The United States Department of Defense - Essay Example

Military Draft Data from the United s Department of Defense puts the number of active duty personnel in United States Army of the day at a conservative 1.4 million. In the contemporary relatively peaceful global atmosphere, such a figure is enough to cater for Americans interests home and abroad. In case of a bigger operation, the US army may seek the support of reserve forces (MillitarySpot, Para 1). It is in case of an unlikely event where the US engages in a major conflict that it might seek to institute the Military Draft. Such a move would see the military source its soldiers from the general American civilian population. This can be seen as a contemporary approach to conscription—a military aspect that has evidenced itself since ancient times. In its history spanning more than two centuries now, the United States has continued to employ a number of approaches to ensure that its military ranks remain filled both in times of peace and war. While there are sound arguments put forward against the Military Draft in the United States army today, the pro military arguments far outweigh those against this noble idea (Hod 8). An overview of the United States invasion in Iraq by the Bush administration can help one to gain an insight of why the contemporary US military needs to embrace the draft. While the US had earlier occupied numerous foreign lands—Germany, Japan, and on a lower scale in Kosovo among others—and helped to build relatively stable democratic governments in those countries, it failed to demonstrate this in the Iraq case. The military approach employed by the Bush administration saw the first democratically elected government of Iraq inherit a country widespread with assassinations, and kidnapping among other social ills. This is attributable to a miscalculation that saw the Bush admiration invade Iraq with a few troops. Further, the military of the day was sharply objected to the idea of sending more troops in Iraq when the country crumbled into a violent turmoil after the fall of Saddam. A school of thought in the military circles conceived all these ills that a transformed US military can be effective in a war with a minimal number of ground troops (Friedman 125) True, the modern American military can manage to win a stunning battlefield. Nevertheless, such an instantiations force is not sufficient to secure peace—a critical aspect of the outcome of a war. Clearly, the modern all-volunteer American military could not have sustained the demand of the number of forces required in Iraq and continue deterring the American nation from threats elsewhere in the world. Adding the number of standing soldiers in the army may not have been a solution either. It is in view of this that the military draft should be adopted (MillitarySpot, Para 3). The underlying argument is that United States does not require a bigger standing army but rather a deep bench of well-trained soldiers who can be mobilized from their reserves to address the unpredictable but inescapable wars and other necessary humanitarian interventions of the future. The adoption of the military draft could go a long way in ensuring that the limitations of a surge in capacity of the all-volunteer force do not hold the American society at a standstill when such a need arises. Indeed, history is clear that the American society has turned to the draft from time to time to offer an effective solution to the persistent issue of humanity crisis. While ideally it should not come in the shape of World War II mass combat mobilization or the Vietnam’s discriminatory conscription—because war advances as the nature of threats change—there is no doubt that a modern model of a draft is much-needed (Hod 9). Another argument in support of the military draft is evident from a look at the US military involvement in the past two decades. In these two decades, US has found it critical, in view of national security issues, to deploy over half a million military personnel oversees. Each at a time, many United States troops have seen themselves kept in the harm’s way for a number of years. During the First World War, America deployed 4.1 million Marines and doughboys to Europe. The government mobilized a further 16 million Americans towards the World War II effort. In the first hot scenarios of the Cold War, three million grants were deployed to fight in Korea against the Chines and North Koreans. Even more recently, more than half a million US soldiers were sent to eject Saddam’s forces from Kuwait, and the list continues. Arguably, the superpower status of the US arises out of its capacity to routinely send large number of troops to oversee missions over a long period (MillitarySpot, Para 6). Though this is a price US pays for the superpower status, there lacks a clear reason why America would decline paying for that price even in the future. This further underlines the need to increase the strength of the American troop—from those who prefer the military functioning through alliances to the critics of the Bush’s ‘unilateral democratization of middle east.’ In addition, the international community has continued to rely on the robustness of the American army. For example, the reluctance by the international community in intervening in the Rwandan case was attributed to a decline by the United States to send its troops. Further, NATO allies are said to have agreed to send troops to Bosnia and Kosovo only after United States put a substantial number of its own men. Safely, the present built of the United Sates military fits the wars the army would prefer to engage in but not the wars that US has historically fought (Hod 11). While in theory, there are a number of ways put forward in seeking a solution to the ever-increasing US military need for manpower, most of these suggestions have intrinsic limitations. Among Democrats and liberal Republicans, there is a widespread school of thought that suggests US should convince other countries to always share the burden in its foreign oversees operations. The government can employ such a move to mitigate the efforts of embracing the military draft (Carter and Glastris, Para 5). One, such an approach stands to be turned down by the US allies should they feel that a war is not justifiable. Two, from the case of Kosovo and Bosnia above, such a move would call for more US troops—not fewer—as the US troops have to outnumber those of its allies. Even more important, America should not learn to rely on the troops of other countries—in any case, it should be prepared to intervene unilaterally if the need arises. Other schools of thoughts suggest that the US military should rely on private military contractors instead of embracing the military draft to solve the manpower crisis at the US military landscape once and for all. True, there are in excess of 40,000 private contractors in Iraq hired by the US government to take care of jobs ranging from security to construction. While these private contractors create a surge in the military when the need arises, and are done away with when their contracts come to an end, these private armies have come to create a myriad of problems in the modern United Sates army. One, they do not come to save the military in terms of spending—their services are equally expensive. Two, private contractors introduce a nature of competition between them and the military personnel which usually leads to the creation of a form of tension between the two parties during recruiting efforts. Third, the government puts unrealistic demands on these private contractors by limiting their finances while giving them enormous tasks (Friedman 121). Calling in cutting-edge military reformers in the contemporary United Sates military landscape to institute radical reforms has also been put forward as a possible option to military draft. According to this school of thought, the American military force of the day does not reflect the contemporary needs of the society since it was constructed many years ago by military minds that we could not necessarily be sharing ideas with today. A possible approach that these military radicals and visionaries would employ is cutting down the size of the navy, scraping some of the army’s mechanized divisions among other methods that could see troops in tens of thousands freed. These troops could then be deployed into ‘soldier centric’ units with the capacity of handling everything along the military spectrum from humanitarian interventions to battleground confrontations (Carter and Glastris, Para 6). However, much of this is pure theory. In conclusion, the approach of directly increasing the number of standing army has also been looked into. While in theory one can recruit soldiers through high monetary incentives, in reality there exists practical limits to that end. In addition, US is not in need of a large number of standing military—the current figure is fine. The other need can be adequately addressed by the military draft—a massive number of troops in reserve who can rise to augment the active-duty forces in case of an emergency (Carter and Glastris, Para 7). Works cited Carter, Phillip and Paul Glastris. "The case of the draft." March 2005. 30 November 2011 . Web Friedman, Lauri. Military draft. New York: Gale, 2007. Print Hod, Boz. The need for a military draft : prepare to see the world. Philadephia: AOM Pub. Unit, 2004. Print MillitarySpot. "Military draft: selective service registration." 2011. 30 November 2011 . Web Read More