Quote:
Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Just tell me how the National Guard is "part of the main force" (except, perhaps, as a matter of very, very technical doctrine). I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that the Texas Air NG is "the Air Force" or the Ohio Army NG is "the Army"* -- especially not in the 1970s. No way.
S_A_M
* No offense intended to those individuals who got the shocks of their life post-9/11 and have been activated for extended periods. When you're in that situation, you're "in the main force." Bush wasn't.
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I'm no expert on the history of national security policy, but I've taken several classes from people who are; according to them, this issue is at the crux of the history of the armed forces for the last 30 years.
During Vietnam, the reserves and the national guard really were the rear guard. A few people were deployed in combat zones here and there, but the basic underlying paradigm was that you throw the main forces at the problem first, and then the reserves are, well, your reserves.
In the post-Vietnam hangover, the armed forces looked at the reserves system, recognized the fact that the system meant that those who got into the reserves essentially minimized their chances of being forced to go into combat, recognized that bred a lot of dissent in society, and even led to a circumstance where, because draftees were more likely to come from disenfranchised parts of society, wars could be entered into without putting the reserve class in harms way. The forces also recognized that many of the functions required in the time of war are not functions that are necessary to the day to day operations of the regular forces (i.e. ramped up logistics), and were therefore perfect candidates to be handled by the reserves instead.
So the armed forces changed their structure so that in times of conflict, reserve units would be integral. While this was smart strategic sourcing of men and materials (don't have to pay for supply folks, or battlefield intelligence analysts to just sit around all year), it was also designed to ensure that the political leaders would have to stop and think twice about taking on a major, Vietnam-style action. One wouldn't be able to fall into it, slowly ramping up. Any kind of siginificant deployment would require calling up reserves, and this would be a political check on the nation's leaders. If the action was warranted, nobody blinks at calling up the reserves. If there isn't national consensus, you get a shitstorm. This second sensitivity also led to efforts to severely curtail the types of exemptions that can be claimed to a draft should one ever be reinitiated. It's a very founding fathers type approach (if you keep a small standing army and therefore have to institute a draft whenever you want to go to war, you better have a national consensus that the war's a good idea).
It is interesting to note that Rumsfeld and Cheney don't like this system at all, and Rumsfeld has declared that he is launching initiatives to change this structure such that reserves are brought back to their more traditional "used only when the regular army is toast" role. This may be a correct view, in that America may be facing a future of always being engaged in a couple of small conflicts or a medium sized conflict all the time, and resources can be better managed with full time soldiers instead of reserves. But it also makes it a hell of a lot easier to fight an unpopular war.
