Kitty Boon: Good morning everybody, I am Kitty Boone; I am with the Aspen Institute. We have a joke sort of internally when we create the Ideas first of all that we have way too many people from little universities in the Northeast, and not from big universities in the West, and and not enough from Palo Alto and because David was my advisor and my history professor at Stanford, I am very thrilled to be able to present him to you. David is a professor of American studies, Stanford. And when he was here last year, he participated in a panel discussion where this topic if I call came up and he has decided to come back and talk to you about our military, so welcome.
David Kennedy: Thank you Kitty, there is another former student of mine here, but I don't know if he is here this morning John Sullivan Sullivan are you here? Well, Sullivan and I had met at Yale I was in the graduate school phase of my professional development. And among my other students there was in a manner of speaking was George W Bush, who was an undergraduate at the time I was a graduate student, and though I have absolutely no memory of them what so ever, it turns out that I was the Chief Grader in a course that he took from my great mentor John Morton Blum. So when George Bush was elected president in 2000, Blum called me up and he said Kennedy, he said I have checked your records here, and in the year that George W Bush took my course, you were the Chief Grader and I went to the registrar's office and I looked in, you gave him a grade of 82 which in Yale terms in those day B above or B minus. The story bears on my right to be speaking to here today. And he said he could not possibly deserve that 82, the fix must have but and somehow, and you gave him a grade he didn't deserve, and that's why he passed my course and if you didn't give him the grade he really deserved, he would have flunked by the course he would have flunked out of Yale, he wouldn't be the president of United States today and I am holding you personally responsible. So that's my brush with Chaos theory. But it does have kind of an oblique bearing on my right to talk about this subject here with you this morning and the subject is the composition and the configuration of the United States Armed Forces. And I am going to talk mostly in terms of telling you a bit of a story about the nature of the force structure that we have today. And about particularly about the role of technology in shaping the character of that force and it's composition. But my deeper subjects are really not the military itself. My deepest subject, the one I want principally to dwell on is the implications for the political accountability of the force structure that we have. And time permitting at the end of these remarks I want to say a couple of things about the implications of the force structure for social equity and social comity. And the premise of these remarks is simple, that the United States today has configured its armed forces in a fashion that has many of the attributes of a Mercenary army. And I will shortly explain what I mean by that term, Mercenary army which I understand can be inflammatory. And I want to offer as I say a brief historical account of why and how such a force came into being. A story with more than a few ironic twists, but more importantly to repeat when I said just a moment ago, I want to explore some of the political, moral and psychological implications that the existence of such a force with those characteristics poses for the society. And the proposition that I want to argue is this. That the current State of Civil Military Relations in the United States raises some truly urgent questions about America's role in the world, about the informing doctrines of National Security Policy and about the health of our democracy, and the moral basis of our society perhaps as well as it's very integrity. Now I want to acknowledge at the outset that many people I know this for a fact, I have been spoken on this subject in other forums that many people find it offensive, to describe this country's military as having any of the characteristics of a Mercenary army. So I want to emphasis here at the outset is with as much emphasis as I can give it I want to say that my use of that term Mercenary is there no way what so ever intended as a criticism of those who serve in uniform. My own belief as it happens as that the profession of arms can be a noble calling and I harbor no disrespect what so ever for those who follow that calling. Their motives for service are not my concern here. Though their demographic profile does suggest some issues into which I will return about equity and comity. But to repeat yet again my principle interest on this occasion is to undertake neither a psychological nor a sociological analysis of today's service personnel, but I want rather to emphasis some structural questions about the relation of the military we now have to the conduct of American foreign policy and especially to the important matter of political accountability. So a better title for these remarks instead of saying does the United States had a Mercenary army which that I think the title Kitty that you gave it. But the title it wouldn't fit in the program and doesn't serve the purpose of being a kind of headline and announcement of the subject. But a better and more accurate title was, thus the United States now have an army whose character tempts the political leadership to treat it as if it were a Mercenary force. That is the real just what I am trying to argue here. Or yet another way to put the same proposition, do we now have a military that has created a moral hazard as the philosophers and risk assessment people like to talk about. And that it's used and its deployment is largely unshackled from the kinds of consequences that the deployment of military forces had for other societies than history overtime. That's that's the heart of the matter. Now the fact