Beyond the Volunteer Army

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.

The above hackneyed lines state the situation with economy and exactness. The United States was born in an act of violence. The embattled farmers were an armed peasantry making its appearance upon the formalized stage of 18th century warfare. Upon that stage marched the imperial armies of the King, a soldiery conscripted almost entirely from the lowest strata of society and officered almost exclusively by the topmost strata. At the moment hastily assembled militiamen stood up to the disciplined professionals of George III, an age was coming to an end.

Since that day at Concord Bridge the American people have entertained a volunteer consciousness towards national defense. As the federal bureaucracy became more top-heavy and repressive, however, conscription returned to plague us all with the “legal” slavery of involuntary servitude. But the forces of liberty are once more on the move. Even the Nixon administration is now ruminating in some half-forgotten attic of our national heritage to come up with a popular defensive concept in this election year. The all-volunteer army, however, in the present context, is doomed to failure.

Every military establishment has reflected the parent society. A slave society produces and maintains a slave military. A free society, anti-imperialist and non-interventionist, would relieve us of the burden of a standing army. Without an empire to defend, our military requirements would naturally assume a purely defensive function and posture. Come then, and let us hallucinate awhile together. Perhaps we can come up with our own mirror image for the defense.

Let us assume the establishment of a new nation based upon individual liberty. Some libertarians will prefer a new world. However, let us assume that man, with his instinctive affinity for the tribal property line, will hew closely to that line for at least another few million years of recorded social studies. Instinctively territorial, our tribal property lines are a legitimate evolutionary development from the hunting and breeding territories of our lesser kin in the animal kingdom. As the hunting pride of lions has for its arch-enemy the next adjacent hunting pride of lions, even to marking its borders with a distinctive scent trail of urine, so has man divided himself against social groups of his own species. Man generally marks his borders with a distinctive line of fortifications. Abhor war, declare universal peace, brotherhood and good will, we must ever still beware the bad guy.

Our new UnState (let’s call it the Glorious Peoples’ Republic of Anarchia) would very shortly become a juicy plum ripening for plunder. A return to the gold standard with an accompanying myriad of other exotic economic happenings would undoubtedly whet the appetite of many a foreign “liberator.” The story of mankind has been liberally strewn with enough Attilas, Alexanders and Adolphs to keep the pot boiling. This is man’s moment upon the stage of history and we must deal with him as he is.

To defend our free society, we would probably rely upon the local volunteer regiment and air or naval squadron as our basic tactical unit. Allow me to suggest a possible structure: from the top down, four levels of command.

Level One: The national military establishment would be abolished as we now know it, to be replaced by a National Militia Cadre, or skeleton crew. The only full-time career personnel in the entire Militia, this cadre would comprise and be responsible for operating and maintaining a general staff, admiralty, inspector general, logistics, weapons standardization, contingency planning, and such educational and training facilities as West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, the National War College and the branch training schools in Artillery, Armor, Submarine Warfare, Intelligence Services, etc. The National Cadre would be forbidden to withhold logistical and other supportive services from any local unit of the militia or of the peoples’ guerilla.

Level Two: The Regional Command would bear the responsibility for basic training, defense planning for the geographical region, annual unit training facilities, selection of officer candidates to the national academies and perhaps a coordinating agency for natural disasters and air-sea operations. Regional commanders would be selected on a competitive basis from the local units.

Level Three: In our new UnState, the regiments and squadrons would undoubtedly reflect ethnic, regional, class, political, religious or any other conceivable tribalism. For the pacifist one can easily hypothesize a unit called, perhaps, the 42nd Quaker Field Hospital Company. Volunteer units have sprung from every group and level of our parents’ society. The Regiment is an entity unto itself. The traditional soul of the regiment resides in its ethic, which is defense of the tribal unit, and in the lists of its honored dead.

During the war between the states, the volunteer fire companies of New Yorkdo raised a regiment and called themselves the New York Fire Zouaves. Outlandishly uniformed in red persian pantaloons, and bright blue vests topped off with a tassled red fez, our smokeaters provided grand targets for North Carolina sharpshooters. Cornelius Vanderbuilt bought himself a battery of artillery and packed them off to the front. The Italian community raised the Garibaldi Legion. My own favorite regiment is the 69th New York Infantry. Originally raising itself as a “hate England” group, the members formed a company of infantry to do battle for the rebel cause. Acquitting themselves by a rather respectable showing under Washington, they returned to New York City at war’s end and remained loosely organized as a political and fraternal society. The Regiment came to prominence both famous and infamous in the Civil War. Whilst earning a grudging respect and the nick-name Fighting 69th from one Robert Lee of the opposing side, the Home Guard of the regiment was earning anarchy in the streets during the New York Draft Riots of song and story. Historical rumor-mongers maintain that the legendary Irish Cop was born when the Home Guard defeated the Police and were asked by the civil government, in turn, to form the new Police Department. The Regimental Crest is still formed in the shape of a policemen’s shield. The 69th still leads the line of march up Fifth Avenue every Saint Patrick’s Day. The spirit still lives on in such organizations as the 69th Veterans Corps and the Sergeants Mess, a watering spot on the second floor of the old Armory where the faithful still sing the Irish songs, tell war stories and get drunk. The Regiment serves chiefly today as a haven for draft dodgers and war resisters who prefer six years in the National Guard to exile in Canada.

