11 ms·

I'm not sure willingness matters as much in the military as you seem to think.

by usrn 4y ago

CamperBob2 4y ago
We'll see. We have an all-volunteer military here in the US, and that won't change, at this point. The idea, as always, is to get more done with fewer people.
- int_19h 4y ago
  It'll change very fast once US gets into a major war. Say, with China.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Never say never, but you really don't want that to happen.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      I didn't say anything about wanting it to happen. But if it happens, does anyone seriously believe that US could avoid re-instituting the draft?
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        There are a lot of voices that seem to believe that isolationism is the way to go and that this will protect their 'lifestyle' from being impacted by the war in Ukraine. It's interesting how apparently some of history's lessons are impossible to learn, the exact same thing happened in 1938 and the end result was a much bigger war. Also, the degree to which the world economies are now interconnected make it next to impossible to believe that a major war in Europe would not impact other parts of the world, which is super naive. Time will tell but I fear that we're in for a very rough ride if this current war doesn't get stopped in its tracks before it can engulf more territories, which ultimately will happen. The only good thing is that now that the Russians have shown their true goals that the bulk of the 'NATA did this' or 'The Ukrainians only have themselves to blame' people have something to chew on.
        usrn 4y ago
        I completely disagree. You can't go preemptively flattening every country you don't like (I mean, we did for a little while and all it seems to have done is made a bigger mess.)
        jacquesm 4y ago
        Where did I write that you can go to preemptively flatten every country you don't like?
        remarkEon 4y ago
        I'm not a fan of our (US + NATO) current Ukraine policy, but that isn't because I'm an isolationist. I think it's just dumb policy, on several different dimensions. The version of the criticism you're leveling right now can be inverted very easily. That the people arguing for escalation in Ukraine, that it's "the exact same thing [that] happened in 1938" (it isn't), and that unless we do things like a NFZ it leads to a larger war, have a cartoon version in their heads of war and geopolitical strategy. Where there's clear boundaries between the "good guys" and "bad guys", like this is some Marvel film where you don't really even need to watch it to know what happens (spoiler alert: the good guys win!). Perhaps they are the ones who have something, and some history, to chew on.
        yks 4y ago
        You either accept a moral responsibility to protect sovereign nations from elimination, and elimination at this point was stated by Russian officials and media as a goal numerous times, or you accept the Russian position of "lands and peoples belong to the strong men" and we're back to the age of conquest, but now with nukes. Not only the former position is morally right, but it also prevents or at least postpones the nuclear proliferation. This is not only about Ukraine, this is about the whole Eastern Europe, and literally about post WW2 order that you seem to be enjoying the fruits of, if only by hanging out on Hacker News.
        remarkEon 4y ago
      - themadturk 4y ago
        A draft takes a long time to ramp up, and soldiers take a lot of time to train, so we're unlikely to start up a draft unless we expect a conflict to be protracted. The United States is unlikely to invade China and vice versa. A war pitting the US against China is likely to be largely naval- and air-oriented, with ground action (if any) concentrated on Taiwan, and will probably take at most a few weeks or months. We mustn't forget Vizzini's Aphorism: Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
        int_19h 4y ago
        If only all the wars that were deemed "unlikely" before they began never happened, we'd all be much better off. The problem is that once shots are fired, things can escalate very quickly, and decision-making is often not rational.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > But if it happens, does anyone seriously believe that US could avoid re-instituting the draft? The US no longer has a draft law because the US determined that the draft was bad both from a military manpower perspective and from a domestic politics perspective as to maintaining national will to continue a conflict. The US will not reauthorize a draft for an overseas war while the US remains a major power. If the US collapses from major power status and the entire political and military calculus is scrambled, it might.
        remarkEon 4y ago
        >The US no longer has a draft law because the US determined that the draft was bad both from a military manpower perspective and from a domestic politics perspective as to maintaining national will to continue a conflict. Nixon got rid of the draft for reasons that had to do with the unpopularity of the Vietnam War and his presidential election. The argument was that the AVF wouldn't negatively impact force readiness, not that the draft was "bad" from a military manpower perspective (I'm not sure what that means). There's some other reasons peppered in correspondence from that time, but I'm super skeptical of this argument for enough reasons to finish a PhD thesis. It's been a long time coming, but the conversation needs to be had about how even if the United States needed to institute a draft we may not actually be able to do so anymore because of the general decline in health and fitness of men in this country. More over, there are civ-mil relations considerations that aren't properly accounted for when you claim the AVF is superior - we have essentially a warrior caste now, that's in many ways sectioned off from the reset of the civilian population. Good? Bad? Exercise for the reader but you can probably guess my stance. >The US will not reauthorize a draft for an overseas war while the US remains a major power. I don't see how these are related. Plenty of non "major" powers have conscription (in some form or another), as do plenty of "major" powers. The US wasn't a "major" power before WWI, though it was certainly "a power", and yet my great grandfather was drafted. Maybe you mean the US won't get into an unwinnable and unpopular ground war in South East Asia and then re-institute the draft, but you may be underestimating the depth of ineptitude of the people who've been running the show the last 30ish years. Everyone I served with was a volunteer, obviously, but war necessitates a lot of things that people would otherwise consider impossible right up until they happen.
      - rurp 4y ago
        A full out war between nuclear powers would be over way faster than a draft could be implemented.
      - lmm 4y ago
        I think it's pretty unlikely that a war between nuclear powers would last long enough for a draft to become relevant. And if it somehow did, I'm not at all convinced that the US public would opt for sustained war over giving them whatever it is they want.
  - usrn 4y ago
    Unless it's a land war we're more than able to defeat China with what we've got now and their future looks very dim due to the demographic bomb they've created so that's unlikely to change. I'm not too sure it would be motivating to people either. Usually what motivates people is the fear of being overrun by some other group but with immigration the way it is that's happening anyway.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    That war (god forbid) might only take a couple of hours

