Who's Gonna Die for Your Wars?

Got a lot of emails about the Washington Post article in Sunday's Outlook. Surprised that the Post now puts down the author's direct email for replies, vice having that material directed at the Post's server itself, but such is life today. My webmaster set up the tom@thomaspmbarnett.com address to send the material to my hotmail account, so I have been replying to readers' emails as they've come in.

I would say about 2/3rd are positive and about 1/3rd negative, which surprises me somewhat.

The negative 1/3rd often sound that note of "who's going to die in your wars?" "The poor you can't see from your ivory tower?"

Confession: I have family serving in the Gulf this very minute and I'm damn proud of that fact.

Here's my answer: This country has never had trouble finding young men and women who are willing to serve in the armed forces so long as the Pentagon has been up front and honest about the tasks they are likely to pursue and the White House has deployed them to wars/crises when the gain-to-pain ratio makes sense and progress can be seen.

More specifically, what I call the Leviathan portionóor warfighting portionóof the military has a fairly easy time of attracting enough youth to serve, and no, these are not simply poor kids with no education who are tricked into fighting overseas. This military is built around high school graduates who are generally well-motivated and quite patriotic in the broadest sense: they don't just want to protect America but do betteróon America's behalfófor the world.

The real problem we have today in terms of recruitment, I would argue, is with that portion of the military that really constitutes the Military Operations Other Than War portion, or what I call the Sys Admin force. Most of the Reserve Component is found here (National Guard and Reserves), as are the Jessica Lynch's of the militaryóbasically civilians serving in the military without really being "soldiers" in the warfighting sense. What's wrong with that part of the system right now is that we seem to be asking the Sys Admin-type forces to play Leviathan on an irregular basis, often on tours that get stretched out with little warning. That sort of on-the-fly dealmaking is unfair, because it amounts to renegotiating the contract midstream.

My goal in pushing for the Sys Admin force as a recognized and readily distinct portion of DoD is to bring out into the open the question of the contract or bargain the Pentagon should actually conclude with these servicemen and women, and the promises it needs to make about how they are going to be deployed around the world. I believe that America will have no trouble finding young people willing to serve in a Sys Admin force that focuses on peacekeeping, nation-building, disaster response and foreign aid, anymore than this country has a hard time finding people to be cops, firemen or EMR personnel. They don't do it for the money, but for the thrill, adventure and the innate desire to serve. If the Pentagon were more upfront about the deal being made, and stuck to those promises, the Sys Admin force would be easily staffed, as would the warfighting Leviathan force. In short, this is all about honesty.

Same would hold for allies working with both forces. No trouble finding the Special Ops guys from other countries who are eager to go into real battlesóevery good-sized nation has them. But for most countries militaries, the real desire is to see their own Sys Admin-like forces find real partnership with a similar DoD-derived and supported force on our end. Again, so long as we are honest and upfront about the roles for each type of force and stick to that rule set as we employ them, we will attract the needed people both from within and without.

And having both forces out there and available is the best gift the Pentagon can give global security right now, because having both the front-half and back-half forces for the Saddams of the world will give impetus to the global community's enunciation of the A-to-Z rule set for processing political bankrupt states that we all want to see toppled. In short, if DoD's transformation were to focus on the Sys Admin force, it would generate a huge asset for the international security community as a whole. Absent that effort, it is unlikely that such a rule set will emerge within the toothless UN.

We have it within out power, then, to build that future worth creatingóbut not all by ourselves. And yet, if we don't get that ball rolling, tell me, who will?