End the All-Volunteer Force

[AmericanPride]

In fact, I think the weight of evidence presented by posters other than yourself in this thread is against the position you hold. (I do give you full marks for tenacity though.)

Let's look at this "weight of evidence".

Ken's position focused on the unethical nature of conscription and the craven nature of politicians (mostly Congress).

[Tom Ricks'] proposed solution that political and ethical failure is to punish as many people -- himself not included -- as possible by reintroducing conscription.

People have choices, if they make poor choices, that becomes their problem and the 'fix' needs to address the target, the politicians and their lack of ethics, not the bystanders.

The American solution to any problem is to throw many at it to avoid making the hard choices to actually fix the things. Congress throws money not at training but at 'things' that are made by people, preferably in multiple districts.

Compulsory service is a political dream to solve the problems of society (and to insure the connected can avoid it and, ideally, those problems...). Unfortunately, like most socialistic dreams, every time it's been tried, it has failed.

'Fixing' the armed forces is not the answer to correcting a significant slide and failure in US societal norms.

I'm not at all sure it 's clear but what is emphatically clear is that Congress not only has abrogated its responsibility with respect to the Armed Forces and wars but to virtually all its fiscal responsibilities as well.

All his suggestion will do is allow the inept Politicians to give inept Commanders more troops to waste on stupid endeavors. We need to fix the Pols and fix the Command competence problesm

I think that sums up rather clearly Ken's objections to conscription. While he made numerous claims that conscription won't fix this or that, he really did not provide any historical or factual evidence to augment his argument nor did he point out how craven politicians and the weak-willed public are at all contradictory to the benefits of mass conscription. In some discussion, he does point out that all-volunteer forces have capable track records, but that does not necessarily demonstrate an inherent effectiveness over conscript forces.

Like some of the other posters, which I will also quote, Ken also attacks the personal motivations of the writer rather to undermine the credibility of the argument.

Confirming my long held opinion of [Tom Ricks'] twittishness (and military ignorance) he states...

Lastly, a large number of Ken's comments are anecdotal:

Having lived and served a good many years when the Draft was operating -- as opposed to Ricks and others -- My observation was that did not occur. Given general US and world societal changes since that time, I would anticipate that to be a very flawed argument.

Speaking as one who was there way back when and has a Son serving today as well as two others who did serve earlier, it did and has produced a "better quality" service member.

While I can recall pre-draft, draft and post draft eras, the disconnection factor has existed more often than not. On balance, I do not find that worrisome.

Can't speak for the Civil war but for the last draft, those that were drafted mostly did their jobs to the best of their ability.

These personal observations may be true insofar that they were perceived at one point by Ken, but that does not make it representative of the whole.

OK, on to Steve.

Steve's position is that conscription would not break or diminish military elitist culture.

Conscription in this country never broke the back of the elitist soldier culture...and it had ample opportunity to do so between 1945 and 1972. I think if anything it had a hand in reinforcing the "useless civilian" idea within certain sectors of the military.

He also objected to my use of Civil War conscripts as an example of the positive effects of conscription. His position was not that there were not positive effects, but that there any positive effects were insignificant:

Take the Civil War out of your ponderings, please. The backbone of the Union Army was state-raised volunteer units, not conscripts.

You continue to avoid the fact that the BACKBONE of the Union Army was state volunteer regiments. I understand that the 8.5% figure fits in with your pro-conscription position, but it still doesn't square with the military facts of that conflict. To reverse the statistics, 91.5% of the Union Army was NOT conscripted.

Whether or not Civil War conscripts statistics are significant is a conversation separate from whether or not conscription has positive effects.

Also, he attacks the author as well:

Ricks is a moron. Pretty simple.

Yes, very weighty evidence...

Let's move on to Fuchs:

Fuchs argues that conscription is worse for the general welfare of a soldier than a volunteer force.

Now if you want a volunteer, you pay him the appropriate price for his motivation. That's fair, that's voluntary. No power advantage is used to coerce (except stop-loss etc).

If you hire a conscript, you don't need to pay him the appropriate price. instead, you can use a mix of inappropriately low price and power advantage, for coercion. This is the part about the loss of freedom through conscription.

I have not disputed his argument.

Before I move on to Entropy's comments, who has along with you, provided the most substantial counter-arguments about the positive outcome of conscription, I will quote a few other ad hominem fallacies:

I find Ricks to be an elitist snob who has used members of the military to push his agenda.

On the other hand, Ricks, who has never served in the military, decides that the right thing for the military is to reinstate the draft, long after he is past the age to serve. So he is quick to decide that young people should be coerced into going into harm's way in a fashion that he was never subjected to. How convenient for Ricks. I'm sure this will help his journalist career.

I think your man, Ricks, is trying to meet his quota of words published...

Ok, so now on to Entropy's comments.

