New from Harvard University Press:
The Rise of the Military Welfare State (Oct. 2015), by
Jennifer Mittelstadt (Rutgers University). A description from the Press:
Since the end of the draft, the U.S.
Army has prided itself on its patriotic volunteers who heed the call to
“Be All That You Can Be.” But beneath the recruitment slogans, the army
promised volunteers something more tangible: a social safety net
including medical and dental care, education, child care, financial
counseling, housing assistance, legal services, and other privileges
that had long been reserved for career soldiers.
The Rise of the Military Welfare State
examines how the U.S. Army’s extension of benefits to enlisted men and
women created a military welfare system of unprecedented size and scope.
America’s all-volunteer army took shape in the 1970s, in the wake of
widespread opposition to the draft. Abandoning compulsory conscription,
it wrestled with how to attract and retain soldiers—a task made more
difficult by the military’s plummeting prestige after Vietnam. The army
solved the problem, Jennifer Mittelstadt shows, by promising to
take care of its own—the more than ten million Americans who volunteered
for active duty after 1973 and their families. While the United States
dismantled its civilian welfare system in the 1980s and 1990s, army
benefits continued to expand.
Yet not everyone was pleased by programs that, in their view,
encouraged dependency, infantilized soldiers, and feminized the
institution. Fighting to outsource and privatize the army’s “socialist”
system and to reinforce “self-reliance” among American soldiers,
opponents rolled back some of the military welfare state’s signature
achievements, even as a new era of war began.
A few blurbs:
“A truly important book. Mittelstadt
shows how the military welfare state has contributed substantially to
upward mobility for both soldiers and their families. Her excellent
account is especially crucial today, when outsourcing and privatization
threaten the standards of living of service members and civilians alike.”—Linda Gordon
“Mittelstadt describes the emergence
of a khaki safety net extolled as tangible evidence of the nation’s
commitment to its soldiers’ well-being, and she traces how this support
system was undermined by a combination of military and civilian agendas.
This is a provocative, informed, and disturbing book that provides an
essential perspective on the modern U.S. armed forces.”—Brian M. Linn
More information, including the TOC, is available
here.
