All this talk about how Republicans or Democrats support the troops in Iraq (rarely Afghanistan, notice?) got me thinking. Why should we support troops?
Don't get me wrong. You probably have me pegged as a radical leftwing communist pacifist anarchist. Not at all (I'm not even libertarian; they don't have a word for what I am). I'm not saying we shouldn't support our country's troops (I'm Australian, but my nephew is recently back from a tour as an SAS communications expert in Afghanistan). I'm asking why we do, and how we should.
For a start, it ought to be noted that we rarely give the support returned troops need. They are released into the community or a veteran's hospital (one in the US is apparently disgusting, conditions being bad even for a Victorian era asylum) without much in the way of further aid. My father lived through the bombings of Darwin by the Japanese - since the Australian government kept it quiet to "maintain morale", it was not treated as seeing combat, and he was given no pension or support. Eventually he committed suicide, and my mother was given no support either, for the same reason.
But that's not my rant topic for today. Rather, it is this: how much support should a decent society (defined as democratic, liberal and lawful) give to its military? I ask this because the US struck me as heavily militarised, so much so that Americans don't even seem to realise how militarised they are. I know one person in the armed forces in my country, my nephew. But every second American I know seems to have an immediate circle of ex-military or military friends and relatives. Everywhere you look, you see military ordinance, staff, or bases. I once read that something like 2/3rds of research done in the US is DoD research (although that was in the mid-80s).
Now, when someone does active service for their country, there's an implied contract here - they should be able to expect that their service is given the support they need, and that they and their families will be treated with some respect for it. This was the horrible failure of the anti-Vietnam War protestors - too many of them blamed the troops themselves for political failings, and Vietnam Vets were treated abysmally for a long time afterwards by self-righteous prigs. They saw themselves doing their duty, a concept that seems to have fallen into disfavour through its abuse by the authoritarians in charge. Should someone doing their duty be attacked or left unsupported if the duty they are doing is to bad ends? I don't think that is fair, unless there was some honourable alternative they could have undertaken.
I would, however, be a lot more sanguine about the "support the troops" trope if those who play that card also spent more on the well-being of these troops both in the war and out of it. But it seems to me the trope is in fact a way of manipulating populations to political ends, of getting cannon fodder. A compliant populations is able to support a large military. So here's the key question:
How big should a military be?
I sat next to a very nice American on a plane recently, and he was shocked at my suggestion that the US has too big a military, such that it needs to invent adventures to justify it. Grenada, Panama, Iraq, probably Vietnam, Somalia and other places are all, I think, the result of governments with a toy they just had to use.
Remember the Roman Empire. When legions were disbanded after campaigns, this left thousands of hungry men roaming about without income or places to live. It caused the sorts of troubles seen in Russia after the Cold War ended; banditry, organised crime, and civil unrest. If you have a large military, it's very hard to unmilitarise. But if you have a large military, all the social and political pressures are on expanding the military, not cutting it back, in part for the goals of (internal) empire building, but also because all the clichés and propagandistic jingoism are in place, and it's easy to call a disarmer a coward or a traitor.
My travelling companion thought that the US had to be the world's police force, because nobody else was doing it. But why? And can a police force that has no oversight in the rest of the world not be a special pleader for its own country's, or even just it's leaders', interests? History suggests not. In fact, having one state's military act as the police for the rest of the world undercuts something most countries jealously guard (including the US) - sovereignty. By what right is the US in Iraq (or Australia, Britain, and the other "coalition" partners)? Afghanistan is a different case, because that government implicitly declared war by actively supporting terrorism against western countries. But Iraq? It was terrible, yes, in conflict with its neighbours, yes. But nothing it did, and nothing it was about to do, made it legitimate for its sovereignty to be overturned.
What shall we do to wind back increased militarism in the west? Is there anything we can do? Are we in the situation of Japan in the 1930s, unable to bring the military to heel? I have no idea. But notice that that case of militarism ended in a nuclear attack. And now too many countries have nuclear weapons. If the US (or Russia, or China) continues to militarise further, I do not see a happy ending for all of us.
