“The country thinks too rarely, and too highly, of the 1 percent under fire in our name,” so says Jim Fallows in a 10,000-word cri de couer in this month’s Atlantic that bemoans the growing cultural and social divisions that separate the American people from its armed forces. This lack of inquiry, and growing distance, Fallows argues, is responsible for not only the promiscuous deployment of U.S. troops around the world, but for Pentagon excesses of which War on the Rocks readers are all too familiar.
Fallows, has long been one of the nation’s best journalists, and it’s hard to disagree with his basic diagnosis that Americans spends far too little time looking at how we spend money on the military, how we deploy our troops, and substitute mindless praise for actual scrutiny. Less clear, however, are the broad conclusions that Fallows is drawing. America’s military is far from perfect and it certainly spends far too much of the taxpayers’ dollars for too little gain. But ultimately, the challenge of U.S. civil-military relations in the 21st century is more complicated—and oddly less problematic—than his argument suggests.
Indeed, the core problem with Fallows argument is that it fails to make a clear distinction between the military and the leaders that send them to war. “Why do the best soldiers in the world keep losing?” screams The Atlantic’s front page. “In 13 years of continuous combat under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the longest stretch of warfare in American history, U.S. forces have achieved one clear strategic success: the raid that killed Osama bin Laden,” Fallows writes. He approvingly quotes Jim Gourley, a former military intelligence analyst who says, “it is incontrovertibly evident that the U.S. military failed to achieve any of its strategic goals in Iraq … evaluated according to the goals set forth by our military leadership, the war ended in utter defeat for our forces.” Where is the accountability, asks Fallows?
Putting aside the fact that the killing of bin Laden was more a tactical event than a strategic success, these are fair criticisms, but they are aimed at the wrong target. If you look back at the initial military objectives for Iraq, laid out by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in March 2003, most of them were achieved. The initial objective of the Iraq war was to topple Saddam Hussein and remove the threat he allegedly represented. It was not to create a Jeffersonian democracy, with American blood and treasure, between the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Of course, the success of the initial invasion quickly evolved into the quagmire of occupation. The military leadership is not completely blameless here, but considering that the Bush Administration largely ignored their pre-war objections and requests for a larger ground force (and post-invasion occupation units), the lion’s share of blame should lie with Washington, not Tampa, where Central Command is headquartered.
As Fallows is certainly aware (and wrote on presciently before the war even began) the Bush Administration had no clear post-invasion strategy for Iraq. After the instability that followed the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. civilian leadership disbanded the Iraqi Army and then demanded that the U.S. military maintain an occupation of the fractured country with limited resources, unclear political objectives, and poor civilian support. That the Iraq war led to an uncertain outcome is because the hoped for outcome, established by politicians, was simply unattainable.
Ultimately, the U.S. military didn’t lose the war in Iraq. The United States writ large lost the war in Iraq. That is a crucial distinction.
To be honest, if there is anything over the last 13 years that the military brass should be held to account for, it is the mistakes they made in Afghanistan. After all, in 2009 it was the General Petraeus, Admiral Mullen, and General McChrystal who successfully lobbied the Obama Administration to send more troops to fight the Taliban. Their logic was based on the supposedly valuable lessons the U.S. military took from Iraq on how to defeat insurgencies. The “surge” that followed in Afghanistan turned out to largely be a fool’s errand that has failed to bring stability to the country or do much of anything to further U.S. national security interests. Yet, Fallows has almost nothing to say about the war Afghanistan. As someone who practically pulled his hair out in 2009 trying to alert people about the military’s lousy ideas for counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, I’m all too used to that forgotten corner of the U.S. war on terrorism being ignored. But, one really can’t talk about civilian-military gap without talking about Afghanistan.
