Over at Kevin "Calpundit" Drum's Washington Monthly blog, Paul Glastris steps beyond fearmongering b.s. and steps up with some well thought-out proposals about a draft in the USA that might avoid past problems and contribute to national unity, a better and broader understanding of the military, and effectiveness in the current war. Discuss.
People can agree or disagree, but this isn't Congresscritter Rangel's cynical attempt to hamstring America, nor is it false, fear-mongering election b.s. (though Glastris shows his partisan lack of ethics in supporting the latter tactic). It's an issue liberals have been pushing for a while, and are still discussing. With the campaign b.s. past us now, it deserves examination on its merits. On the issue of a draft itself, Glastris says:
"...there's a limit to how many young people you can lure into the all-volunteer force without seriously lowering your standards. And from various sources - including news stories of recruiters pursuing kids with criminal records or who can barely pass their GEDs - one senses that we've about reached that limit."
I didn't miss the elitist liberal sneer for all things military and the classes who volunteer for same via the word "lure". This detracts from Glastris' credibility. Still, the policy question remains: is the USA in fact close to that limit? It seemed to do just fine with almost 200,000 extra volunteers in the early years of Clinton's Presidency, but what if the USA needed even more than that? Glastris asks:
"So what happens if Iraq gets worse, or North Korea implodes, or any one of a dozen other scenarios happens that might require further commitments of U.S. troops? How, short of garnering significant military help from allies, are we going to handle our manpower needs?
The answer is we probably can't, short of a draft. Which is why we at The Washington Monthly have put forth our plan for a new kind of draft. You can read about it here and here."
Actually, there are other options, but in this post I want to focus on letting Paul make his argument. We'll make it easier:
- Now Do You Believe We Need a Draft? We're in a new kind of war. Time for a new kind of draft. Written in November 2001.
- First Draft: The battle to create universal service has just been started. Here's how it can be won. Written in March 2003.
Glastris argues that:
"It's a plan that guards against the kind of injustices we saw in Vietnam, while not undermining the many advantages of today's all-volunteer military. In a nutshell, we propose that every young person headed for a four-year college be required, as a condition of admittance, to serve his or her country for a year or two in some capacity -- as an AmeriCorps member, in some homeland security role, or in the military. All who complete their service would receive G.I.-Bill-type college scholarships, with the largest grants going to those who serve the longest and choose the most dangerous duty. No one, then, would be required to join the military. But even if only, say, five percent of the million-plus young people who enter four-year colleges a year were to choose the military option, the U.S. military would be getting 50,000 additional college-grade volunteers to deploy as needed (probably as MPs and truck drivers in places like Kosovo and South Korea, but possibly in Iraq).
It's fashionable in Washington to dismiss the idea of bringing back the draft as a political nonstarter. Not only is this attitude irresponsible; I don't even think it's necessarily true. Last week, I laid out our draft idea to about 200 college students and professors in Twin Falls, Idaho--deep Bush country. In a show of hands, more than half favored the idea; only two opposed it. I've had similar reactions all over the country. Maybe, after the elections, someone in authority will at least float the idea."
His blog post's partisan "truth isn't important" crack and liberal sneering at the military annoyed me, and reflect much of what is wrong with the U.S. Democratic Party. That said, Glastris and Moskos' draft proposals deserve praise overall. They are clearly coming from people who see a problem, and have given serious thought to a solution that they truly believe will benefit their nation. That fact alone makes their ideas worth reading in these difficult times.
Reading, and discussing too. Is their proposed U.S. national service framework a good idea, or a bad one? Will it truly avoid the problems created by the draft system of the 60s? How well does it address other traditional issues with military drafts? Etc.
The floor is open.
This is the same old story. What appears to be desired by those in favor of a draft is to build an army for foreign conquest. No matter how you slice it, it comes up the same. The US was never designed to have a large standing army, nor a "draft." The defense of the country was to be in the hands of a small professional army and the militia. The Constitution defines the militia's missions 1) resist foreign invasion 2) enforce the laws 3) put down rebellion. A fourth mission is described in The Federalist - namely to terminate an oppressive government. Membership in the ("unorganized") militia was to consist of all white male adults (since the Militia Act of 1792). Under current law the unorganized (non-National Guard ["organized militia"]) militia consists of all male adults and those women serving in the National Guard. The officers of the militia are chosen by the States. The only draft possible under the Constitution was to call up the State Militias for federal service, not to enlist them in the standing army. Read the Constitution - its all there. That we have had a draft before does not make it consistent with the designs of the Constitution, not withstanding Supreme Court decisions to the contrary. If the State Militias were called up for federal service then operations outside the CONUS would be contrary to the Constitutional definition of the missions of the militia. Please note that we did not have a draft during the Revolution, and when the first draft was introduced during the War Between the States it provoked riots. Americans used to have the correct understanding of the Constitution in these matters. We should have the same attitude now. Arguments in favor of some unifying national service obligation ignore the history and the design of our form of government. Look at who is proposing this idea - Rangel? He is an idiot. He doesn't want a strong army, he wants to provoke a culture war for his own political purposes. He will use any language to justify his position including throwing guilt and blame where it is not merited. It is our own fault if we buy into this line of specious reasoning. Universal service in a militia (similar to the existing Swiss model and still under the command of State Governors) operating within the CONUS would be reasonable and I would argue, desireable, but not a federal draft into the army.
I think that mandatory service proposals (or "serve if you want this" proposals) are a nice idea, but I'm very skeptical of the non-military options mentioned. To be less charitable, I think that when someone puts forth AmeriCorps as the non-military service option, they're nuts.
I'm not sure how many readers are all that familiar with how AmeriCorps works, and if you served as one, my strong dislike of the program might not necessarily apply to your service. We employ about five AmeriCorps at work and they are excellent, the best that the program could be. They are, however, the exception and not the rule. Our Corps members require a college degree and work very hard. Some friends of mine who did the program as well as some other Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Uzbekistan with me all said that AmeriCorps was poorly run and that they felt the really didn't do anything during their service. This isn't surprising because management in the nonprofit sector is almost uniformly atrocious, and nonprofit managers mostly view AmeriCorps as a way to get cheap labor to do every little job they can't afford to pay someone for.
