Having no military experience, I will express no opinion on how to train or supervise recruits, what armaments to acquire, or how to fight wars. As one who has observed for many decades how our military relates to the wider society, I here offer a few suggestions regarding that relationship.
Integration with society
In our democratic republic, power comes from the people. The military is no exception. The more the American people identify with our military, the stronger our military will be. Having a large number of Americans with military training, and frequent day-to-day interactions of military personnel and veterans with other Americans will strengthen that identification. Additionally, having large numbers of militarily-trained Americans will speed-up recruiting and training if a war arises.
I propose dramatically expanding the National Guard with the goal of at least 25% of Americans having served in the Guard. We will need to offer significant incentives to attract this many young people to enlist. Payments and incentives should be provided immediately with no promises of future benefits following service. (For example, no educational or veterans benefits following completion of service.)
For various reasons, many applicants are not physically or educationally able to enter the military. Up to 6 months of intensive, targeted remedial training should be offered to these individuals with the goal of preparing them to serve.
The dramatic successes of our all-volunteer military demonstrate that it is time eliminate the Selective Service.
Immediate compensation
Between major wars, all compensation to members of the military should be provided concurrently with their service. Pensions for career service personnel should be in the form of IRAs. The VA healthcare network should be replaced with HSAs. However, this should not relieve us of long-term responsibility to assist those disabled as a result of their service.
During a major war, the United States may not possess the resources to immediately compensate our fighters, and there may be little in the way of goods and services for the fighters to spend their compensation on. In this situation, promises of future compensation may be appropriate. Such promised compensation should be defined at the time of service and completed as quickly as possible after the war. For example, credits could accrue in accounts that will become available for withdrawal on some predetermined schedule.
There should be no open-ended promises.
Focus on the mission
The mission of the United States military is to protect the American people within their states and territories, and when engaging in voluntary travel and exchange with other countries that choose to participate. It seems unlikely that we need 750 foreign military bases in 80 countries to accomplish this; we need to close most of them. George Washington famously warned the nation to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” When an alliance, such as NATO, no longer serves our purposes we should politely withdraw. We can enter into more-limited agreements to work together on training and weapons technology without committing to go to war to defend other nations.
Development and acquisitions
The military should publish desired specifications for new weapons systems with prize amounts for demonstrating a prototype that meets or exceeds those specifications. (Distribution of the specifications may be limited to organizations that comply with security and classification protocols.) Military expenditures for weapons development and research should be limited to verification testing and prize payments.
The inefficient and wasteful way Congress handles military acquisitions has drawn much rightful criticism. However, it would be worse to allow an oligarchy of unelected military or civilian bureaucrats to make major purchasing decisions without Congressional oversight. Perhaps we could have a military commission that submits acquisition requests to Congress with Congress agreeing in advance to vote yea or nay, without amendment, on each individual weapons purchase request.
Funding
The U. S. military is expected to spend $778-billion in 2022, which comes to about $2300 per person and about 3.7% of GDP. This is far more than any other country when measured as total cost or cost per person, and ranks about third as a percentage of GDP. This is a lot of money, but affordable given the amazing productivity of American labor. My proposal to expand the National Guard will cost money, but my proposal to close foreign bases will save some. Additional savings may come from my suggested changes in the way we develop and procure weapons. It is hard to know how these costs and savings will total out.
The problem is that no one knows what our defense money is currently being spent on. Sure, we can identify that this bit of money went here, and that bit went there, but that still leaves a huge fraction unaccounted for. The Department of Defense should have any unaccounted-for funds automatically deducted from its funding for the next budget cycle.
Posted 2022/07/26