remains, I turn to this again that some people take the term mercenary army quite literally and I don't mean this is upon as fighting words. And if the close of these remarks, I hope to say something about a bit of a fight that they recently provoked in which it is truly was one of the combatants and what that dust up suggests about the current state of American culture more broadly construed not just in former political realm. And including some implications for the particular sector which I have lived out my career that is higher education. Now my random house dictionary defines Mercenary as follows. "Working or acting merely for money or other reward, hired to serve in a foreign army". Now I do not want to be understood as suggesting that American Service People today work merely for money. Though in fact, recent recruiting campaigns for the all volunteer force lay a lot of stress on wages and benefits and signing bonuses. Then of course we hire our soldiers and sailors and airmen today from mostly from within our own society. Unlike for example, those much much maligned Hessians whom George III employed to fight against our revolutionary forbearers. Though the fact remains interestingly enough, touched on in today's New York Times front page article on naturalization ceremonies in fact. That some 70,000 non citizens are currently serving in the Active Duty Forces. And the fact which prompted the Bush administration in 2002 to expedite Naturalization Procedures for aliens in the military by rather drastically reducing their residency requirement. In any case, to belabor the obvious, so I just like to recognize that Mercenary is a term that carries a lot of negative connotative freight, so I would like to try here to unburden the word, at least of some of that freight and focus on it's core meaning which is routed in the Latin term from which it's derived mercari, to trade or to exchange. What are the terms and trade between civil society in this country today and the military organization that fights in its name and on its behalf. And as you will see a subsidiary but closely linked question is what role has technology played in defining the terms of that exchange or to put it in still more straight forward way what is the relation of military service to citizenship and of our current force structure to political decision making. Now our forbearers had already answers to those kinds of questions, from the time of the ancient Greeks through the American revolutionary war, and well down into the 20th century. The obligation to bear arms and the privileges of citizenship were very closely bound together. In republics the histories of which we have from Aristotle's Athens to Machiavelli's Florence, Thomas Jefferson's Virginia and beyond. To be a full citizen was to be ready to shoulder arms. Indeed in many cases, particularly in ancient Greece, to provide one's own arm is that one's own expense and it was precisely their respect for the link between service and citizenship, was why the why the founding fathers of this society was so committed to militias and so worried about standing armies. With Samuel Adams one of the founders said we are always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Franklin Roosevelt, closer to our own time drew from that same well of doctrine and sentiment, in his I think still to this day his extraordinarily moving D-Day prayer, and which she recited over the radio as the Normandy landings were going on in which he called those GIs, the people from the greatest generation. Our sons pride of our nation lately drawn from the ways of peace, they yearn but for the end of the battle and for their return to the haven of home. Now, African-Americans have understood the linkage between service and citizenship in the civil war and again in both world wars I and II when they demanded combat roles as it means to advance their claims to full citizenship rights. So for more than two millennium in virtually the entire body of the history of the western world. The tradition of the citizen soldiers have serve the indispensable purposes of strengthening civic engagement, promoting individual liberty, and perhaps most notably again I use the term encouraging and sustaining political accountability. Today my, the core of these remarks is that today that tradition has been seriously compromised. No American is now obligated to military service. Few will in fact ever serve in uniform, even fewer will actually taste battle and very few of those who do serve and do see battle will have ever sat in a classroom of an elite university, like Stanford or Harvard or Princeton or what have you. Now, a comparison with a prior generations war can I think serve to illuminate the scale and to suggest both the novelty and the gravity and the hazard of this situation. In World War II the United States took some 16 million men and several 1000 women in the service. The great majority of them despite of a lot of folk called the contrary, the great majority of them draftees. Once more it mobilized the economic that war -World War II mobilize the economic and the social and the psychological resources of the society down to the last factory and a rail car and victory garden and classroom. World War II is rightly understood as a total war. It compelled the participation of all citizens. As it happens it exacted the last full measure of devotion from some four hundred and five thousand three hundred and ninety nine military personnel and it required an enormous commitment of the society's energies and material and economic resources to secure the ultimate victory. Today's military in contrast numbers just 1.4 million plus a few and a 1000 maybe approaching that 1.5 million active duty personnel with about another nearly 900,000 in the reserves. In a country whose population has more than double since 1945. So proportionate to population today's active duty military establishment is about four