While ultimately the responsibility for the mistakes in Afghanistan must lie disproportionately with the civilian leadership, I can’t quite figure out to how to square Fallows statement that “America’s distance from the military makes the country too willing to go to war, and too callous about the damage warfare inflicts,” with the fact that in Afghanistan it was the military brass pushing for escalation (and in my view, causing a serious civilian-military crisis). Moreover, when the Obama Administration wisely pulled the plug on the counter-insurgency mission in Afghanistan (after foolishly agreeing to it 18 months earlier) and began the drawdown of U.S. combat troops that ended last week, it was a decision opposed by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan as well as General Petraeus, who—according to one account—said at the time that Obama’s decision “invalidates my entire campaign plan.” If anything, the Afghanistan campaign is evidence of how disconnected the U.S. military is from the push and pull of American politics and the political interests of civilian policy-makers. But, that is not a new story.
Indeed, this gets to the other problematic element of Fallows piece. He harks back to a halcyon era when more Americans served, more Americans knew someone who served in the military and, as a result, politicians better scrutinized the armed forces and were less inclined to send them into harm’s way.
There is a seemingly obvious rejoinder to this argument: Vietnam. If America is today a “chickenhawk nation” and, as Fallows claims, “more likely to keep going to war” and willing “to wade into conflict after conflict, blithely assuming we would win,” then how did the United States end up sending, at its peak, 500,000 troops to Vietnam and losing more than 50,000 lives there? More important, why for 25 years after Vietnam – in an era when the United States had an all-volunteer force – did the country fight wars in a manner that was more rather than less risk averse?
Between the end of Vietnam and 9/11, the United States de-emphasized large scale military engagements; when fought, wars were limited with clear political objectives. Overwhelming military force and allied support were considered paramount.
The Iraq war – and to a lesser extent Afghanistan – are of course major exceptions, but they are also outliers in the post-Vietnam era. Indeed, since the surge in 2009, the Obama Administration has sought to lessen America’s global military footprint by relying more on airpower than boots on the ground.
Ironically, one the loudest and most persistent criticisms directed at President Obama over the past two years was that he was unwilling to keep U.S. troops in Iraq after 2011 and that he should have engaged militarily in Syria. That criticism may represent a chickenhawk contingent of politicians, but Obama largely rejected those calls while at the same time continuing the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Wouldn’t a chickenhawk nation have put troops on the ground in Libya and perhaps Yemen and Pakistan (rather than using drones)? Wouldn’t it have gotten involved earlier in Syria, and would it have completely ruled out sending U.S. ground troops to Iraq to battle the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)?
Fallows claims that “because so small a sliver of the population has a direct stake in the consequences of military action, the normal democratic feedbacks do not work,” but the general reluctance of U.S. presidents to engage in long-drawn out conflicts with significant military footprints and potentially high casualties since the end of the Vietnam War says otherwise.
Americans are seemingly more than willing to support wars that involve dropping bombs from the sky or firing cruise missiles, but far less inclined to support those that lead to lots of Americans being killed. When presidents embark on the latter course, they more often than not pay a serious political price.
Consider that when Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated as president in January 1965 he told the country, “Terrific dangers and troubles that we once called ‘foreign’ now constantly live among us. If American lives must end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries that we barely know, then that is the price that change has demanded of conviction and of our enduring covenant.” It seems impossible to imagine an American politician saying that today.
Instead, as Fallows notes at the opening of his piece, we end up talking about the military in reverential, sometimes cavalier terms. He cites, for example, a September 2014 speech by President Obama at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, in which he lavishes praise on the men and women in uniform all the while trying to build public support for the U.S. mission against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Fallows, who watched the speech in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, reports that few of his fellow passengers paid much attention to the president’s words. He claims this disengagement is rooted in the fact that “we love the troops, but we’d rather not think about them.” In short, we’re ultimately indifferent to their sacrifice.
I’d posit another interpretation. In that speech at MacDill, Obama also said this: “As your Commander-in-Chief, I will not commit you and the rest of our Armed Forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq.” Why should Americans be overly concerned when the president goes out of his way to say the U.S. forces sent to Iraq have no combat mission and that the only engagement with the enemy will come from a distance of 30,000 feet above the ground?
