David Kennedy on America's "Mercenary Army"

Professor Kennedy, about whom I've blogged before, was the faculty speaker at the Senior Luncheon today. Excellent choice. He talked about graduating in general, and the real world vs. the academic world in a very engaging way, and everyone was smiling and laughing.

His main point, or his main serious point, that he eventually came around to is that he's concerned that America today has a "mercenary army." He was careful to distinguish between the character of the men and women in uniform, "these are not the hated Hessians that George III hired," and what actually concerned him, the amount of civic participation involved in deploying the armed forces. In short, he's worried that the unprecedented power and lethality of the American armed forces can be deployed without burdening or even inconveniencing the general American public. He spoke about how citizenship used to be partially defined in terms of an obligation to defend the population, but that most people never feel this obligation, and that makes us insufficiently involved in where great violence can be inflicted in our names by a professional military. Like any other speech in the circumstances, it ended with a call for the graduating seniors to go out and change the world, take on civic responsibility, and so on, but it was an interesting and unexpected twist to hear a humanities professor at a bastion of liberal thought say, in effect, "Go join the army. It's your duty."

Now on one hand it's tempting to dismiss Kennedy's comparisons to World War II America, where we were involved in a total war against vicious ideologies supported by powerful industrial nations. Today's vicious ideologies are, thankfully, far less well endowed and equipped than Nazism, fascism, and Soviet communism. Islamic totalitarianism doesn't pose an existential threat to America, and maybe it's okay for a minority to really worry about the fight, when that fight has to do with making sure that a fairly limited set of Very Bad Things don't happen. Maybe these concerns would evaporate in the face of an enemy that demanded full mobilization. But assuming that Kennedy is on to something, and that it's problematic for most people to barely feel the costs of military action, how could that be fixed?

For all the talk of the dignity of the citizen-soldier, from a policy perspective it's hard to argue with results. If a professional, all-volunteer force fights better, it looks like lunacy to advocate compulsory service for domestic policy reasons. The first responsibility of armies is to win. And looking forward towards increasing use of automation, it actually looks like the human costs of war will be borne by ever-fewer living, breathing, and voting Americans.

In what other ways, then, could costs be shared? Have military expenditures earmarked on everyone's taxes? Require everyone to serve a limited term in support roles? I'm worried that if this is actually a problem, potential solutions aren't very apparent.

Update: Welocme Mudville readers. You can find a full transcript of Kenndey's remarks that day here. There are still valid criticisms of the column: it's not a good idea to change the structure of the military to achieve social goals, and as some have pointed out, an all-volunteer force can be a check on adventurism (Marginal Revolution makes that point here). But the hysterical "he's a crazy leftist who hates America" criticisms splashed all over the place don't look to me like they hold water.