What Is To Be Done, the Continuing Series
These arguments [by Max Boot and Tom Friedman] are absurd. There are no more troops. Period. What’s more, there’s no way we can get more in either the near or medium term. We could start up a draft tomorrow and it would still be a year before we had any additional combat brigades available. If you discount the draft and consider only realistic scenarios, it would take us at least two years to bring a significant number of new troops online. Suggesting otherwise is just wishful thinking.
The volunteer soldiers have proven themselves fine warriors. But the volunteer Army has failed. This is its first war of any meaningful length, and its lessons are clear: it cannot sustain this effort, through no fault of its own, because, in the end, its discrete parts are rational actors. It is impossible to externally incentivize war. The choice is therefore between that Army’s continuance and a draft. If the choice is for its continuance, then the subsequent choice will probably be between losing Iraq and losing the Army. Losing Iraq will be a strategic disaster for the United States. But losing the Army would be the end.
Sergeant Alberto Martinez has been charged with two counts of premeditated murder, according to a statement issued in Baghdad.
The so-called “fragging” incident happened near Tikrit.
Fragging is a term used to refer to soldiers killing their superiors.
Allowing for his particular way of pitching an argument, I agree with Tacitus’ construal of the stakes. To repeat:
If the choice is for its [the volunteer army's] continuance, then the subsequent choice will probably be between losing Iraq and losing the Army. Losing Iraq will be a strategic disaster for the United States. But losing the Army would be the end.
We have had, with the volunteer army, two known fragging incidents in just over two years. (The first was religiously motivated treason at the outbreak of the invasion.) Put an army of draftees in Iraq and all the future Iraqs that the hawks would like to have, and you will have a lot more. And a lot more of this. (Via War and Piece.) Neither will put us closer to achieving our stated political goals in Iraq. Even if we have a draft, our choice is between losing Iraq and losing the Army. I’ll keep the Army.
In The Face of Battle, Keegan considers just what it was that the British infantryman was being paid to do during the hours-long artillery barrage at Waterloo. The answer: they were being paid to die. It was their job to stand unmoving and, if necessary, go down under the weight of a shell. In modern terms, if you really wanted to occupy bad states and make them better, the equivalent would be to pay men (and women) to stand at checkpoints and, if necessary, let themselves be blown up by suicide bombers, because the alternative – acting to preserve their own lives at the possible expense of blameless civilians – would be strategically ruinous.
The latter tactic is, of course, the one we have chosen – “force protection” as the top priority. There’s little mystery to this: paying our soldiers to die is not something any president could get away with. And that’s with a volunteer army, people who have freely chosen military service (albeit complicated by stop loss, unprecedented reserve commitments and a duty rotation schedule heretofore uncontemplated). No American Army staffed with draftees could ever be ordered to conduct itself in the ways most conducive to nationbuilding success. No American Army staffed by draftees would do so. Instead you’d have a slow-motion mutiny. Our volunteer Army has been given an impossible mission. They have performed it far better than a draftee Army could hope to.
So we lose. It will, yes, be a strategic disaster to give up Iraq. It would, yes, be a bigger strategic disaster to destroy our own Army, whether with a draft or the death of a thousand cuts and car bombs.
UPDATE: In comments, Rich Puchalsky writes
There is no sense in which “the volunteer Army has failed†other than in its willingness to be used as an instrument of torture, which isn’t what Tacitus/Josh Trevino is writing about in any case. The Administration has failed. No Army, volunteer or draftee, can continue to fight a war that its country does not really support. You can not fool a country into an extended war fought for no good reason, as the Bush administration has done, and expect that war to be won.
I agree with this, which is why I qualified my own agreement with “allowing for his particular way of pitching an argument.” The stated policy, the transformation of Iraq by force into a stable liberal democracy, is not one that can be realized by either our present-day volunteer Army nor any Army of draftees we could raise. Tacitus seems to think a draftee Army could engage in successful counter-insurgency/nation-building missions on the scale of Iraq. I think this is disastrously mistaken.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
June 18, 2005 @ 11:01 pm
Nothing that Tacitus writes is ever really worth reading; he’s just glib enough to sound good, but his writing never stands up to examination once you actually think about it. There is no sense in which “the volunteer Army has failed” other than in its willingness to be used as an instrument of torture, which isn’t what Tacitus/Josh Trevino is writing about in any case. The Administration has failed. No Army, volunteer or draftee, can continue to fight a war that its country does not really support. You can not fool a country into an extended war fought for no good reason, as the Bush administration has done, and expect that war to be won.
