Sherry Chandler

Outsourcing the Abrams Doctrine

One thought-provoking passage in P. W. Singer’s The Dark Truth about Blackwater highlights the way in which it allows the Bush government to by-pass the Abrams Doctrine. If you don’t know anything about the Abrams Doctrine, you are not alone:

When the U.S. military shifted to an all-volunteer professional force in the wake of the Vietnam War, military leaders set up a series of organization “trip wires” to preserve the tie between the nation’s foreign policy decisions and American communities. Led by then Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams (1972-74), they wanted to ensure that the military would not go to war without the sufficient backing and involvement of the nation. But much like a corporate call center moved to India, this “Abrams Doctrine” has since been outsourced.

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As it has been planned and conducted to date, the war in Iraq would not be possible without private military contractors. Contrary to conspiracy theories, the private military industry is not the so-called decider, plotting out wars behind the scenes like Manchurian Global. But it has become the ultimate enabler, allowing operations to happen that might otherwise be politically impossible. The private military industry has given a new option that allows the executive branch to decide, and the legislative branch to authorize and fund, military commitments that bypass the Abrams Doctrine.

It is sometimes easier to understand this concept by looking at the issue in reverse. If a core problem that U.S. forces faced in the operation in Iraq has been an insufficient number of troops, it is not that the U.S. had no other choices other than using contractors. Rather, it is that each of them was considered politically undesirable.

One answer to the problem of insufficient forces would have been for the executive branch to send more regular forces, beyond the original 135,000 planned. However, this would have involved publicly admitting that those involved in the planning — particularly then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — were wrong in their slam of critics like Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, who warned that an occupation would require far more troops. Plus, such an expanded force would have been onerous on the overall force, creating even more tradeoffs with the war in Afghanistan, as well as broader global commitments.

Another option would have been a full-scale call-up of the National Guard and Reserves, as originally envisioned for such major wars in the Abrams Doctrine. However, to do so would have prompted massive outcry among the public (as now the war’s effect would have been felt deeper at home) — the last thing leaders in the executive branch or Congress wanted as they headed into what was a tight 2004 election season.

Some proposed persuading other allies to send their troops in to help spread the burden, much as NATO allies and other interested members of the U.N. had sent troops to Bosnia and Kosovo. However, this would have involved tough compromises, such as granting U.N. or NATO command of the forces in Iraq or delaying the invasion, options in which the administration simply had no interest. This was the war that “was going to pay for itself,” as leaders like then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz infamously described in the run-up to the invasion, and to share in the operation was to share in the spoils. Plus, much of the world was vehemently opposed to the war, so it was unlikely that NATO allies or the U.N. would agree to send the needed number of troops.

The private military industry was an answer to these political problems that had not existed in the past. It offered the potential backstop of additional forces, but with no one having to lose any political capital. Plus, the generals could avoid the career risk of asking for more troops.

That is, there was no outcry whenever contractors were called up and deployed, or even killed. If the gradual death toll among American troops threatened to slowly wear down public support, contractor casualties were not counted in official death tolls and had no impact on these ratings.

I have been opposed to a restoration of a military draft. I have several reasons for this, the most compelling one being that I am opposed to war and would not want anyone to have to serve in one unwillingly. In my study of history, it has always seemed to me that wars create as many or more problems than they solve. War is failure.

This observation may not have been true for some one like Julius Caesar, who was willing to “create a wilderness and call it peace.” But even Rome fell victim to its own military expansion in the end.

I also have strong emotional reasons for opposing a draft. During Viet Nam, a good part of my childhood and young adulthood, I saw the young men I knew and loved living under threat of the draft. Some went and were killed. Some went and were disillusioned and their lives blighted. Some ran away to Canada. Some went to jail. It was a time of great turmoil and pain.

Last but not least, I just don’t buy the argument that a draft will bring some kind of fairness by forcing affluent Republican chickenhawks to serve, or send their children to serve, in the war they support. In the history of conscription as I know it, the affluent have never served. The drafted have always been those who are poor and without resources for buying themselves out in one way or another. Most of the hawks in the Bush government, like Dick Cheney, had other priorities during Viet Nam.

However, this passage from Singer’s article raises some questions in my mind.

1. Mercenaries by any other name…
2. Privatized
3. The Bulging Biceps of Fundamentalism
4. Blackwater
5. Outsourcing the Forest Service

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