Post by sunny225 on Feb 16, 2024 20:42:21 GMT
www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/02/13/the_united_states_needs_national_military_service_1011380.html
There comes a time when the traditional way of doing business no longer meets the requirements of the day. This is clearly the case when it comes to how the U.S. recruits its military. Ever since Richard Nixon ended the draft in 1973, the United States has maintained an all-volunteer force model, with our enlisted service members and officers proudly displaying the professional skill level no other armed forces in the world have been able to match. But this model is no longer capable of generating the numbers and reserves the country will need should we be forced into a war with Russia and China, not to mention potential further escalation in the Middle East or the Korean Peninsula. If the rates of attrition for equipment and personnel witnessed in Ukraine over the past two years are any indicator of what the next major war might look like, it is clear that even with America’s advantage in air power and precision weapons, in order to prevail in such a conflict the nation will need to have a pool of readily-available reserves.
During the last phases of the Cold War, generous defense budgets allowed the all-volunteer model to meet the nation’s defense need. This was in part because of the very size of the defense budget, but also that the United States confronted only one superpower adversary, the Soviet Union. U.S. defense spending during the Cold War peaked at close to 9.5% of GDP at the height of the Vietnam War, but even when it declined it averaged 6.9% of GDP between 1960-1990. In contrast, after the Cold War U.S. defense spending between 1991-2021 ran on average around 3.9% of GDP (it currently stands at around 3.2%), while the cost of ever-more sophisticated weapon systems – to say nothing of the numerous campaigns America fought over the past twenty years during the Global War on Terror – has relentlessly reduced the purchasing power of those numbers.
But the dollars and cents spent on defense tell only part of the story. The other critical aspect is the numbers of service men and women that the United States has been able to field post-Cold War. Throughout the Cold War the combined personnel numbers of our military never dropped below two million, and in fact peaked at 3.5 million during the Vietnam war, which still relied on the draft to fill the ranks. [ii] In contrast, the overall size of the active U.S. military authorized end strength is today just over 1.3 million,[iii] with every service, save for the Marine Corps, having failed to meet its recruitment targets.[iv] And when one considers the readiness level, that number is smaller still. At the same time, while the United States faces potentially two simultaneous conflicts in the Atlantic and the Pacific, current personnel targets for the Russian military alone are set to create a force of 1.5 million[v], while today China boasts the world’s largest military estimated at over two million personnel, with increasingly sophisticated capabilities. There is also a mismatch in the amount of money we spend on defense relative to that of our two principal adversaries. The defense budget Vladimir Putin just signed has put Russia back at Cold War levels of spending while China is running the largest military expansion project in history, especially for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
But it is not just about the personnel needed to generate a winning force in case of war. Another reason America must shift to national military service is the increasingly corrosive societal aspect of relying solely on the all-volunteer force. This has bred a culture of “security consumers” that has replaced the civic responsibility for national defense that the framers of the Constitution envisioned. For too long we have lived under the illusion that national security and defense are not among the key responsibilities of American citizenship. Over the past several decades we have created a consumer culture when it comes to national security, or – as an interlocutor told me recently – a “I-pay-my-taxes-so-the-common-defense-is-not-my-problem” view of national service. Setting aside the fact that such a view of the military profession is more fitting to the job description of a security guard at a shopping mall than the thousands of men and women who make sacrifices in life and limb to serve their country, it offers a blinding insight into the absence of any sense of shared obligation to fellow-citizens that the post-Nixonian military recruitment system has fostered. The Constitutional provision that the “Congress shall have power (…) to raise and support Armies”[vi] speaks directly to the American ideal of the citizen-soldier – one that we have largely forfeited. In a nation as diverse both in terms of ethnicity and wealth, we desperately need a place where young men and women serve together, rediscovering that there is a larger nation out there and re-learning that as citizens they owe the nation and each other a level of solidarity and support that has been all but driven out of our political discourse.
more at link
* Nope, No way, Uh-uh
No one owes THIS government their lives nor the lives of their children. I think that a lot of people are coming to that realization.