percent of the size of the force that won World War II. And what's more a fact of I think absolutely equal if that even greater importance. And they behemoth thirteen trillion dollar American economy that we now enjoy. The total military budget of some roughly 500 billion dollars is about 4 percent of GDP. That is about one third of the rate of military expenditure related to GDP at the height of the cold war. In world war II so I am using here as a benchmark, that rate that is the claim of the military on the society's overall productive resources was about 40 percent, a greater than 10 fold difference between world war II and now in the relative incidence of the military's war time claim on the societies overall resource base. And yet this relatively small and relatively inexpensive force is at the same time by far and by common admission the most potent military establishment that the world has ever seen. So I say relatively spent a small and relatively inexpensive advisedly because the absolute numbers tell a very different story by some estimates responsible estimates in my view. U.S defense expenditures even had four percent of GDP are equal to the sum of all other nation's military budgets combined. A calculation that testifies as much to the scale of this economy as it does to the role of the military in our political leaderships, conception of its security and needs and foreign policy, priorities and the instruments relevant there too. So the American military in short is at once, exceptionally lean and extraordinarily lethal. It displays what might be called a compound asymmetry. It is far larger and more destructive than any potentially rival force, and perhaps paradoxically it is at the same time far smaller with respect to the American population and economy that at any time in the last half century and more. And again as I get to just a moment, technology goes a long way to explaining this particularly unusual compound asymmetry. Now I find the implications of this what I am calling this compound asymmetry is fairly unsettling. Histories most powerful military force can now be sent into battle in the name of a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so. The United States can wage war today while putting at risk, very few of its sons and daughters and only those who go willingly into harms away, and unlike virtually all previous societies in history. The United States today can inflict absolutely prodigious destructive damage on others while not materially disrupting its own civilian economy. So we have in short for better or worse we have evolved an unprecedented historically unprecedented and uniquely American method of warfare, that does not ask precisely because it does not require sacrifice, if by that we mean the for the large scale personal or material contributions from the citizenry at large on who is behalf of that force is being deployed. We heard yesterday from Michael Sandal Leo here is another forms as well, the fact is sacrifices the missing term in the discussion of our current engagement with the world, and my argument is that we don't hear about sacrifice exactly because there is no need for it, given the configuration of the forces that we have. Now, some may celebrate these developments as triumphs of the soldierly art or as testimony to American wealth and know how and technological achievement. And those had all be reasonably accurate descriptions of what we have. But there is another and more troubling side to this story as well, it seems to me. The present structure of civil-military relations constitute a standing temptation to the kind of military adventurism, that the founders feared was among the greatest dangers of standing armies. A danger embodied in their days that happened shortly after the founding of the Republic. But in their time by the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Thomas Jefferson described as quote as having transferred the destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm. But Napoleon at least had some or other to sustain a broad public consensus to support the live on mass of these huge draft armies that he, which was one of great innovations in the history of warfare, and the supporters well the significant drafts on economic resources that made his particular adventures possible. So we can only imagine how Napoleon if he could be time warped up to our own time that might have envied a 21st century leader, who shared some of his transformative ambitions, but who commanded a low cost unusually affective force that substantially liberated him from the constraints of man power and finite material that eventually brought the emperor Napoleon's ambitions to a conclusion. So how did this situation come about? Here is the history lesson. Now the ultimate origins of this story no doubt trace back to the most primitive efforts even before record in history, to gain advantages of weaponry or wealth over once adversaries and at the least possible cost and this is the story that is embedded in a much better and well documented stories about the evolution of armies and military forces from those citizen militias of ancient Greece, to the emergence of true Mercenary guns for hire people who are scarcely distinguishable from banditi in medieval Europe to the emergence of so called regular or semi-professional forces mostly in 18th and 17th century Britain and the continents as well. And the emergence after Napoleon right down through World War II in our own time of these vast conscript armies, gone from the manpower, available manpower pool of the entire citizenry. An era, in the history of warfare that I think is largely at past. But in the case that have, the case of the emergence of this particular force that I am talking about today, the more immediate origins of this standard events, they lay not way back they are necessarily the mists of time that historians like to explore. But in the train