the Army and Marine Corps) and the nature of interventionary operations, particularly those of a predominantly counterinsurgent character, the same units, the same men, the same officers would be cycled through the area of operations repeatedly.

As a result these individuals, particularly senior NCOs and officers who might see four or more tours of duty at ever higher rank, would begin to feel quite proprietary about "their" war, would have an increasing sense of what might be called entitlement regarding the war and how best to fight and win it. Coupled with the automatic separation of members of the ground combat force from the civilian society, these interlocking notions of "ownership" and "entitlement" would lead inexorably to increasingly tense relations between the military command structure, particularly the one in theater, and the larger civilian leadership echelon.

The tendencies of isolation, ownership, and entitlement would, if anything, be intensified within the special operations communities. At the same time, it would be the special operators who possessed the mindset, the experience, the operational imagination best suited for interventionary operations generally and counterinsurgency more specifically. The nature of the wars of the future (seen from the perspective of the 1980s) dictated that the Big Army of tanks, artillery, fast sweeping maneuvers would be irrelevant to the realities of what we now term "asymmetrical warfare."

The men needed in the future (again from the perspective of the Reagan days) would be those of the special operations forces, the most isolated, most indoctrinated, most committed members of the vocational army. As a result, there would be greater and greater friction between the professionals of the "Small Army" forces and both the diplomats and political leaders.

All of what was predicted by the second group of critics thirty years ago has come true during the long years of the Afghan and Iraqi wars. The "Big Army" professionals, the treadheads, the big gun guys, the men who reigned supreme during the short, sharp, and inconclusive days of Desert Storm were not the right people to run the war Afghanistan.

In a real sense the current flap of the McChrystal Comments is the necessary product of the "all volunteer" force as well as the necessary reliance upon the hard and idealistic minds formed almost automatically in the special operations community. As was prognosticated by a handful of critical observers of the coming "all volunteer" force, the combination of duration and small numbers assured the same units, the same men, most importantly, the same officers, would cycle through the AOs repeatedly.

First important fact: Where multiple tours, particularly more than three, were unusual in the Vietnam period, they have become the norm since the invasion of Afghanistan.

Second important fact: Not until the spec ops officers drifted to the top of the command structure in sufficient numbers did a "winning" theory of victory emerge.

Third important fact: The forecast sense of "ownership" and "entitlement" in a context of "isolation" has emerged with concomitant frictions or at the least fissures between the civilians and the military.

Fourth important fact: The conduct of the wars by the civilian leadership of two successive administrations has not and does not inspire confidence on the part of the commanders responsible for both the lives of those under their command as well as avoiding a disastrous defeat at the hands of a highly motivated enemy.

Fifth important fact: The supremacy of civilian command is fundamental to the American way of understanding and waging war. Whenever this bedrock principle seems to be called into question or challenged--whether by an improvident comment as was the case sixty plus years go when General George S. Patton, Jr suggested arming his German POWs and marching on to Moscow or the clear insubordination of General Douglas MacArthur in 1951--the balloon goes up, fast and hard.

In his comments to the reporter for Rolling Stone, General Stanley McChrystal appears to be challenging his civilian lords and masters. And, in a way he was. However, more to the point, General McChrystal was expressing the net effect of the first four important facts. His remarks and the context which gave rise to them are the consequence of waging war, long and frustrating war for reasons of state, by an "all volunteer" force.

Arguably, had the troops been what they were during Vietnam, the "boys next door," both We the People" and the government would have been more engaged with the conduct of the war and willing to think better about the goals of the war(s) as well as the methods used in fighting. With equal plausibility it can be argued that a conscript army would have assured no disconnect between the troops on the ground and the society which gave rise to them--and issued their marching orders.

In many respects conscript armies are both larger and less efficient than vocational ones. The same may be said of democracies, at least as far as inefficiency is concerned. Countering this accurate accusation is an affirmative defense. Democracies are best served by armed forces which fully and completely represent them as to makeup, values, and tight integration.

Even a man such as General McChrystal, the most complete and professional man of war the Geek has ever met, could and probably would agree that an administration as well as a military command structure would have to think longer, harder, and better before committing the US to war if it was fought in large part by civilians temporarily in uniform--draftees rather than by "volunteers." Probably the general would also agree that having draftees under his command would go a long way to assuring that he thought better, explained more completely, and elicited the cooperation and support of those over him as well as those under his command.

It is easy to understand the frustrations and stresses which caused General McChrystal and his staff to blurt out the intemperate remarks attributed to them. It is even easier to understand the well intended desire to remake the US forces into an "all volunteer" form with the untended consequences embodied in the first four important facts.