Why do Dictators Draft People Into Their Armies ?
Last night and today I watched on Al Jazeera (streaming) what sure looks like a Egyptian revolution. At the moment Hosni Mubarak is still President, however, he is not in control. The apparent turning point occured when he sent the army to suppress demonstrations after the vastly outnumbered security police didn’t manage. This is a throw of the dice and he knew it. I read in the New York Times
“This is the revolution of all the people,” declared the side of a second tank in downtown Cairo. Egyptian men all serve in the army, giving it a very different relationship to the people from that of the police.
An army of drafties can’t be trusted to side with a dictator against a crowd of demonstrators. The security police are volunteers who understand the choice they are making, are thoroughly disciplined and fairly well paid. Actually a few of them took off their badges and joined the demonstration, but most held their lines and fired tear gas and rubber bullets until they withdrew last night.
In Italy, people have only fairly recently been confident that there won’t be a military coup. The fact that attempted dictators can’t rely on drafties was key to the decision to maintain universal military service (to protect Italy from what ? Slovenia ?) until recently.
So why did Mubarak draft his subjects and give them guns and tanks ? A small well paid professional army would have been more reliable and certainly powerful enough to terrify civilians armed with stones and the occasional molotof cocktail. Why did he feel the need to have a huge army ? There is no way the Egyptian army could defeat Israel (been there tried that). There is no way any other conceivable adversary could last a week against the Egyptian army or even a much smaller army.
Why ? My guess is that the generals want to command a huge army for reasons of ego and they have always had the power to overthrow Mubarak. On the other hand the people only become dangerous to him when they are united.
In many countries wehre unemployment is high it is a form of welfare or unemployment insurance.
It sure seems to me that if you just want to give someone a job, you have hime work with a shovel not a tank. FDR sure wasn’t a dictator, but, you know, he didn’t arm the WPA.
CoRev,
The US war machine is indeed an expensive form of welfare, it is for the rich and war profiteers.
I think the issue in Egypt and many other places is: no money for paying mercenaries, so have to draft them.
Also, Egypt and other countries don’t have propaganda machines where militarism and empire are founded on Goring’s dictate to equate militarism to patriotism in the face of fictions.
The risks of a draftee military.
Society in general is in on the waste and abuse, the ficitions of needs and the fictions of super weapons.
Draftees in 1942 North Africa made observations and mimicked the Army code with words like FUBAR, SNAFU and FUMTU. They also laughed at the lifers and the career officers. Thankfully Ike fired many even though a few got US soldiers into messes.
Draftees demanded rapid demobilization, bad for war profits. Long war good for profits, “get it over with and go home” with draftees is bad for war machine business development.
Vietnam draftees created a acronym for LIFER, I leave it to your imagination.
The protest in 1969 and 1970 showed that the mime that fighting communism was a rude lie and that what the US soldier saw in Vietnam they were fighting nationalists to keep a puppet in US empire.
So, the all volunteer force.
No more new acronyms, and everytime the economy drops usually because of mis investment in war and war profiteering the recruiting gets better.
So, keep an all volunteer force and maybe even US soldiers would fire on US civilians.
Draftees would be harder to get into shooting their cousins.
The US has plenty of money in its so important war profit machine that any cost is okay, and the expensive soldiers mean a lot of KP is done for profit by the war profiteers’ companies.
Not much profit to be made on draftees either!
ilsm
i can’t follow you here. we had a draftee army. we still had a long war in Vietnam and killed 50,000 american boys.
the Ohio National Guard had no problem shooting their neighbors’ children at Kent State.
What is true is that an Army is a potential threat to a power elite (“dictator” is such an old fashioned way to accomplish the same thing), so it’s a game, for them, of balancing the risks.
the Army is a potential threat. the draftees not so much. draftee armies have been the norm for thousands of years. it’s easy to control the behavior of draftees…
until the whole system is crumbling. but that’s not because of anything the draftees did.
coberly,
The military industrial complex is filled with enigma. Draftees versus mercenaries is not more logical or economical than spending a trillion a year against no enemy.
The US drafted for the Civil War, after 1862 volunteer units were no longer being raised in numbers at least in the eastern sectors.
Draft too for WW I and WW II. Demobilized quickly after each.
Draft needed for Korea, and kept going for the cold war. First time US kept a draft while not engaged in a sizable shooting war.
I am not that much of an historian but the first I see of a “draft” in Anglo Saxon culture is the Saxon “fyrd”.
Vietnam differed from Korea and the big wars in one major way, the national guard was not mobilized, used draftees but used very limited numbers of national guard. The guard became a way out of getting sent to Vietnam.
By 1968 using draftees in Vietnam was an issue, we were hearing all kinds of bad things from the guys when they got back.
Some viewed the continuous draft as a way to refrain from getting the broader society involved in a long war. Keeping the guard out of the war was seen as less an issue than using all draftees. So, I heard a group favoring the “all volunteer force” who expected it would limit the possibility of keeping a long losing war going because the mobilized guard would hit the home front more.
So, the expectation was to use professional soldiers; better paid, who stayed longer and who were better trained and experienced. Keep the guard and nationalize it should another big shoot come up. The key was pay the all volunteers better, and add incentives.