of events that's following the Vietnam era. In 1968 then presidential candidate Richard Nixon cast about for ways that he might politically dampen the rising tide of anti-Vietnam war feeling. One of the devices that he began to think seriously about was a pledge to end the draft, which was the focal point of a lot of campus disruption and these truth be told I think than an underlined factor that animated a lot of protests our campuses throughout the country. Drafts of course have been a factor in the lives of a whole generation of young man including your speaker today, through the several decades of the cold war. But Nixon now thought began to think for pretty exclusively political reasons about bringing it to a conclusion. So he tasked his defense secretary Melvin Laird to study this matter Laird in turn turned to one of his predecessors Thomas Gates have been secretary of defense in the Eisenhower administration to over see the feasibility study of shifting to an all volunteer force. And in 1973 the selective services system stopped drafting young men and the United States adopted in all volunteer force the force we had every since. And not incidentally with wind out of the Vietnam War the same time frame and there are really to mid 1970s that force is now all volunteer force became remarkably smaller, shrinking from 40 divisions in the time of the Vietnam War to just 16 divisions by the time that Nixon left office in 1974. Again by way the comparison the army fielded 90 divisions in World War II, today's army numbers 18 division, 10 in the active duty force and the eight in the reserves, down from approximately I believe it was 28 divisions at the time of the first Gulf War. Now the the impact of Vietnam on the size and the character of the American military and on the structure of civil military relations does not end with this particular set of facts. The last army chief of staff to serve under Richard Nixon, General Creighton Abrams, who is it happens was a veteran of both World War II and the Vietnam War, was among of the members that rather conspicuous members of the officer core of his generation who were deeply disillusioned with the way the military have been used, or they saw misuse in the Vietnam episode. So to prevent what he, Abrams regarded as a repeating mistakes of the Vietnam era. Abrams devised some thing called the total force doctrine, the total force doctrine. Now this doctrine grew out of several considerations or several, there is several motives for it not the least of which was budgetary, but its deepest logic I will touched on the budgetary matters just a moment, but its deepest logic was so to structure to the armed forces that they could not be easily deployed for large scale long term deployments in the absence of strong and sustained public support. Something that they did Abrams and his colleagues thought had gone fatally missing in the Vietnam era. Now the means to this end that to greater force that would be difficult to deploy absent guaranteed or more or less guaranteed long term public support, was to create a force that in the essence of which was to tightly integrate the active and reserve components. Now budgetary logic comes in here in part because reserve components are less expensive to maintain by and large in the active forces. But the real logic to this is to repeat was so to put together the total force hence the name, total force doctrine that it was in inextricably dependent on the reserves to serve a political, even more than a fiscal purpose. The reserves are traditionally composed of somewhat older men with deeper roots and responsibilities in civil society. Then the typical 18 year old draftee of the Vietnam War for that matter the World War II era, and Abrams hope there was this structure in place, political leaders would hesitate to undertake a major long term deployment that would necessarily, because of the integration of the active and reserved forces be highly disruptive to countless communities and to a tranche of the demographics, you might say in the society that had a lot of stake, there wasn't just a rootless was still unformed 18 year old kid. Unless they were absolutely or sure they could be maybe absolute is too high standard, but they were very, very sure of solid and durable public support. So in affect and its critics is actually voiced this on this matter. Abrams doctrine was intended to raise the threshold for presidential demonstration of a genuine threat to national security, and to require presidential cultivation of the broad consensus of the nature and urgency of the threat as a prerequisite for military deployment. So to repeat as its come to flush it out some of its critics have said that Abrams action constitute to the kind of extra constitutional constraint on the presidents freedom of action as Commander in chief. In fact the total force doctrine had a legislative counter part, it's called the war powers act of 1973, which had ultmately the same objective that is to restrict the president's ability to commit troops, absent a really clear and commencing demonstration of a national security threat. And in not incidentally the war powers act passed over Presidents Nixon's veto, and no subsequent president has acknowledged its constitutionality. And since I mentioned the constitution let me just open a little bit about the side bar here, because underlining the war powers act, and indeed underlying the recent debate in the congress and authorizing the surge and the the financing necessary to support this surge, is of course article one Section A paragraph 11 of the constitution, which gives the congress the power to declare war. And here might be noted not so incidentally as matter fact that - that constitutionally invested power in the congress to be the part of government that has the authority to declare war has been exercised I put it to you to question how many times you think congress exercised