And then there are all the problems with the Corporation for National Service itself that I won't even bother getting into (just suffice it to say that when Bush tried to consolidate all the service agencies under their roof, I was very happy that the fairly well-managed Peace Corps stayed free).
The one kind of pre-college service that I wouldn't mind seeing is something along the lines of the Civilian Conservation Corps or similar civil works programs.
All that being said, considering that not everyone goes to college in the first place and that one has much more to offer to one's country post-college, why not try to create incentives to serve after college? AmeriCorps offers a small educational reward, and the Peace Corps offers a lump sum of cash, but neither really pays down a significant portion of one's college loans. The same scale, increasing with risk and hardship involved in the service, certainly could apply. If I had college loans and this was available, my decision to join the Peace Corps would not have been a "hey, this sounds neat" decision. Heck, maybe I would have joined the military instead.
I wonder what are our committments of force and to whom are. Does anybody know what they are? My first thought is the committment to European land bases as a place to begin redeploying.
A draft is involuntary servitude. Advocating a draft is advocating slavery. That the slaves are paid doesn't alter the fact they are being forced to serve against their will.
RKV:
I wrote on the subject you're talking about some little while ago. You might enjoy my post The well-regulated militia. We aren't.
On the subject at hand, perhaps we should go back to basics. How would mandatory service strengthen our military? Obviously mandatory non-military service would have a negligible effect on our military. It's not obvious to me that mandatory military service would strengthen our military, either. Would a large number of poorly-motivated draftees enhance or reduce preparedness?
Many of the arguments in favor of a draft appear to me to be attempts to reduce our military preparedness and, as such, are beneath contempt.
Don't need a draft; the military doesn't want it.
What we need to do is pay our people in uniform what they are truly worth.
Let the labor market work.
Dave,
Your post was very good, but it really deals with domestic protection, not foreign commitments. No reason we couldn't take your advice AND Glastris', but they're different propositions.
In fairness to Glastris, his proposals do seem to ensure that those who take the military track of his plan are motivated (via higher danger-scaled rewards for those who choose this path).
I'll also note for RKV that Glastris' proposals are decidedly different than Rangel's, and come from a very different motivation. We may think he's right or that he's wrong, but unlike Rangel he is not trying to weaken America.
The Draft
I read with interest all of the articles concerning the future of a potential draft and mandatory military / civic service. In a nutshell all carry the theme that one must be compelled to serve this country in some form or fashion. What none seem to address is the core reason behind such a belief. Some have provided what seem to be sound arguments for and against however, all arguments are aimed at a desired outcome of increasing civic / national responsibility.
The arguments for required conscription:
1) We don't have enough military forces to sustain our endeavors across the globe.
2) Every US citizen owes a debt to US society for the benefits this country provides.
3) Current volunteers are unjustly carrying the workload for the benefit of all.
4) An all volunteer force attracts only the economically and educationally deficient.
The arguments against required conscription:
1) The current military forces and deployments are mismanaged.
2) No US citizen should be forced to put their life on the line for national interest.
3) A voluntary military force is critical to high morale.
4) Forced conscription diminishes the intelligence required for effective service.
To really understand the issue I think we have to look at roles we assign to military and civic duty in our society. What should the military be used for and why should US citizens support the military? What should civic duty be used for and why should US citizens support it? If I look at what I call the core questions they shed a different light on the ones we are debating.
Maybe I'm taking an overly simplistic look at what we are trying to accomplish but I'll offer my dos_centavos.
US citizens pay their debts on a yearly basis as mandated through taxes. Should we force US citizens to pay their debt in blood and sweat at the expense of cheap labor as well or should we force them to pay a higher price in taxes thereby affording those that serve the same opportunities of economic gain that the civilian sector offers.
The notion that those that serve with less than a high school diploma, GED or college education are somehow not worthy of service to me is pure poppy cock. Military and civic service offer many opportunities that put them on the same level as those that attend high school, vocational schools or higher educational facilities. I could easily argue the point that anyone who serves in the military or civic service will attain the minimum of an associates degree from life experiences alone for two years worth of service. Those that serve longer in specialized fields such as engineering, electronics, data processing and other high tech fields can certainly be placed on an even par as those that have higher degrees in our educational facilities.
Before we go off willy nilly instituting a draft in my opinion we need to answer the core questions first. If we don't we are opening ourselves up to a highly explosive issue.
It’s a ridiculous idea.
First, conscription is always wrong regardless of whether the conscriptee is being given a “choice” between the military or a government make-work program like Americorps. No government should have the ability to force its citizens to serve
Second, it’s bad economically. Generally the best way to have resources (and labor is a resource) used in the most efficient manner is through a market-style system of incentives*. If you want the best, you have to pay them what they’re worth or willing to accept and I think we can all agree that while most people who serve valiantly in our armed forces probably do so for patriotism (and to an extent some of the benefits), we could probably improve both their pay and working conditions (making sure that they have adequate supplies and training) and attract even more well-qualified candidates. Also with regards to the make-work option, it is simply silly from an economic perspective to divert people from being producers in the private sector to Americorps simply because someone “feels” that Americorps is somehow more worthwhile.
On a related note, it’s also a bad idea to have a third-party paying for something whether it is health care or a college education because there is little incentive for those who use that service to control the costs. IMO one of the problems with the cost of college has been financial aid, colleges raise their tuition at multiples of the rate of inflation in large part because the students aren’t the ones who pay for it directly. Instead they have a third-party (often the government) who pays for it which separates the customer (student) from the one who is paying and removes the incentive to control the cost. It also enables colleges to raise their tuition at levels that they would probably not be able to get away with if they were in a functioning market in which their customers were more responsive to price pressure.
