Postscript on Conscription, a Clausewitzian Perspective

This is a postscript of a series of threads I did on conscription from a Clausewitzian perspective. Part I, Part II and Part III generated a good deal of well-thought out and presented comment and my view of this subject has developed over the course of this month. Simply the process of writing down one's half-formed ideas and seeing them in print is perhaps the first basic step to a dialectic, but being able to have them commented on, sifted through and expanded upon is something that the contributors to this blog are consistently able to do. So many other blogs dealing with national security issues simply become echo chambers of the prevalent group think, which is a danger for any forum such as this.

The conclusions mentioned in this postscript follow on from those listed in Part III, that is I have not significantly changed anything from that post. If anything those points have become only a bit more refined, as in the case of "Plattsburg". Which means that anyone reading only this postscript will not have the full picture, but rather one would need to look at all three parts and the commentary to follow the evolution of the discussion and how I got to where I am now.

To begin, let us return to the original definition of conscription used, that being "compulsory enlistment of citizens or residents of a political body for national service". This is NOT limited to military service, but could be used to deal with a variety of crises that a political community could face: in which as part of a larger solution mass mobilization would be seen. To achieve mass mobilization, a certain amount of moral and material cohesion within the political community is necessary. An amount of indirect coercion may be unavoidable, but should actual force become a means there is a great danger that the whole endeavor could lead to decline of moral and material cohesion within the group. On the other hand, history has shown us that conscription as in the case of Prussia in 1813 and the US in 1917 working within the context of an obvious national emergency can be used to actually increase the material cohesion of the state.

Following this, I would say that pre-modern moral cohesion becomes progressively weaker in relationship to modern moral cohesion through the process of mass mobilization directed by the state via material cohesion. Conscription divides the youth from their parents and grandparents as well as their local communities. Old pre-modern cohesive bonds are weakened and those associated with ideologies that is modern moral cohesion are strengthened. We thus see a strong connection between modern moral cohesion and material cohesion associated with the state. There is also a definite shift from values to interests, since while it is values (including traditions and prejudices) that more hold a community together, it is shared interests that more hold a society together.

At this point, I need to step back and highlight a certain basic Clausewitzian assumption. Strategic theory is based on political communities, all the various concepts, be it "strategy", "political purpose", "ends, means and purpose", "military aim", "operations", let alone "war", "victory" and "defeat", all refer to political collectives. Only in one specific form of "tactics" as in tactics of the individual soldier, do any of these basic concepts refer to the individual as such. There is an unavoidable tension, even to the level of incoherence in using strategic theory to organize or describe "strategies" to achieve individual, that is essentially individual materialist, goals. This due to the logic of the community being something quite different from that of narrow/self-centered individual interest.

In fact we cannot even define self-interest outside the community, since "justice" is what holds communities together, self-interest in the collective sense can thus be defined as when justice allows for the claims of the individual to be in line with the values/interests of the group. Those who fundamentally argue that conscription is "a waste of the individual's time" or claim to have "other priorities" (I'm thinking of Cheney's excuse during the Vietnam War) miss the whole point. It is not about the individual, that is narrow, self-centered, "what's in it for me?", interests or opportunities at all, but service to the group, as a member of the political community in question. This perspective in turn requires "a language", a specific set of concepts with distinct meanings able to communicate within the group or between like-minded groups.

We now start to see that a conversation which started about conscription actually sheds important light on more basic political questions and helps explain the nature of the changes we have seen in the US since at least 2000, but probably going back to the 1970s.

To shed some additional light on that, let us consider what the US governments response was regarding 9/11. A great wave of patriotic feeling was allowed to dissipate, the population was told to "go shopping", while the government would deal with what was projected as an existential threat. Also, contrary to past practice, no additional taxes to pay for the war were levied. As government expanded in the form of the Department of Homeland Security and other contributions to the expanding war on terror "industry" revenues were slashed.

Furthermore, a conscript force was the last thing the government seemingly wanted. That would have created additional material cohesion within the population with additional expectations as to what government could achieve for not so much individuals, but the political community as a whole. The dominate ideology operating in the US today is Right wing Liberalism which does not even recognize the existence of a viable political community, but rather sees society as a pack of lone wolves (among masses of sheep) responding to opportunities as they present themselves. It would seem that is the way that US government officials see their positions as well.

Finally, the effect of this on the ethos of our military is striking. We seem to be developing a military caste formed along family lines but with a diminishing sense of identity to the US political community as a whole. As implied in the Orwell article I presented, such a force is ideally suited as an imperial constabulary, but not the armed force of a republic.