His first objections are to the fairness of conscription:

Unless he's going to greatly expand end strength it will still be 1% bearing the burden and like today, most people won't know anyone who serves.

How, given our political system, will that small portion of the population be chosen fairly considering there's over 4 million men and women who reach military age every single year?

Universal conscription is not really practical since about 4 million young adults reach 18 each year. So the question becomes a political one of who gets drafted and who doesn't.

So, I think a return to the draft would enlarge divisions within America, not diminish them, and I think that is what would be damaging to America.

These are not necessarily counter-arguments since he is only pointing out that conscription has consequences of its own (which I do not dispute). He does not point out these consequences exceed the benefits gained, or or how these consequences are worst than the problems we are facing now. But he does go deeper eventually:

Our current President ran on a platform of escalation in Afghanistan and ending the war in Iraq. He got elected and fulfilled both promises. Explain to me how that is unaccountable? Additionally, both these wars were specifically authorized by acts of Congress and Congress continues to support the remaining war, Afghanistan. Seems to me the accountability is pretty clear here. Ricks' seems to think that conscription would somehow generate more opposition to the war which would force policymakers to change policy. That might be true, but it hasn't historically been the case, as Ken's pointed out.

The source for his evidence is Ken's post, which as I noted above, is usually anecdotal and has an obvious bias against the mental and ethical capacities of political decision-makers.

Entropy does make an alternative suggestion for the problem(s) identified in Ricks' article:

If the problem is to prevent the US from engaging in large, long wars of choice, then the answer, it seems to me, is not conscription, but an overall reduction in the active duty end-strength for both the Army and Air Force.

Later on, Entropy does object to my evidence of the positive outcomes of conscription (especially in the 1940 - 1973 era):

You've established nothing. You repeatedly asserted a connection and then refused to substantiate it. When specifically challenged, you demurred and said you were only pointing out "that these things were better during the most recent draft period than after it with the all-volunteer force." Which is to say that you admited there is nothing to support the connection you say you established!

I then pointed him to my multiple posts where I laid out my arguments for the positive benefits of conscription. Most of his comments were focused on objections to my arguments on the basis of my conclusions or a perceived lack of evidence. He did not, however, provide much in the of counter-evidence.

Then we come to our dialogue, which I don't need to quote for you. So I disagree with you that the other posters provided a substantial "weight of evidence" against my position.

[Fuchs]

Fuchs argues that conscription is worse for the general welfare of a soldier than a volunteer force.

That was not my point. "General welfare" is as a term linked to a country, not an individual.

Conscription is more expensive (monetary costs + human costs) than a volunteer army and thus suboptimal from the national point of view (,too).

[AmericanPride]

Conscription is more expensive (monetary costs + human costs) than a volunteer army and thus suboptimal from the national point of view (,too).

This is simply not true for the United States. First, of the top twenty countries by active-duty end-strength, 13 exceed the United States in per 1,000 capita. These countries are North Korea, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Vietnam, Myanmar, France, Syria, Italy, Taiwan, and Colombia. None of them surpass the United States in GDP or military expenditures per capita. Of those 13 countries, 11 have conscription (North Korea, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Vietnam, Myanmar, Syria, Taiwan, Colombia). Now, the objection here would be that the US spends more per capita (even over conscript forces) because of its technological advancements. This argument also implies that these technologies are cost effective and produce a measurable increase in US military effectiveness. But this is not true either. This article and this article lay out how defense spending is not efficient at all. Moreover, this is made worse by the inefficiencies of the US national security political economy that is leading to a decline in military readiness despite increased spending. And lastly, we can throw in the three to eight trillion dollar bill for the GWoT. We can also look at the mixed US track record in favorably and definitively terminating conflicts since 1973. So, not only is US spending actually more inefficient than existing conscript forces, the perceived increase in combat power gained by technology has not improved US military effectiveness or American security by any substantial amount.

In contrast, we can examine US economic and military performance when the draft was in place from 1940 - 1973. I pointed out earlier that the mass mobilization and expanded benefits allowed for a full third of the US population during that time access to economic benefits. And the use of those benefits had a direct, measurable, and substantial impact on 'general welfare' of the US, including education, technological advancement, infrastructure, job growth, tax revenues, and civil rights.

[AmericanPride]

To recap AP's argument: A draft in 1940-73 was good for America becase it revitalized the American economy during that period. Therefore, a draft in 2012 will be good for today's American economy.

Potentially. My first aim is to destroy the myths that conscript forces are inherently less cost effective and less capable in definitively and favorably ending conflict than all-volunteer forces. While the experience of other countries may be up for debate, I think it is very clear that these myths have no basis in reality for the US.

I have asserted that the 1940-73 time frame is sui generis. I find especially interesting the fact that American Pride has not tried to rebut that claim.