Finally, it’s a further expansion of the Nanny State. I don’t want the federal government or any level of government for that matter to have the power to dictate to me or anyone else where I chose to work or place an artificial requirement on my ability to enter into a private agreement with a college to receive an education. If someone wants to attend a college that requires “public service,” than s/he can chose to go to that college and meet that “service” requirement. If they don’t, that is their affair as well.
This is the worst possible time for somebody to suggest this, after the utterly revolting way that this issue was exploited during the election. I'm in a mood for public horse-whipping, not giving serious thought to something that the left has turned into a cynical mockery. But here goes:
Any conscription proposal that is not motivated solely by urgent National Defense needs is a sham. Unfortunately, all such proposals have ulterior motives, of the worst possible sort.
- There's the Bogus Pacifist draft enthusiast, who thinks (if he can be said to think) that by drafting everybody we will effectively abolish war, because nobody wants to see all those rich kids get killed.
- Then there's those who want to see all of society regimented, working together to carry out their antique political objectives, after the manner of Bolshevik labor conscription. (Or Italian fascism, though they wouldn't like to hear it pointed out.) These people need to swim to Cuba and join a Revolutionary Defense Committee.
- There's the grizzly old Starship Trooper, drafted during the Korean War, who thinks that young people today are all spoiled rotten punks who need a Drill Instructor to straighten them out. I sympathize, but it's not the government's job to fix your neighbor's kids.
- There's the amateur defense analysts, steeped in World War II history, who think that modern wars require masses of infantry divisions.
- But above there are the cynics and hooligans who push idiotic Draft proposals as a means of attacking the military, poisoning public debate, and disrupting a country that they care nothing for and have no interest in defending in the first place.
"I'm in a mood for public horse-whipping" - damn Glen, don't hold back.
I have no interest in discussing a draft. The last thing the military needs is unmotivated short-timers. If you want a useful discussion, let's consider how we could encourage young men to enlist:
- better pay
- signing bonuses
- increased GI Bill benefits
- speeches and commercials encouraging recruits from the President and other major figures
- personal appeals at high school graduations by local Congressmen and other politicians
- (the old favorite) those "I Want YOU" posters
The left's sudden liking for the draft is a thinly veiled attempt to make war impossible. If everyone had to be in the military, then every parent would be against war - this is the left's thinking not mine remember.
"avoid past problems and contribute to national unity, a better and broader understanding of the military, and effectiveness in the current war."
None of which is the mission of our military. The only question is 'will the draft improve or degrade our military capabilities', period. Every military expert agrees it will degrade our effectiveness, which is answer enough.
-We still havent called up the majority of our NG and reserves. If there is an emergency (NK, Taiwan) that is what they are for.
-Our current divisions are above their quotas for enlistment. Why even consider a draft until we create more spots we cant fill? Hello?
-Excepting NK invading the South, is there a plausible scenario where a large number of ground forces will be desperately required anywhere in the world? Iran or Taiwan could be handled entirely with air and sea power. For that matter any country in the world that messes with us will have their economy and infastructure devastated by air power alone, tomahawks alone if necessary. Every nation knows that and must be willing to accept such an outcome before taking us on. That is a massive deterant.
-Could it be that degrading our military capability is the ultimate goal of the lefty draft advocates? Seriously, are they particularly happy that our military can smash any other army in the world with ease? There is nothing that irritates these people more than the fact that the most enthousiastic Bush and Iraq supporters are the soldiers that are there. I get the feeling that if they had the chance to inject some of the bitter, 'dont want to be here', folks the Vietnam war was famous for, they would be much more comfortable. Moreover a weaker military would make the US perforce less 'beligerant'. Is this crazy talk?
Aren’t you Canadian? ;)
Seriously though (Joe of course, has as much right to take an interest in American public policy debate as we have to take an interest in the internal policy debates of other nations), the most likely motivation of this proposal seems to be what Glen Wishard suggested:
I would also add that another and related motivation would be to get more people dependent on government for their livelihood (such as the CCC during the New Deal) by getting as many people hooked on government programs as possible. Don’t be surprised if this sort of conscription policy were to come into play (it won’t so long as Democrats remain in the political wilderness) that the next step would be to unionize the (non-military) conscriptees and increase the size and influence of the federal workforce.
Frankly this idea is so patently bad (I would even go so far as to say evil) that those who support it should be given no more of a benefit of the doubt than those who would suggest that we reinstitute another leftist New Deal policy of forcible internment of suspect ethnic populations.
Thorley Winston: "... getting as many people hooked on government programs as possible."
Absolutely. In an effing nutshell. Tell your children to just say no. Do phonics, not workfare.
No draft needed.
If necessary, many more people will volunteer.
People seem to have a good sense of whether they might be needed or not. Many volunteered because of 9/11 and the on-going actions in Afganistan and Iraq.
Should the country be presented with a seriously large challenge, I would sign up if they'd take me. I'm 52.
All it would take is a very visible request for help from the President or military through a large volume media source(s).
A draft is useful when you need one, but one isn't necessary yet. If we do need to start filling out the army if Iraq starts affecting recruiting (and that's the only service that's going to have a problem), it's going to be a fairly narrowly tailored draft. The army won't need a couple of million 18-20 year olds a year any time soon. I don't know how they'd do it, but it wouldn't be a mass effort. They just wouldn't have the cash to waste. Just feeding and housing that many people is expensive, let alone paying to give them weaponry and training.
And for the person who says the military is underpaid, they aren't. You take a look at the jobs and pay available to a high school kid in today's private economy, then compare to what's available in the military with training, medical plan, family support, free housing, education benefits, and a pension after 20-30 years (followed by employment as a private contractor for someone with cross-over skills) added in, and the military is a pretty good deal. In fact, the deal is so good that the USAF is actually giving some airmen the boot to keep down costs.