I should say that, in general, I have enormous praise for Fallows in embracing this issue and pushing back on the “can do no wrong” mindset that so often dictates how we talk about the U.S. military. But ultimately what is missing from his argument is the fact that our armed forces are an instrument of national policy. When they are asked to fight stupid wars, the principles of civilian control of the military demands they must obey. So, while we should be critical of many things the U.S. military does, we should be careful in laying the responsibility for strategic failures directly at the feet of our entire armed forces. To do so risks distracting from the much larger and more salient issue of civilian responsibility for losing America’s wars. What’s more, we should avoid the temptation to look back at civil-military relations with nostalgia: strategic incompetence, military misuse (and military overreach) and civilian-military divides are hardly new developments.
I hope as Fallows continues to explore this issue that he’ll take into account some of the arguments here.
Michael A. Cohen is a columnist for the Boston Globe and a fellow at the Century Foundation.
longwalkdownlyndale 
Subs 
Phil 
Barney Rubel 
Tyrone Bomba 
Kevin 
Dennis 
TedK 
sfcmac 
Great points. I guess something that’s really missing is how to solve the problem of disconnect between the military and the rest of American society. Sure you could start a draft or something and thus get more Americans to have “skin in the game” so to speak, but that just raises a whole set of new problems, especially for the military.
Sadly it’s not at all clear that most American voters even have really strong preferences on foreign affairs, other than being opposed to wars that produce a lot of American casualties. Does Larry your car insurance agent spend a lot of time thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or when it’s time to replace all those Los Angeles class submarines? Probably not. And that’s too bad, but this reality is true for all sorts of issues from climate change to racial inequity in the criminal justice system. Lots of people just don’t care that much.
In short the disconnect just sort of an unfortunate side effect of having a professional military, and that’s too bad, but it’s not clear that the alternatives are any better.
Americans should be free to not serve and not think about it. I’m a volunteer, and service is sometimes thankless.
Calls for the draft and national service scare me. They’re un-American. For most of our history we’ve been focused on getting down to business and keeping the government (especially Federal) out of our lives. JFK got it wrong.
Both the original commentary by James Fallows and this response by Michael Cohen contribute to the add to the civil-military relational discourse and help readers’ appreciation of the complexities shaping those dynamics. However, neither appears to touch on the strategic (or perhaps more accurately, grand-strategic) context in which US forces are deployed around the world. There are several areas in which US conduct since 1945 has distinguished it from all other members of the “international community”, pushing it to the status of the only truly global military power.
Firstly, an extensively cultivated self-image of an exceptional state which sees itself and believes it is a model and exemplar for the rest of the world. Even the most liberal and progressive of presidents pursues this argument with vehemence (http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/05/28/obama-i-believe-american-exceptionalism-every-fiber-my-being). A presumed exemplar and role-model will understandably push for the rest of the world to become like itself, and will deploy all its resources to that end. America’s economic, scientific-technological and military domination lend itself to the belief it can pretty much effect any changes to the planet it considers appropriate or necessary.
Since 1945, the USA has girdled the globe with forward-deployed forces with a view to ensuring its self-anointed status as the guardian of global peace
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-worldwide-network-of-us-military-bases/5564). The transition of the systemic order from bipolar to unipolar in 1991 quite easily led President Bush and his successors to proclaim without arrogance or irony their determination to retain America’s stature as the systemic primate into the indefinite future. This meant that any hint or expression of a challenge to that planetary primacy would be considered a threat and countered with the only coercive instrument available, the military. Permanently precarious primacy, not the intensity or extent of threats to essential national security, is what drives what Fallows calls the chickenhawk nation. This will not change until the US elite accepts the futility of efforts to circumvent the impact of globalisation which has levelled the strategic landscape, relatively speaking.
America’s self-proclaimed exceptionalism generates a series of difficult contradictions: any perceived, probable, presumed or likely threats to its systemic primacy (or hegemony, if you will) is, and perhaps will be, countered with military responses. That explains its determination to refine and retain all-domain invincibility. America thus demands that disputes must be settled peacefully according to norms it set for everyone else. No other state will use force against others, and coercion can only be accepted in self-defence, except for the USA which has both the ability and the will to engage in lethal mass-violence anywhere it deems appropriate. Conflation of its expansive national interests with global peace and stability will logically force America to deploy both blood and treasure around the planet. Airborne and automated/unmanned visitations can kill hostiles, but not in sufficient numbers to eradicate threats to its permanently precarious planetary primacy.