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Nor is there any way in which “losing the Army”, in the sense that Trevino means it, is the end for the U.S. Losing individual soldiers is a tragedy. Losing the Army as an effective fighting force would mean what, exactly, for the U.S.? Invaders landing on the beaches of Santa Monica? No one is going to attack the U.S. in conventional war, Army or no Army, and anti-terrorism always has and always will be a police matter. We “lost the Army” after Vietnam, and nothing happened. “Losing the Army” would be bad, yes, but not the end. The war-mongers on the Right will only have themselves to blame, if it happens, but let’s not be infected by their cowardice.
Comment by bryan —
June 19, 2005 @ 12:43 am
well, the army does seem to be the last leg of american international power.
Comment by Frank —
June 19, 2005 @ 1:14 am
On a second glance it seems to me that you are ignoring the possibility that slow motion mutiny and more fragging might be good for the army.
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It seems very clear that military officers have completely lost the ability to hold themselves accountable as a class. Fraggings are not an ideal solution for that problem, but they do mean that at least some officers will be held accountable for their actions.
Comment by Nell —
June 19, 2005 @ 7:34 am
Only options left would seem to be those little robots and a ton more “private military”….
Comment by Barry —
June 19, 2005 @ 10:35 am
Frank, that is a pleasant fantasy (reading the news over the past three years would provide a list of generals who really, really deserve to feel what an IED blast feels like), but alas,
it’s really a fantasy. Lower-ranking officers and NCO’s would be the targets; the generals will protect themeselves. IIRC, company first sergeants were prime fragging targets in Viet Nam, due to their role as chief *ss-kicker in a company.
Comment by Nell —
June 19, 2005 @ 11:58 am
Frank and Barry, your pro-comments are over the top (or if not, then teetering mightily at the very top).
Comment by Nell —
June 19, 2005 @ 12:00 pm
Sorry, that’s ‘pro-fragging’ comments. Hands a little shaky, for some reason.
Comment by Leonard —
June 19, 2005 @ 12:01 pm
Tacitus’ statement is horseshit on several levels. One, though, that should be mentioned here. He say: “the volunteer Army has failed. This is its first war of any meaningful length, and its lessons are clear: it cannot sustain this effort, through no fault of its own, because, in the end, its discrete parts are rational actors.” From here he leaps to the draft.
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Now, let’s ignore the fact that soldiers are paid out of taxes; the soldiers are already there based on coercion. However it is coercion of everyone but them. Tacitus means to imply that the only way to get enough soldiers to carry out the imperial will of America is to enslave the young.
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But is it true that we have tried all voluntary means to get volunteer soldiers (given taxation)? No, we have not. Soldiers are now paid almost precisely what they were paid before the war – something like $20000/year for enlisted ranks. Plus they get other perks, such as college paid for. But the amount spent really is not that large given the new working conditions. As we know, “contractors” (mercs) in Iraq get paid several times what our soldiers do. This suggests the wages paid to soldiers is insufficient. (Fighting for your country instead of a corp is probably worth something, but not that much.)
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If Tacitus seriously cared about the volunteer army “succeeding”, he’d suggest raising their pay so as to get “enough” soldiers, whatever that level may be. The fact that he is willing to proceed so readily to a draft as the only alternative to the status quo is a reflection of his limited understanding of economics.
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It is ludicrous to expect that a person who willingly works at a certain wage given a reasonable set of working conditions will want to continue working that job when you change the working conditions to include “high risk of death or maiming”. Yet that is exactly what has happened to the US infantryman. It is no surprise to see them leaving as soon as they can.
Comment by Nell —
June 19, 2005 @ 12:10 pm
On topic: Bruce Rolston has a look at officer fatality statistics in this war as compared to others, and a link to a related Crooked Timber thread on the question of the relationship between officers’ deaths and accountability.
Off topic: How to produce those nice paragraph breaks with a period? Rich, Frank, Leonard… anyone?
Comment by Leonard —
June 19, 2005 @ 12:17 pm
Another comment on Tacitus’ statement: he sees the notion that a volunteer army cannot fight a prolonged war of aggression as a bug. I see it as a feature.
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Nell, you write your paras as normal, but instead of a two line breaks between paras, you put in two line breaks, a “paragraph” that is just a period, then two more line breaks. The period itself is not important; it’s just the character that happens to be the least obtrusive and so looks the most like the whitespace which is what we want.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
June 19, 2005 @ 1:36 pm
Leonard’s right about the wage levels comment. It’s like the people who say that they can’t find good (maids, McDonald’s employees, janitors, etc.) anymore. When you ask these people if they’ve tried raising their wages substantially, they look blank. Market forces are supposed to be for other people, not for them.
