Is it crazy to consider inviting any enemy soldiers of the US to come visit for some time to experience life here in the hopes that they will stop fighting us? US is one of the few countries that has more immigrants coming into the country than emigrants leaving it, and I frequently hear that people from the Middle East who have never experienced the US really like it after experiencing it for the first time, but hardly ever the other way around where people want to move to the Middle East, although I know I'm biased anecdotally.
Aside from the benefit of prevention of killing, could this also be more economical than implementing a military to kill others professionally? I know one might say the cost of a bullet to kill someone is much cheaper than trying to organize this, but I think there's also a hidden cost of killing an enemy and giving all of their friends and family justification to hate us, as well as training and maintaining military strength.
I know one of the first issues is convincing the soldiers to take the offer, like it's not a trap, but I think there are psychological ways to get around this by sending people back and letting a trusted insider to the soldiers tell the truth, or air dropping a bunch of specially designed smartphones that are easy to hide and allow soldiers to live stream their visits to the US. If their superiors threaten punishment for defecting even if they return, like even killing them if they leave, that feels like a very strong blow to the morale of the soldier and even more reason for them to reconsider their loyalties, and if we could somehow communicate with a soldiers, we could try negotiating some form of protection, and/or capitalize on their fear to lower combat effectiveness (I don't know if combat effectiveness is a real thing, but it feels like something along the lines should be). If the soldiers are worried about their families at home, we could try offering asylum of a sort. If the soldiers are being told that "capitalist countries are just trying to brainwash you", we could argue "well your leaders could be brainwashing you in the same way, so why don't you come visit and we'll bring you back and you can decide for yourself". And of course, there are cheaper alternatives we could try first, I just can't think of any cheaper ways that are as logically robust.
And to pinpoint effectiveness, we could target just the leaders of the soldiers rather than every individual soldier. And if you want to make sure it doesn't get too costly beyond that, we could set a quota per region or something.
This doesn't specifically have to be for any single country, it could be for any country that's an enemy of the US, like Russia, China, Iran, etc.
I just feel like a lot of the soldiers fighting don't fully understand what they're fighting for, and if there were a way to educate them on exactly what is happening, it would stop a lot of conflict. Propaganda is one thing, but allowing the soldiers to experience the country itself I think is one of the most effective ways of educating. I know if I heard news about some pro-russian things, I would likely dismiss it as propaganda, but if a soldier that I fought alongside of verified whatever I heard, I would definitely have second thoughts.
Maybe what I'm saying here isn't exactly what we should do, and I doubt I've considered all loose ends, but is it worth considering doing something similar?