I'm not sure willingness matters as much in the military as you seem to think.

by usrn 4y ago

I'm not sure willingness matters as much in the military as you seem to think.

We'll see. We have an all-volunteer military here in the US, and that won't change, at this point. The idea, as always, is to get more done with fewer people.

int_19h 4y ago
It'll change very fast once US gets into a major war. Say, with China.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Never say never, but you really don't want that to happen.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    I didn't say anything about wanting it to happen. But if it happens, does anyone seriously believe that US could avoid re-instituting the draft?
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      There are a lot of voices that seem to believe that isolationism is the way to go and that this will protect their 'lifestyle' from being impacted by the war in Ukraine. It's interesting how apparently some of history's lessons are impossible to learn, the exact same thing happened in 1938 and the end result was a much bigger war. Also, the degree to which the world economies are now interconnected make it next to impossible to believe that a major war in Europe would not impact other parts of the world, which is super naive. Time will tell but I fear that we're in for a very rough ride if this current war doesn't get stopped in its tracks before it can engulf more territories, which ultimately will happen. The only good thing is that now that the Russians have shown their true goals that the bulk of the 'NATA did this' or 'The Ukrainians only have themselves to blame' people have something to chew on.
      - usrn 4y ago
        I completely disagree. You can't go preemptively flattening every country you don't like (I mean, we did for a little while and all it seems to have done is made a bigger mess.)
        jacquesm 4y ago
        Where did I write that you can go to preemptively flatten every country you don't like?
      - remarkEon 4y ago
        I'm not a fan of our (US + NATO) current Ukraine policy, but that isn't because I'm an isolationist. I think it's just dumb policy, on several different dimensions. The version of the criticism you're leveling right now can be inverted very easily. That the people arguing for escalation in Ukraine, that it's "the exact same thing [that] happened in 1938" (it isn't), and that unless we do things like a NFZ it leads to a larger war, have a cartoon version in their heads of war and geopolitical strategy. Where there's clear boundaries between the "good guys" and "bad guys", like this is some Marvel film where you don't really even need to watch it to know what happens (spoiler alert: the good guys win!). Perhaps they are the ones who have something, and some history, to chew on.
        yks 4y ago
        You either accept a moral responsibility to protect sovereign nations from elimination, and elimination at this point was stated by Russian officials and media as a goal numerous times, or you accept the Russian position of "lands and peoples belong to the strong men" and we're back to the age of conquest, but now with nukes. Not only the former position is morally right, but it also prevents or at least postpones the nuclear proliferation. This is not only about Ukraine, this is about the whole Eastern Europe, and literally about post WW2 order that you seem to be enjoying the fruits of, if only by hanging out on Hacker News.
        remarkEon 4y ago
    - themadturk 4y ago
      A draft takes a long time to ramp up, and soldiers take a lot of time to train, so we're unlikely to start up a draft unless we expect a conflict to be protracted. The United States is unlikely to invade China and vice versa. A war pitting the US against China is likely to be largely naval- and air-oriented, with ground action (if any) concentrated on Taiwan, and will probably take at most a few weeks or months. We mustn't forget Vizzini's Aphorism: Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