As we know today piece-meal deploying the guard is not stopping long perpetual war!!
Theory of using draftees versus having a large professional army is all messed up!!
War is enigma wrapped in misinformsation and faulty history.
The time has come the walrus said
To speak of many things
of ships and shoes and sealing wax
of cabbages and kings
and whether pigs have wings………….
Such is the history of war.
ilsm
you are a better historian than i am. my only point was that a draftee army is no sure way to stop the government from waging stupid wars.
and don’t count on your cousins not shooting you.
Another reason not to have a draft is to be able to have big, expensive wars that fly under the radar screen. Viet Nam was big news every day for years. Major news orgs gave made-up body count numbers so we’d think we were winning. OTOH, Bush was able to cover up the returning caskets from Iraq and Afg. with more than just an American flag.
WWII effected everybody in the U.S
Viet Nam not so much, but still a lot of people and a lot of angst. THere haven’t been riots in the streets since then, Coincidence? Hmmmmm.
Now – between 2 and 5% of American families are affected by the current wars. The other 95 to 07% can conveniently chose to not think abvout it. My older step son has been to the middle East 4 or 5 times – at about 6 mos per. His youngest is 3, and has spent half his life with dad in absentia. My 57-year-old brother-in-law is off to Iraq next week – from the reserves – as a miltary chaplain. The military is desprate for chaplains.
I look at Egypt and see for us not differences of kind, but of degree.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/01/guest-post-inequality-in-america-is-worse-than-in-egypt-tunisia-or-yemen.html
WASF,
JzB
I’d imagine because the Egyptians built a lot of their modern army under Soviet guidance, which emphasized the power of mass as well as the idea of the army as school of the nation. Conscript armies, let’s not forget were in fashion since the French Revolution – the Israelis still follow this method as well.
The US has been the prime source of military aid for the Egyptian military, something to do with Camp David and keeping piece in Sinai by bribing them with arms.
My thought is dictators can’t find enough volunteers, and if they don’t have huge resources cannot afford mercenaries.
Without Goebbels or Fox News dictators could not raise volunteers.
ilsm
The US has been the prime source of military aid for the Egyptian military, something to do with Camp David and keeping peace in Sinai by bribing them with arms.
My thought is dictators can’t find enough volunteers, and if they don’t have huge resources cannot afford mercenaries.
Without Goebbels or Fox News dictators could not raise volunteers.
he can easily manipulate people when he have a bigger army because the relatives of the drafted people would never try to go against the goverment since they have influenced them already. the army need to be united and go against Mubarak so they can finally overthrow him.
jazz
the other reason they can fly under the radar is the body count is relatively low. with Vietnam we had 50,000 killed. and that was with draftees.
don’t give people an argument for restoring the draft. you won’t like it. and it won’t stop the wars.
Coberly,
I can’t speak for Jazzbumpa, but I don’t think he was advocating for a reinstituion of the draft. He was merely pointing out the obvious fact that during Viet Nam the draft affected a larger segment of the publc’s conciousness.
Dale –
Nanute is right – I didn’t intend anything beyond what I said.
But you do raise a point. Why wouldn’t I like it?
Consider a service obligation for 100% of the population at some cerain age – say 18, with no exceptions. It needn’t be 100% military – there are plenty of other serivce opportunities in society.
New Deal type programs seem especially attractive in the current malaise. This could be a way for citizens to earn a gov’t sponsored college education, and avoid the burden of stident loans. Also, delayed college entry will likely result in more mature and serious students.
I’m just talking off the top of my head here, but I think there is real opportunity. And you wouldn’t have a military composed largely of the most miserable, desperate, and/or marginally qualified members of society.
I wouldn’t reject the idea out of hand.
Cheers!
JzB
BIG ARMY MEANS MORE POWER… with all the adversaries happening in egypt, A huge army could easily driven away all the rebels that would build bigger chaos in their country.
Yes,definitely,they should do that so that all these chaos would stop and save innocent people who are affected by these conflicts. I do hope it will stop soon.
nanute: see!
jazz. a draft is slavery. not the “slavery” that Randians holler everytime their government asks them to help pay the costs of providing the services they take for granted. but real slavery with threat of death, if not from the enemy, then from the “miliatary justice” system.
this is not a good subject to speak “off the top of your head.”
“My guess is that the generals want to command a huge army for reasons of ego and they have always had the power to overthrow Mubarak.”
I would amend that view a bit. Generals may also want to create solidarity through common experience. If managed rightly, much of the male population of the country will feel a connection with the army, if not with the head of state. Heads of state may come and go, but the army remains. Happened in Rome. Happened when the army took over from the king. Happened when Sadat was killed. Turkey’s army tries to moderate the partisan thrust of civilan politics and the contest between secular and religious politicians, so that Turkey – and Turkey’s army – survive while politicians come and go. An army that intends to act as a political guarantor needs what all political groups need – a constituency. Looks like Egypt’s army has one.
Compare that to Argentina’s generals during the dirty war, or Chile’s under Pinochet or Cambodia under Pol Pot. Generals don’t all operate with the same political goals.