A close friend of mine enlisted recently. When he got back from Basic, he had a lot of interesting things to share. The most memorable thing he said about the difficulty of the training: "It really is all mental. If you don't want to be there, it'll be hell; if what you really want is to be a soldier in the US armed forces, it won't be anything you can't handle."
Drafts are generally useful for producing cannon fodder. They aren't good for much else, because the people you get don't really want to be there.
We don't need cannon fodder to win wars anymore - at least not the kind of wars we're currently fighting.
Seriously, does nobody else see the problem with linking conscription (military or otherwise) to entrance to a four-year college program?
The word is "economic disincentives".
Basically, the value of a four-year degree is mostly the value of the salary you can expect afterwards, modified somewhat by individual enrichment (some of us like class) and other factors (like Mom saying "You WILL get a degree".)
So if you put a big, unpleasant disincentive attached to it (basically, a year or two of impressment!), suddenly the value of that four-year degree goes down pretty sharply. This is even more pronounced if the disincentive isn't going to be persistent - if I'm considering whether I want to go to college or not, and I figure the draft won't last more than a year or two, I'm a LOT more likely to defer my enrollment until later. If I've got to do something else for two years, I might as well do something on my terms, instead of being drafted or forced to work in a third-world country handing out food aid.
You might say, "but some people will join the military willingly, in order to receive the benefit of education." Okay, but people already join the military willingly to receive the benefit of education. Not just admission either - we pay for it! So I find it difficult to believe that there is a horde of people willing to join the military in order to go to college that, for some reason, haven't joined the military now in order to go to college.
I think what you would find, should such a proposal be rammed through, is that an awful lot of entry level jobs that currently require college degrees will suddenly no longer require those degrees (or will require an associate's degree or something that doesn't trigger the draft?)
Joe:
I agree that motivation is key, but sometimes guys get drafted and decide they like army life. And sometimes people volunteer for the money or security rather than to be warriors.
I was reading a book on the English civil war recently, and one thing that struck me was that the new model army preferred pressed men over volunteers because the method allowed them to choose the ones that were strongest and healthiest out of a given population. So the answer might not be cut and dried.
Glastris: "It's a plan that guards against the kind of injustices we saw in Vietnam, while not undermining the many advantages of today's all-volunteer military."
This is such utter horsefeathers. Surely not even people who subscribe to the Washington Monthly print edition are stupid enough to believe this.
Eliminating college deferments and crossing your fingers will not correct the inequities of the Vietnam era. Those who have the means and the inclination to avoid service will easily do so. Those who are caught will not be punished - in fact, I suspect that if a Republican president is in office, the same folks who are pushing this idiotic draft will be encouraging people to evade it.
Instead, everyone else will be punished, as future generations of Americans will be subjected to endless recriminations and finger-pointing, about who did or didn't "serve", and about who served better than others, etc. Complete with forged documents, no doubt.
Among those who do not avoid service, those with educational advantages will seek out the comfy billets. The victims of the Detroit public school system will get what's left. This will degrade the quality and the prestige of the combat arms branches, and it will put back in place a resentful social stratification that the military has done so much to eliminate since Vietnam.
As for his remarks about people who can barely pass the GED - countless young men who have done poorly in school have gone on to excel in the armed forces, acquiring skills and education that their schools deprived them of. There they serve alongside college-educated men, and they have in common the fact that they are all volunteers who chose to be where they are, and who have chosen to adapt their lives to the requirements of military service (service which is a SKILL, not a sentence).
Configure it how you will: Under a draft, they will have in common the fact that they are all the slaves of a conscription system, under which some people are obviously doing better than others, and which so many people are so obviously evading. They will be put alongside people who have no business being in uniform, and asked to entrust their lives to these people. Again, MILITARY SERVICE IS A SKILLED OCCUPATION WHICH NOT EVERY SEEMINGLY ABLE-BODIED PERSON IS FIT TO PERFORM. The days of passing out polearms to peasants are long, long past.
All this, just so a bunch of "liberal" reactionaries can have one more thing to gripe at George Bush about? Did they suffer some kind of head injury that made them forget all about evil corporations and insufficient taxation levels, and all the other fun stuff in their toybox? Let them stick to that, please.
"They will be put alongside people who have no business being in uniform, and asked to entrust their lives to these people."
That describes about half the people with whom I served in the reserves. Not everyone who volunteers is someone who should be in uniform. Looking at history, was every combat soldier drafted in WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam a klutz who was a danger to his outfit?
Several problems with this statement. The only military afforded housing on a guaranteed basis are for single active duty members. Yes they have the option of living in town or living in billeted quarters. The officers get a room to themselves. The enlisted may get two to three man rooms and as they progress in rank eventually they are afforded a room to themselves. When such quarters are not available they are housed in military barracks that afford little to no privacy at all let alone any substantial space for amenities and luxuries. For the single military member they have the option of eating in the chow hall for free or eating out in public on their own. They also have the option of living in town at their own expense.
Enlisted / officer military families are not guaranteed housing on any military installation. They normally go on a waiting list since these quarters are generally filled and they must wait until quarters become available. As in most cases the selection process is based on time and RHIP (rank has it's privileges). The post or base commander will always be afforded military housing. Those that have to wait can live in a hosting house provided one is available on a space available basis for a limited amount of time. When that time expires they must either move out in town or into military quarters. If they are lucky enough quarters will become available within that time frame. Military families who have husbands or wives serving overseas on unaccompanied tours peaceful or war time must move out of military housing to allow for the accommodations of those families stationed at the military installation. Those families that are forced to live in town due to space availability do receive a housing allowance and a meal allowance for the active duty member only. Any married military member receiving meal allowances may eat in the chow hall for a nominal fee. The chow hall is not available for military families.
The 20-30 year pension is based on years of service in which a member receives percentage of base salary attained at time of retirement. Housing allowances, meal allowances, combat pay, hazardous duty pay etc do not count as part of base pay. No one receives 100% of there base pay. Keep in mind that although it is the private sector tax payers base that provides for the military throughout their careers they also have been paying into the tax base to support their own retirements. It is not as though they get to keep every penny they earn.