      - int_19h 4y ago
        If only all the wars that were deemed "unlikely" before they began never happened, we'd all be much better off. The problem is that once shots are fired, things can escalate very quickly, and decision-making is often not rational.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > But if it happens, does anyone seriously believe that US could avoid re-instituting the draft? The US no longer has a draft law because the US determined that the draft was bad both from a military manpower perspective and from a domestic politics perspective as to maintaining national will to continue a conflict. The US will not reauthorize a draft for an overseas war while the US remains a major power. If the US collapses from major power status and the entire political and military calculus is scrambled, it might.
      - remarkEon 4y ago
        >The US no longer has a draft law because the US determined that the draft was bad both from a military manpower perspective and from a domestic politics perspective as to maintaining national will to continue a conflict. Nixon got rid of the draft for reasons that had to do with the unpopularity of the Vietnam War and his presidential election. The argument was that the AVF wouldn't negatively impact force readiness, not that the draft was "bad" from a military manpower perspective (I'm not sure what that means). There's some other reasons peppered in correspondence from that time, but I'm super skeptical of this argument for enough reasons to finish a PhD thesis. It's been a long time coming, but the conversation needs to be had about how even if the United States needed to institute a draft we may not actually be able to do so anymore because of the general decline in health and fitness of men in this country. More over, there are civ-mil relations considerations that aren't properly accounted for when you claim the AVF is superior - we have essentially a warrior caste now, that's in many ways sectioned off from the reset of the civilian population. Good? Bad? Exercise for the reader but you can probably guess my stance. >The US will not reauthorize a draft for an overseas war while the US remains a major power. I don't see how these are related. Plenty of non "major" powers have conscription (in some form or another), as do plenty of "major" powers. The US wasn't a "major" power before WWI, though it was certainly "a power", and yet my great grandfather was drafted. Maybe you mean the US won't get into an unwinnable and unpopular ground war in South East Asia and then re-institute the draft, but you may be underestimating the depth of ineptitude of the people who've been running the show the last 30ish years. Everyone I served with was a volunteer, obviously, but war necessitates a lot of things that people would otherwise consider impossible right up until they happen.
    - rurp 4y ago
      A full out war between nuclear powers would be over way faster than a draft could be implemented.
    - lmm 4y ago
      I think it's pretty unlikely that a war between nuclear powers would last long enough for a draft to become relevant. And if it somehow did, I'm not at all convinced that the US public would opt for sustained war over giving them whatever it is they want.
- usrn 4y ago
  Unless it's a land war we're more than able to defeat China with what we've got now and their future looks very dim due to the demographic bomb they've created so that's unlikely to change. I'm not too sure it would be motivating to people either. Usually what motivates people is the fear of being overrun by some other group but with immigration the way it is that's happening anyway.
- FredPret 4y ago
  That war (god forbid) might only take a couple of hours