Civil Responsibility and Accountability

There is a tremendous amount of money that is spent on war. The US outspends the next ten countries alone and is determined to have the world’s most powerful military. This is all to fight wars of physical intimidation. At the same time, wars of words and wars of ‘hearts and minds’ are usually interspersed throughout the physical campaigns or the saber-rattling that takes countries to the brink – the words usually before, and the hearts and minds after/during. Why? Talk is cheap and with the way arrogant countries like the US use words, they are usually little more than a prelude to conflict if tensions already allow for it. Wouldn’t it make sense to spend time, effort, and money on trying to win the hearts and minds of people first? Or maybe never even having to talk or think about physical conflict at all?

The ultimate hearts and minds campaign that the US possesses is the Peace Corps. Economic policies make a few people rich, but tend to piss a lot of people off in their delivery, while at the same time, have flat out not worked for the majority in a lot of the developing world. Of course an institution like the Peace Corps has its drawbacks and inefficiencies. But it does two very positive things; firstly it is a donation to the world of not just the country’s money, but its blood, sweat, and individual time. Sending a person abroad to interact with foreign people, cultures, and locations is invaluable to building grassroots relationships throughout the world. Fostering an awareness – on a hearts and minds level – of communal understanding that leaves an impression upon the local populace of a simple human being, with ordinary concerns and compassions, rather than a camouflaged marine with rifle in hand and skepticism in his/her eyes. The second lasting effect is the education of what has become a very ignorant American population. Each individual that goes abroad and serves will come back with an entirely broader understanding of the area they worked in, if not the world at large; in seeing and living amongst people of differing cultural persuasions for an extended time, while learning their language, one can not help but conceptualize the nuances of individual lives and the truly different ways of living them.

With these two thoughts in mind, think about the military. It is an institution seemingly as old as mankind and certainly as far back as written history goes. It is as such a necessity in the current world. However, an army divorced from the consequences of its actions and usage is one that has and accepts no responsibility for its actions. In democratic society, the decision to go to war should never be separated from the consequences. Today’s US army is divorced in character due to its ‘voluntary’ nature. If an individual does not support the war itself, then why should they support individuals that volunteer to fight it? (Obviously in a capitalist society rife with institutionalized poverty and economic inopportunity this is a debatable line, but still a valid one). The point is that by divorcing the human costs of war from the democratic decision making process, the costs are no longer directly felt or attributable to the democratic populace or their elected decision makers.

This line of thought also feeds directly back into the point raised above regarding the Peace Corps in regards to the education and enlightenment of individual civilians. These citizens – both in military and civil services – would only be factored into the democratic process if they are not voluntary – if anyone and all could/had to go. I believe that countries throughout the world – even though a great deal have just recently gone away from it – should have it mandatory for all citizens to spend either one year of military service, or two years of civil service abroad by a specific age (say 25 or 30 years old).

This type of mandatory service would hold the government accountable for its actions in both the civil and military sense. The democratic public may not stand for their sons and daughters being in harms way involuntarily without the greatest of defensive causes (this concept is bolstered by the prevailing theories surrounding ‘Democratic’ or ‘Liberal Peace’ theories that claim that democracies won’t go to war against each other – but these theories assume that true democratic institutions exist). With greater accountability in place, the government would be more apt to expand upon Peace Corps type policies, which would work on a preventative grassroots level, to stem the possible tides of war. The program could even be expanded to the scale of a globally inclusive program – not just within developing countries – to exchange individuals among nations of all creeds and outlooks. Imagine the good will and understanding throughout the world if everyone had spent a year or two living in another country? The level of openness and understanding would be tremendous. Of course the Right wing parties would immediately object to this idea on grounds of sacrificing indigenous culture, and then of course their would be their security concerns. But this blog isn’t about getting from A to B, it is about finding B first rather than trying to get to someplace that does not exist. The point would not be assimilation, but rather understanding. Preventative time spent abroad that increases individual awareness of ‘the mysterious abroad.’

Individuals would thus have a multilevel choice – shorter military service, or longer civil service. Once within each service category they could decide further; rural, urban, more developed, less developed; or different avenues in the military, engineering, administrative, combat, etc. Everyone serves – with choices – so that no one has to fight. Putting ‘hearts and minds’ before cheap talk and expensive weapons systems…