Limited War, National Will, and the All Volunteer Army

Abstract

Historically, the American national will to fight has been hard to galvanize for anything short of global war or internal and direct threat. Even when we go to war, there has been much less of the patriotic fervor than is romantically written about. The paper examines teh All Volunteer Army in relation to national will and limited war. It reviews the difficulty of maintaining the national will when fighting for limited objectives. Though it affirms that limited wars are more probable, it cautions that the all volunteer force is insufficient to conduct a limited war. Further, it points out the improvements in the force composition in a high incentive volunteer system and argues that those improvements can not be sustained in a limited war. And thus the paper concludes, the All Volunteer Army is not the force with which we should plan to fight.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 05, 1988
Accession Number
ADA195031

Entities

People

  • Ramon A. Ivey

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Attrition
  • Casualties
  • Department Of Defense
  • Education
  • Employment
  • Enlisted Personnel
  • Ethnic Groups
  • Foreign Policy
  • Human Resources
  • Law
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Personnel
  • Motivation
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • War Colleges
  • Weapons

Readers

  • Military History / Militaries and War Studies
  • Military Mobilization and Reserve Forces Studies.
  • Strategic Security Studies