In short, no primacy is forever and the campaign against any perceived and presumed challenger – sub-state, state or multi-state – can only drain national substance and erode America’s stature as a morally superior exemplar. The fiery bowels of Iraq and Afghanistan branded America’s military enterprise with that missive as clearly as is possible, but nobody seems to have received that particular memo.
While I generally agree with the assessment that America holds a view of itself as an exceptional arbiter of world affairs it is untrue to suggest that America wields only military action as an instrument of national power. Sanctions and other diplomatic pressures are regularly employed to those ends. Look at the long standing pressure placed on Iran, or on the more recent sanctions coordinated with European allies against Russia.
Cohen has it about right; greater public involvement is not a panacea for the ills that Fallows cites. Nor is moving Army functions into the Reserves, as Gen Abrams did in the early 70s. A key part of the problem is the combination of dominant US power of all kinds, and its insulated geopolitical position. Thus, it has been in the position, since at least the end of the Cold War, if not since 1945, of being able to decide whether or not to go to war and when to get out of the ones it gets into. What’s the background theory for that situation? One of the problems is in fact with military theory in general, that tends to be prescriptive and leads, insidiously at times, but more often explicitly, to the notion that there is some kind of winning formula. This spawns unwarranted optimism in both civilians and military folks. A different approach to military theory is needed that is descriptive and clinical.
In the late-1930s the militaries of the Western world could be generally described as composed of a relatively elite motorized/mechanized force atop a large mass of foot-slogging and horse-drawn units.
Even then the trend was clear to any who wanted to see it: by the late stage of WW2, the Western world’s winning armies were fully moto-mech.
Today the militaries of the Western world can generally be described as composed of a small but ever-growing elite of special forces, which are in turn increasingly weaponizing with drones and robots — and all that sitting atop a mass of (often still conscript-based) moto-mech units.
In another 10 or so years, within those same First World armies, the moto-mech mass will be gone and the SF will be composed mostly of robots/drones along with a super-elite of human operators/soldiers. Even as they keep getting ever-improving robots/drones, the humans will also be undergoing constant bio and cyber enhancements.
That change is effectively pre-destined, given the West’s geo-strategic and internal-political realities. The present moto-mech masses are way too expensive — both in money and political costs to their nations’ governing elites — to be maintained much longer. At the same time, the ever-increasing pace of technological improvement is rendering the hi-tech SF ever cheaper, at least when measured against the moto-mech alternative. For example, the US Army is currently organizing what is being termed a “Special Forces Division” — it doesn’t as yet officially have that designation, but it will.
So the whole debate laid out in the article above is really an intellectual artifact from the previous century. As the Germans say: “Dass ist Vorbei” — meaning all those considerations are obsolete and increasingly meaningless and aren’t going to be coming back.
The new concern is to begin to layout TO&E for the evolving new human-cyber units on the one hand, and — on the socio-political side — to try to grasp what that military change will mean for democratic governance.
The RMA is just beginning. Think of the tanks (and the doctrine to use them) available in 1938, and compare them (machines and doctrine) available in 1944. That was six years.
Thank you for contributing this thoughtful piece to this great forum. I think you and Fallows are talking past each other. You both have valid points. I don’t think he’s laying any blame at all at the feet of the US military. I think he’d probably agree with you that the military and civilian leadership have failed in setting goals and definable success (There seems to be a consensus in the blogosphere about the failure of American elites in thinking creatively and boldly beyond rent-seeking and the status quo). It seems to me Fallow is primarily troubled by the growing the disconnect between the US writ large and the US military, and the implications of such disconnect. I can say from my personal experience from my deployments that very few people outside my immediate family cared when I went overseas. And from my admittedly imperfect and informal poll among my Green Beret peers, I daresay this seems to be a widespread occurrence.
I think there are several factors. 1) Lack of skin in the game, as you and Fallows have pointed out. Not having to serve and not having immediate family/friends who are serving distances us from the realities of going to war. Not having direct experience also means that people don’t feel qualified to critique the military and all its bumbling idiocy. 2) War fatigue…WoT has been the longest war we’ve been involved in. Back in 2011, with our ongoing efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the average American wasn’t batting an eye at Libya because it was all happening “over there.” 3) Incredible selfishness and inward focus of the Millennials, or the Me Me Me Generation.
