15 November 2009
PTSD and the All-Volunteer Army
America in the Twenty-first Century is not ready to sustain an all-volunteer military force—not if it expects that force to fight long wars. There are Americans who are psychologically apt to withstand the trauma of the battlefield, even when that battlefield is defined by terrorist attacks that can happen anywhere without warning. However, many of the volunteers who have joined America’s armed forces (37% by one estimate) are ill-suited to combat and suffer from post traumatic stress disorder when exposed to the life-threatening and brutalizing pressures of warfare.
That proportion of America’s fighting force may actually have been higher when the fighting force was assembled by a draft, but I doubt it. Although the military is now patently self-selected, it is not correct to assume that voluntary enlistment eliminates those who are not psychologically suited to such a stressful occupation. In fact, the military has been shown to be filled with large numbers of commissioned officers NCOs who suffer from PTSD. An all-volunteer military should have no reason to accept applicants for positions in it who do not display adequate immunity to breaking down under stress.
Unfortunately for the viability of the all-volunteer fighting force, America’s decision to maintain a large military in support of an aggressive foreign policy does not reflect the psychological profile of its population and is not consistent with its willingness to pay the cost of attracting sufficient numbers of suitable individuals to join. PTSD is a tragic consequence of warfare that is avoidable when we choose to use violence to impose our policies on other countries only as long as we limit our imperial goals to those for which we actually have the human psychological resources to pursue them. Our superpower status is situational. It is limited to those situations where we are mentally prepared to act like a superpower.
PTSD may be a true gauge of the congruence of a war policy with the American character. When those of us who choose a military career, or who are impressed into service, believe there are important values at stake in a conflict, it may be easier to repress the overwhelming psychological burdens of its traumatic events. However, when the link is broken between the actions that soldiers are called on to take and the defense of their common beliefs or interests, only a few personalities can modulate the extreme emotions aroused by those actions. In the case of unsuitable persons subjected to such trauma, the result may run the gamut from disturbances to domestic life at one end to violent outbreaks like the Fort Hood massacre at the other. The more commonly military servicemen and servicewomen experience PTSD, the less likely it is that the nation is calling on them to do what it should.
America in the Twenty-first Century is not ready to sustain an all-volunteer military force—not if it expects that force to fight long wars. There are Americans who are psychologically apt to withstand the trauma of the battlefield, even when that battlefield is defined by terrorist attacks that can happen anywhere without warning. However, many of the volunteers who have joined America’s armed forces (37% by one estimate) are ill-suited to combat and suffer from post traumatic stress disorder when exposed to the life-threatening and brutalizing pressures of warfare.
That proportion of America’s fighting force may actually have been higher when the fighting force was assembled by a draft, but I doubt it. Although the military is now patently self-selected, it is not correct to assume that voluntary enlistment eliminates those who are not psychologically suited to such a stressful occupation. In fact, the military has been shown to be filled with large numbers of commissioned officers NCOs who suffer from PTSD. An all-volunteer military should have no reason to accept applicants for positions in it who do not display adequate immunity to breaking down under stress.
Unfortunately for the viability of the all-volunteer fighting force, America’s decision to maintain a large military in support of an aggressive foreign policy does not reflect the psychological profile of its population and is not consistent with its willingness to pay the cost of attracting sufficient numbers of suitable individuals to join. PTSD is a tragic consequence of warfare that is avoidable when we choose to use violence to impose our policies on other countries only as long as we limit our imperial goals to those for which we actually have the human psychological resources to pursue them. Our superpower status is situational. It is limited to those situations where we are mentally prepared to act like a superpower.
PTSD may be a true gauge of the congruence of a war policy with the American character. When those of us who choose a military career, or who are impressed into service, believe there are important values at stake in a conflict, it may be easier to repress the overwhelming psychological burdens of its traumatic events. However, when the link is broken between the actions that soldiers are called on to take and the defense of their common beliefs or interests, only a few personalities can modulate the extreme emotions aroused by those actions. In the case of unsuitable persons subjected to such trauma, the result may run the gamut from disturbances to domestic life at one end to violent outbreaks like the Fort Hood massacre at the other. The more commonly military servicemen and servicewomen experience PTSD, the less likely it is that the nation is calling on them to do what it should.
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