[This has been the ill-informed rant of a complete amateur, who never was in the military. I have no substantive answers to any of the rhetorical questions asked here]
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But at least you are asking them.
I had the good fortune to have been in the U.S. military between wars -- after Korea but before Viet Nam. I was a volunteer, not a draftee, and served four years. Those were the days when one could hitch-hike in uniform and grandmothers with grandchildren in the car would stop and give you a ride, and go 5 miles out of their way to ensure you had a good place to hitch your next ride. Many of the men in my extended family had served -- father and uncles (and one aunt) in WWII, and my grandfather in France in WWI. So it was almost automatic for a midwestern boy to go in the service after he flunked out of college.
The military trained me in a trade -- electronics -- that subsequently supported me through my Ph.D., sent me places that a small-town Minnesota boy had barely heard of, and gave me a place to sleep, food to eat, enough money to buy a motorcycle, and a bunch of knuckleheads to hang around with. I have to say that with the exception of boot camp it wasn't a bad life at all. I damn near stayed in for a career.
A few years later, of course, it would have been very different: Viet Nam was the start of the degradation (and I use that word advisedly) of the U.S. military. Now, with the all-volunteer force, the U.S. essentially has a mercenary army. A substantial force of actual mercenaries, euphemistically called "security contractors" are in Iraq right now, and take casualties just as the uniformed services do.
What has happened in the U.S. is that while the military pervades the society, the society has not been asked, or required, to make sacrifices in any way comparable to those of WWII. I remember walking farm fields during WWII to gather milkweed pods to be sent somewhere to make kapok for Navy life vests, and being proud because an uncle was flying off a carrier in the Pacific and might wear one I'd made possible.
Now the society does not participate in the wars our military fights. Bushco cuts taxes and tells us to go about our lives normally, while our representatives are killing and being killed in Iraq. The military adventures have become detached from the day to day lives of all but those wh have immediate family in the service. Because there is no widespread sharing of the load, the load seems imperceptible except when a coffin comes home. But dammit, the wars a society engages in should mean life is different for the society! Military adventures should be borne by the whole society, and as heavily as possible, so only those adventures that are worthwhile to the whole society are undertaken.
Sorry this got a little incoherent. It's late here in the peaceful U.S.
Seemed damned coherent to me...
Wikipedia tells me the US has a total of over 2.3 million people in the military (including reserves and whatnot). On a total population of 300 million, that's a ridiculously high number.
There have been cases of a country successfully demilitarising (partially or entirely) on its own, but those have mostly been tiny countries that were hopelessly outclassed by its neighbors anyway.
If the US demilitarises, I think it'll have to be because the economy finally collapses all the way. They're trying to run a war-time economy, but they're so very bad at it.
Of course, direct supporters of the government are still making truckloads of money, so it may be another few years even if the rest of the country comes crashing down around them.
The US needs a Mikhail Gorbachev in the White House.
You wrote, "Vietnam Vets were treated abysmally for a long time afterwards by self-righteous prigs."
Do you have first-hand evidence of this? I lived in the US at the time, and didn't see it, even though my own brother and a few friends served in Vietnam. I know there are stories around of anti-war protesters spitting on troops, but these seem to be little more than urban legends, kept alive by people for their own purposes.
I saw it here first hand. Not spitting, but screaming abuse, nasty comments at parties, and the like. Had a socialist party not been elected that year (1972), I was due to go to Vietnam by draft, as my birthday had been pulled from the lottery, and we would have stayed until 1975 with the US. I'm now a member of a bike club that has a lot of Vets, and they all tell the same story. Maybe it didn't happen there. It happened here.
Progressive economist Max Sawicky's graph of US defense spending since 1940. Currently, US defense spending as a proportion of GNP and overall federal spending is small in comparison to recent decades, while dollar (inflation adjusted) cost is close to post-WWII highs. (Note: that sharp dip in constant $ in the late 70s is just a data artifact, I believe).
http://maxspeak.org/gm/archives/00001146.html
The current number of US military personnel is very low compared to the WWII-Korea-Vietnam era and is even low compared to the 80s (late Cold War).
