The US Military

A Basic Introduction

Judith Hicks Stiehm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136466144
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

This book provides a basic guide to the US military and will raise questions for further discussion by students and other curious readers.

The US Military provides an accessible starting-point for those with a limited knowledge of this institution. Covering a wide range of subject matter, and ending with an extensive list of suggested resources to aid individual study and research, the text is divided into the following chapters:

• The A, B, Cs

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• Strategy and Doctrine

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• The Military in Action

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• Weapons and Capabilities

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• The Budget

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This book will be of great interest to students of the US military, US politics, defense studies, and war and conflict studies, and will also be of relevance to journalists, NGO staff and diplomats.

1

Introduction

For most Americans the words of the Declaration of Independence are something of a mantra. Providing “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is seen as the “self evident” purpose of government, and Americans generally honor the assertion that “all men are created equal.” The military is composed of individuals who may be committed to these principles, but they have, nevertheless, chosen to join an organization where they may be asked to kill people and, perhaps, asked to sacrifice their lives. They serve in a rule-bound organization in which “liberty” is a time out for which one gets a pass, not the everyday experience. Also, although happiness means different things to different people, for most there is usually some association with pleasure based on material and/or physical well being. For the military it is likely to be connected to service and/or to honor. Further, every individual's uniform clearly marks his or her location in a hierarchy. At a glance one can determine if someone is a subordinate, and just how subordinate, and, conversely, if an individual is one's superior.

In some countries the military is the government. In others it may have an informal veto. In some it runs businesses to fund itself. In the United States, civilian control is the rule. An elected official is the military's Commander in Chief and the military depends on an elected legislature to provide it with resources. In addition, civilians make rules about the military and the U.S. Senate must approve senior promotions. Because those commanding the nation's arsenal take their orders from elected officials, it is important that those officials, the citizens who elect them, and U.S. allies and enemies understand the nature of the U.S. military – how it operates, what it can and cannot do, its expectations, its values.

Since World War II the U.S. has had a large, standing, peacetime military. The nation's founders generally opposed such a force, but in the last sixty years few have argued against it. The only postwar presidents to publicly question much about the military were West Point graduate and former five star general, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, an Annapolis graduate, and Missouri's Harry Truman, who famously fired a five star general, Douglas MacArthur. Congress has also been relatively uncritical of the military, and, importantly, public opinion research shows that the military is one of the nation's most respected institutions. Citizens debate taxes and education and abortion and health insurance with passion, but they rarely debate issues related to the military – at least until the United States has been in a particular war for a long time. Then calls begin to “get out.”

My experience has been that few of my students, or even my colleagues, have a lot of information about the military. Even those who take political debate and voting seriously tend not to be informed about the military. They may know that the Constitution makes the President the Commander in Chief and that Congress has the responsibility for declaring war even though it has not done so since World War II.¹ For the most part, though, they, and most citizens, give elected officials a blank check when it comes to that expensive and lethal institution known as the U.S. military.

The purpose of this book is simple. It is to provide accessible, useful information about the U.S. military. Discussion about how it might be or should be used will be deferred. The goal is only to provide an account free of fog and excessive numbers, which will enable readers to participate intelligently in debate about a military that possesses unmatched power and reach.

The first section, “The A, B, Cs,” briefly describes the services and their missions. The differences between Regular, Reserve and National Guard forces are explained, and demographic data show just who is serving in the military. Next, some of the differences between civilian and military culture are illustrated through a discussion of military customs and courtesies and military lifestyle and culture. The constitutional and legal bases for the military and the kind of control exercised by the three branches of government, executive, legislative and judicial, are outlined and the military justice system is discussed. Visuals of military insignia and uniforms are presented. This is followed by a description of the structure of the unified commands, and the organization of the separate services. Finally, the range of military specialties and data on compensation and benefits for active duty troops and for veterans are described.

The second section explores strategy and doctrine. There is a National Security Strategy, which cites diplomacy, economic measures, and military force as the means to achieving national goals. There is a substrategy, a National Defense Strategy, which assesses the threat environment and evaluates the nation's “capabilities” to respond. In considering military analyses one might remember Samuel P. Huntington's admonition that the military's tendency, and perhaps its job, is to consider worst case scenarios. That view has been described as “realist,” but, realistically, few governments act and few citizens lead their lives based on worst case possibilities. Thus, the degree of risk to be assumed is an important question to address in determining the size and nature of any military.

Military analyses examine strategy, operations and tactics. This involves setting the military goal and establishing the variety of means needed to achieve it. Senior officers develop the strategy and plan operations. Tactics, which are executed by small units, are largely prescribed. Much about operations and especially tactics is learned as doctrine and inscribed in manuals. The point of doctrine and the manuals is to make it possible to act quickly and with coordination. The problem is, as the military always acknowledges, that things never go according to plan. Thus, the assumptions and activities summarized in this section are, inevitably, adapted once action begins.

The third section focuses on the military in action. Recruitment, training and education are summarized. The military spends a lot of time on planning for a range of contingencies and a lot of money on research, much of it allocated to civilian investigators in universities and research centers. The planning process and the range of research topics is detailed. The collection and analysis of intelligence are important to both functions. Next, the military's diplomatic efforts will be examined. This includes outreach to civilians and local communities, representations to Congress and the executive, and sometimes awkward dealings with the media. It also includes a wide variety of military-to-military contacts. These include training and advising militaries of other countries. The location of U.S. bases in foreign countries will be discussed in this section.

