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.

Michael O'Hanlon, his book "The Future of Land Warfare", and Me

Michael O’Hanlon has released his latest book entitled “The Future of Land Warfare” though it is a discussion of the future size and shape of American Land Power than about the future of warfare in conflicts that might call upon US land power.  O’Hanlon argues here for land forces that are at least the same size or even slightly larger than those currently fielded by the United States.  Three chapters survey possible conflicts or humanitarian disaster/relief situations that could emerge in different regions of the world and discuss what US forces and capabilities would be needed to respond.

The conclusions re US force structure represent somewhat conservative and mainstream military thought but as the author points out more than once, force planning must be done conservatively because it is less embarrassing to have more forces than you need than it is to have fewer.  I agree that ground warfare will remain the central defining aspect of war over the foreseeable future, simply because humanity remains tied to the 30% of our world that is its land surface.  I also think that his proposed 1 war + 2 regional crises formulation is a reasonable basis for this exercise.

I do have to quibble with him on a couple of points advanced during his discussion.  The regular US Army before the Civil War was about 15,000 men, but 97% of the men who fought that war for the United States did not enlist in the Regular Army, they enlisted in Volunteer regiments that were governed by separate (though very similar) legislation, regulation, policies, and procedures – in effect a massive army of citizen soldiers who resumed their civilian lives after the war.  I do not challenge his figures on the number of men who served under arms (Continental Line, State Line, Militia, etc.) during the American Revolution, the largest single battle of that conflict saw an American Army reportedly numbering about 10,000 men versus 22,000 Crown forces, significantly smaller than most battles fought in Europe during the latter half of the 18^th Century.

Michael dismisses the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) concept or perhaps more accurately the ideas, etc. put forward in recent years in the name of RMA.  While I agree that the RMA idea has too often been invoked by people wanting to sell either hardware or an associated theory of how we should be making war, I have to disagree with such out of hand dismissal just as I disagree with Thomas Kuhn’s belief that his theory on such revolutionary processes could not be applied beyond the hard sciences. 

However, it is easier for us to apply hindsight in identifying RMAs than to apply foresight.  Too much of the debate has focused upon technology and hardware and not enough upon the breakthrough revolutionary applications of technology.  Twenty-four years after tanks first appeared on the battlefield, Germany in 1940 in France fielded tanks that were generally inferior to tanks used by both the French and the British armies, but neither of the latter countries understood just how revolutionary was the German use of tanks on the battlefield.

The oft revived debate that the USA does not or has not had at key moments a coherent clear national strategy has seen me on both the sidelines and as a participant.  However, I have come to attribute the oft noted lack of a strategy to the reality in the years following the Second World War that the USA has been primarily a status-quo power.  Maintenance of the status quo has been at least our default national strategy even if not clearly expressed or artfully presented and supported in public debate.  I would argue however that in the face of the reality that the one constant of life is change, it is long past time for the USG to abandon the status quo.

We should have a national strategy that reflects the reality of a constantly changing world instead of wasting our time, treasure, and resources trying to maintain the status quo.  Our global strategy should examine where we want to be in that oncoming changed world and then work at achieving the changes to the world that we desire.  This strategy would have to be supported by the military forces appropriate for implementing the military elements of that strategy, but in the absence of such a strategy we continue to guesstimate instead.  I would note also in this context that Michael O’Hanlon asks how great a reliance the US should place upon its allies.  However, I believe he stops short of the even more pointed question of how much reliance do we want our allies to place upon the US?  How great a burden will we take up in that regard?

The challenge of formulating an effective national strategy is affected also by the persistence of American exceptionalism contending with a residual isolationism and a desire to further disengage from the world.  Recurring demands for American leadership partially reflect a reality shaped since World War II by US reluctance to see the UN or any other nation emerge as a rival source of leadership.  Yet, I am persuaded that the greatest obstacle is the absence of consensus on such critical questions as our national identity as a country or of a clear definition of what our interests are in the rest of the world.  Lacking answers to those questions we cannot have a clear national strategy.