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/gov310/FAD/milper/index.html
In terms of proportion of total US population, the shrinking size of US military personnel strength is even more dramatic.
I meant GDP, not GNP. But the trend is the same in either case.
I mentioned "contractors" above. From the AP today:
Cairnarvon wrote: Wikipedia tells me the US has a total of over 2.3 million people in the military (including reserves and whatnot). On a total population of 300 million, that's a ridiculously high number.
Note that just under half of that number are reservists, aka "weekend warriors," who train a few times a year and the rest of the time are ordinary, productive citizens. In any case, I have to ask why you say a total military force of under one per cent of the population is "a ridiculously high number."
John, you asked: "How big should a military be?"
I'm reminded of a famous quip attributed to Abraham Lincoln: How long should a mule's legs be? Answer: Long enough to reach the ground.
So how big should a military be? Big enough to do its job(s). The United States Armed Forces actually have quite a lot of jobs to do. It's true that the Army and Marine Corps spend most of their time fighting or training to fight -- which is a full-time job all by itself. But the other branches ... well, let's see:
* The Air Force and Navy both fly search-and-rescue missions over land and sea, whenever necessary. USAF aircraft are even called on by other countries sometimes for S&R missions.
* The Coast Guard does search and rescue at sea; police patrol of all US harbors, coasts, and waterways; anti-smuggling operations; and general maintenance of coastal safety machinery like lighthouses, buoys, and so on.
* Aircraft carriers are mobile S&R bases that are usually disposed so that they can be onsite anywhere in the world in two weeks, if not less. Remember the Banda Aceh quake and ensuing tsunami, in December 2004? Some of the first effective search/rescue/relief forces on-scene came from a USN aircraft carrier battlegroup.
* USAF and USANG aircraft routinely fly all sorts of specialized nonmilitary missions. The well-known "Hurricane Hunter" aircraft who regularly fly in and out and all through Atlantic Basin hurricanes, providing critical weather data on them, come from Air Force and Air National Guard squadrons and operate from Air Force bases. The Navy operates a couple more squadrons of weather research aircraft, on both coasts.
* Local National Guard units provide emergency-response capability anywhere in the country. The things that are most needed in the immediate aftermath of a disaster -- cargo transport capability, rapid air and land movement capability, reliable radio communications, etc. -- are all things that a military unit is supposed to be trained in. And by making them local, you get the added advantage of having your response teams made up of people who know the area. That can be important.
* By funding R&D programs, the US armed forces routinely produce technology that has civilian applications. An airplane developed for the USAF sixty years ago is still the best light cargo transport in the world: the C-130 Hercules.
And that's just a partial list. I'm sure I could find more.
On top of all that, the armed forces teach their people a lot of skills that are valuable in the civilian world. Any noncommissioned officer has training and experience in leadership. All officers have four-year college degrees; most officers and many senior enlisted men have master's degrees, and some have doctorates in their chosen fields. Those people find a good job market when they leave the armed services and reenter civilian life.
The U.S. military is not large compared to the population of the country, but the resources devoted to the military are enormous. Even the defense budget doesn't accurately reflect the true spending because the figures usually quoted leave out the huge sums hidden in secret appropriations or spent for military purposes outside of the Defense Department. As a chemist would say, the rate limiting quantity is money, not people.
Raw manpower simply isn't the crucial variable in contemporary warfare, which is why calls to reinstate the draft are merely gestures. Even if it were politically possible to greatly increase the size of the military, it would be impossibly expensive. The Age of Cannon Fodder is over, at least in the West. And that's a problem in itself.
Democracy emerged in a time when states needed to recruit a large proportion of their population for military purposes. Even in countries where the mass of people were denied political rights, they had to be catered to in other ways in order to fill up the ranks of enormous armies and insure their loyalty. Power may not always grow from the barrel of a gun, but the welfare state certainly did. The end of mass armies means the end of the main reason that the powers-that-be had to cultivate the people. Which is part of the reason why it matters so little that considerable majorities in the U.S. and Britain oppose the War in Iraq. The People are less and less important in the post-democracy era.