Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation
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Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

rand.org
07.06.2014 Views

-336- A Historical Analysis of Cadre

-337- A Historical Analysis of Cadre 8. CADRE IN THE POST-VIETNAM ERA Cadre forces were proposed after the Vietnam War due to renewed doubts about the readiness of the reserves. The Vietnam War was the first major war where U.S. reserve forces did not provide a significant portion of the manpower. 228 This was due to a choice made by President Lyndon Johnson not to call upon the reserves. Instead, the government relied mainly on conscripts. Weigley argues that this represented a shift back to Uptonian contempt towards the citizen soldiers: “there is at least a suggestion of a neo-Uptonian outlook in the Defense Department’s reluctance to call upon citizen reserves for the war in Vietnam.” 229 However, there is very little evidence that Uptonian logic had any effect on Johnson’s decision not to call on the reserves. Crossland and Currie argue that: “the best historical judgment of the decision not to employ Reserve component units … in Vietnam is that Johnson had made an almost purely political decision.” 230 Crossland and Currie go on to argue that the main “political” factor driving Johnson’s decision was that activating the reserves would signal to Congress and the public that the country was at war, something he wanted to avoid. 231 Although it appears that Weigley might have been incorrect in attributing this decision to resurgence of Uptonian contempt for the National Guard, this decision did ____________ 228 For the first three years of the Vietnam War Lyndon Johnson refused to mobilize the reserves (either National Guard or Army Reserve). In 1968, Johnson finally mobilized some Army Reserve units but they were only a small fraction, less than five percent, of the total army force involved in Vietnam. [Crossland and Currie (1984), p. 208] 229 Weigley (1984), p. 556 230 Crossland and Currie (1984), p. 195 231 “Lyndon Johnson was gradually involving the United States in a land war in Asia, yet he was disguising his every move … There was ‘general satisfaction’ in Congress, reported E.W. Kenworthy for the New York Times, ‘that the President had decided to increase the draft and postpone a decision on calling up reserve units.’ The President had become ‘increasingly sensitive,’ reported the Times, ‘to the possible political effects of a reserve call-up.’ … Calling up the Reserve Components, stated one study of this period, would not have been consistent with Johnson’s attempts to portray Vietnam as ‘a limited war of short duration which could be fought with little domestic dislocation.” [Crossland and Currie (1984), p. 195]

-336- A Historical Analysis of <strong>Cadre</strong>

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