Some other points that occurred to me in reading Michael’s book follow:

·        The mistakes made in 2003 were not due to the fact that no one in Washington DC anticipated or predicted the outcome in Iraq, but came about because those who offered warnings about this outcome were ignored and pushed aside by decision makers who had already decided.

• Nation-building remains apparently as much beyond our understanding and our capability as it was in the attempted reconstruction of the post-Civil War American South some 150 years ago.

• I would add in connection with the scenario discussions regarding India and Pakistan that in 1990, intelligence indicators were that the war we would have to deal with would be between those two South Asian nations.  Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait kicked that idea to the side of the road so to speak.  Also, it would appear that an Indian “Cold Start” doctrine and related planning would also prepare India to respond to a collapse of Pakistan requiring an Indian response to keep it from spilling over in any way onto Indian soil.

• No nation or group of nations has the power to deny any nation the right to decide for itself on matters of national security and defense, including NATO.  If NATO was to and is to retain its meaning and place on the world stage, it has to keep its doors open to membership by any nation that meets its criteria.  Russia’s absence from NATO today is as much or more a product of its own failure to meet those criteria and its insistence despite that fact that it receive special treatment and consideration and join NATO directly foregoing the tedious process followed by all other modern new members.  Likewise, in the face of a Russian invasion and occupation of even a portion of the territory of a NATO member state, a NATO failure to respond militarily would sound the death knell for the alliance, for where is the value in membership if NATO does not fight for even its smallest and most vulnerable members?

• As frustrating as we may find it now to deal with Putin’s Russia, the greater tragedy may well be that Obama’s successors will find themselves dealing with a post-Putin Russia that knows no other paradigm for interacting with the West than the one bequeathed to them by Vladimir Putin.

• The conflict in Syria and Iraq is on the verge and in my view already constitutes a single conflict with numerous fronts.

• China’s role and actions in a future Korean Peninsula crisis must not be seen as limited to militarily propping up the regime.  It is already clear the Beijing does not relish being confronted with a wave of refugees from North Korea in the even war breaks out on the peninsula.

• Historically, If you’re lucky, you start fighting the next war with the army that won the last war for you.  Of course, it’s rarely if ever the army you really need for the new war and you find yourself adjusting on the fly.  Even our best wargames rarely predict for us the war that we find ourselves fighting but they can still give us some idea of how we will fight the next war.

• A military force facing the challenges outlined by Michael O’Hanlon and others must fight better, faster, harder but especially smarter.  A critical element in fighting smarter is bringing the nation’s best from our civilian National Security agencies to the field with the force to help inform the decision-making of our military commanders.  This means that DoD, DoS, and the others must start working now to give their personnel the joint training experience that will prepare them to become 'expeditionary'.

Finally, the author presents an excellent explanation as well of why we cannot return to a draft-based military, though I agree that military service would be an important element in any proposed universal national service obligation.

This discussion also helped me probe deeper into my own mind experiment of a wholly Reserve/National Guard military.  Michael O’Hanlon’s calculations confirmed my conclusion that this would require significantly more people in uniform in order to provide the Inactive Reserve/Active Reserve/Active Force throughput.  The amount of time to be served in the Inactive/Active Reserve/Active Force needs to be carefully calculated in order to ensure sufficient active capability and the necessary reserve supports.  There would have to be some number of career servicemen and women to fill command and planning functions, especially in the Army, Corps, Division headquarters organizations what would be always in the Active Force.  Employment protections for the civilian jobs of the members of such a force would also need to be enhanced and enforced.   However, such a force once stood up could fulfill one element of a possible system of universal national service and would great reduce the chasm that has opened up between our military personnel and their civilian population in general.

