Brian M Downing
It’s probably not the right time to institute military reforms. The prospect for pushing through ill-advised changes or opposing sound ones based on short-term passions is too great. But it is the right time to think about and debate them. One reform should aim at the military’s social composition. Our combat troops today are not made up of poor kids with no options – that’s just the rhetoric of lefties who know less about the military than the neoconservatives do. It’s more accurate to say that soldiers come from the working- and lower-middle classes. Reforms should spread out military service into the middle classes and perhaps even above.
There’s something troubling and ill-boding about a military drawn from a narrow part of the social system, though too many find it a relief. For all the criticisms of the Vietnam-era military, its social composition was much wider than today’s. We all know that many middle-class and privileged sons evaded the draft by needlessly extending their educations or having their dads call in markers with members of the local draft board; but many such sons had no desire to avoid service and went in, eagerly or reluctantly. A sense of noblesse oblige was still found in upper strata, resulting in the occasional upper-crust kid, though far fewer than during WW2 when scions of the upper classes took very heavy casualties as platoon leaders and fighter pilots.
It grates on most political sensibilities that the casualties from our nation’s policies are not borne by the public at large, but only by a few narrow strata, mostly below the median. This serves to further detach war-making from consideration by the general public and most elected officials, leaving such crucial decisions to the political machinery of presidents, in which there once was a large number of veterans, but no longer. Furthermore, the long-term significance of such a military is uncertain, but a look through history will reveal more than a few disconcerting cases.
An obvious solution would be to bring back the draft. But inducting and training a cross-section of today’s youth would cause severe disciplinary troubles and undermine cohesion – headaches that few in or out of the military want to face. Pay incentives? Military pay is already far ahead of where it was during the draft era (ca. $75 a month!) and roughly commensurate with civilian pay in many occupational specialties. Increasing it to attract sufficient numbers of middle-class and privileged youths would be very costly. Some thinkers have recommended linking college loans and health insurance to military service, but such benefits are already expected by much of the public, and the military could not deal with or have any use for the enormous numbers of people joining up for those bennies.
Another option would be granting citizenship to foreigners who served a set period in the US military. The exchange of rights for military service goes back to Antiquity and has been part of American life, intermittently, since Hessian mercenaries were enticed to desert from British employ. But too large a foreign component in our military presents definite possibilities of disloyalty to the Constitution and allegiance to ambitious generals. In any case, such foreigners are likely from the same demographic strata of our current soldiers.
Let’s consider tax incentives – oddly, a favorite neoconservative device for social policy before they turned their attention to solving our foreign policy woes. Soldiers who serve satisfactorily, say, six years of active duty would, upon reentering the civilian workforce, get a specified percentage deducted from their income tax rate for a specified number of years. For example, veterans of six years service could deduct twenty percent from their tax obligations for twenty years. Longer service, larger and more protracted tax benefits. This could be attractive to young people who see themselves becoming highly-paid professionals one day.
The inheritance tax, strictly speaking circumventing it, could attract the sons and daughters of the affluent classes, in whom noblesse oblige all but perished in the sixties. At present, incremental changes to the federal estate tax law are set to expire in 2011, when we revert to a hefty 55% tax on estates of a million dollars or more. Veterans might be granted significant reductions of the estate taxes they must pay, depending on the number of years of satisfactory service.
A reformed military system will provide several benefits to the nation, polity, and Constitution. Casualties from a war that the nation embarked upon, wisely or not, would be more fairly distributed throughout the nation’s social system. Men and women from across the social system will live and work together. Congress and the nation will be more likely to think through foreign policy issues before sending troops off. And the political elite might view young soldiers as more akin to their own sons and daughters and less like low-value chips in the great game they profess mastery in.
Copyright 2008 Brian M Downing