Medical benefits for the active duty member and his family at one point was free of charge. This however is no longer the case. Military families now pay a nominal fee for medications and hospitalization. The active duty member will receive these services free of charge with some exceptions. One such exception is the active duty member must pay for all meals and hospital stay if they receive meal and housing allowances. There are also other exceptions. Unless there is an absolute emergency military families are afforded medical care on a space available basis. Family members may have to wait longer than they want to for non-life threatening treatments such as minor surgeries.
What I can say is this. For a single military member the benefits and pay are good but from a family perspective they are not as rosy as some people may think. Add to this the fact that even in dual income military families the consistent moving around does more to hurt the optimal potential income as well as family structure. As with the job market there is never any guarantee that a working spouse will find a job at the new installation let alone military housing. Most rotations at any given installation occur on a 4 year basis. It should also be noted that active duty military that retire with state side service only is a rarity. Everyone is literally guaranteed some overseas duty time. That time can range up to 4 years for accompanied tours military families and active duty to as little as 1 year unaccompanied. Given that aspect the only dependable bread winner is the active duty member.
Has the military done enough for military families? That's a conundrum that can certainly be debated. Has the military done enough for the single active duty member? One can certainly argue they've done too much but we all know that single active duty retirements are the exception not the norm.
Avatar's point deserves a little more attention, assuming we're to take this proposal at all seriously. The formal credentialing process of the four year college is already under substantial threat from alternatives ranging from Internet based learning to work/learn programs. Some days I think the only thing keeping it propped up is the need to have a meaningful educational credential at that point in life, now that the average American high school diploma is near worthless. (Thanks, NEA!). Attaching such an extreme disincentive to going down the traditional path is indeed likely to cause it to collapse.
Glastris is just wrong on one of his statements you quoted: "So what happens if Iraq gets worse, or North Korea implodes, or any one of a dozen other scenarios happens that might require further commitments of U.S. troops? How, short of garnering significant military help from allies, are we going to handle our manpower needs? The answer is we probably can't, short of a draft."
We've got somewhat less than 2/3 of the active land forces that are not deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. About half of those are an immediately deployable reserve; the others in refit and training. In a real emergency the latter could be used, and we'd have a mass callup of the Guard and Reserve. If you stripped the cupboard bare, there might be a half million effectives, and of course we have all the destructive power of the AF and Navy also in reserve. Enough to convert Little Kim and his gang into hamburger. (And if NK implodes peacefully, just why are we the ones to pick up the pieces?)
What we cannot do is continually field a large enough occupation force to hold down a truly hostile population, since what I mentioned is a surge effort, not sustainable without substantial harm to readiness and combat capability. In this case, our options would be withdrawal, doing enough destruction to cow the populous, or enlarging the starting armed forces through recruitment or a draft. In either of the latter cases, keep in mind I've seen figures ranging from two to three years to stand up an Army quality mechanized division, assuming you can adequate officer and NCO cadre. Not a quick fix if one were getting ready to go to - say - Iran, believing that the bulk of the population would be hostile.
The issues associated with expanding the military have nothing to do with availabliity of manpower and everything to do with economics.
The military draft would hit people around age 20. The census breaks population down into 5 year cohorts. The population of 15-25 year-olds in 2000 was 36.8 million and in 2000 39.2 million. The military had 1.7 million active duty personnel in 1993. In 2004, the number was 1.4 million. While it is somewhat apples to oranges, total active duty personnel as a percent of the 15-25 cohort was 4.6% in 1993 and 3.6% in 2004. How can it be that the army is scraping the bottom of the barrel for recruits in 2004 when they are using 20% less of the cohort? Why is it that we didn't need the draft in 1993 but we do in 2004?
Our troops today are the most lethal and effective in the world because of their capital intensity. To equip and train an additional troop is a not inexpensive, nor quick. That is why the Army currently has a length of commitment of 8 years with 2-6 year term of active service. To bring people into the military for a year or two would be to gain them for their most expensive, least productive period. The military has been wary of expanding its size because Congress has a history of appropriating insufficient funds for the enlarged force and as a reuslt the readiness of the entire force suffers. There is no military benefit that could not be realized by an expansion of military force levels and all necessary appropriations using the current enlistment mechanisms up to, probably a total military of 2 million.
Use of the draft for military or civilian purposes is an economic tool. It forces involuntary servitude on a population at below market wages. Most of the people caught in this draft would not go to the military. This is just a proposal to subsidize domestic social programs with below market labor at a time when there is decreasing political enthusiasm for such programs. Based on the preaching I get at National Parks I have little doubt that most of these would be primarily political education programs with a liberal politically correct curriculum.
This is a bad idea from all perspectives.
USMC
I don't disagree with your points here. Rather than saying 'free housing', I should have used a narrower term like 'a housing allowance'. Also, I wasn't saying that people are getting rich in the military, only that compared to the career situation in the civilian economy for the average high school graduate, military service or a career isn't the low-paid alternative it's made out to be.
Richard Heddleson wrote:
I agree, the primary motivation for this idiotic proposal is for expanding domestic social programs although I tend to think it has more to do with encouraging government dependency and bolstering the size (and therefore political clout) of the federal workforce. The level of troops is simply a smokescreen.
Joe: "Glastris' proposals are decidedly different than Rangel's, and come from a very different motivation. We may think he's right or that he's wrong, but unlike Rangel he is not trying to weaken America."
I would be willing to give him the same credit for good intentions, if Glastris had begun by taking a deep, manful breath and saying: "The Democratic Party needs to propose a reinstatement of the draft. We need to support a candidate who will promise to do this if elected. This will meet with a great deal of protest, but in the interests of our nation we must stand up and make our case."