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But I also think that this is really still a subset of my first comment. If higher wages were what it took to get more volunteer soldiers, and the U.S. was really committed to winning this war, it would pay higher wages.
Comment by adsfasfd —
June 19, 2005 @ 2:29 pm
Leonard is absolutely right. How would Tacitus know whether it’s possible or impossible to “entirely incentivize” the army enrollment? I mean, a paltry $20,000 a year. Is the “empire” really worth that little? Once Tacitus and his ilk start considering real payments: $40,000, $50,000 or more, and those fail, then he can start claiming that it’s impossible to incentivize Army participation.
Comment by Daryl McCullough —
June 19, 2005 @ 3:11 pm
Maybe Iraq shows what’s right about the all-volunteer army. It shows that if the US is fighting a war that the public is unconvinced is necessary, then the source of new recruits will dry up. That creates an important brake on military adventurism.
Comment by Nell —
June 19, 2005 @ 7:40 pm
re Daryl’s point (made further above also): That was the idea of the volunteer army, which was instituted after the Viet Nam war. But it was never intended to be the first line of resistance to wars of aggression. Congress failed to hold up its end (generating a real debate and insisting on their Constitutional prerogative to declare war or not), mainly due to a deficit of political courage among Democrats..
Comment by Tacitus —
June 19, 2005 @ 7:52 pm
All the braying about pay levels here suggests a dearth of veterans on the thread. In any case, Jim’s statement, viz.: “Even if we have a draft, our choice is between losing Iraq and losing the Army.” This is simply false. Counterinsurgencies have been fought and won (militarily, anyway) by draftee forces many times in the past. While I agree that disciplinary problems — e.g., fraggings — will go up in a draftee force, it does not follow from this that the Army will be destroyed, nor that the war will be lost. While there may be a reasonable argument I’m missing to this effect, it isn’t being made here.
On a side note, “losing the Army” after Vietnam was, of course, catastrophic for millions around the world, even in the absence of a Soviet landing at Wilmington. While I don’t expect the isolationist libertarian type to particularly care — they’re far away, and strange, and brown — those of us who do regard the lesson of history there as fairly cautionary.
Comment by Jim Henley —
June 19, 2005 @ 8:21 pm
Tac, you, personally, might wish to eschew the word “braying” when describing the writing of others. Hot reactors shouldn’t throw control rods and all that. I take your shifty race-baiting imputation at the end, though, to mean that you’d pretty much have our draftee Army fighting somewhere in the world pretty much all the time. I’m glad we got that straight.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
June 19, 2005 @ 9:13 pm
I have no idea why Trevino thinks that “losing the Army” after Vietnam was catastrophic for anybody. What was the Army supposed to be doing during this time, adding to the death toll in Central America? Hell, we defeated the Soviet Union soundly and thoroughly during the next decade or so; what possible greater victory were we supposed to get, and over who?
Comment by Glaivester —
June 19, 2005 @ 9:47 pm
“All the braying about pay levels here suggests a dearth of veterans on the thread.”
Ummmm – what exactly do you mean?
Let’s also consider another possibility – there likely is a way that we can pacify Iraq with the number of troops we have (or an even smaller number). Extermination of the Sunni Arabs, or at least mass murder in retaliation every time a coalition soldier is killed (you kill one of ours? We’ll kill 500 Sunni Arabs at random!)
This is obviously a bad idea, but I am not convinced that it is not what is going to happen if Bush gets desperate.
Comment by Leonard —
June 19, 2005 @ 10:15 pm
Hi Tacitus.
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I am not a veteran. I brayed about pay levels. Heeeee-hawwww!
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Now that’s clear. How about you answer the charge I made about you: that you failed to consider using normal market incentives to get “enough” men to man the imperial armies. There is a vast gulf between $20,000/year and having to conscript men to get an army, don’t you think? Is not paying, for example, $50,000/year likely to get more men than $20,000? Are you trying to duck this question for some reason? I’d think as a person that “supports the troops” you’d be pleased at the idea of paying “our” soldiers more.
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I’d also like you to explain to me exactly why my status as a non-veteran makes any difference to this argument. Are you suggesting that there’s a different logic for vets and non vets such that I would not understand your reasoning? That’s very multicultural! Or is that you are disgusted by my proposal to use simple economics to get more men, and therefore think economics does not apply to veterans?