that power in the 200 or some year history of the republics. We are at the right end of the spectrum that the answer is five. Anybody cared to name the five don't you know - know this don't you. 1812? Spanish America is number 3, World War I is number 4, World War II is obviously number five. What's the missing item? Mexican war, 1812 Mexican war, Spanish American war, War World Wars I and II okay, five only five times as the congress formally exercised this constitutional power to declare war. The navy department has a website in which they publish a list of overseas military engagement since 1789 and at the list is two hundred and some I think is 268, I forget precise that was well over 200. So there you have pretty interesting contrast, 200 plus military deployments overseas, but only five of those fully constitutionally sanctioned by congressional declaration of war. Now so this this leads me to the conclusion, that in fact over the two centuries plus history of the republic we have been struggling to making do with chronically deficient constituently mechanism for bringing deliberative democratic practices meaningful to bare on the decision to wage war, all kinds of ways to understand that situation arguing, the fact is we still are not worked out, even after generations of practice and trial, a truly reliable way to bring them from democratic liberation to bare on these kinds of decisions. So what I am talking about here is may be a special case in our time, so peculiar type of characteristics of the much more chronic a problem. Okay, now the force shaped by the total force doctrine by Abrams ideas persisted into the early years of the Reagan Presidency when then defense sectary Caspar Weinberger took the logic, that the logic of the total force doctrine it is an insulating the military from ill considered rash or imprudent political decisions to deploy. Weinberger took that logic step or two further and precipitating incidents on this case was not Vietnam it's has happened in Lebanon, where the Reagan administration send troops over the objections of the Pentagon and join chiefs. And is many of you this room will recall on October 23rd 1983, 241 Marines died on a suicide attack on the Beirut barracks. So is in reaction to that particular catrastophy in the following month that Weinberger declared what came to be known as the Weinberger doctrine, in a speech called the "Uses of military power", and he lay down a set of six principles that were in his view to govern the decision to resort the arms, and these principles have a kind Doric simplicity there is no rocket science here, this is pretty straight forward stuff. Here are the six principles on the Weinberger doctrine the idea was these are the ideas that principles should govern the decision to actually take up arms. One, the United States should commit forces to combat, unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved. Two, US troops should only be committed whole heartedly and with the clear intension of winning other wise troops should not be committed. Three, US combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political or military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives. Four, the relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary. Five, the one that most concerns be here this morning, US troops should not be committed to battle without a reasonable assurance of the support of US public opinion and the congress. And six, the commitment of US troops should be considered only as a last resort. Now seven years later in the context of the first Gulf War, other than the chairman of the joint chief and staff General Colin Powell, gloss the Weinberger doctrine and in the process managed to substitute in the publics mind his name foe Weinberger's and the is the nomenclature by which to understand this general business by adding two criteria to the six that Weinberger had laid down. First of all that the United States should have over whelming force in the face of the adversary force before and under took any commitments. So that the victory was all but guaranteed by the asymmetrical relation of the forces. And secondly, that there should be an exit strategy, for any force thus thus deployed. These are simply footnotes you might say to the Weinberger doctrines logic, but we now speak much more familiarly about the Powell doctrine, we do about the Weinberger doctrine, so much for being the originator of these things. All right, now like Abraham of course, Colin Powell was a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, and he was inspired to lay down the call-pardon me, the Powell doctrine, and not least of all, by his own reflections on the same event that precipitated Weinberger's statement in the first place that is the Beirut bombings, and here is an exert from that the suicide attacks on the marine barracks, here is an exert from the speech in which Powell laid out what comes to be known as the Powell doctrine, he said "We must not send military forces into a crisis with an unclear mission they cannot accomplish, such as we did when we sent the US marines in Lebanon in 1983, we inserted those proud warriors, Powell said, into middle of the five faction civil war complete with terrorists, hostage takers and a dozen spies in every camp and said gentlemen be a buffer", the results were 241 dead marines killed and US withdraw from the trouble area. So my point here is simply, that contrary to many stereotypes about the blood thirstiness of presumably warrior class, these various doctrines, Abrahams total force doctrines, the Weinberger doctrine, the Powell doctrine, did not seek primarily to articulate rationales for doing battle, instead they were principally intended as formulas designed and supported by professional soldiers in the case of Abrahams and Powell for avoiding war if it is all possible, or waging war only in the most unambiguous and extreme circumstances. So