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candals in veteran care services, bloated
defense spending, declining youth interest
in military service, and abdication by Congress of
war declaration powers are but a few of the many
challenges faced by the United States military. As
with any institutional social problems, solutions to
such conditions can be perplexing to say the least.
However, as Lycoming professors, it is our job to
empower students with the analytical tools to help
effect change in social policy as voters, potential
legislators and government administrators.
This spring, students in
the course Sociology of War
and the Military analyzed
current issues facing the
United States military,
and were challenged to
analyze the facts and data
to prescribe their own
social policy framework to
determine where the greatest
need lay. To cap off the
semester, they had to write a
summary brief designed to
Echoing the concerns
of President Dwight D.
Eisenhower about the
potential for unwarranted
influence by the military,
first on their list of concerns
is defense spending and the
influence of the military-
industrial complex. The
U.S. is currently spending
more than $1 trillion on
national security in 2015.
By some accounts, this is
more than the next ten
countries’ combined military
spending. The spending is
potentially fueled by the
strong relationship between
Congress and defense
contractors and allows
the country to “go to war”
despite the fact that no
formal declaration of war
has been made by Congress.
Along with that, America
is not actually winning the
wars it wages, which raises
the question about what
Americans gain from all of
the financial output.
Recent overseas
deployments resulted in
protracted wars involving
grueling tempos for our
all-volunteer forces. As a
nation, we asked a great
deal of these military
personnel, who represent
less than one percent of the
total national population.
Students felt strongly that
veteran care should be
among our top national
priorities. Unfortunately,
the Department of Veterans
Affairs that has historically
been plagued by systemic
troubles and outright
scandals, including the
2014 VA Hospital scandal
in Phoenix and the poor
follow-up care of WWII
veterans purposely
exposed to mustard gas.
While adjustments can
ease the pressures on this
Bloated
budgets, vete
Students contemplate complexities facing America’s military
persuade the reader to take
action to resolve them. The
intended reader? Who better
than the potential 2016
presidential candidates, who
also become the country’s
commander-in-chief of the
armed forces.
Reaching into a
semester’s worth of
materials, students
identified the following as
the most pressing issues.
S
By Susan M. Ross, Ph.D.
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LYCOMING COLLEGE 2015 SUMMER MAGAZINE
P E R S P E C T I V E S