Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
Marc,Originally posted by MarcT: I certainly won't disagree with you on this, but I do have to wonder how many of these conditions are "inevitable" as a result of both the social and structural effects of globalization. Let me toss out a case in point.
No disagreement on the societal issues. They play a large role in recruitment, whether one is talking private or government/military service. But what I have centered on in the past is the US internal perspective on this issue that arose as after the Berlin Wall came down and the Armed Forces were downsized. As we downsized we used an economic model which assumes contractors are always more cost effective or rather we assumed the conditions that would make contractors more effective.
There is a very good relatively short historical paper at CSI called Public War, Private Fight? The United States and Private Military Companies by Deborah Kidwell that is well worth the read.
Best
Tom
Hi Tom
I'm going through it right now. I'm not sure that I would say it is good. Chapter 4 seems to be arguing all sides of the question. Just one example from page 55
More later.The American public may well question the moral aspects of encouraging combat specific positions, which may result in a loss of support and confidence in military organizations. In addition, using American soldiers exclusively to provide combat “tooth” is a curious irony to historical precedent, where nations often hired foreign nationals for some of their most dangerous fighting.
Marc
ps. It think the earlier chapters are quite goof, but 4+ are only annoying me .
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
Marc,
It is a history paper. It is supposed to look at all sides. Think of it as an Israeli student of mine once said to me about my teaching Mid East military history to Arab students and him, "Tom, you are doing OK. you piss everyone off and that is good."
Tom
Hi Tom,
I certainly won't disagree with you on this, but I do have to wonder how many of these conditions are "inevitable" as a result of both the social and structural effects of globalization. Let me toss out a case in point.
In 1968, North America began to show a breakdown in the post WW II employment patterns and social expectations called the "post-war compromise". A large part of this breakdown came about as a result of the economic reconstruction of Germany and Japan after the war, while the US and Canada hadn't modernized most of their manufacturing capacity (and also had too much - BTW, this was most apparent in the automotive industry, but also showed up in others as well). Now, the post war compromise was linked to a fairly explicit social contract that can be summed up as "loyalty for security" (basically a form of the Authority Ranking [AR] social relationship; military organization is another form of the same AR relationship; see Alan P. Fiske's work on Human Sociality).
This relationship was pretty much shot by 1975, and was generally recognized at the cultural and social levels by 1982/83, when it was in the process of being replaced with a different form of social relationship - Equality Matching (EM), aka reciprocity and/or networks (BTW, very similar to a form of neo-tribalism). In this setting, loyalty isn't given to organizations, it is given to personal networks. If you are interested, take a look at al of the literature on job search, which is how this little bit of cultural adaptation / engineering happened. As another comment, not that this shift coincides in the US with the abandonment of the draft and the shift to the volunteer Army.
Now one of the characteristics of EM systems is that loyalty tends to be personalized - it is to individuals (including yourself, family, friends, network, etc.) and not to abstract institutions. This type of relationship is dominant in the Gen Y'ers (<30) who form the bulk of current junior service members, amongst whom "consulting" does not mean "unemployed" but, rather, has connotations of "freedom" and a balance between work and life. Most Gen Y'ers are also quite aware that hey need requisite training in order to pursue this type of life, and look towards the education system, loosely construed, to provide it. We can see it in the attitude of students at universities and colleges today and also, I suspect, in the attitudes of many junior officers and enlisted.
In this type of social environment, it is, to my mind, inevitable that we would see a rise in the PMC market, with the emphasis on the "consulting" angle. Anyway, that's my 2 cents .
Marc
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
Hi Ken,
Thanks . I did my dissertation on this topic but aimed at the creation and spread of the career counselling industry - then I worked in it as a consultant for 3 years (along with teaching and web design) after I got my PhD. . I've been watching the dominoes fall in industry after industry, so seeing it happen in the military isn't a stretch at all. Actually, I first noticed it in the USAF when my brother-in-law was talking about the RIFs going on in the 1990's.
There are some interesting corollaries as tactics and strategy are concerned, and I'm trying to plot them out now for a future paper.
Marc
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
us.
My pet corollary was the one about the Railroads; "They never learned they were in the transportation business, they died thinking they were in the Railroad Business."
Substitute Airline or any number of nouns and verbs, including fighting smart instead of the (insert appropriate armed force) business...
I'm still trying to design the paper at the moment, but I will definitely be sharing it with the SWC. I'll probably be posting a draft in the RFI section looking for advice, comments, criticisms and examples.
Marc
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
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