National Service and the All-Volunteer Force

The Draft and U.S. Foreign Policy

The restoration of the draft is one of the three significant changes to U.S. foreign policy that Colonel Hauser favors. He argues as well for a dramatic expansion in U.S. ground forces and a significant shift in power over foreign policy-making from the president to Congress (Hauser, 2017, p. 4; see also Hauser & Slater, 2009, 2010). In his view, these proposals are interrelated. Colonel Hauser thinks a draft is necessary in large part because he thinks a dramatic expansion of ground forces is necessary; he does not fear the president’s misuse of larger ground forces because he envisions Congress reasserting its constitutional powers over foreign policy. It is important, therefore, to consider Colonel Hauser’s proposal for a new draft in light of his vision of U.S. foreign policy and foreign policy-making.

Expanding ground forces and reinvigorating Congress’ power over foreign policy may be good ideas, but is it clear that they are not exercises in futility? The devil is in the details, few of which Colonel Hauser provides either in his response to our article or the articles he has coauthored with Professor Slater. In his response, Hauser says that ground forces should be “substantially larger” (Hauser, 2017, p. 4), but the only concrete guidance he offers for ideal end strength comes from Hauser and Slater’s (2009) citation of “the 1 to 10 troop-to-population ratio generally acknowledged to be necessary for success in counterinsurgency.” According to this ratio, combined with standard troop rotation time lines, a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq (population 33 m) would require ground forces of approximately 10 m; Afghanistan (population 30 m) would require 9 m. If counterinsurgency operations were restricted to the three largest cities in each country, Iraq would require ground forces of 3.9 m and Afghanistan 1.4 m. By comparison, the combined end strength of the army and marines in 2015 was about 650 k, a number that has declined steadily since the end of the Vietnam War. Perhaps some of this gap could be made up by allied and indigenous forces. Nevertheless, even without forming a judgment on the strategic wisdom of the increase Colonel Hauser seems to envision, and without taking into account the military’s roles apart from counterinsurgency, it seems safe to say that policy makers and the American public have not shown much willingness to pay the costs associated with ground forces of this size.

Colonel Hauser’s proposal to shift foreign policy-making from the president to Congress presents similar difficulties, however attractive it might be in theory. Colonel Hauser calls for this change without considering how the status quo came to be. In light of the work of a number of scholars (for instance, Wildavsky, 1966; more recently, Fowler, 2015), it seems likely that the current balance of power over foreign policy reflects the preferences of both Congress and the president. If it did not reflect their preferences, Congress could reclaim the control the constitution promises them, as they chose to do at end of the Vietnam War (as Hauser & Slater, 2010, and Lindsay, 2003, note) but have rarely done since. This settled pattern of relations between the Congress and presidents suggests that calls for Congressional empowerment are likely to be futile as a matter of practice, however wise they seem by other standards.

The Costs and Benefits of the Draft

This brings us to Colonel Hauser’s proposed restoration of the draft. Our article acknowledges that conscription would go some way toward making the military more representative of the nation (Liebert & Golby, 2017), but we argue that this benefit does not outweigh the associated costs. Colonel Hauser does not acknowledge that a renewed draft carries costs; instead, he lists eight benefits. We find this argument unpersuasive. To explain why, let us focus on three of the benefits Colonel Hauser mentions.

First, Colonel Hauser suggests that a draft improves national character and offers personal benefits to young Americans by providing a “shaping civic experience.” We agree that civic responsibility is a good thing, but it is not clear to us that forcing (presumably his draft is backed by penalties for noncompliance?) every young American into public service would facilitate this goal, nor is it clear that a “reduction of youthful cynicism” would be a likely outcome of renewed conscription (Hauser & Slater, 2010). Our most recent experiences with a draft during the Vietnam War suggest that these outcomes are rather unlikely. There is substantial evidence that young Americans have grown more individualistic and libertarian since the early 1970s (see especially Gallup, 2015; cf. Jones, 2012; Dugan, 2015). And it is in part for this reason that polling consistently indicates overwhelming opposition to restoring the draft (in our article, we cite Jones, 2007). These numbers shifted somewhat in response to September 11—Gallup found that opposition to the draft had fallen from 81% in 1998 to 69% in January of 2003—but quickly returned to form; by June 2003 and in every subsequent poll, 80% or more of Americans have opposed the draft (Gallup, 2017). Absent a shock like Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war that followed it—that is, a national crisis necessitating a protracted and man power–intensive ground war—it is difficult to see how a new draft could come to seem attractive or necessary to the American public and, by extension, their elected representatives.

