The draft: arguments for and against
Arguments for a draft
Rep. Charles Rangel got a lot of publicity when he introduced a bill into the House to restart compulsory military service, the draft. Herewith some analysis.

Support for a draft is minimal but cuts across political lines, with different motivations. Many political conservatives who tend to be sympathetic to a renewed draft grew up in the old draft era. They see the draft as a great social equalizer that brought young men together in difficult circumstances from all walks of life, all ethnicities and regions of the country. These men generally that kind of social mixing as desirable in itself. Such men (women were never drafted) also tend to be highly patriotic and think that military service is a basic obligation of citizenship. Except for World War II, the number of men actually drafted during the draft years was small compared to the pool of eligibles. But every male had to register for the draft (and still does) upon turning 18 and face the real possibility that he might be called up. That fact alone made young men ponder, however briefly, that freedom is not free. These things, so one side of the political spectrum says, are worthwhile reasons to reinstitute the draft. The draft would also free the services from the time and expense of recruiting.

Other folks say that whatever one's opinion of the military, it is best to have decisions made about its uses, funding and equipping made by a national leadership that has at least some familiarity with the military. Hence, they may support a renewal of the draft because they want tomorrow's leaders to be at least minimally aware of military life or capabilities. Some proponents also say that America would be better served with a population "salted" with more veterans than it is now, even if only a tiny number of veterans rise to political leadership.

Both these positions are based on a concern for the betterment of the country as a whole. They contrast with the left of center position on the draft. The liberals who support it (not all do, of course), claim some of the same concerns as the first two camps, but Rep. Rangel did not disguise his hope that a renewed draft would foment anti-military feeling and opposition to President Bush. This position is crass and calculating, being oriented on what will make his party prosper, not the nation at large.

Are these premises valid?
I think it is highly debatable that a term of military service by young men (or women) would mean that their later decisions, as national leaders, concerning war or military affairs would be better in any meaningful sense. Even with a draft like Rangel envisions, the number of elites to serve would be very small compared to the number eligible. It can't be reasonably expected that somehow military service, rendered two or three decades before, would make men or women of say, 45-60 years of age wiser heads in debating national security.

As a form of social policy intended to garner better-informed decision makers at the national level, the draft has little to commend it and much against it. Here are three arguments against it.

A draft would achieve low density results a great expense
Even if I grant that a term as a private in the Army by draftees would have a beneficial effect on national policy years down the line - and I do not think so - the number of men actually drafted would be a small percentage of those eligible, and the number of men who would rise to national leadership would be much smaller still. We could wind up spending literally billions of dollars in increased costs to garner a single draftee turned Senator. Does that make sense?

The US Census data for 2000 show that there are approximately 7,900,000 men aged 18-21 inclusive, the prime years for a draft. This number will stay fairly stable for at least a decade. Drafting a half-million men per year (I'll not address whether women should be drafted) takes only 6.3 percent of the eligibles. Of that 500,000 men, a significant number will not successfully complete their term; even in the all-volunteer force, perhaps one-fourth to one-third do not. Draftees may be expected to have a higher failure rate, call it 40 percent, charitably. That 40 percent presumably would not offer a national-class benefit later in life.

Of the remaining 300,000 men, how many would later rise to national-level leadership? No one can say. Some would, of course, but the presumption that their influence would be very great is not founded on anything, really, but the example of WW II vets - of which there were 16 million, all who served within a four-year span. I say that the experiences and contributions of that generation are historically unique: the Great Depression shaped their character as much as the war (Marine veteran William Manchester made this point in Goodbye Darkness) and after the war the G.I. Bill shaped it at least as much also. To expect that their model would hold true today is more imagination than well grounded conclusion.

A draft is a bad investment with no "payoff"
The armed forces are presently meeting their recruiting goals quite handily with volunteers. In fact, 2002 was the best recruiting year ever, according to a recent DOD release. If we revive the draft, draftees would either displace volunteers or require a larger military.

