Micah Blaichman

ARIES DELA CRUZ

n August, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report barely covered by the mainstream media. The report, prepared at the request of Representatives Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) and Pete Stark (D-Calif.), detailed the recent rise in military recruitment “irregularities.” The report defined these as “willful and unwillful acts of omission and improprieties that are perpetrated by a recruiter or alleged to be perpetrated by a recruiter to facilitate the recruiting process for an applicant.” These infractions ranged from clerical errors to “criminal violations” committed by a recruiter. With unemployment rates remaining low and the war in Iraq raging on, recruiters from the four military service branches have found it increasingly difficult to lure Americans to enlist, especially considering that more than half of American youth cannot fulfill the minimum requirements to enter service. Accordingly, although the report found that cases of recruiter malfeasance jumped from 4,400 to 6,600 incidents between the fiscal years 2004 and 2005, it also concludes that many more incidents go unreported, due to the spotty nature of the data kept by the four services. In short, a problem that is worse than we think it is is getting worse by the day.

As the GAO report pointed out, the war in Iraq is one of the major contributors to the rise in irregularities. The Bush administration did not expect military operations to drag on for so long. As the United States becomes increasingly bogged down in what most analysts have described as a civil war, the strain on man power and equipment has begun to threaten the integrity of the military services.

The Army has borne the brunt of this hardship. In late September, the New York Times reported that besides the 17 combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, “only two or three combat brigades in the entire Army—perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 troops—are fully trained and sufficiently equipped to respond quickly to crises.” Soldiers who have already done tours in Iraq are finding their vacation time curtailed as their units are being rushed back into combat duty. The Times article makes it clearer why some military recruiters would risk their careers in order to meet their recruitment goals.

These recent difficulties must be understood in the broader context of the evolution of the U.S. military in the last 35 years. After President Nixon's 1970 directive to institute a commission to end conscription, the military created the All Volunteer-Force (AVF) in 1973. The Vietnam War, a traumatic event for the military and the rest of the country, demonstrated that conscription was no longer a reliable source of man power, as young men avoided the draft en masse. Instead, conscription could lead to great domestic strife over unpopular foreign policies.

Nixon's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force argued that conscription was inequitable, because affluent or well-connected Americans could avoid being drafted, and inefficient, because it entailed higher training costs and resulted in less turnover of personnel. Furthermore, the Commission observed that the military had always depended on volunteers, except during major wars. The solution was to “professionalize” the military by relying on volunteer recruits rather than draftees. Despite dissent from voices both inside and outside the services, the AVF was implemented and remains the general blueprint for military personnel.

Recently, the military announced that all four service branches had met their active-duty recruiting goals for 2006. Why the sudden good fortune? One reason is an increase in cash bonuses for new active-duty recruits, with almost two-thirds of new recruits receiving them. Additionally, the Army has widened its applicant pool. In October, The New York Times reported that the army had decided to “raise recruits' maximum age and to accept a larger percentage of applicants scoring at the lowest acceptable range on a standardized aptitude test.”

This points to a tension inherent in the AVF: these volunteers are not to understand their activity as “service” motivated by patriotism as much as an occupation. This is not to say that many volunteers are not committed to serving their country, but rather that the aim of the AVF was to create a military that would be more effective by producing more efficient soldiers. Unlike the unreliable and reluctant draftee, the professional soldier would be more serious and more capable of performing his duties. In this way, the AVF has been largely successful, as the average soldier has become older and better educated since its creation, according to the GAO report.

At the same time, as noted earlier, the pronounced and prolonged military commitment that U.S. foreign policy now entails has made recruiting more difficult. The goal of a more professional military is undermined if the exigencies of recruitment require lower standards for potential recruits.

This stress is reflected in how the military markets itself to potential recruits. More and more, military service is described as a means to further advancement in non-military careers, not as a career in itself. Advertisements highlight assistance with paying for higher education and retirement benefits. The Army's Web site promises potential recruits that they will “gain valuable interpersonal skills like teamwork, time management, problem-solving skills and professionalism” and develop a “new sense of discipline and responsibility.” Whereas the AVF was supposed to create a permanent professional soldiers corps, now the military claims to turn soldiers into future professionals.

The other major strategy of military recruitment targets the U.S. immigrant population, particularly Latinos/as. Over the last decade, the percentage of Latino/a service members has almost doubled, from five to nine. And while only two percent of service members are not U.S. citizens, this number is likely to rise after President Bush's issuing of Executive Order 13269 on July 2, 2002, which waives the usual citizenship requirements for non-citizens serving in active duty since Sept. 11. This order underscores the extent to which the government encourages non-citizens to fight U.S. wars abroad.

Perhaps what we are currently witnessing is a difficult transitional period for the U.S. military, similar to what occurred in the early 1970s. Beginning with the French Revolution, the Western military centered on the citizen, who received certain democratic liberties and rights in return for national service. Gone were the days of the mercenary force, paid professional soldiers of other nationalities, who would wage the sovereign's wars. The citizen soldier was proven more efficient, and this type of citizen military was used to fight the great wars of the 20th century. Vietnam proved that the system no longer worked for a global power like the United States, whose hegemony was maintained by short and contained conflicts rather than extended warfare against guerilla forces. Incredible advances in military technology and tactics required that the soldier become better educated and more disciplined, qualities that the professional soldier brought to the table.

The recent occupations of Afghanistan and, more importantly, Iraq changed all this. Occupations require massive amounts of troops and door-to-door combat of insurgents, a much grittier and more precarious business than the “shock-and-awe” air campaigns of the first and early second Gulf Wars or former President Clinton's actions in Central Europe. It is probable that the AVF “professional” military cannot fight this type of war, and so the military has begun to market itself not as a viable career choice, but as a stepping stone to better careers for the most disenfranchised of U.S. society. This is not explicitly a mercenary system, for most new soldiers, except for immigrant recruits, are U.S. nationals. However, it is a definite repudiation of the notion that sacrifice should be shared and that the citizen has obligations to higher national service. The service-for-citizenship suggestion is the most extreme example of this repudiation: national sacrifice is shared, but by citizens of other nationalities.

As President Bush constantly reminds the American public, our main “service” is to keep consuming products to bolster the economy. The question is, then: Can citizens retain their democratic liberties while shedding their democratic obligations?    

I would like to thank Professor Isser Woloch for discussing this article with me.