like the total force doctrine that preceded them and inform them, the Weinberger doctrine and the Powell doctrine grew out have a persistent anxiety, on the part of senior military leaders, that they lived in a world, were it was far too easy for their political masters to behave irresponsibly, even recklessly by committing the armed forces to action in the absence of clearly compliant reasons, a well defined mission and the reliable properly informed approval of the citizenry. So these were counsels of prudence and a responsibility, intended to induce caution and consensus building when confronting the decision to make war, so how affective did those doctrines prove to be? Well, opinions may well differ about that matter, but here now I want to get to the technological part of the story, because there is an intervening development, actually intervenes strictly speaking even after the articulation of the Powell doctrine some 16, 17 years ago, since essentially, the time of the first Gulf war in 1991, that has served further to weaken the already pretty frail structural inhibitions on rash or imprudent political decisions to resort to military force that Abrahams and Weinberger and Powell were trying to check, and this intervening development usually goes by the name of the RMA or the Revolution in Military Affairs, all this refer to it as the RMA. Now all historians of this matter know that they have in fact then many RMAs in the history of warfare, that is many revolutions in the way war is waged from the introduction of the stirrup in the middle ages which made possible a mounted cavalry that the horse will no longer just for transporting troops, the horse became a platform from which one could fight with heavier weaponry that one could on the ground, stirrup is a technological innovation that changes the history of warfare. The invention of gun powder is another revolution in military affairs. The Napoleons introduction of mass conscript armies is yet another innovation to the revolution in military affairs. Blitzkrieg in world war II, strategic bombing in world war II, and of course the advent of nuclear weapons in 1945 are all themselves revolutions in military affairs, that all of them fundamentally redefine strategic as well as tactical doctrines. Okay but this newest RMA, the one that I am talking about here this morning, this newest revolution in military affairs is notable, for the speed with which it is - it has worked it's affects or its intimate relationship to parallel developments in Civil society. And I think by a large for the lack of public understanding, with which it is going forward. The RMA that I am talking about here this morning was foreshadowed in the 1980s in the writings of a man, by name Albert Wohlstetter, who is long and influential theorist of nuclear war at the Rand Corporation and then on the Faculty at the University of Chicago were as it happens among his students was Paul Wolfowitz. In a series of articles in the 1980s Wohlstetter began to dwell on the factor of accuracy in weapon systems, in determining force composition and war fighting doctrine, and as really as 1983 he began to speculate that a 10 fold improvement in accuracy was roughly equivalent to a 1000 fold increase in shear explosive power. And by extension you can do the numbers or add zeros, a 100 fold increase in accuracy amplified destructive potential by a factor of one million. Now the implications of that calculus of the leveraging affect of the accuracy of delivery of explosive power, were energetically pursued in the office of the Pentagons the Pentagons office of net assessment led in particular by a man by name Andrew Marshall. And Marshall was much as any individual I suppose can probably lay the strongest claim that to be the father of this particular RMA. Marshall and the Office of Net Assessment promoted a broad program of capitalizing militarily on the information and computer revolutions that were then so rapidly and pervasively beginning to transform the civilians sector, especially impressive advances in very large scale integration technologies VLSI, many of them developed in my home county Santa Clara county, Silicon Valley, California. And specifically the military proponents of the application of these technologies to military force stress the potential for dramatic technological upgrading, of stealth and stand off weapons of all weather and all terrain fighting capacities unman systems like the predator, space-based networking, joint force integration, miniaturization, range, endurance, precision precision precision. Now all of these innovations were un spectacular that's why in the early stages of the 2003 Iraq war, though as it happens this is a different kind of story that they have manifestly proved far or as relevant to the occupational and nation building missions that have followed the conventional military. That is another subject about the in appropriateness of these technologies to the actual mission in hand, but that's what we talk about that perhaps later. The first, the very first initial fruits of this RMA were actually evident in the 1991 Gulf war, the war over the Iraqi incursion into Kuwait and you remember remember, I am sure many people in this room will remember that kind of see Green television. The scenes - of the great news, celebration of the smart air launched weapons. But in fact, that the first Gulf war that the Kuwait matter is best understood militarily I think as the that we saw the final mission of a force that had been configured to fight a fairly conventional land battle against Warsaw Pact advisories in central Europe. The fact is the so called smart weapons or smart bombs kind of only about 10 percent of the ordinance used in the 1991 conflict and the decisive action was General Norman Schwarzkopf's blitzkrieg-like flanking attack against the Iraqi army which is a classic World War II era Maneuver, it mimicked the great