Instead, Glastris leads right off with his editorial opinion about Bush's "insane" war in Iraq. (First we want other nations to join our "coalition of the coerced and bribed", now we want to draft everybody to fight in our insane war.) And the message is loud and clear: It's Bush who wants to draft you, not us. If we're proposing a draft (which we're maybe not really doing) it's only because Republicans have forced us to. And the Republicans have a secret plan that's a thousand times worse - if they say any different, they're lying.
It doesn't inspire confidence when those who claim to favor a draft refuse to take moral and intellectual responsibility for their own proposal. This is the same game Rangel was playing, dressed up in disingenuous packaging.
Glastris claims to detect support for a draft among college-age Americans. Tell it to the anarchists, please. But if that support is really there, then the Democratic Party should have no problem stepping right up and slapping that proposal on their agenda, and making their case for it openly and honestly. Without pretending that it's really a Republican plan. Without resort to whispering campaigns, manufactured rumors, and appeals to the lowest forms of conspiracy sick-think.
And when the anti-war left rears up in all its rage, Democrats will stick out their chins and face down that mob like courageous man-persons, because the good of the country demands it.
I'm really looking forward to seeing the new DNC chairman spell all of this out in a press conference, while Hell freezes over and monkeys fly out of his butt.
At one time, I supported a form of compulsory national service. I saw it as a way to get an educational boot camp for inner-city kids, get kids from the suburbs to mix with those from the country and city, and as a backdoor way into national education and health plans via a beefed-up GI Bill and VA health system.
Then I did the math.
As Richard points out, we have almost 40 million aged 15 - 25, so assume 10% of that number are 18 - 4 MILLION kids. A program that size would take another 2 - 3 million staff to run, and the costs are simply too high (unless we want to use them to replace unionized city workers, which presents its own costs).
Nice notion, bad idea.
A.L.
The comment that we need to raise the pay to the appropriate level and let the market do its work is dead on.
More than that, I'd say that we need a different way of looking at the military--as an occupation comparable to that of a police work or fire-fighting. These occupations are physically demanding and involve danger to life and limb, but nobody thinks of 'drafting' people into the police or fire dept to keep the numbers up. If not enough candidates (or high quality candidates) are attracted, the pay scale must be raised.
This also leads to thinking of the military as a long-term occupation, not one primarily unattached (and expendable) young people. The Iraq war, with its reliance on older reserves, exhibits this tendency, and it's a positive one.
As an alternative to a draft (if manpower is indeed seen as a problem), I offer the suggestion of recruiting foreign auxiliaries.
A separate American Foreign Legion is organized. All of the officers are American citizens. No legionnaire ever is allowed in CONUS; pay is one-half of what a cit gets in the regular Armed Forces.
Any who re-ups gets the currently-meaningful equivalent of Latinitas, the opportunity to be promoted to NCO in the Legion, and a 50-100% increase in pay. Two terms of service gets you citizenship, no questions asked and all legal barriers set aside.
Of course, this means an influx of, say, 20,000 new citizens per year, foreign-born, assimilated into the Legion's culture (which will probably be very different from the American civilian culture), and who've spent a decade out on the sharp and dirty end of things. But that's rather a problem for Presidential candidates of 2016 and beyond, yes?
I was wondering when some one was going to get to my earlier point. The military for it's flaws trains people and it trains them very well. It offers skills training in a wide variety of fields.
Most seem to see the military as strictly a fighting force which is not the case. They train civil / combat engineers, plumbers, mechanics, aviators, truck drivers, electricians, communications and data processing fields to name a few. The American tax payer invests heavily in the education of every service man and woman. Be it in language arts, intelligence gathering, tactics and analysis these are skills our trained forces can and do use in the public sector to become valuable contributors to society when their time is up. These people for the most part are journey men and women who serve their apprenticeship in the military providing services for a substantial fee. That fee being yearly totals of one's life. Given the choice of listening to the professor or listening to life experiences of someone who actually has hands on experience I'll take the hands on every time.
Are high school and college diploma's really worth anything except for the paper they are printed on? Everyone pays for higher education in some form or another. Some are more fortunate than others in the fact that they can afford to pay dollars for an education while those less fortunate opt to pay for it with years of their life. Having a military background and also working in the public sector sometimes I tend to wonder how someone with a PHD in health science / sports attains a management position in the data processing sector of a company simply because of the sheep skin. It just doesn't make sense that someone with a degree in archeology should be making decisions on networking topology and deployment. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has experienced these situations in the work force. I will add this though it does make for an interesting day.
Okay back to the subject at hand. There are plenty who will volunteer for the armed services and many more than not will be better off for it. The issues they face when they retire or serve their contracts are not work force related. Many of the issues they will face are misplaced perceived conceptions of the military by the public at large both in and out of the work force.
Do we need a draft? In my opinion the answer to that question is no. Many of the reasons for not needing one have already been stated. Do we need to educate the American populace about the benefits of military service? Absolutely and not just from a security fighting force stand point. This however becomes very challenging when schools and colleges remove ROTC programs and ban military recruiters from the premises.
Yes it is the young 18-25 crowd that needs to be targeted for a variety of reasons. They are developing and have yet to attain their peak in strength and knowledge. That's not to say that the older crowds can't serve as they most certainly can in many ways. It's not to say that the older crowd isn't physically up to the task given today's vanities for muscle tone and fitness. The bottom line is the older crowd comes with baggage while the younger crowd does not.
The population of 15-25 year-olds in 2000 was 36.8 million and in 2000 39.2 million.
Should be
The population of 15-25 year-olds in 1990 was 36.8 million and in 2000 39.2 million.
Apologies to any confused.
John "Akatsukami" Braue -
I think a Foreign Legion is one of the worst ideas I could imagine for us.
Simply put, if the youth of America doesn't think it's worth defending, it's not.
way back when, William Burton had an interesting post about the draft. His semi-serious suggestion was to make government benefits conditional on serving in some way.
"I think a Foreign Legion is one of the worst ideas I could imagine for us.
