Yet how can the U.S. military, so overstretched in strategically crucial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, spare any troops for this type of primarily humanitarian venture? The dilemma is similar to that faced in recent years in Darfur, where we wanted to do something but did not have the forces.
Admittedly, there may not be a solution tomorrow. But by tapping into President Obama's call for a new spirit of volunteerism and national service, there may be a way to make a difference sometime in 2010. The idea involves a new type of military unit that the Pentagon should propose during its ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review.
For crises like those in Congo and Darfur, the United States should consider a radical innovation in recruiting policy. We should create a peace operations division in the Army with individuals enlisting specifically for this purpose. There would be risks in such a venture, to be sure. But they are manageable and tolerable risks, especially since most such deployments would be legitimated by the United Nations, carried out with partners such as key allies, and backstopped by the U.S. armed forces in worst-case scenarios.
The notion is this: Ask for volunteers to join a peace operations division for two years. They would begin their service with, say, 12 weeks of boot camp and 12 weeks of specialized training and then would be deployable. They would receive the same compensation and health benefits as regular troops, given their age and experience. Out of a division of 15,000 troops, one brigade, or about 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers, could be sustained in the field at a time.
What with the need to keep recruiting and training new enlistees as terms of service expire (only 2 years!), you'd need more than 15,000 to deploy 4,000 continuously. You'll need more just to keep from shipping out pseudo-soldiers for a one-year tour when they only have 1 to 11 months of service left in their term (or will we stop-loss them? Heh).
And of course you'll need regular forces to deploy and sustain those peace operators. Do the pseudo-soldiers protect the logistics trail or do we send real troops to protect the combat support and combat service support elements? The power of "yes we can" poorly trained peace operators means little to the stone cold killers who will face them. (Funny that this proposal also applied to pre-hope and change volunteers during both the Bush 43 and Clinton administrations.)
Oh, right, regular forces will "backstop" them. So we still need real troops standing by to save the pseudo-soldiers? How does this help with an over-stretched military? Or do we backstop the pseudo-soldiers from positions in Fort Bragg, ensuring that the backstoppers get to the Congo in time to body bag the pseudo-soldiers?
Eleven years ago I railed against the idiocy of this idea (then it was called a army constabulary force) and I can do little better than repeat what I wrote way back when:
The United States does not need a Peace Corps in battle dress uniforms. The proposed constabulary will not only fail to alleviate the high operational tempo U.S. forces are committed to in operations other than war, it will threaten the Regular Army by creating another force that will compete with the Army for people and resources. The ACF will look like soldiers, but they will not be soldiers. Ultimately, they will be called upon to fight as if they were soldiers. If they are recruited and trained on the basis of their nonviolent mission, the shock of combat will be all the greater.
Our enemies will not care that these are peaceful kids, only that they are wearing American uniforms. We may get lucky and never have to face the body bags coming home, but why risk the pitfalls of the Army Constabulary Force when its benefits are illusory?
It is not radical new thinking to believe you can send poorly trained soldiers to war to win. It is done all the time in history. And every time those pretend soldiers are slaughtered. Why would we pretend we could do any better?
This is rock-pounding stupid, people. Seriously rock-pounding stupid.
God help us all when the best and brightest think about military policy.