German run around the Maginot line in 1940 or Patton's great sweep to Argentan in 1944. Nothing is very innovative about that in the history of warfare. But by the time of the second gulf war second Iraq war in 2003, smart munitions then in the space of little more than a decade, separating these two conflicts. Smart munitions made up something approaching 90 percent of the American arsenal in the second engagement. So the implications of accuracy that thing that Wohlstetter had talked about so much in the 1980s, the implications of accuracy as a force multiplier prove to be really quite spectacular. I will give you one example, refer again to the conflict that I talked about earlier the World War II. By the calculations that we get from the post World war II study of the effects of aerial warfare against Germany and Japan, very closely studied matter. It is called the strategic bombing survey, people try to figure out just how important was aerial warfare bringing Germany and eventually Japan to its knees, with all kinds of calculations done about the effective to airpower and out of those studies comes the calculation, that on average in World War II, it took 108 aircrafts dropping 648 bombs to destroy a single target. That that was the the volume of delivery system and weaponry you actually needed to be sure you took out a single target. During the 2001 camping in Afghanistan, which is the first truly large scale demonstration of this particular RMA I am talking about. 38 aircraft destroyed, 159 targets in a single night. So there there you have a pretty dramatic contrast. The the weaponry that was used in World War II and the weaponries now available and the way in which the RMA vastly amplified, the fire power and the fighting effectiveness of the individual soldier or sailor or airman making it far more feasible to field a much smaller force, capable of reeking much greater destruction them the lumbering terrain bound largely sightless armies that have clashed on thousands of battlefields since time in memorial. So we have here a convergence you might say of several developments. Going dating back to the immediate post Vietnam Era, fiscal considerations, political considerations and especially this technological intervention cultivated by under Marshall and company that have conversed in our time to yield this extremely downsized and remarkably effective military establishment that we now have. Now to repeat, many observers and commentators on this matter have applauded these developments. Especially the all volunteer force in the RMA has triumphs of American values and triumphs of American ingenuity, and technological powers and knows how, and can do sprit and so on. But these development have also, I submit to you incubated a substantial threat to the no less important values of political accountability, and responsible decision making in the face of the possibility of resorting to arms that Creighton Abrams and Casper Weinberger and Collin Powel were trying to bolster. The RMA has in the sense made possible the fatal undermining of the logic of the total force doctrine by underwriting the downsizing of the armed forces to such a degree that only the willing or the desperate need served. And even the call up of the reserves does not now have an appreciable effect on the overall operations of civil society. This is well understood in the modern day Pentagon and indeed the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld has pursued a policy or did pursue a policy written by the name I believe of rebalancing. I am trying to once and for all extinguish the logic of the total force doctrine. And maybe and made the active forces fully deployable on their own without having the resort to the call up of the resorts. That's what he he meant by rebalancing. Now I believe its simply is not healthy for a democracy such as ours allegedly is to let something as important as war making grow so far removed form broad popular participation and understanding and strict accountability on the part of those who make the operative and dispositive decisions. That's way it seems to me that war making power was constitutionally lodged in the legislative branch in the first place. Our current situation in my view makes some supremely important things too easy. Things like the violent corrosion of other societies and the result to military solutions, on the assumptions that assumptions they will be cheaper and more swifter and more easy bought and more conclusive than one could be accomplished by the much more tedious and vexed processes of traditional diplomacy. So this is one place where I think people like Theodore Roosevelt, a century ago had it right. That the life of a democratic society in these dimensions at least in these domains should be strenuous. It should make demands on its citizens when they are asked to engage with issues of life and death their own lives and those of others. Now, to be sure its obvious I think, self evident that the RMA I have been talking about is made obsolete the kind of great mass conscript army we had in World War II. We had a draft army and those proportions there will 32 million people. Perhaps even someone more, because we have now draft women as well as men theoretically. What we would do with such a force that would be far larger than any possible consideration of threats out there today with dictate. Now to mention the damage we do the to civilian economy to extract 32 million plus productive worker from it and redeploy them into the military. But we need so mechanism and I will concede to you that this presentation is far more diagnostic to introduce therapeutic, I can identify the problem much better than I can give you a solution for. But we need some mechanism I think to ensure that the civilian and the military sectors do not become dangerously separate spheres. And to ensure that this society makes war only after do deliberation making the full