Not Quite “The Thunderer” – But Still a Timely Noise

When I first began seriously reading about military topics, beyond the usual war stories, battle histories, and biographies of the great commanders, I realized that a number of the authors I was reading either were or had been military correspondents for The New York Times. These included names like Drew Middleton, Hanson Baldwin, Leslie Gelb, and later David Halberstam. Their books, while not reflecting a unified theory of war and warfare or even a single arc of the political spectrum, helped me to think about warfare as a more complex phenomenon and to examine the disparate elements of how we go to war and how we make war.

Nevertheless, like many Americans, I have not in recent years looked to The New York Times for advice or useful insights on military matters, preferring the ‘professional’ presses which actually cater to the career military and civilian military intellectuals (many of which you will find referenced elsewhere alongside by blog). So it was with both surprise and great interest that I read the lead editorial in The New York Times Sunday edition of November 16 – “A Military for a Dangerous World.”

The timing of the editorial is clearly inspired by the global urge to give the President-elect the best advice we can offer (and I’m guilty too, having previously offered my two cents). The editorial hits every one of the points that would be evident to and understood by anyone who has been closely following our ongoing wars since 2001 and the toll that these have taken on our military.

The Times endorsed the increase in our ground forces by the 65,000 Army and 27,000 Marine troops now being raised. This will allow the U.S. greater opportunity to rebuild and to retrain units (both in the regular Army and Marines as well as the National Guard and Marine and Army Reserves) overstretched by repeated deployments in theatre.

The Army and Marines in particular, but the other services as well, need to institute training programs that will maintain U.S. dominance in conventional warfare but will also preserve the hard-earned lessons of irregular and counterinsurgency warfare. The irony to me of the recent emphasis on “asymmetric warfare” has been that virtually all warfare is “asymmetric” in that one always tries to pit one’s strength against the enemy’s weakness. The reality is that given U.S. dominance in conventional warfare our potential foes will continue to look for ways to exploit the weaknesses that they can identify (both in our forces and in the political will that commits those forces to combat). We need to prepare our forces accordingly so that they can respond flexibly and effectively. This includes increasing the Navy’s ability to fight in coastal waters as well as in the deep blue sea so beloved of the carrier and submarine admirals.

Mobility has been a critically important principle of war since the days when everybody walked (or rode an animal that usually walked) to the battlefield. Modern warfare (roughly since the 16th Century) has repeatedly demonstrated the importance of “getting there firstest with the mostest” (Bedford-Forrest) and that “Speed is essential. Haste harmful.” (Alexander Vassilyevich Suvorov). However, in today’s world, mobility means airlift (and logistics means sealift). Today, all of our ‘lift’ capability is in need of attention as much of the existing equipment (aircraft and shipping) is worn and possibly inadequate to the challenges of fighting not one but two conflicts on the opposite side of the world. It would probably astonish the average American to learn just how much use has been made by U.S. and Allied forces of the Soviet-designed Antonov 124 cargo jets flying under charter.

As the editorial points out, carrying out these necessary measures will not be cheap but part of the cost can be made up by spending wisely on capabilities that are really relevant to the conflicts we anticipate. For The New York Times, this raises questions about the F-22 and the national missile defense system. I am not convinced about the unnecessary nature of the F-22. Air superiority over Iraq and Afghanistan has not been in question and the observation, reconnaissance, and close support missions there can be better flown by other aircraft. This does not mean that we won’t need to fight for air superiority in some future clash with a different adversary. Continuing research on missile defense is clearly warranted, though the rush to deploy a complete system now can certainly be questioned.

The hope that money can be saved through reform of the DoD procurement system is a longstanding one, though I am skeptical that any of the previous reform efforts resulted in measurable financial savings. What any new reform effort has to achieve is to make the process more transparent while not burdening it with requirements that draw time and money away from the process itself while failing to create that transparency.

The Obama administration and the American public will be faced with many hard decisions to be made on these kinds of military issues. Whatever is to come, however, can only be improved by contributions such as this editorial from a platform like The New York Times. I look forward to it.