Does Anyone Feel a Draft?

With military forces stretched thin, America may need to consider some form of universal national service
by Jerome Slater and William Hauser

Jerome Slater taught political science at the University at Buffalo from 1966 to 2000 and was appointed a University Research Scholar after his retirement.

William Hauser is a retired Army colonel and corporative executive. He taught at West Point and was a combat commander in Vietnam. After leaving the Army, he wrote “America’s Army in Crisis” on the post-Vietnam Army.

It is likely that the struggle between radical Islamism and Western liberal democracy, sometimes called “the war on terror,” is going to be a long one. In this protracted conflict, military intervention by the United States may well again be necessary as a last resort against particularly dangerous states or terrorist organizations.

There are two dangers, however, with regard to military intervention, and both must be taken equally seriously.

The first of these is that our volunteer armed forces may be too small, in terms of “boots on the ground,” for such operations. This is hardly hypothetical, for while scarcely anyone doubts it was essential to invade Taliban-led Afghanistan — the host state of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization — that initially smashing victory is gradually sliding away…

We simply did not send enough troops to prevent our enemies from resuming their efforts to create a radical Islamic base for attacks on the West, and then diverted many of those we did send to the invasion of Iraq. Bin Laden is still on the loose, and the Taliban and al- Qaida have re-established themselves along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and are attacking from across that border with increasing impunity.

It would take substantially larger U.S. ground forces to defeat these enemies, and such forces — in light of current commitments in Iraq and other places — simply do not exist.

Similarly, it is becoming increasingly clear that the United States cannot win the war in Iraq without far larger forces on the ground, probably for years rather than the few months envisioned by the current “surge.” Indeed, even then the war still might prove to be unwinnable, for military force — no matter how extensive — cannot

substitute for the political will and wisdom that so far has been in such short supply among our Iraqi allies.

Given that it is now acknowledged by an overwhelming majority of Americans — not to mention by nearly every U.S. ally in the rest of the world — that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was a disastrous error, how much does it really matter if we lose the war? The answer, unfortunately, is that it is likely to matter a great deal.

An Iraq under extremist Islamic control, or even under no one’s control, could destabilize U.S. allies elsewhere in the Middle East — such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan — and become a base for expanded international terrorism, especially in but not necessarily limited to the Middle East. Beyond that, American influence on other nations — allies as well as neutrals and adversaries — will likely be substantially diminished.

Whether or not Iraq can be saved, it is imperative to prevent similar disasters in the future. The best way to do that is to prevent unwise military interventions while ensuring victory in those where national security is clearly at stake.

The need is to meet both the danger of inadequate forces and that of their reckless use. Afghanistan and Iraq conclusively demonstrate that the United States is going to need much larger numbers of soldiers than it has today. Moreover, the numbers of “boots on the ground” that we can deploy is not the only issue, for the armed forces of the future also must be well-educated, in order that they include the range of human talents and skills required in the kind of hightech/ unconventional operations that are likely to be the dominant mode of warfare in the long struggle against dangerous fanaticism.

It is not reasonable to expect that such armed forces, substantially enhanced in both size and quality, can be achieved under the current system of voluntary enlistment. To accomplish this ambitious but imperative goal, there will have to be a reinstitution — although in a significantly modified version — of universal military service.

This will be no easy task. There will be both administrative and political problems, as conscription would be opposed from both ends of the political spectrum, by civil libertarians on the left and classic libertarians on the right.

In addition, representatives of different sectors of American society are likely to demand either that their members be excluded from military service on the grounds of opposition to war in general or to particular wars — for example: Vietnam and Iraq — or that they be included on the grounds of equal rights — as, for example, in the cases of openly acknowledged gay citizens and noncitizen immigrants.

Even so, the benefits of some form of universal national service are so great that it is likely that solutions to these or other problems can be found. Aside from the strictly military benefits, such a system would better reflect the full range of American pluralism, increase equity among socioeconomic classes and racial/ethnic groups, and enhance national comity.

Moreover, there surely would be less danger of an excessive militarism in our security policies if the sons and daughters of America’s political and business elites also served in uniform — as so many did in the past, but so few do today.

Yet another step would be to combine the draft with a broader national service program, as already practiced in some European states — a “domestic Peace Corps,” as it has often been termed. By allowing draftees to choose to serve their country in a nonmilitary capacity, such a universal national service program would simultaneously increase the political appeal of conscription, defuse the problem of draftees who oppose the use of military force, and serve valuable nonmilitary national purposes and needs such as public health, public works or the shortages of teachers in certain areas of the country.

As we have suggested, it is also necessary to address the issue of excessive as well as insufficient military power, meaning the possibility — hardly hypothetical, as the Bush administration has amply demonstrated — that a president might exploit the increased military power at his disposal to unilaterally decide on military intervention when such intervention is unwise.

For this reason, it is essential to provide for a restoration of serious constitutional, congressional and possibly judicial controls over the use of force. This could be accomplished through three means:

• A return to the original intention of the Founding Fathers to divide the war-making power between Congress and the president. Perhaps the best vehicle to do that today is to revive and strengthen the now-dormant War Powers Act of 1973, which prohibits presidents from unilateral military intervention by requiring prior and explicit congressional authorization — except in cases of clear national emergencies, such as an attack on the United States or its forces. Equally important, under the terms of that act, Congress also can end wars, by requiring the president to remove U.S. forces from overseas combat.

• The power of the purse. Congress has a wide variety of measures under its legislative powers — should it choose to use them — to prohibit, limit or end U.S. participation in wars. Perhaps the most important of these is that it has the constitutional authority to refuse to fund wars, or to more selectively fund certain military actions or interventions but not others.

To be sure, it is often hesitant to do so, as with Iraq today, because of fears that a demagogic president will charge that “our troops will be left without the means to defend themselves.” Of course, this is nonsense. An appropriations cutoff would not leave our troops to die but would force their withdrawal, just as finally happened in Vietnam in 1973.

• The conscription law. Congress could write into the law establishing conscription a provision that draftees could not be sent into a combat zone without specific prior congressional authorization, except in time-urgent cases of national emergency. Moreover, an additional level of volunteerism could be established, by providing that in “wars of choice” — for example, Vietnam and Iraq — draftees who chose to serve in the armed forces rather than nonmilitary service could still choose noncombat rather than combat service.

Such a provision would not only provide more free choice to individuals, it would go a long way toward reducing political resistance to a reintroduction of the draft.

At first glance, it might appear that a system in which only volunteers would have to serve in combat would reintroduce the problem that such a force might be too small for some necessary military interventions.

It is our expectation, however, that many draftees in fact would volunteer for combat duty, in part simply out of patriotic pride and a youthful sense of challenge and adventure and in part because additional incentives for combat service can and should be provided, such as significantly greater pay and post-service educational and health benefits.

In any case, should very large ground forces be necessary in cases of genuine national emergencies — as jointly specified by the president and Congress — the armed forces would be authorized to supplement volunteers with draftees.

In sum, in the prospective “long war” against terrorism or radical Islamism, the United States is going to need both large standing forces of considerable quality and greater protections against their misuse. Some combination of military conscription, alternative nonmilitary but compulsory national service, combat volunteerism and revived and enhanced constitutional and congressional controls could accomplish both purposes to an unprecedented degree.

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