The military is used in many ways. It can deliver humanitarian aid or intervene in a domestic conflict or even in a conflict between countries. It can conduct surveillance, engage in peacekeeping, stability, counterterrorist and counterinsurgency operations, and it can deter conflict by demonstrating commitment to protect an ally. Although conducting war is the military's unique function, the one it recruits, trains, educates, researches, and plans for, it does so with the belief that preparation is the best way to avoid actually going to war.²

Readers may be tempted to skip the section on weapons and capabilities. Do not.

It is important to know what the U.S. military can do, what it costs, and how its weapons relate to strategy. Weaponry is not “too complicated” and “willful ignorance” is not acceptable. Further, one should understand the consequences of a weapon's use. Knowing whether a weapon can discriminate between an enemy and a child is important not only for legal and ethical reasons, but also because poor discrimination affects the effectiveness of an operation. Consideration will be given here to military capabilities, for example transportation capacity, and to “force protection.” Both play an important part in the designing of strategy and in the choice of weapons.

Readers are also admonished not to skip the section on the budget. Many know that the United States spends about as much on its military as all other countries combined. Many also know that even setting aside the Iraq and Afghanistan wars the U.S. military budget has been increasing. The procedures and numbers may be daunting, but money is always important. This section outlines budgeting procedures and their recent results. It includes money spent for military purposes through contracting and outsourcing. It notes the profit made by sales of weapons to other countries and suggests the possible amount and purposes of the “black budget.”³

This volume will not explore policy issues in detail. Its purpose is only to describe the basic nature of the U.S. military and, thus, to lay the groundwork for debate about its “proper” nature and use. Some issues involve defining the national interest, exercising and respecting sovereignty, the “duty to protect,” the level of risk to be assumed, and the requirements of international law. Conscription is currently off the agenda but relevant. Although active duty officers are supposed to be nonpolitical, some are now asking what this means in practice, and also what should be expected of retired officers.

Finally, this volume will assist readers in doing their own research by listing a sampling of research organizations, websites, periodicals, books and even films which can contribute to further understanding.

2

The A, B, Cs

The services and their missions

There are five military services. The primary mission of one, the Coast Guard, is to protect the coastline, although it does have some missions abroad. It also has rescue and law enforcement responsibilities. The Coast Guard has had different governmental homes. Currently it is part of the Department of Homeland Security, although in time of war it has been placed under the Navy. The focus here, however, is on the four military services located in the Department of Defense (DOD) and housed in the Pentagon. Thus, the Coast Guard will not be discussed further. As will be seen, the missions and cultures of the four DOD services are quite different.

Originally there was only a Department of War. The Navy acquired its own department and civilian secretary in 1798. Until 1947 the secretaries of both departments had a seat in the President's cabinet. Now there are three civilian service secretaries, Army, Navy and Air Force, each of whom reports to the Secretary of Defense. Only he, thus far, is a member of today's cabinet.

The Army's mission is land combat – for almost a century and a half that combat has occurred abroad. The Navy's “turf” is on and under the high seas, the U.S. littoral and the littoral of some other countries as well. Both the Army and the Navy have fleets of planes. Nevertheless, the Air Force emerged from the Army as a separate service after World War II. It has a special responsibility for space as well as air. Then there is the Marine Corps. The Marines are a part of the Department of the Navy. Some might call them the Navy's Army. Their special role has been to fight from ship to shore, to be amphibious. They are different from the other services because they are overwhelmingly a combat force. Their support, for example medical care, is provided by the Navy. Again, the Marines are separate from the Navy, but not from the Department of the Navy. They do have their own member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and a small and new war college. They do not have a separate service academy.

The military's unique mission is combat: fighting and winning the nation's wars. However, an individual's chance of participating in combat varies by service and specialty. Fewer than 5 percent of Air Force personnel are expected to be in combat and at risk. These include the crews of combat planes (mostly officers) and members of Air Force Special Forces units (mostly enlisted personnel). Other services sometimes call the Air Force the civilian service and harrumph about its purportedly easy lifestyle and its public relations successes such as movies showing “right stuff” officers and its always popular air shows. The Air Force has a significant constituency in the corporate world. This includes officials and stock holders in corporations that build its aircraft as well as the many workers who produce them. To some degree that constituency is concentrated where there are major plants. However, it is also well distributed because aircraft components, and also the weapons and equipment of the other services, are produced throughout the country. This means many members of Congress have constituents whose jobs are tied to the defense budget.

Even though aircraft deployed from the Navy's carriers are playing an important role in land combat, the Navy has not engaged in significant naval combat since World War II. North Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq do not have much in the way of a navy, and Afghanistan has not even contemplated one. One's risk in the Navy, then, has been relatively low even though the Navy patrols much of the world's oceans. This has not been true for the Army or more especially for the Marines. Both engage in land combat. However, the Army has a long “tooth to tail” and as many as two-thirds of its personnel are in support rather than combat specialties.¹ Still, it is a large service and many soldiers do fight. Those most at risk are enlisted troops and junior officers. The Marines, the smallest service, describe themselves as “warriors” and assert “every man a rifleman.” Because the Navy provides its support, its members are the ones most likely to see combat, to fight, to act out the images of combat offered up by Hollywood. Some have described the Marines as military fundamentalists. They concentrate on doing what only the military does – fight.

Carl Builder has described the differences between the services as “profound, pervasive, and persistent.”² Although his account is dated and does not include the Marines as a separat...