We Need to Change the Army’s Mission

By Mary Ann McGivern, PEP Board Member

This piece was originally published in the 2014 edition of the Peace Economy News. To receive the 2016 edition later this summer, please sign up below.

The United States Army has a mission: the Global Strategic Mandate. As Andrew Bacevich tells it in Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, when the Cold War ended, the Army saw the end of its mission.

Global Strategic Mandate

General Carl Vuono, Army Chief of staff from 1987 to 1991, recognized that without the threat of Soviet incursions into Europe, the Army had no work to do. So he coined a new phrase and chose a new direction. The U.S. Army would hereafter carry out a “Global Strategic Mandate.” Quietly, without direction from Congress, the Pentagon, or the Clinton administration, Vuono’s successor, General Gerald Sullivan, put flesh and bones on the vision, disseminating a series of analyses brimming with confidence in the new high-tech, lean, agile, professional army, prepared to solve problems around the globe, whatever they might be. Bacevich’s account of how the army’s new vision came to be astounded me.

This Army vision needed partners, and weapons manufacturers and Congress (along with the other services) were happy to oblige. Engineers proposed technology to make airplanes, tanks and ships invisible and invulnerable, and radar that could spot enemies and allies ten times sooner than they were seen. Companies designed satellites and space modules, guns and submarines, fighter planes, communications systems. Congress was happy to throw money at these new technologies that would elevate the U.S. military into its rightful role as invincible leader of the free world for generations to come. And indeed some of our planes and ships are well nigh invisible and sometimes our new radar can spot the enemy ten times faster than it sees us.

The Cost of this Mandate

But the cost has been high. Trillions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of lives lost, civilian infrastructure destroyed, our nation disgraced, uncounted enemies created.

As we saw in Iraq, the Army needed more than a lean force with high-tech equipment. It wasn’t prepared to do the task it was given. That analysis is being done in other places by authors like Bacevich. In Breach of Trust, Bacevich does not write about a war of choice or hubris or Department of Defense disregard of Department of State planning or unreliable data about weapons of mass destruction. Bacevich asserts that the military debacle in Iraq and elsewhere is rooted in the American people’s disengagement with the army. When we chose to replace the draft with a volunteer force, those of us who didn’t have a stake turned our backs. Whatever the Pentagon did was fine with us as long as it didn’t cost us blood or sacrifice.

In short, we didn’t pay attention because it wasn’t our sons and brothers who were fighting. We let the Army define it’s own glamorous mission, be courted by weapons suppliers and brag that it was number one in the world.

The Dangers that Lie Ahead

For twenty-five years, Congress, the Pentagon and the arms manufactures have gone full steam ahead designing weapons, speculating wildly about future threats and designing tools of destruction. Enthralled by the glamour of weapons technology, Congress funded the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at at least $3 billion at the expense of basic research.

Some of the products designed to meet this “Global Strategic Mandate” include combat lasers, a directed-energy or rail gun to replace missiles, stealth drones and cyber warfare with risks that are described in detail on PEP’s website.

The F-35 fighter plane is a problematic weapon. It can’t fly faster or higher that the F-15 and F-18. But it has stealth design and is loaded with sensors and computer analytics. The pilot’s helmet sees through cameras installed throughout the plane. But the helmet doesn’t always work. Neither does the plane. Half of the U.S. fleet of about a hundred planes is usually grounded. And what we know about operating high tech tools in demanding environments doesn’t bode well. The cost is projected at about a trillion dollars.

These new weapons hold a hidden threat: the dangers of a new arms race. As we pour our wealth into these lethal systems, we are inviting other nations to arm themselves.

Meanwhile, climate change is intensifying conditions of conflict as food and water become scarce and, as the oceans rise even land is scarce. It’s a particularly bad time to foster a culture of militarization.

The Military Boondoggles – Waste, Fraud and Abuse

In March 2011, the New York Times ran a feature on the Pentagon’s biggest boondoggles. Based on a 2009 General Accounting review of defense acquisition programs, the author found that two-thirds of the programs suffered from cost overruns and delays and generally didn’t meet modern military needs. Twenty-five years worth of engineering speculation on future wars, and the products still are being designed to fight past wars.

The systems reviewed included ballistic missile defense, the littoral combat ship, the Ford class super carrier, the F-35 fighter, various so-called mine-resistant vehicles, a robotic combat system, an Armed Forces intranet and a global information grid. Most of them sprang from that Global Strategic Mandate which fostered a culture of contracting-gone-wild in thrall of high-tech warfare.

What to Do?

We need a new Army mandate. That’s the bottom line. Starting at base zero, what do we want the U.S. Army to do? Going back to basics, the point of an army is that soldiers obey orders. They shoot when an officer says “Shoot!’ So we don’t want to use our army to assist earthquake victims or police neighborhoods.

It is at this point that my own pacifist values lurch forward. I don’t want soldiers to kill anyone. There’s not future in it. I want us to use our resources, money and intellect, to find another way.

But in the interim, before we get to that point, I’m willing to consider a role for the army. I just don’t know what it would be. And here I think Andrew Bacevich has the right idea. If the American people are to support our troops, we need to see the Army with a mission we can stand by. The Army mission must be a vision for which we are willing to send our sons and daughters to their possible deaths. We must return to some sort of draft or compulsory service.

How we engage with the world matters to policy wonks, peaceniks, professional soldiers and arms makers. Renewing the draft is one way to make global diplomacy matter to us all.