Once Again, the Challenge to the U.S. Army During a Defense Reduction

This monograph places the Army's 2011 campaign of learning about the Army as profession after a decade of war into the context of the just-initiated Department of Defense (DoD) reductions. The exact shape of those reductions and the defense strategy our down-sized land forces are to execute in the future are only now becoming clear as this monograph goes to press in early 2012. But what is already clear is that the U.S. Army will undergo a severely resource-con-strained transition to a significantly smaller force than it sustained during the past decade of war. As with the post-Cold War downsizing during the Bill Clinton administration in the late 1990s, one critical challenge for the Army centers on the qualitative and institutional character of the Army after the reductions. Will the Army manifest the essential characteristics and behavior of a military profession comprised of Soldiers and civilians who see themselves sacrificially called to vocation? Will the Army perceive its service to country within a motivating professional culture that sustains a meritocratic ethic, or will the Army's character be more like any other government occupation in which its members view themselves as filling a job, motivated mostly by the extrinsic factors of pay, location, and work hours? Strategic Studies Institute.