Level Four: The greater mass of the citizenry, with its right to keep and bear arms, would constitute the People’s Guerilla. When invasion by a foreign “liberator” comes, as I fear it must, a given region or regions may well be overrun by the enemy. Members of the local regiments and squadrons in “temporarily occupied Anarchia” could simply fade into the crowd to become the cell leaders of the resistance movement, proceeding to raise hell with the enemy personnel, their supplies and communications, while the Regional Commands and local units in “free Anarchia” mobilized for the counter-attack. Defense planners will have to take all conceivable eventualities into account.

The question naturally arises as to what we could do if faced by an aggressor with nuclear capability. I believe that unilateral nuclear disarmament would be not merely a humanitarian gesture, but a policy to our strategic advantage. Our defensive posture would then be basically pentomic, that is, widely dispersed so as to nullify the advantages to be gained by a “first strike.” The aggressor would have to literally vaporize all forms of life within our tribal property lines in order to “conquer” us. He would certainly be unable to occupy our territory for a few centuries while the resulting radioactivity dissipated. He would then occupy ashes; hardly a reasonable return on his investment.

I might add that it would be next to impossible to entice our local units into some harebrained foreign adventure such as a war of conquest in, shall we say, Indochina. The great majority of our militia stalwarts would quite sensibly refrain from going and getting themselves killed in some stinking jungle thousands of miles from home. However, getting ourselves killed in some stinking neighborhood in the Bronx is an entirely different matter. And that brings up the unlimited liability clause in the unwritten contract.

The essential basis of the military life is the ordered application of force under an unlimited liability. It is the unlimited liability which sets the person who embraces this life somewhat apart. There are heavy numbers within all this concerning chivalry, honor and integrity. I maintain that these elements constitute far superior guarantees against soldierly moral inefficiency (cowardice) than the wages and plunder paid to a purely mercenary force. There are occupations in which what is demanded of the practitioners cannot be entirely regulated by monetary contracts. They include those of the priest, the healer, the craftsman, the teacher, the scholar, the seaman and the farmer. There are many ways of looking at a soldier. He can be regarded, rather emotionally and too simply, as a hired assassin. Only those who have not known many soldiers can maintain this view with confidence. A military operation can be regarded as no more than just another engineering project. This is a mistake. It can lead to unfortunate results when the unlimited liability clause is invoked as the operation unfolds.

The soldier has been the target of some of the best invective, Voltaire, for example, or Shaw’s. I would particularly recommend the preface to “John Bull’s Other Island” as sane and refreshing reading for the regular officers of our future Militia. To see how far wrong Shaw is today is as important as to see how far he is still right. Shaw is as angry as Voltaire and for the same reason: man obstinately remains what he is and declines to become what the radical reformer thinks he ought to be. The rancor this arouses in the radical breast against the military minded is easily understood.

But there are certain satisfactions in military life. Dawn, dusk, moonrise and moonset, what the wind does, the shape and size of woodland, currents and tides, the flow of rivers and the form of clouds, whether the leaf is on the tree or the branches are bare, the seasons, the weather and the stars—these are matters of compelling importance to soldiers, sailors and airmen. There is a certain satisfaction in the active life; in the mastery of complex skills; and in professional association with men of a high average level of integrity. There is satisfaction in service; but it has to be service to that which is worthwhile, not the least of which is service in the defense of life and liberty. It is upon these points that a young volunteer who is considering armed service in our imagined Militia might satisfy himself.

The profession of arms remains an essential social institution. True, it is set a little apart, but not without elegance. It will remain with us for as long as man continues to be what he is, too clever and not too good. This looks like a long time yet.

[Citizoid 112-24-6757, a/k/a Michael P. Donohue, is active in the Free Libertarian Party and the labor movement. He is a firm believer in the “theory through struggle” philosophy of bringing about alternative lifestyles now.—Ed.]