Once Again, the Challenge to the U.S. Army During a Defense Reduction (Paperback) | Released: 07 May 2012

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.
About the Author: Don M. Snider is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at West Point, from which he retired in 2008. He serves now as Senior Fellow in the Center for the Army Profession and Ethic (CAPE) at West Point and as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College. In his previous military career, Dr. Snider served three combat tours in Vietnam as an infantryman; after battalion command, Dr. Snider served as Chief of Plans for Theater Army in Europe, as Joint Planner for the Army Chief of Staff, as Executive Assistant in the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on the staff of the National Security Council, the White House. He retired from the Army in 1990. Subsequently, and before joining the Academy's civilian faculty in 1998, for 3 years he was the Olin Distinguished Professor of National Security Studies at West Point. Dr. Snider's continuing research examines American civil-military relations, the identities and development of the American Army officer, military professions, and professional military ethics. He was research director and co-editor of The Future of the Army Profession, (2d Ed., McGraw-Hill, 2005), and Forging the Warrior's Character (2d Ed., McGraw-Hill, 2008). More recent publications include, "Dissent and Strategic Leader-ship of Military Professions" (Orbis, 2008), The Army's Professional Military Ethic in an Era of Persistent Conflict (co-author, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2008) and, co-editor with Suzanne Nielsen, American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in the New Era, (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Dr. Snider holds master's degrees in economics and public policy from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in public policy from the University of Maryland.