The famous/infamous NCO problem
The is heresy for all my SF friends. Latin America doesn't have an NCO problem. It also doesn't lack a middle class, so that isn't the source of the civil service problem.
Back to NCOs. What the LATAM militaries lack is a first level supervisor. We use NCOs for that purpose. The Soviets and the LATAM militaries used/use junior officers. In LATAM the problem was too few LTs and a culture that said/says that officers don't get their hands dirty. El Salvador never solved the problem during the war and few, if any, LATAM militaries have.
John Waghelstein tried to solve the problem with an OCS course that produced a lot of LTs but ran into the problem of the regular officers not seeing the OCS products as real officers and seeing them as a threat. So, that approach died. Nobody ever tried my proposed solution which was to create a class of Warrant Officers - the requirement would have been a high school diploma and reserve, not regular status. This would have taken advantage of El Salvador's middle class...
Cheers
JohnT
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