In the first case, we would have to tell would-be volunteers that they may not serve in order to make room for those who do not wish to serve. To me, this is self-evidently stupid, indeed un-American. It would not even accomplish the putative goals of a better informed citizenry in later years because no greater number of men and women would be serving than are serving now.

The second option is to increase the size of the armed forces extravagantly. There are good arguments to increase the size of the armed forces. I think they are too small myself. But the draft is no cure. In October 2001 I wrote that the anti-terrorism crusade "will take a new kind of national commitment. . . . It will require new kinds of armies, armies not of soldiers but of engineers, agriculturalists, financiers, administrators and educators." The draft won't do that. It will give us the wrong kind of force for the challenges we must face in the years to come. In fact, many of those skills are more suited for civil service than armed forces.

All these new troops would have to be trained, housed, equipped, transported and fed. Many of them would be married; more than half the enlisted force is now. Family-support costs would skyrocket. In the Army alone, the present basing infrastructure won't support such an expansion. The present unit structure won't support it. To reactivate old units whose colors are now furled would take years because those units would be useless without vehicles, ammunition, weapons and countless thousands of items of other equipment. The Air Force and Navy have similar problems concerning ships, aircraft and bases.

None of that can be manufactured quickly, unless substantial sectors of the civilian economy are converted as was done in World War II. You can bet that no proponent of the draft envisions that! A draft's startup costs alone would be astronomical and the annual recurring costs would be exorbitant also - all for the unreasonable expectation that the armed forces would be better off or would in later years make better national leaders.

The poor premises of a renewed draft
The whole move for a draft for its supposed social benefits is founded on fog: that a term as a draftee private makes better members of Congress or university presidents or cabinet secretaries or Wall Street bankers many years later. But there is no real evidence to support such a conclusion.

Draftee-level service is not training for national-level leadership.
The kind of education and knowledge needed at the national-policy level for the uses of the military either to preserve the nation or advance its goals is not the kind that will ever be learned by draftees or short-term volunteers. In the military education system, noncommissioned officers really never get training oriented toward national policy, at least not in any significant degree, and officers get none at all until Command and General Staff College - and then only concerning the structure of the national military establishment. Theory education, the philosophy of American way of war, pondering what a military is for in America and studies of the limits and uses of military power do not come until the War College and later schools. But only career officers attend those schools, and not all of them.

Veterans' records are decidedly mixed
Even veterans who actually served in combat are not necessarily better or wiser civilian controllers of the military later in life. Former Republican Senator Bob Dole and Democrat Senator Daniel Inouye are both WW II combat veterans with distinguished service. Maybe their wisdom about military affairs was enhanced by their service, but we really have no way to know. Many non-vets have proved pretty smart, too. Abe Lincoln is often offered as a foremost example, since he had six weeks of active duty, total, and spent almost all of it sitting in a tent in bivouac.

President Lyndon Johnson: can you say, "quagmire?" He was a WW II Navy veteran.

Robert McNamara: Johnson's secretary of defense was an Air Force veteran. He was the architect of America's agonies is Vietnam.

Jimmy Carter: US Naval Academy graduate, Navy officer, and architect of the disastrous Agreed Framework with North Korea in 1994, which haunts us today. The "hollow Army" also came to being during his terms as president.

Woodrow Wilson: No military experience, but during his term the United States decisively defeated Imperial German forces; it was the peace afterward that Wilson mismanaged.

Harry S Truman: An Army artillery officer and combat veteran during WW I, he saw WW II to a successful conclusion. The Marshall Plan saved western Europe under his administration, but he also let conventional forces degenerate pitifully. He mismanaged the Korean War at great cost to American blood and treasure.

John F. Kennedy: A WW II Navy combat vet, Kennedy brilliantly handled the Cuban Missile Crisis (but it was close!) but also started America's long tragic slide into Vietnam.

Ronald Reagan: Made training films in WW II, no other military experience. Materially ensured the defeat of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, masterminded the downfall of the USSR.

Overall, the national-security record of veterans in office is mixed at best, and so is that of non-vets. It's no basis for starting the draft.

by Donald Sensing, 1/31/2003 12:52:48 PM. Permalink |