Is It Time To Reconsider the Draft?

Our military has been an all-volunteer force since 1973, and after 50 years, Americans are used to the arrangement. It has been an adequate, albeit expensive, way to man our armed forces since the end of the draft during the Vietnam War. But if major conflict breaks out, history suggests that reinstating the draft might be the most prudent course of action. Given the size and capabilities of our potential adversaries, and the constant alarm raised about great power threats, it would be wise to prepare for that eventuality—and soon.

In a recent report, the Commission for National Defense Strategy, led by former Congresswoman Jane Harman and sponsored by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, flatly declares we are unprepared for a major war against China or even Russia, in the sense that the U.S. military would not have adequate manpower for a sustained conflict against either of these countries. The report questions the adequacy of the current all-volunteer force to fight—or even to deter—adversaries: “The requirements of peer or near-peer conflict ... raise serious questions about whether the size of the force is sufficient and could be sustained.” Without mentioning the draft by name—it recognizes this topic is “politically volatile”—the report nevertheless urges the Department of Defense and the executive branch to prepare for mass mobilization.

A switch from volunteer to compulsory military service would require Americans to make a major change in mindset. To be sure, our all-volunteer force has come at a high cost. More Americans than ever are detached from the reality of military service and the sacrifices it often entails. As of 2022, only about 16 million Americans were military veterans—about 6% of the U.S. population. As military veteran and novelist Elliot Ackerman has argued, the all-volunteer force plus deficit spending gave Washington free rein to launch its post-9/11 “forever wars,” without inconveniencing the American public.

If you accept the commission’s major premise that we must successfully confront and deter our rivals in this new Cold War, then we must face the hard facts. To counter an adversary with a huge population like China, we will need to reinstate the draft to increase the size of our military. Without the draft, there is simply no way we could meet the challenge of a major conflict, and likely a protracted one.

Even Small Wars Are a Big Lift

It is difficult to imagine today’s U.S. Army responding as it did in Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990-1991—with 500,000 troops initially deployed to liberate Kuwait and defeat the Iraqi army. Back then, we had 2 million active-duty personnel. Today, our armed forces stand at about 1.3 million. If we faced a situation in which we needed the manpower we committed to the Persian Gulf 33 years ago, the strain on the nation’s reserves to make up the difference would be immense.

Often policymakers simply don’t wish to acknowledge how many troops it takes to run even a limited war. In 2003, when General Eric Shinseki said it would take “several hundreds of thousands of troops” to fight the Iraq War, he became a political pariah for the Bush administration. But he was more realistic than the war planners who decided on an invasion force of 130,000 troops, a figure woefully inadequate to maintain security in Iraq. We certainly did not have the personnel to fight successfully two wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even the relatively minor troop surges in both conflicts came at a political cost because troops weren’t readily available. In 2009, President Obama reluctantly agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan but then hastened to add that it was of limited duration. In 2010, his administration couldn’t demobilize them fast enough, even at the expense of unraveling our hard-gained military objectives.

Right now, two ongoing wars tell different stories about the need for a draft. The Russia-Ukraine war has been a manpower story— with not enough of it on either side. Ukraine refuses to mobilize people age 18 to 25. Vladimir Putin likewise has pushed back on drafting more Russian troops. Neither side can achieve victory because neither side will initiate a full-scale draft. The casualty rate has been high on both sides, but neither side is committing its society sufficiently to win the war. Thus, we have an effective stalemate, with a growing casualty list.

In sharp contrast, Israel subjects all its citizens, male and female, to a military draft, which is why it is able now to wage simultaneous wars against Iran and its proxies. It cannot be exaggerated how this universal draft contributed to the Israeli Defense Forces’ readiness to battle Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

Our Modern Draft in History

In our Civil War, the North and the South used a draft to conscript troops. In the North, it was used as an inducement for volunteers, who often received hefty signing bonuses. But the draft concept really took off with our 1917 entry into World War I. Although we were ill-prepared in nearly every other military aspect, Washington did excel at building up a 2-million-man expeditionary force to go to France.

After World War I, the draft was discontinued, but the “selective service” apparatus remained in place to register eligible young men. In late 1940, President Roosevelt shepherded a peacetime draft bill through Congress, a singular political achievement in isolationist America. Largely through the draft, America eventually fielded a force of 14 million men—about 12.5% of our population. Simply put, we would have lost World War II without the draft.

Nor could we have held the line in the Korean War without the draft. Probably our greatest Cold War achievement was saving the fledgling Republic of Korea from a communist takeover, and the draft played a decisive role in that. Later, during the Vietnam era of the 1960s and 1970s, 2.2 million men were drafted into military service.

