Here is an interesting take on why America has become so unwilling to wage war.
By a margin of 69 percent to 29 percent, Americans view the level of casualties in Iraq as "unacceptable." And yet by historical standards, in the sweep of U.S. history, the Iraq casualties - about 1,750 killed in the past 27 months - are, to put it bluntly, negligible.
During the Civil War, Union forces lost 360,000 men, out of a population of 22 million. Which is to say, almost 2 percent of the entire Northern population was killed in four years. Yet President Abraham Lincoln hung on to his support and was re-elected by a landslide in 1864. Of course, public opinion polling and television didn't exist back then.
But there's another factor, too: big families. In 1860, more than half the population of the U.S. was under 19. It's a cold fact that if there are a lot of kids around the household, it's easier to give some over to war. But the long-term trend toward smaller families has undercut this demographic "surplus."
A majority of Americans didn't say Vietnam wasn't worth fighting for until August 1968, by which time some 30,000 American soldiers had been killed. So while Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam War was one-hundredth as costly as Lincoln's Civil War, on a relative basis - the 36th president, unlike the 16th president, was thwarted in his bid for re-election.
By 1965, the share of under-19-year-olds had fallen sharply, to 37 percent. So in 'Nam, each combat fatality - magnified, of course, by the media - was felt more strongly. Today, the under-19 percentage is down to 27. Families that once had five or six kids now have a couple at most. Poll numbers on Iraq - and plummeting enlistment rates - show the impact of demography on the polity.
In 1994, Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., surveyed the U.S. experience in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia and concluded, in a Foreign Affairs article, that America had entered its "post-heroic" era, in which the public would have a permanently low tolerance for casualties.
In his piece, Luttwak considered possible responses to this new reality, such as recruiting more non-Americans, a la the French Foreign Legion, or learning to ignore "tragedies and horrific atrocities" when they occur around the world. In this Luttwakian scenario, the U.S. would need either mercenaries or a less interventionist agenda.
Bush, and probably most Americans, would likely reject both those options. In which case, the challenge to be faced is squaring a heroic foreign policy with a post- heroic demography.
2 comments:
This is a great look at the economics of human capital.
I don't think having more expendable kids about the house was the reason fathers would send their sons to war. I think that the overall quality of life is more the direct reason. In 1860, life was rough relative to now and people understood struggle and were willing to wage war to protect their way of life.
Today, the American middle class lives relatively struggle-free, and the thought of war is inconvenient. Why fight for what we already have when it's not even a daily fight to maintain it? Watch any television ad for the armed services and you will notice that they are selling their product to minorities. The reason is because that segment of society is still struggling to reach middle class, and has not lost sight of the wondrous social mobility offered by America, and is willing to fight to preserve it.
There is great personal risk involved in becoming a soldier which by and large, people who live lives of relative comfort are not interested in assuming. People should be thankful that other people are willing to do the fighting for us, rather than bitch and moan about the casualties. Survival is a struggle, and with struggle comes casualties. Minimizing them is key to good leadership, not avoiding them.
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