...Now, that infantryman must also have certain attributes of a “beat cop.”
LCol Eyre's closing line.
To engage with the population and destroy the enemy at close quarters.
That is the role envisioned by the author for the infantry. I would disagree. I believe that the role of the infantry should remain as it is: to close with and destroy the enemy.
The guy with the can of whitewash.
The second position makes everything easier. There is a training focus. There is moral clarity.
But, I most humbly suggest, that is not what a government can supply.
I have argued that the soldier is first and foremost an agent of the Crown (or the sovereign people for those silly types that require democracy in all things). The Crown needs to control its spaces and places. Places are where the people are. Spaces are where people might be.
People don't easily self-identify as targets and non-targets. Only members of the military tribe seem to have that propensity.
The Government requires people to act as its agents to engage other people. By choosing to act as agents then the types involved also self-identify as targets - might as well give them uniforms.
The ongoing question of the difference between the Policeman and the Soldier is ultimately a non-question. Both of them are agents of the Crown whose role is to enforce the Crown's wishes. Fortunately, in Canada, the Crown wishes a peaceful, secure environment.. The Policeman expects to come home most nights after a day on the job. But he works every day. The Soldier doesn't work everyday (ducking now). He trains every day and gets paid for that but he really only works occasionally. Most importantly, when he does work, he doesn't have the same expectation of coming home that the Copper does.
That difference in expectations is not a function of the role of the Agent so much as it is a function of the environment to which they are assigned. Soldiers are assigned to target rich environments. Policemen are assigned to target poor environments. Unfortunately the scale of poor to rich is a sliding scale and sometimes the targets have to be sifted. And this brings us back to Dragoons raised as mobile infantry to police the spaces. And to Gendarmerie, and Carabinieri and Marechausse and Mounties and British South African Constabulary.....
It is no accident that the Cold War infantry was an endangered species. The Cold War was predicated on people in uniforms operating in target rich environments with moral clarity of purpose. The targets self identified. The Shock Forces (Cavalry and Artillery - tanks to nukes and everything in between) didn't have to worry about finding something to fight with).
Now that that period of silliness is behind us we are back to where we started. The Government needs to find people to sift out the wolves from the sheep and to identify the target rich space from the target poor spaces so that they can appropriately assign personnel: police to target poor zones, soldiers (or should it be Shock Forces) to target rich spaces.
The Continentals, accepting of a Standing Army and no concept of Minimum Force, have no trouble maintaining a separate domestic army of gendarmes to control the spaces. Their police control the places and their armies control their borders and beyond.
Us Anglo types (and our Huguenot friends) rebelled very precisely and exactly against that very type of standing domestic army, whether it be Jimmy the Sixth and First's paid reivers on the borders, Charles II's Highland Host and Dragoons in Ayrshire, Louis XIV's Dragons in the Vendee and the Palatinate, or George II's Black Watch. Consequently the Brits have had to maintain an infantry heavy army to supply the Crown with the capabilities that Louis's Dragoos supplied him.
The Crown needs bodies to operate in the Grey Zone that is neither target rich nor target poor. They need Policemen that can take Shock Action when the situation warrants rather than waiting for someone else to handle it. At the same time they need Shock Forces that will find their own targets and not piss off the population in the process.
Apparently our Cold War raised Army doesn't want the job. Unfortunately the prognosis for Shock Forces is not that great in the absence of self-identified targets. Given such a shortage the Shock Forces are not likely to get much usage and end up going the way of the Guild of Wagon Wheel Spoke Makers.
