How Long Does It Take to Build an Army?

 

An army was originally raised simply by gathering together groups of people (usually men but sometimes women and even children) with whatever weapons they had to hand or could be given.  When the conflict for which they were raised came to an end – the survivors mostly went home.  Over the centuries, it occurred to several civilizations that there was a benefit to keeping an army together even after the conflict for which it was raised had ended.  They apparently knew enough about history and humanity to realize that there was very likely to be another conflict in the not so distant future and keeping an army together that had already fought and presumably won, or at least not lost, the last war was probably a good idea – it would certainly save time when the next conflict popped up and such an army of veterans might even have an advantage in that next conflict.

Keeping an army together even when there is no war for them to fight does offer an opportunity for peacetime training and an improvement of its military skills, and perhaps an opportunity to explore and develop more sophisticated tactics and even operations drawing on the experiences of those veterans.  Improvements to existing weapons or the acquisition of new weapons and the training of soldiers on these weapons might further improve such an army’s prospects in the next conflict.

History is replete with examples of the costs and benefits of sending an army home versus keeping it together against the dangers of another conflict.  I think this is the point at which we transition from raising an army to building an army as a social artifact, an institution within a larger socio-political-economic unit.  So just how long does it take to ‘build’ an army?  History suggests that this is a process of decades.

The army of the United States has been both raised and built over its history.  The army of George Washington was raised and brought to a level of capability that would win our independence, but then it was sent home.  We followed this pattern for much of our history, through a second war with Britain, a war with Mexico, a civil war, a war with Spain and two wars in Europe against Germany and its allies.  For most of that history, we also had a small standing “cadre” army, intended to provide the leadership and training for the army that was raised to fight each of these conflicts.

Faced after World War II and Korea with a potential armed conflict with the expanding Soviet Union and its ‘allies’, the USA decided that it was time to build an army, though still modeling it on our experience with citizens inducted into its ranks for short periods.

One key element in building of an army involves training that army on how to train an army.   Baron von Steuben in his drilling of the men at Valley Forge was actually training trainers as each soldier who passed through his tutelage was expected to return to his own unit and pass on what he had learned.  A critical tool with which you build an army is having good examples.  An army can find these in the performance, behavior, and even demeanor of those who previously served in that army.  The U.S. Army and many others draw heavily upon their own history in heritage programs that endeavor to give the latest generation of soldiers positive role models.  The ranks of our armies, especially among the cadre, have always included members of families for whom such service was a tradition if not the occupation of choice and their names are quickly recognized by students of our military history.  In other words, the examples provided of service across generations are invaluable assets.

A second critical element is that an army has to have something to fight for.  Historians and others have long noted that for Americans, each war is usually presented in the terms of a crusade by which we hope to achieve something better.  Author Michael Shaara gave Colonel Lawrence Chamberlain a speech that addresses that question rather well –

“This is a different kind of army. If you look back through history, you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, because a king leads them or — or just because they like killing.

But we are here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground — all of it. Not divided by a line between slave state and free — all the way, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here, we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here, you can be something. Here, is the place to build a home. But it’s not the land. There’s always more land. It’s the idea that we all have value — you and me. What we’re fighting for, in the end, we’re fighting for each other.”

Historically, individuals fight for survival, for the comrades alongside them, for their families and their larger community even up to and including the nation they represent.  They fight in the hope that by winning their fight, their families and their descendants will have the chance to live an even better life and not just in a material sense.  But they have to hope and believe that that better future is possible or else individual survival again surpasses all of these other things in importance.

Finally, as with many aspects of the human experience, building an army is not something that can be done for a society – that society has to do it for itself, it has to own that army, that army has to reflect the society for which it will be asked to go to war.  Armies that are not integral to the society will not succeed in defending that society and both will fail.