"Simply put, if the youth of America doesn't think it's worth defending, it's not."
But if the youth of Kazakhstan does?
There's a great deal more to be said about the conditions under which we might need a draft (or substitute) which isn't really relevant to this article. It might be well, though, to think about those conditions (RKV hinted -- not entirely accurately, IMO) at them in his first comment).
John, I would be interested to hear what if any inacuracies in my post #1 you perceive. In terms of my statement of the nature of the missions of the militia I am positive I am on sure ground. That the founders intended national defense to be conducted by a mix of regular army and militia, look to the conduct of the War of 1812 for the prima facie case. Not sure what else you could be referring to. For my part I thougnt Glen's post 10 was quite perceptive.
You can get a pretty good idea of the performance of a draftee army vs a volunteer army from comparing our performance in Fallujah to the Russian disaster in Grozny.
Granted we have people in the military which are amazingly motivated and professional, but are we using them efficiently? Unfortunately, no. Our force composition is still pretty much entirely based on the Cold War. We do very well with what equipment we have, but the basic problem is that our military has a choice of too heavy (Abrams/Bradley/Paladin) or too light (Strykers, Humvees and trucks). The same kind of problem is present in most areas of military hardware, from small arms to aircraft. What we need is a force which is logistically agile and can be deployed by air at a moment's notice and suplied by air, but which packs enough punch. We need vehicles which can be dropped from a C130 plane or carried by a CH54 helicopter, are cross-country mobile (tracks not wheels), and are armed with something more substantial than a machinegun. Basically two new types of vehicles: a light armored gun system (like the Sherridan or the cancelled M8 Bufford - the Army is trying to get the four existing prototypes deployed to Iraq asap, which should tell you something) and a troop/cargo carrier (upgraded M113 similar to what the IDF uses). We need 100% containerized supply which is towed by armored carriers, not trucks. We need containerized housing and other base facilities so we can set up a field base anywhere in a day, instead of having to (re)build fixed installations. We need a lot more direct firepower integral to infantry units - a 106mm recoilless on each infantry vehicle, rifle grenades and a simple (and cheap) reusable rocket launcher almost exactly like the RPG-7 - all of which would reduce the need for air support in urban fights and again improve logistics.
How does all this relate to the draft? What takes up most of our military manpower is not people who actually fight, but people who handle logistics... the problem is that the people who handle logistics are just as much (or more) at risk. Most of the casualties in Iraq are from attacks on supply convoys and bases. The support requirements for a (heavy) infantry or armor division are utterly mind-boggling. Yet all of that stuff has to travel by roads (with predictable ambush sites), in completely unarmored trucks, and it has to be loaded and unloaded (break-bulk) at each end. Which is really, really stupid. A different force could have a higher combat effectiveness (in an Iraq-type scenario) with half of the manpower, half the casualties and a quarter of the cost if only the logistics were improved.
I agree with the folks who think that mandatory service is a total disincentive for the high achievers. Just look at the news stories about Mayor Daley's son or Patrick Tillman. Both of these men clearly didn't need to join up for fiscal reasons, so why did they do it?
Because they see a purpose and a challenge behind it. They see other people who are laying it on the line for what they believe. That is always going to bring the best out of people.
Now with the technology and lethality that the US military possesses we need every soldier to be at the top of their game. If someone makes a mistake, there are many more people who potentially get killed. So why on earth would we want someone serving alongside of them who is just clocking their time?
And I would argue that the same goes for non-military service. In fact, even more so because you don't necessarily have life and death situations to motivate people. There are many people who consciously decide to serve others and it takes that mind set to be effective.
We don't need more government programs to make this nation great, we just need more grateful people to serve this nation.
This conversation is just completely out in the stratosphere. We are above our recruitment goals. The only problem we have now is organizational. During the 80s we habitually committed 250,000 troops to West Germany alone. Is anyone arguing our population has dropped since then? Our people are less patriotic? Lets get real here, our military infastructure has chopped personel and invested in technology. That is fine, it made sense at the time and we've seen dividends. But lets not hyperventilate.
We can easily field probably double the force structure we have without resorting to a draft just by providing the positions. They dont exist right now, thats why this conversation is absurd. This is very, very simple. Fund 2 more active duty divisions (which is still well under our Cold War levels).
Will it take a few years to get them online? Of course, but so would a draft. I can see absolutely no advantage a draft would have over simply adding additional active duty divisions. In fact quite the opposite.
This whole thread is just wheel spinning when you consider the simple fact that we are at such a smaller military than we were 20 years ago.
The question of US military manpower and how it is used is what is driving the discussion of the draft. It's clear that currently the USA military forces are capable of defeating anyone on the open battlefield. But at some point you end up with control of the political entity that is defeated. For the purposes of control(police and infrastructure protection) there are currently not enough troops on the ground. Isn't the need then for a force restructuring that takes into account these issues? How do we do that? In any scenario there is simply a need to have more boots for the ground to do those types of jobs.
No draft, but an avenue for service that does not interfere with our current military. See this post at The Dignified Rant
(Ok, Joe, after several complaints by you--taken in good nature--I jumped to a real blogging site. My old site's jury-rigged links work again after Yahoo! Geocities fixed the problem you noted)
Frankly, any sort of "homeland defense draft" would probably run up against the Constitution. Yes, you can draft a military to fight wars. A draft that's specifically not intended to fight wars, though? That might not even pass the 13th amendment, forget the 14th. If the nation needs security guards and truck drivers, it can hire them at market rate.
OTOH, requiring a mandatory basic training course might be a bit different. But what good would it do for the military? We don't need a million infantrymen anymore, and our force structure problems are totally unrelated to the difficulties of training up a bunch of recruits. I mean, sure, it might have good side effects for civic society (though you really couldn't make it mandatory; if basic training means anything, it's got to have a physical component that flunks out people who can't perform the physical tasks, which is definitely a significant chunk of the population, no?)
