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Notes -
Let’s talk about modern world armies. No, not about logistics, or training cycles(and the length of training cycles shaping deployments in high intensity warfare is, I think, underdiscussed), or equipment. Let’s talk sociologically. Specifically, how do the soldiers see themselves in relation to society at large.
The worst case scenario for a state is if the soldiers see themselves as members of their ethnic group first, and the army second. ‘I’m a hausa/pashtun/shiite soldier’ is a mentality that breaks down military discipline quite rapidly. Ditto for other loyalties- the US civil war took place because the army was commanded by officers who saw themselves as Virginians before they saw themselves as soldiers. So soldiers have to be deracinated. They need to be pulled out of their prides in civilian life. But that’s not enough. The Mexican army, unlike many armies in similarly unstable and violent countries, doesn’t have a problem with soldiers using their newfound status to advantage their castas. What it does have a problem with is ‘desertion’, which can mean anything from just running away/otherwise not doing their job all the way to outright defecting to the cartels. Being a soldier isn’t an identity in Mexico. It’s just a shit job, in a country where lots of people have shit jobs. They yank casta and replace it with nothing, and so there’s a legitimate problem with Mexican soldiers joining the cartels during their deployments for the promise of better mess hall rations. There was a similar process with Roman armies in the crisis of the third century- legionary recruitment is known to have been difficult in the period leading up to it, and legions just kept switching sides during, not to fight for a particular province or ethnic group but for more money.
So soldiers need an identity as being soldiers. The army needs to be a totalizing institution. If it becomes associated with white britishness(for example), then there’s a real danger of freikorps. So a draft needs to be ethnically mixed, of necessity.
And ‘young white men are all lazy and would rather play video games’ isn’t an answer. Yeah, they would, but their sergeant won’t let them. The army is quite good at turning young men from useless neets into the kinds of people who organize to accomplish specific goals. And political leaders at least listen to people who know this.
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