as possibly use of the democratic institutions and practices that we have. Now a final couple of words about this matter of the separation of the civilian and military spheres. There there is a wonderful, I think really quite admirable scholar at Boston University Andrew Bacevich some of you may know his name. He is recently in the news, he is a retired military officer himself, his son died in Iraq on mothers day weekend, Bacevich has been is on the record as being highly critical in the current Iraq War. He has written some really terrific things about the history of modern warfare in particular. And from him I learnt that in 2000, so his data is now seven years old, and it turns out very difficult to get updated data on this and it's not for want of trying that I give you somewhat aged data. But in 2000 according to Bacevich ethnic and racial minorities composed 42 percent of the army's in listed ranks, and here is a comfortable number which tells the same story essentially. In the civilian sector, if we take the code cohort of young people age is 18 to 24, 46 percent of young people in the civilian sector of age is 18 to 24 have had at least some college education. They are either I college or has been in college or they graduated from college; 46 percent nearly half of those young people. But in the Armies the listed ranks today in the same age cohort 18 to 24 only 6.5 percent as of 2000 at least had ever seen the inside of a college classroom. So not only is today's military remarkably small in relationship to the overall society in whose name you fights. But and so, it is it is you might say in the institutional structure of our society kind of minority institution, it's remarkably small. This was not only small there are minority institutions in that sense; it is also disproportionally composed of racial and ethnic and social economic minority young people. And who ever they are and for whatever reasons they are listed, again I do not question their motives. The surely do not just on the face of it, they do not make up the kind of citizen army that we fielded two generations ago whose members were drawn from all ranks of society without respect of background or privilege or education, and they were mobilized on a scale on such a scale; the civilian societies did and durable consent of the shaping and use of that force that they made up was absolutely necessary. So here if I can revert the language I used earlier is another compound asymmetry of worriesome proportions. I hugely preponderant majority of American s with no risk what so ever of exposure to military service have in effect hired some of the least advantage of our fellow countrymen to do some of our most dangerous work while the majority goes on with our own affairs unbloodied and undistracted. Now one last word about the matter of social comity. When I published they much attenuated they are very much foreshorten version of these remarks 800 word op-ed slot is all they give you, you know. But I published a version of these remarks in the New York Times, just about two years ago July of 2005. And on that occasion I heard from a lot of these countrymen of ours who are serving in the armed forces as well as their friends and relatives. Most of them were deeply offended by my use of the word "Mercenary". And in retrospect I wish I had been more careful or have the space of I blame it on the New York Times. I was the times the times that give me the space to explain more carefully the way in which I was using that term with reference to the general argument that I tried to develop here about civil military relations, and especially the issue political accountability. But what was no less disturbing to me as I read these hundreds of messages that the piece solicited was how rancidly marinated they were in the vernacular or bitter and venomous cultural resentment. In comments that I will describe that here as the colorfully embroidered with the vivid anatomical and scatological detail. These messages castigated. The educated classes, the securely employed, the presumably professoriate and an array of elite and supposedly clueless institutions like the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the major universities, especially ones like Stanford, that do not have academically a credited ROTC Programs and resist allowing military recruiters on the campus. Those policies instantly I might say in my in my own university has such policies, go a long way towards ensuring that universities like my own which pride themselves publicly crow about the fact that they are in the business they are in the mission of training the next generation's leaders. They in fact will have minimal influence on the leadership of a hugely important American Institution, the United States Armed Force. And how in the name of heaven can that be a good idea. Now there would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that the cultural divide registered in those reactions that I got is the precursor to the emergence in this country in the 21st century of the equivalent or the kind of German freikorps, these rootless, diisaffected veterans that formed the core of the Nazi party and brought Hitler to power in Germany after World War I. Or the Fasci di Combattimento, same group in Italy that the this affected veterans that brought Mussolini to power in the early 1920's. But, the cultural distance that increasingly and rancorously separates those who serve and those who do not and insolate some of our greatest universities from the officer core. Those matters it seems to me undoubtedly exacerbate the cultural tensions that already threaten our social comity and integrity. And there is one more reason just one more reason, to worry about the longer term implications of maintaining the all volunteer force now to mention continuing that universities like mine to ban ROTC. I will stop there and be happy to have your comments and questions.