Eventually, the Vietnam War killed the draft. It had contributed much to the domestic dissent over the war, and in the early 1970s, conservatives and liberals came together to abolish the draft in favor of an all-volunteer force. Richard Nixon’s reluctant embrace of ending the draft probably contributed to his smashing victory over George McGovern in 1972. Though the draft had been very successful in building up a robust fighting force, it was dead by 1973.

One of the intellectual authors of the all-volunteer force was economist Milton Friedman, who argued that the military needed to recruit using market incentives. Signing bonuses, education assistance, housing assistance and reenlistment bonuses, he argued, all incentivize our military personnel to join or stay. However, with the end of the draft, recruitment problems began almost immediately. The Army was a hollow force in the 1970s—it’s a good thing the Soviets decided not to attack us then—but eventually, the Pentagon made the all-volunteer force work by emphasizing more specialized training and offering better career opportunities.

Still, the armed forces continue to strain to sign enough recruits every year. In some cases, they have lowered standards on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery by offering more prep courses to underperforming recruits. A 2020 Pentagon study estimated that only 23% of young Americans are eligible for recruitment anyway, due to obesity, poor test scores or drug use. This is a sharp downtick from 2016, when an estimated 29% were eligible. With declining demographics, and fewer family-member veterans to encourage military service, we face a shrinking enlistment pool.

Today, only men must register with the Selective Service, a legal obligation 18-25-year-olds have in case of a future draft. This year, Congress debated whether to extend Selective Service registration to women as well, but conservatives opposed subjecting women to the possibility of a draft.

The Debate We Need To Have

As it did in Congress this year, the argument for reinstating the draft comes up periodically. Often, draft advocates emphasize sociological reasons why we should return to the draft: It would encourage more patriotism, or help expand the American “melting pot” or even encourage America’s youth to value national service. There’s no guarantee, however, that it would deliver these benefits. For example, it’s not clear that the draft will engender more patriotism or public-spiritedness: This certainly didn’t happen during the Vietnam War.

The strongest argument in favor of the draft is that the all-volunteer force often fails to meet its personnel objectives. This year, the Army and the Navy announced they have met their annual recruitment goals, but that’s more the exception than the rule. The draft would solve that problem. We will simply need more troops if we wish to maintain our global security commitments.

Some critics of a draft, like former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, claim we don’t need a large-scale troop mobilization. It would be a logistics nightmare, they claim. But this is status quo thinking; the draftee-based military was just as much orthodoxy during its heyday as the all-volunteer force is now. America managed a draft for nearly 33 years, including during peacetime. Certainly, the Pentagon and the American people would adjust to the new requirements.

Other draft opponents insist that current military technology advances make manpower less of a concern than it used to be. For example, they’ll point to the success of drones in the current Ukraine conflict. But this overlooks the flesh-and-blood nature of war, even tech-driven modern war. As David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts explain in their book “Conflict,” more sophisticated technology paradoxically has led to greater manpower requirements. Technology can lead to more casualties too, because of the increased lethality of modern weapons. This is the story of the World War I and World War II bloodbaths.

Moreover, war is unpredictable. Anyone arguing they know how a war with China would go is in denial; all that is certain is that a war between these two vast populations would likely be a long, bloody affair. We must anticipate any war with China would come with a high casualty count that an all-volunteer force would simply be inadequate to replace.

No doubt, reinstating the draft will require a major societal commitment, and it will be controversial. After decades of relying on the all-volunteer force concept, it would be hard for America to adjust to a draft. In the 1950s, economist Gary Becker argued that forcing young men to serve was against our basic principles as a free society, and certainly, this is a powerful argument in a country where freedom is such a fundamental notion.

The draft will also exacerbate social divisions. Some will be called to fight, and other eligible people will not be. Some professions such as medical workers or critical infrastructure operators might be exempted because of their importance to the war effort at home. Those judged as ineligible for the military must be provided alternative ways to serve.

More importantly, women likely will be drafted in large numbers, but I suspect American society will balk at their mass conscription into high-risk roles like the infantry. When registration for women was being debated in the Senate this year, one of its chief advocates, Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed did not believe women should be forced to serve on the front line.

Reinstating the draft is an urgent debate we need to have. As we face increasing alarm about the risk posed by our foreign adversaries, Americans face a hard choice: Either we decide these risks aren’t great enough to require a draft—and all the disruption and inequality that would entail—or we can accept that the risks are real and start planning in earnest for the manpower requirements of a major war.

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