Reviewing the Legions

Jerry Pournelle argues that it is time to take a long hard look at the role and requirements of our standing professional military. I have reproduced the entire blurb here, but you can find the original here.

National Debate on the Legions

It is time for a national debate on the military: how big do we need it? What are our military objectives and goals? Do we go abroad seeking monsters to slay, or are we the friends of liberty everywhere but guardians only of our own? If guardians of our own, what are the threats we must guard against? Who are our potential enemies and how stable are they? Where abroad do our national interests lie?

These are not trivial questions. They are not politically easy, either, since the needs of the services are different. It is much easier to build a large Army from cadre than greatly to expand a professional Navy. (The Caine Mutiny had some revelations about that.) The Air Force has to decide just what its role is now that SAC no longer exists, and we are not faced with 26,000 launchable nuclear warheads. The Army can’t be reduced simply to cadre. What is the proper size and role of the Marine Corps? These are not just political questions although they will be answered by politicians.

One problem is that we don’t have many who can debate these questions. As Kagan said long ago in his comments on the Peloponnesian War, if you seek peace you must keep that peace. Or as Appius Claudius put it, if you would have peace, be thou then prepared for war. Of course most of those who will be debating these matters will not have heard of Appius Claudius, or Plutarch, or Thucydides, and if they vaguely remember that people with those names existed they will not have read about them, much less have read them. There was a time when we could assume some minimum familiarity with the History of Western Civilization among all “educated” people, which is to say, all college graduates and most high school graduates. Now education costs a great deal more than it did back then, but few know as much as was routinely known by the class dullard in a decent university. We expected our Senators to be familiar with keeping the peace, and what a Pyrrhic victory was. Indeed we expected anyone who put himself up as a candidate for Congress to have some familiarity with the basic documents and ideas in the development of Western Civilization. Now – well, not so much, despite the enormous costs of our education systems.

And yet: we can’t afford what we are doing. We can’t afford to take a meat axe to the Legions, either. If we are to remain a Republic we must discuss these issues, which means that the debates must start, and those who do know some history will have to spoon feed it to the many who don’t – and worse, to those who have been persuaded that they know things they do not know. We have far too many who seem to have majored in self-esteem while in fact learning little that is estimable.

I agree. While a standing professional force is preferred over a conscript force for competence, reaction speed, and effectiveness, it is a voracious consumer of cash. It also carries the distinct disadvantage that it can be turned on the people who feed it, which was a primary concern of the Founding Fathers.

I don't deny the efficacy of our military in Iraq and Afghanistan; modern soldiers, sailors, Marines (and yes, even flyboys) are the most proficient, well-trained, and well-equipped in the history of the Republic. What I'm concerned about is that no one can give me a good reason why we are still in Afghanistan -- in massive force -- ten years on. What is our long term goal? To track down and kill a few ratty terrorists? Do we really need 100,000 troops on the ground for that mission? Could it not be better executed by CIA operatives and special operations teams?

As Jerry says, we can't afford to just "take a meat axe" to the military, as many on the Left would have us do. But the military has grown very large and very powerful in a very short period of time. That is cause for concern, and needs to be examined closely.