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Notes -
US military offers immigrants fast track to citizenship in effort to boost recruiting
I have some thoughts about this.
First, this looks suspiciously like textbook "How to lose your empire in five easy steps" guide:
Have your citizens grow fat, lazy and unwilling to risk their lives, especially in far away wars that they see no benefit from anyway
Hire strong and hungry barbarians to serve in the imperial military
Have the barbarians realize they are now doing most of the work holding up the empire together, while not getting commensurate benefits, which go to the fat and lazy citizens instead
Have the barbarians take over the reigns of power
The empire suffers bouts of "bad luck"
The historians write "Decline and fall of the $EMPIRE"
(Side note: since we live in the clown world, I feel compelled to add a disclaimer that the word "barbarian" is used in purely descriptive, not pejorative, meaning - as "somebody who is not part of the imperial culture" - and, in fact, for the purposes of this definition, I am a barbarian myself and many of my friends are Barbarian-Americans)
Second, we have been actively sold the notion that DIE efforts in the military are vital if we want to keep the recruiting targets and the strength of the military. I do not see this idea being empirically confirmed, and what is even worse - I am not seeing anybody even interested in empirically confirming or disproving it. I expect that from the left - you don't seek an empirical confirmation of your religion, you already know it's the true faith. But I would expect people on the right - and I mean all those talking heads, think tanks and high-flying politicians - be interested in figuring out whether DIE actually makes the army stronger - and if not, pushing that fact hard. I don't think I am seeing this. For the most of the 20th century, The Right sleep-walked into giving up almost every major societal institution to The Left's takeover, but I'd expect at least they'd put up some fight for the military. Doesn't seem to be the case. Is it that the only thing that can get people really caring nowdays is when a piss water manufacturer offends them? I'd say the military going woke is a bigger deal than piss water going woke, but I don't see the red tribe treating it this way.
As a Hegelian synthesis of the above, the third thought is that the barbarians should be, at least at the start, the least woke part of the society. Thus, them joining the army in large numbers (provided that indeed happens) should constitute at least a temporary impediment to the further assimilation of the military into the woke collective. However, again, I see very little interest - at least where I could observe it, maybe I'm not looking in correct places? - in the red-tribe thought to exploring this opportunity and building some kind of "welcome wagon" track to ensure these people will join the Right Side and vote accordingly once they become citizens. I am not sure how it should look like, but that's what these "think tanks" are for, aren't they? Do the thinking thing and figure it out. Or at least try - I don't see the trying, really. Am I wrong here?
I don't really find this account compelling. The Roman Empire was damaged heavily by the efforts of popular military leaders to seize power, but this pattern started long before the use of foederati in the army. Far from decadence and complacency, Rome was damaged by the irrepressible ambition and ruthlessness of generals and soldiers.
Does it matter? If foreign wars are pointless, and America should turn away from military adventurism, does the strength of the army actually matter that much? Is the army naught but an appendage of the state - in which case, it hardly matters what the people in it believe? Or is the expectation that the army could provide a bulwark against leftism - in which case, the army is now interfering in politics? Is it wise to invite interference from an institution that is vulnerable to capture by your opponents?
I think it's worth asking exactly what people want from the military before they treat it as a political battlefield. Because it doesn't seem to me like Americans really have a consensus there.
It's really more complex than this.
The late Roman Germanic Federates who systematically dismantled the Western Empire to their own benefit were the heirs to a tradition of Roman military federates stretching back beyond the beginning of the Republic. The term itself referred originally to the agreement between the Romans and the other Latins, back when Rome was a first among equals in the Latin League (foedus just means pact or treaty). While the exact relationship between citizen and non-citizen military units in the Roman army evolved over the entire course of the evolution of the state, barbarians (from both within and without the limits of the Empire) were recruited heavily even at the peak of Imperial power. There were whole tribes who specialized in providing recruits to the Roman military, such as the Belgae in Northwestern Europe. In fact, this recruitment of barbarians served as a major engine of Romanization for centuries prior to the arrival of the Germanic federates.
The difference between the Germanics and prior barbarian recruits into the Roman Army is that the Germanic Tribes were adopted wholesale as units into the Roman military, with their military leaders/kings being given high ranks and allowed to continue leading their own men. Whereas, in the past, barbarians were recruited as individuals/small groups and they served under existing Roman officers, the new situation meant that there was a growing component of the Roman Army that was essentially a legitimized foreign military force serving under their own leaders. What happened wasn't a bunch of outsiders conglomerating together into an anti-government force (as mentioned, the individual groups of outsiders had, in the past, had heavy incentives to learn Latin, adopt Roman culture, and bring those things back to their homelands after they mustered out), it was that a potential anti-government force was given legitimacy as a conglomeration.
When the US starts hiring military units wholesale from foreign countries and allowing them to operate under their existing leadership, that's when you start to worry.
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