The decision to suddenly stick to the letter of a contract can cause a great deal of confusion if the parties have previously operated on a looser interpretation of the agreement. The Defense Department’s decision to force some 5,600 members of the Individual Ready Reserve to return to active duty is just such a case.
The relevant economic insights are that people respond to incentives — both intended and unintended — and that every action involves an opportunity cost. That is, every decision to pursue some course means that something else must be given up.
There is no question that the DOD can legally activate members of the IRR. Most members have completed an initial three- or four-year active duty enlistment but still have time remaining against their statutory six-year military obligation. Others have met the six-year limit, but in the course of subsequent reserve component are, for a variety of reasons, neither serving in units nor discharged.
(By way of disclosure, I was in the IRR for three years after my active-duty enlistment ended in 1970 and again repeatedly for varying periods over 27 years of reserve service.)
Enlistment forms refer to applicable laws specifying several things. Persons in the IRR can be involuntarily recalled when needed. Those on active duty enlistments can have their release or retirement from active duty delayed. (This has been common recently under the “stop loss order” program.) Members of reserve units can be called to active duty as often and as long as necessary to meet the nation’s needs.
Of course, not every detail is explicitly laid out for every enlistee. The documents are clear enough, however, that court challenges to involuntary activations and extensions will go nowhere. Nor should they. The law as written provides a legal basis for a wide range of rapid responses in case of true, dire national emergency.
Few soldiers would object to recall or extension if it were clear that there was a dire need and that all other alternative measures were being taken.
It is harder to accept such bruising disruption to one’s life when the administration has been refusing, against the bi-partisan urging of many senior members of Congress, to increase the size of the armed forces in response to threats to the nation. DOD’s grudging recent acceptance of modest troop increases comes nearly three years after the Sept. 11 attacks that signaled the start of what we term the “war on terrorism.”
The rationale given for tasking existing active and reserve units with greater and greater commitments is that increasing long-term Army and Marine numbers would add some billions to the defense budget.
Failure to do so, however, imposes a very heavy de facto tax on a very limited number of households that generally are among the poorer in the nation. This is certainly legal. To many it is not fair, however.
The longer-run opportunity cost will be to decrease the supply of people willing to enlist in the armed forces. In the past, potential recruits ignored the dormant legal liability for involuntary service after their enlistment ended as they weighed their choices. Given the broad publicity about involuntary extensions and recalls, this would not be true in the future. The chance of such involuntary service will enter into any young person’s weighing the pros and cons of military service.
The administration might respond that the armed forces do not have difficulty in meeting current recruiting goals. That may be true. Nevertheless, citizens have a long collective memory. The effects of actions in 2004 will not be clear for some time.
The change in the implied bargain of National Guard and Reserve unit service is already making itself felt. Prior to this war, most reservists understood they could be called to active duty in any emergency.
Most assumed, however, that such call-ups would be part of a much larger mobilization of resources. Their function was to plug the gap until the active-duty training establishment turned out enough new units to assume the burden. This is the first time in U.S. history that reserve units have been asked to take a major burden without any concurrent increase in active duty numbers.
The effects already are becoming evident in reserve unit reenlistment patterns. Many loyal and highly experienced troops are opting out in prospect of extended and repeated activations carried out primarily so that active duty numbers need not be increased.
People respond to incentives. Actions have consequences. It is not clear that the current civilian leadership at the Pentagon really understands these concepts or that they are willing to look beyond the short-term horizons of an election year at the longer national well-being.
© 2004 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.