Comment by Tacitus —
June 19, 2005 @ 10:30 pm
Pulchasky may wish to expand his grasp of history c.1970-c.1980 beyond North America. Jim, I’m not at all clear on why you accuse me of “shifty race-baiting” when I’m quite explicitly stating that many of your ideological stripe don’t particularly care about, as stated, folks who aren’t American, within line of sight, or brown. As for your opinion of my writing style: eh. One of us gets paid for it, one does not; as a libertarian, I assume you’ll defer to the market’s judgment over your own. Certainly, in this case, I’ll accept its inscrutable wisdom. Finally, on the topic of market judgment, if folks think that incentives of that nature are the reasons most soldiers fight, then there’s no need, to paraphrase Johnson(?), for them to think meanly of themselves for not having soldiered: soldiers will do it for them.
Comment by Tacitus —
June 19, 2005 @ 10:32 pm
And lest it be forgotten, we should note that Henley’s assertions that a draftee force 1) cannot fight a counterinsurgency and 2) will ipso facto fall to pieces in Iraq remain unexamined in any serious manner.
Comment by Glaivester —
June 19, 2005 @ 11:30 pm
Tacitus,
Are you saying that offering more money won’t help recruitment?
Certainly there are some people who will do it just for the money. Certainly there are also people who would do it for patriotism, but can’t afford to do it without the money (maybe they need to work to support their siblings).
In any case, you’re right. Paying them more to fight cheapens the whole military experience. Better to ensalve them.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
June 19, 2005 @ 11:42 pm
Trevino has the habits of the political speechwriter that he once was (not the habits of a *good* one, but the classic habits of the type). Dodge every question, lard in lots of glittering generalities, put in attacks on opponents to hide lack of content.
A paraphrase from Johnson is supposed to keep us from believing our own lying eyes when we see the Army raising enlistment bonuses. (Not enough to, say, make risking your life for your country a middle class activity or anything, or to keep people with experience from leaving the Army and joining the mercs, but they’re still trying, to the extent that they can try without raising taxes.) And his final add-on dares people to prove something that they never even asserted. No one said that all counterinsurgent wars could never be won — we said that *this* war could not be won.
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It’s difficult to write comments on blogs where your politics differs from that of the blog. But if you’re going to do it, you should at least write forthrightly, setting out what your argument is. There’s no point in doing it as if you’re writing answers for some state senator at a press conference about the cost overruns.
Comment by Leonard —
June 20, 2005 @ 10:14 am
Tacitus, there’s more than one reason “why soldiers fight”. Yes, there are reasons that have little or nothing to do with money. However there are also those that do. I would characterize them broadly as follows: the reason why soldiers fight in the short term, i.e., why they do what they do in combat, are not about money. Why don’t men flee combat? Why do they move when hot lead is flying? They fight because they are male-bonded to their comrades and would rather die than be dishonored in the eyes of their peers. They fight because they love their comrades and cannot bear to endanger them by failing to do their part.
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In the long term, though, soldiers fight (meaning: join and remain in the army when they have a choice) for other reasons, which go outside of the primitive brain. Soldiers are not stupid. They know what they are being paid, and have some notions of the risks they face, and can weigh the two things. When their term ends, then they may rationally include money as a part of their decision. There are, surely, some men for whom money is never part of the equation; they will not leave their comrades no matter what. But not all men are the same. Also, many men have commitments to people outside of the Army. Men have families that they provide for. There are reasons for soldiers to be motivated by money.
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Similarly, when deciding to join up or not, a man is not deciding based on male-bonding that does not even exist yet. He decides based on other things. Some of these may be non-monetary, such as patriotism. However they may also be monetary.
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As Rich points out, the recruitment and retention bonuses being paid now are direct proof that the Army, at least, thinks that its soldiers respond to money.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-09-army-bonuses_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA
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Now, I can see why you would try to assert polycentric logic to count coup on us mere non-veterans – you may be able to convince some people with that schtick. But are you going to claim that your status as a veteran allows you to pooh-pooh what the Army does?
Comment by jlw —
June 20, 2005 @ 11:58 am
I think Tacitus helps falsify the idea that paying soldiers more would lead to a better army with his comments here.
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The market-oriented point of view is that if you pay more for something, you get more of it, or at least a better quality. Therefore, offer more pay for soldiers on the front line, and more citizens will offer themselves up and recruiters won’t have to lower standards to make quotas.
