Monthly Archives: September 2010

The Casualty Gap

by Diana Wueger Posted on September 10, 2010

Returning to the recurring (only?) theme of who’s serving in today’s military, today’s bloggings is all about Andrew Bacevich’s article over at The Nation, which is itself all about The Casualty Gap. Hopefully I can track down a copy of the book itself, but in the meantime, Bacevich’s article provides an interesting summary of the history and causes of the way lower-income, lower-educated members of society are more likely to serve and sacrifice (though Bacevich seems to conflate the two, Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen are strictly looking at who dies in combat).

A couple things jumped out at me:

1. This gap wasn’t always present.

Only in the case of the war against Germany and Japan did “the nation’s long-held norm of equal sacrifice in war” prevail. Given the reliance on conscription to raise the very large forces required for that conflict along with the military’s refusal to induct anyone who didn’t meet strict, if arbitrary, health and literacy standards, “the poorest and most undereducated counties actually suffered lower than average casualty rates.” In 1941–45, there was no casualty gap.

In deciding who should and would serve, relaxed standards have had the predictable effect of drawing in greater numbers of socio-economically disadvantaged folks. I feel like maybe I’m calling for the return of a noblesse oblige, but I believe there is something fundamentally important about sharing the burden of military service.

Anecdotally, I haven’t noticed many sons and daughters of Roswell, GA or even Atlanta, GA in the DoD casualty announcements, though there are plenty of other Georgians.

2. Higher casualty rates lead to less political engagement.

3. Bacevich doesn’t cover whether Kriner and Shen tease out whether troops from lower-income/education communities are proportionally more likely to die than troops from higher-income/education communities.

What to do about it? Why does it matter? Why should we care who serves, as long as service is done? Because that’s the American ideal, and dropping standards to be able to recruit lower down the education totem pole is militarily, financially, and socially undesirable - or should be.

How do you get the upper echelons in? Tell them about veterans’ preference in government hiring. Tell them about the on-the-job leadership training. Tell them how business school loves former officers. The current messaging may work in some cases, but for some, words like honor and duty feel propagandistic. Like any major brand, the military should have multiple advertising campaigns targeting multiple consumers.

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Open Email to Gen. Casey

by Diana Wueger Posted on September 6, 2010

This post is part of a series entitled “My Old Writing: Let Me Show You It.”

As referenced in my previous post, I spoke with General George Casey in 2007 during a Brookings event on maintaining quality in the force (transcript and video available here. I get chatty around 59:06.) Afterward, we struck up a short email conversation:

Dear General Casey,

My sincere thanks for your briefing at Brookings this morning, particularly for your response to my question regarding military recruiting from Ivy Leagues and other elite schools. I agree completely with your response that there needs to be a national call to service - but I also believe that military service is a distinct type of national service that has a very different impact, both on the individual and on society more broadly, than service in the Peace Corps or in AmeriCorps.

You spoke about offering officers a menu of options for broadening their experiences to improve their ability to lead in the increasingly complex situations we’re seeing; why not supplement that by taking advantage of elite graduates who have already had many of those broadening experiences through study abroad programs, internships with a variety of organizations, and complex senior theses on modern security issues? These individuals are, by and large, not enlisting upon graduation, and it seems like a worthwhile group to think about increasing recruitment from. Our most trusted political voices on military matters are, sensibly, those with military experience; I worry that in 20 or 30 years from now, when my generation assumes political leadership roles, we will not have the necessary experience to understand our national security needs in a military way.

I would, of course, be happy to discuss this at greater length; it’s an issue I’ve grappled with at length without coming to solid conclusions, but I feel like it bears some thought. Many thanks again for your thoughtful and timely briefing, and for your consideration of my questions. I wish you the best in your efforts to transform an already excellent organization.

Warm regards,

Diana

****************

Diana, thanks for your question and your thoughts.  Would welcome  your further thoughts on recruiting on ivy league campuses and on the propensity of those students to come in the service after graduation.
gwc

****************

Dear General Casey,

Many thanks for your response, and my apologies for the delay in responding; I wanted to be sure I did the question justice. As a caveat, my opinions are backed only by anecdotal evidence, and I don’t claim to speak for my entire “graduates of elite undergraduate institutions” cohort, but I think I speak for many of us. These are not necessarily the only reasons we don’t join, but these influence our decisions. We are afforded many opportunities upon graduation, and when weighing our options, we are often looking for reasons not to choose an employer. These have been some of those reasons for my friends, family, and me personally. We are not compelled by economic or familial pressures to join the military; if we serve, it’s because we are making a conscious choice and conscious statement that we believe in what we are fighting for.

That said, some thoughts:

  • We are not anti-military in the way our parents were; indeed, we don’t really blame the military for our current situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we haven’t been impressed by the political leadership we’ve seen in the last several years, and we find it difficult, if not morally reprehensible, to go to war for this administration. We just don’t trust our politicians to make the best choices for our country.

    • The Iraq War in particular is a stumbling block. We’re not naïve enough to expect a mea culpa, but by the same token we don’t feel obligated to potentially give our lives for a cause we don’t believe in and politicians we don’t trust. We understand that we can’t just pick up and leave Iraq, and we know that the reasons for staying in this war are different than the reasons for starting it, but we dislike the way this war has been handled, and want an admission of wrongdoing. Afghanistan does not present this same problem.


  • Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:  We have grown up aware of and, to a large extent, accepting of homosexuality as a lifestyle choice. Whether or not the military takes concrete steps towards accepting and protecting this class of people, we find the maintenance of this policy frustrating and indicative of a narrow-mindedness we are unwilling to live with day-to-day.

    • Additionally, recruiting efforts on college campuses have been hampered as a result of DADT. If recruiters cannot talk candidly with college students, we aren’t going to receive crucial information about why we might choose military service and what it would be like. We aren’t at a loss for what to do with ourselves after we graduate, so there’s no incentive for us to go out and look for this information otherwise.


  • Among my female friends, we remain concerned by the possibility of harassment in a male-dominated, often hyper-macho culture. We want assurances that women’s issues are not ignored or swept under the rug. I clearly recall being disgusted by the handling of a string of rape allegations at the Air Force Academy in 2003, and choosing at the time not to consider military service after graduation. A major push to make it clear that the military does not, in fact, drop charges or simply reassign people as a way of smoothing over accusations of rape and harassment may help change this negative impression.

In my conversations, it seems like a national call to service from a figure we liked, respected, and trusted to lead us wisely and to use military force as a last resort would gain a real response. We want to be asked to serve; we don’t want to be asked to shop. But we don’t see that leader in this administration, and so we don’t join.

Thank you very much for your time and your consideration of my comments. Please know how much I appreciate having the opportunity to express my views and, by extension, those of my friends and peers. I am, as before, willing to discuss these points if you’d like.

Warm regards,

Diana

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Me and the Major Don’t See Eye to Eye

by Diana Wueger Posted on September 6, 2010

Unpublished op-ed written July 2010 in response to “Army ROTC needs more boots on more campuses,” John Renehan (Washington Post, July 4, 2010).

In 2007, I had a chance to talk with Army Chief of Staff General George Casey about my concern that the armed forces were not recruiting graduates of America’s elite institutions. Well into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, recruiters were having trouble meeting their quotas even with lowered standards for entry, but there had been no discernible push to promote military service to top-tier college grads. Less than one percent of Ivy League graduates were joining the military, down from 50% in the 1950s. General Casey turned the tables on me and asked me to tell him why my cohort wasn’t joining up. Not wanting to provide solely my own views, I polled my friends and peers why they weren’t serving. I heard about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and about women’s concerns for their personal safety, but what I heard loud and clear was that nobody had ever asked them to serve and they had no idea what they’d do in the military.

My generation has never been called to national service. We have been asked to shop, and if our collective credit card debt is any indication, we’ve done a bang-up job of that. Yet for all that the Millennial Generation has been painted as lazy and self-centered, we have a strong undercurrent of service-mindedness that should have - and still needs - to be tapped on a national level. We have come to adulthood in the shadow of two wars that have barely touched our lives, in a world that seems to get sicker every day, and we want to do something about it beyond picking up another reusable tote bag. The popularity of programs like Teach for America, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps among the graduates of top-tier schools are evidence that we are looking for lives of meaning. Appeals to working together for the greater good resonate with my generation; a national call to service would provide a sense that we’re all in this together.

As part of this call, the argument for and benefits of military service must be clearly articulated. Beyond academic debates about the validity of the use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, most top college graduates don’t know much about the modern military. My immediate peer group doesn’t contain many veterans, and as a result of DADT and lingering acrimony about Vietnam and Iraq, many private schools have banned the military from campus. The military has responded by pulling back from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, home to a sizable number of elite institutions, and disengaging from these schools. The mutual animosity between academia and military recruiters is
detrimental to both and has resulted in a population that only sees fatigues in the airport.

This is a serious missed opportunity for the military, the nation, and these graduates. The low-supply/high-demand positions in today’s military fit our interests and knowledge; we have studied abroad in developing nations, learned uncommon languages, and grown up with a sophisticated understanding of networked technology. Beyond the potential short- and medium-term gains, there are long-term negative consequences to a persistent lack of military experience among elites. The top ranks of government are increasingly populated by this cadre; the low-paid internships and entry-level jobs that act as a gateway to later government service require high GPAs from name-brand schools and are often subsidized by wealthy parents. When my peers are debating defense policy in twenty years, will it be without gut-deep knowledge of what war entails for those who fight it? Will we lack first-hand experience of the strain deployment and subsequent reintegration places on soldiers, their families, and their communities? Military service isn’t required to speak intelligently about national security, of course, but it does provide a visceral understanding of what it means to use force that cannot be duplicated in a classroom.

A variety of economic, educational, and regional backgrounds makes for a stronger military, and widespread military experience makes for a more educated citizenry. The Obama administration needs to reinvigorate its efforts to promote national service and expand the definition to include military service. The military must learn how to explain the benefits and challenges of military service to this population, which may require new approaches and will certainly necessitate a reallocation of recruiting resources. At a time when recruiters are having trouble finding top-notch candidates and college graduates are having trouble finding meaningful work, it should be a straightforward solution to bring the two together.


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