Mark is, of course, correct in saying that we could increase the size of the military pretty easily, just by doing it. If we ran into recruitment problems, we've got an entire array of inducements to get people to join the military voluntarily - pay, benefits, what have you. Heck, the President hasn't even used the bully pulpit to call for more volunteers! (Well, okay, maybe it wouldn't get a big response from Democrats, but not much would, no?)
"That describes about half the people with whom I served in the reserves. Not everyone who volunteers is someone who should be in uniform. Looking at history, was every combat soldier drafted in WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam a klutz who was a danger to his outfit? "
Most of the "draftees" in WW2 would have volunteered without a draft. The draft was pointless, but at least it wasn't a complete disaster the way it was in Vietnam.
Here's a bit of historical speculation for you. About a year before Pearl Harbor, the peacetime draft came up for renewal, and passed by a single vote. Suppose that vote had gone the other way?
Would Congress have revived the draft after Pearl Harbor? With everything else it had on its plate and with lines at recruiting stations around the block?
If they didn't bring back the draft, I don't see any way the draft would have ever come back since. After winning WWII without a draft, bringing it back for Korea or Vietnam would be obviously nonsensical. Without a Vietnam draft, I figure our chances of holding out until the other side threw in the towel go way up, the dreaded "Vietnam syndrome" never happens, the Soviets fold ahead of schedule (which opens up the tantalizing possibility of a "peace dividend" with Reagan still in office) and Osama never gets confused about our willingness to respond to an attack on our own soil.
The Democrats have been spewing a lot of nonsense about the draft, but the historical record is simple: No Democratic President has ever been willing to fight a war without a draft. Not once. (Well, unless you count Clinton's airstrike campaigns). No Republican since Lincoln has introduced a draft, and one Republican President (as opposed to zero Democratic Presidents) has ended a draft he inherited.
Sure thing, RKV.
I’ll lead off with a comment as to where I think that you are basically correct. You wrote:Now, I’m of the opinion that that’s a very good first approximation. As Robert M points out, the U.S. armed forces as very good at killing people and breaking things, which is the twenty-five-words-or-less definition of “how to win wars”. Having won the war, however, it is then necessary to decide “what next?”: can we just leave the enemy population to sit in the rubble, or – either out of humanitarianism or a desire to avoid revanchism – must we occupy for a greater or lesser length of time? If we choose to do that – and that “conquest”, however we may pretty it up for domestic consumption and the history books – we need “boots on the ground”. Indeed, we need an entirely different kind of army from the one that won the war – a heavily-armed constabulary, not a combat force.
If, in any given instance, we decide that it is sufficient to smash things up, and then leave with the warning, “Piss us off again, and we’ll be back…and we won’t be so nice next time”, then we can dispose of the notion of augmenting the existing armed forces in any way. If not, however, I would contend that it is actually counter-productive to expect the combat army to become the army of occupation at all, let alone overnight.
As I noted to A.L., the draft is not the only way to go. If we look at past empires, both national and end-stage, the traditional tactic has been to recruit semi-barbarous troops – “Libyan men”, Roman auxiliarii, Khyber Rifles – both to act as the “army of occupation” and to assimilate them into the empire. An American Foreign Legion might serve those purposes.
As for objections to the American Empire, I share them. OTOH, those who object seem not to have thought much about the European Empire, or the Chinese Empire, or the Islamic Empire. I am by no means original in thinking that Western “culture” has run its course, and will shortly collapse into Western “civilization”…and such collapses in the past have always brought about an end-stage empire, from the Egyptian “New Kingdom” to the Ottoman Empire. If the Empire of the West indeed arises in this century, as I expect, I suggest that there could be very much worse nuclei for its formation than the U.S.
Robert M: "USA military forces are capable of defeating anyone on the open battlefield"
I would qualify that statement a bit... we are capable of destroying any opposing force, either with heavy armor in open terrain, with long-range bombardment in closed terrain, or with nukes if it came to that. Destroying is not quite the same as defeating.
Also, there is the major problem of getting there in time, before the enemy disperses. A study of the logistical limitations of the Tora Bora operation is very illuminating in that respect.
John Braue: "we need an entirely different kind of army from the one that won the war – a heavily-armed constabulary, not a combat force."
I emphatically disagree. We are dealing with an insurgency/guerilla war. A constabulatry is always vulnerable to defeat in detail by insurgents, at any time and place the insurgents choose to concentrate, since the constabulary is dispersed by definition. In counter-insurgency theory, there are three elements to winning: superious mobility, superior intelligence, and superior (faster) decision loop. You still need a constabulary (which might as well be locally recruited) but they serve primarily as a trip-wire, not as the decisive element. The key is being able to drop a company-to-battalion sized force (plus suitable blocking forces) anywhere in half an hour in response to an attack, which is one key ability we lack at the moment. We are doing well in intelligence, both the human side and the electonic side - surveilance drones and fixed sensors (which get a lot less attention) are a big step in the right direction. We have explosive-sniffing dogs, powder-residue test kits and all kinds of other good stuff. In Fallujah we knew exactly where everything was. We are doing pretty good on the decision loop, especially with air power, stuff like AC130 Spectres and armed Predator planes (time from observing to destroying - one minute). What we are missing is the rapid reaction ability. When the bad guys took the streets in Mosul and attacked - and in a few places overran - the police, we knew about it within minutes, but we didn't have the ability to respond quickly enough to trap and destroy them. We had the force, but it took too long to move it into position (by roads - probably 4-5 hours) and so the bad guys got away (again).
The Medium Brigade concept and Strykers are based on sound thinking, it's just that the execution is flawed. Strykers are theoretically air-transportable and off-road-capable, but not with a full load and not with the ridiculous 5000 lb anti-RPG bird-cage they have these days. So the practical result is we do not have a rapid reaction force... all we can do is get spotters in place for air strikes, but the decisive air-mobile ground reaction force is not available.