'America's Broken Army' NPR Series. Cavguy makes COL Gentile proud ...

[Ken White]

but up until the Cold War the American Populace was not willing to fund such a force, and in fact, for the first 100 years or so of the nation did not even trust having such a force.

Not Correct. It was not so much the populace as the Congress and not so much unwilling as unable -- the Federal Government take of total government revenue was only about 12-15% until the Income Tax Amendment was ratified in 1913, then it slowly climbed until Franklin was elected, began a steady and more rapid climb and hit about 60% of all government intake by the end of WW II where it has essentially stayed since. We had a big Army during the Cold War because, for the first time in a period of peace, we could afford it.

I think we are over the trust issues, and the Cold War model has gone on for so long that most without a background in history don't realize what an anomaly it is.

We never had a trust issue except for the 10-15% fringes on both the left and right. That lack of trust is still there, big time -- in fact, for the far left, it's worse than ever. I do agree with you that the Cold War was an anomaly -- an era of phony 'not peace but no war' except for Korea and Viet Nam when, as is true today, the Army and Marines went to war, supported by the Air Force and Navy while DoD and the rest of the nation did NOT go to war. You're also correct in saying that many do not realize what an anomaly the cold war era was -- the world is now back to business as usual. Messy, isn't it?

This graph on wikipedia tells the story better than I can. The history of America is one that maintains a small professional cadre in times of peace to man garrisons, write doctrine, and provide a nucleus to build upon in time of war. Each war has then been fought by a vast influx of citizen soldiers, who quickly returned to civilian life once the conflict was over. Which brings us to another downside of a professional Army, is that we don't have a lot of vets stepping into key civilian leadership roles after their short stint for the duration.

That was partly true, that small Regular Army fought several wars without the Militia. Different world, though. Today's speed of communication and travel make a return to what was the norm before WW II not a sensible proposition; make it a dangerous idea in fact. You are of course correct in the lack of veterans for civilian leadership roles being a negative but I suspect we'll survive.

Absolutely we maintained a professional core of an Army, but that isn't what we fought and won our wars with. Guard, Militia, Volunteers, Draftees; not Regulars.

True and if we have a big war, I suspect we'll do the same thing again.

Today we think it normal that we have this huge army and massive footprint overseas and at home. Maybe we need it. I don't know. We sure have our fingers in a lot of pies around the world these days.

Yep. In 1939 the Army and AAC were at 189K, 50K overseas, the Army and AAC were about .15% of the US population. Today the Army and USAF total about 866K, about 220K overseas, they are about .28% of the population. So we're twice a big on a per capita basis now as then -- mostly because we can afford it -- and we have about five time as many overseas -- that's due to that speed of communication and travel I mentioned...

Still well less than one half of one percent of the nation serving in the active Army and air arm. I don't think we need to worry about being a garrison state for a while.

Now that the Cold War is 20 years behind us, the Army is just one of many institutions, policies, relationships and perspectives that were formed for a particular purpose, but that have been around so long we forget the real reason we formed them. High time for a full review and recalibration across the board.

This is another of your anomalies. The cold war Army ran between 700K and 900K with ~40% overseas. This Army is 500K with less than 35% overseas -- and the big batch of that will return to CONUS over the next couple of years. The Cold War Army had 10 to 19 divisions; we now have 40 plus Bdes. This Army bears very little resemblance to the Army of 20 years ago, one with which I was thoroughly familiar.

The reason we -- Congress -- formed the active Army was to be an instrument of national power where and when force was required. That was true in 1840, true in 1940 -- and it's true today. I don't think anyone has forgotten that reason.