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The same should hold for writing. But the fact that Tacitus gets paid some amount for his dreck and Jim writes clear, evocative prose for free shows that throwing money at a problem doesn’t guarantee a better outcome. Indeed, it’s likely that the individuals who would risk permanent disfigurement or death for $50,000–but not for $20,000–might not be the keenest blades in the medicine cabinet.
Comment by Jim Henley —
June 20, 2005 @ 12:49 pm
Tac, in addition to Leonard’s points re what the Army is actually doing with incentives (too little, but in the direction of bigger reward for bigger risk), I’m puzzled by seeming inconsistencies in your own statements. Firstly, in the post I linked, you said the component parts of the volunteer Army are “rational actors.” Now in comments, you are all about the arational. (You’re also, and here’s where the slippage comes in, shifting the discussion from why soldiers join the Army and stay to why soldiers fight.) If the component parts of the Army (including the potential parts, which is to say, the recruiting pool) are indeed rational actors, as you said initially, it seems entirely reasonable to think they would respond rationally to incentives, including financial incentives. We price risk into jobs – and callings! – all the time.
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Going back further, didn’t your item defending the honor of military contractors months ago acknowledge the role of financial incentives in attracting soldiers to this nevertheless, you wrote, honorable career path? Whatever criticisms we may have of the contractors or the US reliance on them, they certainly have proven themselves willing to fight, standing up to fire repeatedly over the last couple of years. And being paid handsomely to do so.
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Lastly, if it comes to reasons why soldiers choose to fight, does “Because my number came up and it beats jail” really outrank “Because I’m being paid handsomely to take that risk for my country?” Because that’s the choice on offer here: forced service versus financially induced service.
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I remain, of course, an admirer of your prose style, and if your paid writing job is one I would like to have myself, my hat’s off to you, sir.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
June 20, 2005 @ 3:02 pm
You admire his prose style? OK, I’m going to choose to believe that you’re just being polite, as you usually are, because it’s clear that his prose style is horrid. It’s all about concealment of his lack of actual ideas and about propaganda. To use as an example the text in front of us:
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“The choice is therefore between that Army’s continuance and a draft. If the choice is for its continuance, then the subsequent choice will probably be between losing Iraq and losing the Army.”
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Look at the heavy-handed pounding on the word “choice”, three times in two sentences. All of this choice-emphasis is a typical technique to forestall notice that we aren’t really being offered a choice at all; we’re being presented with a complicated false dilemma that leads to the conclusion that the only thing we can really do is have a draft. When someone’s word choice and substance are diametrically opposite in this way, they aren’t a stylist, they’re just a competent propagandist.
Comment by ckrisz —
June 20, 2005 @ 5:13 pm
I was actually thinking about going back to reading Josh Trevino after several months away. Thankfully the stench of overwhelming condescension wafting from his posts in this thread reminded me why I stopped in the first place.
Comment by Glaivester —
June 21, 2005 @ 4:37 pm
Also, Tacitus seems to use indirect, “clever” ways of saying things rather than plainly stating what he means.
Comment by Jim Henley —
June 21, 2005 @ 4:50 pm
I thought his memoir of suffering clinical depression during his Army service was quite fine.
Comment by mnrr —
June 22, 2005 @ 12:50 am
Braying about pay levels? Give it a break. Pay people what they’re worth, and they’ll fight. But you’re too damn stingy; you want an empire, on the cheap. Pathetic.
As for the racist dig, give that a break too. If “brown” people, as you charmingly put it, attack, then there’s a war to fight, which may even include liberation from their oppressive regime. But I love the “white man’s burden” theme you’ve got going there, Tac. That’s got a fine lineage. Nice job, pal. Your command of history is about as impressive as your command of economics.
Comment by mnrr —
June 22, 2005 @ 12:59 am
Henley: you’re a nice guy, so you’re laying it on a bit thick. The guy writes like shit, but most people believe that because someone writes in opaque prose, but reaches the same conclusions they reach, he must be a fine writer. The Roman allusions are part of the pose. People like their warmongering, but they like it dressed up for them so it doesn’t seem so mundane.
Comment by Jim Henley —
June 22, 2005 @ 7:07 am
Tacitus, I should also say that you are correct that your imputation of racism itself is as forthright as any LULAC activist before a faculty committee. The “shifty” part comes in the sleight of hand where one somehow doesn’t care about brown people unless one (constantly!) makes war on brown people. That moral precept is . . . underdemonstrated.