There comes a time when the traditional way of doing business no longer meets the requirements of the day. This is clearly the case when it comes to how the U.S. recruits its military. Ever since Richard Nixon ended the draft in 1973, the United States has maintained an all-volunteer force model, with our enlisted service members and officers proudly displaying the professional skill level no other armed forces in the world have been able to match. But this model is no longer capable of generating the numbers and reserves the country will need should we be forced into a war with Russia and China, not to mention potential further escalation in the Middle East or the Korean Peninsula. If the rates of attrition for equipment and personnel witnessed in Ukraine over the past two years are any indicator of what the next major war might look like, it is clear that even with America’s advantage in air power and precision weapons, in order to prevail in such a conflict the nation will need to have a pool of readily-available reserves.
During the last phases of the Cold War, generous defense budgets allowed the all-volunteer model to meet the nation’s defense need. This was in part because of the very size of the defense budget, but also that the United States confronted only one superpower adversary, the Soviet Union. U.S. defense spending during the Cold War peaked at close to 9.5% of GDP at the height of the Vietnam War, but even when it declined it averaged 6.9% of GDP between 1960-1990. In contrast, after the Cold War U.S. defense spending between 1991-2021 ran on average around 3.9% of GDP (it currently stands at around 3.2%), while the cost of ever-more sophisticated weapon systems – to say nothing of the numerous campaigns America fought over the past twenty years during the Global War on Terror – has relentlessly reduced the purchasing power of those numbers.
But the dollars and cents spent on defense tell only part of the story. The other critical aspect is the numbers of service men and women that the United States has been able to field post-Cold War. Throughout the Cold War the combined personnel numbers of our military never dropped below two million, and in fact peaked at 3.5 million during the Vietnam war, which still relied on the draft to fill the ranks. [ii] In contrast, the overall size of the active U.S. military authorized end strength is today just over 1.3 million,[iii] with every service, save for the Marine Corps, having failed to meet its recruitment targets.[iv] And when one considers the readiness level, that number is smaller still. At the same time, while the United States faces potentially two simultaneous conflicts in the Atlantic and the Pacific, current personnel targets for the Russian military alone are set to create a force of 1.5 million[v], while today China boasts the world’s largest military estimated at over two million personnel, with increasingly sophisticated capabilities. There is also a mismatch in the amount of money we spend on defense relative to that of our two principal adversaries. The defense budget Vladimir Putin just signed has put Russia back at Cold War levels of spending while China is running the largest military expansion project in history, especially for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
But it is not just about the personnel needed to generate a winning force in case of war. Another reason America must shift to national military service is the increasingly corrosive societal aspect of relying solely on the all-volunteer force. This has bred a culture of “security consumers” that has replaced the civic responsibility for national defense that the framers of the Constitution envisioned. For too long we have lived under the illusion that national security and defense are not among the key responsibilities of American citizenship. Over the past several decades we have created a consumer culture when it comes to national security, or – as an interlocutor told me recently – a “I-pay-my-taxes-so-the-common-defense-is-not-my-problem” view of national service. Setting aside the fact that such a view of the military profession is more fitting to the job description of a security guard at a shopping mall than the thousands of men and women who make sacrifices in life and limb to serve their country, it offers a blinding insight into the absence of any sense of shared obligation to fellow-citizens that the post-Nixonian military recruitment system has fostered. The Constitutional provision that the “Congress shall have power (…) to raise and support Armies”[vi] speaks directly to the American ideal of the citizen-soldier – one that we have largely forfeited. In a nation as diverse both in terms of ethnicity and wealth, we desperately need a place where young men and women serve together, rediscovering that there is a larger nation out there and re-learning that as citizens they owe the nation and each other a level of solidarity and support that has been all but driven out of our political discourse.
more at link
* Nope, No way, Uh-uh
No one owes THIS government their lives nor the lives of their children. I think that a lot of people are coming to that realization.
I admit to being highly opinionated for one who did not serve, but if you happen to be in a boat that is sinking, a piddling poor reason to refuse to help bail it out is NOT wanting to save Nancy Pelosi who happens to be in the boat with you.