Sputnik: A similar Trump initiative looking to prevent green card holders from serving in the US military was blocked by a federal judge last year. What are the chances of the Pentagon's initiative being adopted this time?
Jacob Wohl: Pentagon vetting programs are unlikely to be challenged in court, unlike outright bans on groups of people.
In many ways the USA is currently fighting against the inevitable — by building walls, drastically reducing immigration, scrutinizing all immigrant applications more closely, and even deporting or ejecting current foreign-born military recruits (green card holders and US Citizens alike) it is not just sufficient to deny these recruits security clearances as they have done in the past. However, just like with the USA withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action ("JCPOA") nuclear deal with Iran, the USA has also pulled out of or drastically modified many other international treaties with the rest of the world's people out of these same concerns, while the rest of the world moves full throttle into globalism and internationalism.
While this is not only the result of President Trump's opinions on the matter, it is said that "a King only listens to the advice of his advisors when they match his own." While 8000 US military recruits per year are foreign-born, this apparently presents a security threat to the policymakers in the DOD and Pentagon these days. Since this is a matter of National Security it is very unlikely that the federal judiciary will be able to continue to block the Pentagon's initiative at this time.
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Jacob Wohl: The military is trying to balance a current struggle that it's having with recruiting with the need to vet potential candidates. They are still trying to find the best way to balance out those two priorities.
Rahul Manchanda: Indeed the US Founding Fathers explicitly indicated that the US Military should only be composed of US Citizens if only to guard against potential espionage by foreign actors or agents, and also to ensure that only like-minded recruits of similar civics and constitutional understanding and principals may serve. Mercenaries and other "professional soldiers" were expressly denied admission.
But it is also a standing fact that military service has steadfastly decreased amongst American politicians within the legislature, executive branch and the judiciary each and every decade since this country's founding, and many argue that this is why stupid/misguided foreign interventionism by armchair warriors has increased, and the use of the military has been abused for "prop" purposes or as a political weapon, rather for national security or American defence.
Other methods of securing the US Army could include even more stringent requirements for security clearance if those recruits are not needed at this time.
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Sputnik: In order to join the military from a foreign country you must become a permanent US resident or a green card holder. Is it possible to allow only US citizens to serve in the army?
Rahul Manchanda: Again, the genesis of recruiting foreigners into the US Military was borne out of a desperate need for medical, scientific, and logistical skills that they needed both before, during and after the Cold War. Indeed after World War 2 many thousands of foreign-born members of the German Nazi Party were imported to the USA military, DOD, and intelligence services in "Operation Paperclip," precisely because of this need and due to the fact that the USA did not want those skilled labourers to go to work for another rival nation, such as the former Soviet Union.
But with greater confidence by the US Military in their relative global military hegemony, coupled with the heightened sense of fear of foreign espionage at work particularly from nations such as China or even Russia, the US Military has begun to shed its foreign-born military recruits and/or made it harder for them to join. Indeed China and Russia have also historically minimized their use of foreign-born military recruits, as well as does Israel. There is a lesson contained thereon.
Sputnik: Why has the initiative, which aims to protect national security, been dubbed an "Anti-Immigrant Military Enlistment Policy" by the Western media?
Jacob Wohl: Any effort to vet immigrants is called anti-immigrant and racist by the leftists that populate the American Mainstream Media.
Rahul Manchanda: Again, the Western media has been decried and dubbed by the current administration as "fake news," if not globalist or internationalist in nature, and much of this is true, since media powerhouses such as CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, Al Jazeera, Sky Media, and other of their subsidiaries/competitors maintain field offices all throughout the world, and as such are coloured by such international worldviews, that are at odds with the inherently protectionist security policies of the US Military, Pentagon and the DOD.
Jacob Wohl: The military is struggling to find new recruits, mostly due to the booming private sector economy. By combining new recruitment initiatives with the use of private contractors, the military will fill the void.
Rahul Manchanda: It would certainly decrease those numbers, but not really to the detriment of the program since the need/days of desperate recruiting for skills/training are pretty much over now that the Cold War has effectively been ended, Europe is pretty much a vassal state of the US, and internationalism and globalism have increased security concerns, particularly when it comes to cyber-security and information warfare.
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Sputnik: Every year, more than 8,000 green card holders join the military. Federal Law prohibits security clearance being granted to non-citizens but once they are naturalised they have access to classified information. How are potential spies or terrorists allowed to work with sensitive information?
Jacob Wohl: The US Military's counter-intelligence policies and practices are very robust, and designed to detect and ensnare foreign spies.
So essentially, because they were always flying under the radar, and the least suspected, they were also the most effective in undermining US National Security and passing on secrets to the enemy. In fact, there is a direct correlation to being foreign-born and loyalty to the USA, since they are constantly and always under severe scrutiny and surveillance, not just from their employers at the Pentagon and DOD, but also by their colleagues.
The views expressed in this article are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
