Citizen-Soldiers in a 21st Century Army at War
Abstract
In the first decade of the 19th Century, Prussian General Karl Von Clausewitz set out to determine why nations with the most professional armies of his day lost war after war to the seen seemingly less-professional armies of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. In his now famous manuscript, ()"On War", Clausewitz identified as essential to the nature of war the interplay of three key elements: the Government, the General and the army, and the people. From the government derived the fundamental rationale, from the general and the army the necessary skill and courage, and from the people the passions that enabled the creation and sustained exertion of tremendous national power. Successful conduct of war therefore requires both the preparation and the thoughtful orchestration of all three elements to draw forth and appropriately direct the maximum power of the nation. A little over a century and a half later, an American general, Army Chief of Staff Creighton W Abrams, concluded that a substantial reason for the defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War, was the US Government failure properly to engage the passion of its people via the employment of its "well regulated militia", which the Nation's founding fathers actually had cited as necessary to the security of a free state" a decade before Clausewitz wrote. Accordingly, General Abrams supported policies and initiated a restructuring of the Total Army" so as to attempt to ensure the involvement of America's part-time citizen-soldiers in any future conflicts believing this would ensure the connection to the populace at large". Today, three decades later, with the Nation engaged again in war abroad and also threatened at home, these policies and structures are being tested, and in some instances questioned.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA423826
Entities
People
- James O. Kievi
- Thomas P. Murray
Organizations
- United States Army War College