With Their Shields or On Them

I'm sitting in front of the computer whilst the kiddos indulge in some truly reprehensible Saturday morning TV - a ritual as old as MY childhood, at least - and came across this Krugman column that ends with a comment that I thought went right to the heart of the discussions we had over at GFT about what I considered the unfortunate narrowing of the social arc of military service in the U.S. circa 2011:

"If people can’t comprehend what it means to work for larger goals than their own interest, if they actually consider any deviation from self-service somehow a sign of phoniness, we, as a nation, are lost."

The Krugman essay is in reference to the apparent difference between "conservatives" - who seem willing to shove any sort of public-figure misbehavior down the memory hole so long as the offending politician continues to vote for their regressive policies - and liberals, who immediately defenestrate their own "leaders" if the personal lives of those leaders vary from the public positions.But in the course of his post Krugman brings up someone I had forgotten; Ed Luttwak, who wrote back in 1995 that any hope the U.S. (and other Western societies) had of returning to a widespread national service was doomed by the replacement-level birth rates of their peoples. Luttwak's "post-heroic" societies had developed such an attachment to their children "...(b)ecause most couples have only one or two children, the loss of any in warfare becomes intolerable, and conscription becomes unthinkable..."(and)"...child-centered Americans (and Europeans and Japanese) will be forced to rely in the future on allies, mercenaries, and maybe robots to fight on their behalf."So; here I am, looking at my own precious offspring (one inert on the couch, the other somewhere in the back of the house - I can hear her chatting to herself there, anyway...) and wondering - would I give them up if my country demanded it not for existential defense, but for some abtruse foreign policy objective? Would I be "convincible" that burying my son or daughter for some transient geopolitical advantage in part of my country's imperial corona was worth the end of my own personal immortality?And I honestly don't know the answer.

But it certainly raises some difficult questions for me.

Slaves of Duty

Richard Cohen has a worthwhile piece up in today's Washington Post.

"I was on active duty as a reservist, not for very long but long enough for the Army to have lost all its mystery. I found the Army to be no better and no worse than other large institutions. Some of its leaders were fools, and some soldiers were thieves, and everyone wasted money like there was no tomorrow. This is the truth and everyone once knew it.

No more. The military of today is removed from society in general. It is a majority white and, according to a Heritage Foundation study, disproportionately Southern. This is a military conscripted by culture and class - induced, not coerced, indoctrinated in all the proper cliches about serving one's country, honored and romanticized by those of us who would not, for a moment, think of doing the same."

Yep.

Like this or hate it, this is why a republic needs to have some way to connect its citizens with its Army. The only practical way this has ever been accomplished is through universal conscription. Yes, it's involuntary servitude. Yes, it's often cheated on and often unfair. Yes, it makes things more complicated for the professionals within the Army.

But Cohen makes some good points here. For all the "garsh, what a great Army we have now those cranky draftees are gone!" rhetoric (to which I would merely observe; really? Where are the heavyweight enemies this great Army has dispatched? The Panamanian Defense Force? The Republican Guard (I guarentee nobody calls those fuckers "elite" anymore)? The Somalian militias?) the only real difference I can see between the mass army of WW2, Korea, and Vietnam and the VolAr of Grenada and beyond is that the latter is "virtually worshipped for its admirable qualities while its less admirable ones are hardly mentioned or known."

The Founders and Framers were quite explicit in their antipathy towards a standing Army. In their opinion, an opinion formed not from airy philosophy but from having been in the impact area of Great Britain's last "little war" with France, a standing professional force made that sort of cabinet war, the same sort of cabinet wars we've been fighting in southwest and central Asia for the past eight years, much more likely.

And why is this a problem?

Because in a republic the law is supposed to be king. We're a "government of laws, not of men", remember?

But in wartime the civil law is nullified. The day of battle is a legal dies non in the common law; the only law that applies is the Law of War, and that law takes no notice of things like personal liberties or property rights beyond what is required to fulfill the minimal requirements of civilian safety. And as the great wars of the 20th Century showed, these requirements are disregarded as often as not; ask any civilian resident of Coventry, Dresden, or Hiroshima.

So when the military is worshipped and ignored, when the business of killing and dying is offshored like an automobile plant, when every President becomes a War President, and every day becomes just another day in the War on (Insert Name Here)...what becomes of the law?

What does this mean for the long term health of the Republic?