US Military

published in Indian Express- Saturday, July 23, 2005- URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=74919


Tough, getting them to sign up

Atul Bharadwaj

The most powerful and technologically advanced army in the world is unable to make it attractive to its citizens to join the all volunteer force (AVF). The US army’s target is to recruit 80,000 troops by the end of 2005, but it is ‘‘more than 15 per cent behind its year-to-date goal’’. In addition to lowering its enlistment standards, the army has unleashed new TV ads targeting reluctant parents — offering sign-up bonuses of up to $20,000 to lure youth to serve in the national army.
The result is that the recruiters are under intense pressure to meet the quota requirements. Among the victims of this stress-laden drive, for instance, are Corporal Pat Tillman’s parents. In the wake of 9/11, Tillman had left his well-paying football career to serve the nation. His death last year was celebrated as an act of great patriotism. But the recent revelation of the true story — the young footballer was killed due to ‘‘friendly fire’’ by one of his buddies in Afghanistan — has shattered Tillman’s parents, who now complain that an “army worried about the crippling recruitment” concocted a story about their son’s death and lied to the country.
On May 20 this year, the US army had to suspend its recruitment drive for a day. The reason was not to give rest and recuperation to 7,500 army recruiters, but to reflect on their recruitment techniques which have come under intense scrutiny due to allegations of regular misconduct. The immediate context for the one-day suspension was a recruiter threatening to call the police to arrest a young man who had resisted recruitment.
Coercion and intimidation is not only being employed against individuals resisting enlistment but also against academic institutions and student groups involved in anti-war protests. Earlier in November 2004, the Federal Court of Appeals in Philadelphia blocked the government from enforcing the Solomon Amendment. According to this law, universities which refuse to allow military recruiters on campus could be denied federal funding.
The law was originally passed by Congress in 1996 but was not actively enforced before the beginning of President Bush’s administration. A network of 25 law schools and about 900 law professors had filed a complaint against the Solomon amendment, which violated the free speech rights of schools that restricted on-campus recruitment in response to the US military’s ban on gays and lesbians. The army’s discrimination against women and homosexuals is not the only reason for the low levels of recruitment. According to Jamie Weinstein, a right-wing scholar, the protest against discriminatory policies is just a facade. The anti-war Left radicals are primarily campaigning because they consider the army to be perpetuating the interests of US imperialism.
If this proposition is true, the civil society’s refusal to provide the foot soldiers to its army represents a growing civil-military divide. To obviate this civil-military gap, the US has three options. The first is the reintroduction of conscription. This option may not appeal to the neo-cons because of their ideological opposition to mass conscript armies containing reluctant soldiers. The second option is to follow the prescription proposed in Samuel Huntington’s book, The Soldier and the State (1957) — instil conservative values in a liberal society in consonance with military needs. This the neo-cons are pursuing through various measures, including the heightening of the fear element. However, this is a long-term option and cannot be easily achieved in US society, with its strong liberal moorings. The third option — Rumsfeld’s ‘military transformation’ doctrine — means maintaining a lean, mean and thin fighting machine.
But it is important to understand the “unknown unknowns” in this doctrine. Disregarding General Eric Shinseki’s advice, Rumsfeld sent a comparatively small number of fighters to Iraq. The shortfall was filled by raising the Iraqi armed forces. It is primarily as a result of this policy that compared to 700 Iraqi casualties, only 70 US soldiers were killed in the one month of violence that had erupted after the formation of Iraq government.
More numbers of Americans in the war zone means more casualties and therefore greater resistance to war at home. Making the Iraqi soldiers man the frontlines against insurgents and keeping the US forces to rear-guard action posts is a sound policy to keep the US casualties at manageable levels. For instance, had the US succeeded in getting one army division from another country, like India for instance, the US casualties in Iraq might have been lower than 1,700. But that did not happen. In many ways, then, the US army’s recruitment problems become the world’s concern too.

The writer is a war studies scholar at King’s College, London