Second, Colonel Hauser claims that a draft would improve national security because elites make sounder foreign policy decisions when their own sons and daughters stand to suffer in war. This argument makes sense, and Colonel Hauser has good company in making it (see, for instance, Rangel, 2002). But there is not much evidence to back it up. If what Hauser argues were true, we would expect members of Congress with close friends and family serving on active duty to vote differently than those without “skin in the game.” As we discuss in our article (Blinded), this is generally not the case. Indeed, Pickering (2011) has shown in these pages that states with conscript armies are significantly more likely to use force than states with volunteer armies. One could imagine an excessively risk-averse Congress resulting from conscription; after all, having one’s own sons and daughters at risk does not normally facilitate calm decision-making. But to the extent that we have evidence on this point, it does not seem that American foreign policy makers with deep ties to the military behave very differently from those without these ties. We do not find it likely that a conscript force would, in and of itself, contribute to improved foreign policy decisions.

Third, Colonel Hauser claims that a conscript force is less expensive than a volunteer force. In his response, Colonel Hauser does not explain why this would be so, but in the articles written with Professor Slater, he anticipates savings from reduced enlistment inducements and retirement benefits (see Hauser & Slater, 2010). Since Milton Friedman’s pioneering economic critiques of conscription in the 1960s—critiques that were repeated almost verbatim in the Gates Commission report—it has been widely acknowledged that the sorts of savings Hauser and Slater look forward to are in fact transfers of costs from taxpayers to conscripts. In effect, Friedman argued, we can consider the compensation package required to man an AVF as the “market price” for an army of a given size under the prevailing economic and strategic conditions. A conscript force is likely more costly than a volunteer force, but it hides the cost by removing it from the federal budget and placing it onto unlucky draftees. Even apart from this compelling argument, however, it is not clear how ground forces of the size Colonel Hauser seems to envision would cost less than the current force. One assumes even draftees would receive some pay. Perhaps more importantly, a larger force would also necessitate a more sizable group of career officers and noncommissioned officers to lead it. Since these officers and noncommissioned officers presumably would not be compelled into service for life, the financial costs of retirement benefits and retention pay could potentially increase since these are precisely the individuals who are most costly. If draftees were offered “extra-generous postservice education and health care” to incentivize service in combat (Hauser & Slater, 2010), benefit packages in a conscript force might come to resemble those in the AVF. But again, if they did not, it is the draftee who would bear the cost of service—that is, the difference between the benefits he or she receives as a draftee and the benefits that would have induced him or her to volunteer.

National Service Without a Draft

If, as we maintain, returning to the draft is inadvisable and one finds uninspiring our modest but practicable suggestion to strengthen the military’s nonpartisan norms, what remains? How, apart from compulsion, might a more politically and regionally diverse population be brought into contact with the AVF?

It is possible to design attractive but noncompulsory national service programs that include the military as an option, without being as oriented toward the military as Colonel Hauser recommends. ¹ General (retired) Stanley McChrystal’s Service Year Alliance might serve as a template for such a program. One could also think creatively about the time commitment required by national service programs. (Colonel Hauser does not specify what term he envisions.) Vietnam-era draftees were obliged to at least 2 years of service; advocates of a renewed draft have proposed active-duty terms as short as 15 months; the most prominent national service programs require 1-year commitments. But much of the benefit of a national service program might be gained in an even shorter term. Army initial entry training now occurs over approximately a 4-month period. This might serve as the baseline term, the minimum necessary to produce meaningful results. ²

Similarly, policy makers might experiment with the timing of national service programs. College graduates transitioning into the work force are the target of most existing national service programs. As many college graduates can afford to devote a year or more to an enriching service experience, this focus is understandable. But a shorter term of service would enable greater flexibility with regard to timing of service. Service timed to coincide with the summer after high school graduation would minimize the impact on participants’ life trajectories and would integrate the college-bound and their noncollege-bound peers more seamlessly than programs directed at college graduates. A noncompulsory national service program that included a military option, required a relatively short term of service and was timed to follow high school graduation, would not eliminate but might help to alleviate the emerging estrangement between the AVF and American society.

While we do not share Colonel Hauser’s enthusiasm for a return to the draft, we agree that fostering civic responsibility is an important policy goal. His emphasis on broad national service as a way of overcoming some of the AVF’s current imbalances is a valuable contribution. We hope to have indicated here how a variant of his suggestion—one that relies on enticement rather than compulsion—might help to address some of the problems that our article identified.