My generation is defined not by any ideal or service but by how much attention, Facebook Likes, and clicks one can attract. We yearn for the spotlight and accolade, for people telling us how awesome and special we are. Throughout college and grad school, most of my peers claimed to reject a career in finance, consulting, (insert traditional career path) and wanted to “change the world.” yet a cursory LinkedIn check shows that the vast majority of my peers ended up in the very careers they sneered at. “Service” became another buzzword for resume building. We have trouble with follow through and commitment to a cause that’s not ME.
What does this have to do with the growing civil-military disconnect? People simply don’t care. We lack the civic spirit to serve and more simply to care about what’s going on beyond our immediate surrounding. In a society of growing interconnectedness and complexity, where attention span is short and it’s hard to stand out among the sea of noise, we are becoming incredibly fragmented and aloof to the idea of service and causes beyond our own immediate selfish interests. In a time where news, events, or causes are evaluated by new-ness or novelty factor, it’s hard for something remote like war to dominate our attention, unless it is ME going to war. When I talk to prior generations of SF soldiers, I am humbled by their sense of service and professionalism. I am especially humbled when I talk to WWII vets. In WWII, people committed suicide when they were told they couldn’t serve.
This is admittedly not derived from any rigorous analysis but my own observations. Having had the fortune to attend an elite college and then graduate school after my term of service, I am troubled by what I saw of the future of American elite (I do not exempt myself from my peers. I wish I could serve longer but have my own selfish goals to achieve). Everyone is seeking to collect badges, brands, buzzword on our resume. We are not looking to make a difference through sustained commitment or engagement. We want to create a buzz and move on to the next cool thing.
I agree with most that a draft is out of the question. The way we equip, train, and fight makes it too expensive to get everyone in. Perhaps a mandatory period of public service after HS but before college with orgs like Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, or Teach for America could reinstitute a stronger civic spirit in us. But I’m not holding my breath.
Kevin – Excellent post.
I do not agree that a Draft is out of the question. We heap praise on the military and commit then without real a winnable strategy. Why? Because the Leadership of this Country does not commit their own children.
My solution: Bring back a WW2 style essentially non-deferable draft that is tied to the War Powers Act. If the US goes to War, then the Draft is triggered to provide a portion of the needed additional personnel.
If you are going to send me or my child to war, then the President’s, Congressman’s, CEO’s kids are at high risk of going also. I suspect that we would go from simply handing DOD resources to giving them a Winning Strategy.
My larger point is: technology is making it possible for the West in general, and the US in particular, to maintain and grow its military power and superiority while actually putting less — not more — “skin” into the game.
So, even if it’s just some shrinking fraction of the millennial (and soon to be post-millennial) generation(s) who feel any attraction toward the idea of national service, that really matters less and less with each passing year.
With a population of over 320 million, the US can ever more easily drawn from that large mass the smaller and smaller number of elite personnel we need to keep our military in tip-top shape.
It’s like this: back in the year AD 1, it took 97 people working in agriculture to feed themselves and three additional people, for a total of 100. Today it takes three people working in agriculture to feed themselves and 97 other people, for a total of 100. All that change came about through gradually enhancing agricultural science.
Today the same process is taking place within the realm of the military, but it’s not taking 2000 years to come to fruition.
So the original article’s point about this perceived “disconnect” between the masses of Americans and their military IS TRUE, but it matters less and less each passing day.
Dass ist Vorbei.
In 2011, Obama withdrew all the troops including any follow-on units that could have remained in place to provide security. Now he’s running from it because Iraq is collapsing in the face of the very Al Qaeda groups he claimed were “JV”. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were won before he was installed the first time, and over the last 6 years, he’s flushed everything we accomplished.
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/paging-obama-iraq-is-falling-to-al-qaeda/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/the-punchline-to-obamas-afghanistan-joke-the-taliban-gets-an-office-in-doha/
“We” didn’t lose a damned thing. We were withdrawn by a President who said “winning isn’t necessarily the goal”.