I have not intentionally over-looked your claim, though I wonder on what basis you claim the whole "1940 - 73" time to be sui generis. There are significant differences in today's economy compared to the most recent draft era, a number of which are: increased financialization of the economy, higher concentrations of wealth in the upper echelons of society, and extremely low effective tax rates for the wealthy and corporations (who, as I noted, also have more of society's wealth). These may or may not be relevant to the effects of mass mobilization,though I think putting the 16.7% of youth that are unemployed to work (even if they're just mowing laws in the brigade footprint), is better than having that labor idle.

[Fuchs]

@AmericanPride:

I am 100% confident that you do not get anything of what I wrote here. I advise to go back to my first post and read it real slow - twice.

[AmericanPride]

@AmericanPride:

I am 100% confident that you do not get anything of what I wrote here. I advise to go back to my first post and read it real slow - twice.

You claimed that an all-volunteer force is inherently more cost effective than a conscription force. In the case of the United States, I have demonstrated that to be false. So, instead of continually referring back to your original post, I recommend that you refute the argument and evidence I have laid out. Thanks.

[Fuchs]

Fuchs

Conscription is more expensive (monetary costs + human costs) than a volunteer army and thus suboptimal from the national point of view (,too).

AmericanPride

(...)in GDP or military expenditures per capita(...)defense spending(...)increased spending

Furthermore, a discussion of a specific choice does not allow global developments to be taken as an argument as if there was a proved causal relationship.

Now try to understand. I did neither write about individual soldiers nor only about money. I wrote about general welfare - the country's general well-being.

I do harm to you when I force you to do something disgusting by pointing a gun at you. Such an action would not have any fiscal impact or GDP effect. Now imagine I'd do it to four million Americans every year. Something really, really disgusting. Four million times a year.
The general welfare of the U.S. would suffer because I would cause human costs.


Not monetarised enough?
Monetarise "national security" well first, or else the whole conscription thing lacks any revenue side!

[Steve Blair]

I happen to think Ricks is a moron when it comes to the application of historical analysis. And this does not gain you any traction.

You have clearly made up your mind on this issue. You also clearly have assembled propositions that support your position. When challenged, you simply assert that your position is correct and that others must supply information to prove that you're wrong. Regarding that 8.5% figure from the Civil War (which appears to be high...unless you count those who paid NOT to be drafted as having been drafted), you have posted nothing that indicates that an overall 8.5% manpower increase over a two-year period had a substantial impact, You simply insist that it must be so.

I haven't made an exhaustive study of all Union regimental returns, but there are some that I have fair experience with. California, to name one example, did not make use of conscripts, and their forces provided the majority of Frontier garrison troops west of Colorado. A recent history of the Army of the Tennessee makes little mention of draftees in the ranks of those regiments. The article I linked to earlier also indicates that impact in terms of numbers in Wisconsin from conscription was also low. Volunteerism was also stimulated by the use of bounties at the state level, and there were constant problems with "bounty-jumping" and substitute fraud as well. I'd be interested to know how many of those supposed 8.5% actually served in the ranks for any period of time and how many went over the hill soon after reporting.

[Ken White]

You claimed that an all-volunteer force is inherently more cost effective than a conscription force. In the case of the United States, I have demonstrated that to be false. So, instead of continually referring back to your original post, I recommend that you refute the argument and evidence I have laid out. Thanks.

It appears to me that the second sentence could more correctly read "In my opinion I have demonstrated that to be false" -- The opinions, numbers, anecdotes, citations, quotes and so forth of others not withstanding...

You guys have fun. Carl has it right, it's not going to happen so no worries.

P.S.

With respect to my commenting on Rick's credibility, FYI it was not done to lend credence to an opposing view, it was an aside merely to express distaste for Mr. Ricks and his ilk. There are few things more dangerous (or amusing / annoying in turns) than a passable intellect imbued with overweening self-righteousness and an, umm, enhanced view of own knowledge and worth. They are fun to poke at however...

[wm]

I have not intentionally over-looked your claim, though I wonder on what basis you claim the whole "1940 - 73" time to be sui generis. There are significant differences in today's economy compared to the most recent draft era, a number of which are: increased financialization of the economy, higher concentrations of wealth in the upper echelons of society, and extremely low effective tax rates for the wealthy and corporations (who, as I noted, also have more of society's wealth). These may or may not be relevant to the effects of mass mobilization,though I think putting the 16.7% of youth that are unemployed to work (even if they're just mowing laws in the brigade footprint), is better than having that labor idle.

You have hoisted yourself by your own petard, refuting your own argument from analogy. Rather than showing why the 1940-73 period is not sui generis or, in other words, is similar to the current time, the above quotation by you points out that the economy of today is relevantly dissimilar from the economy that you alleged received such a boost from conscription between 1940 and 1973.

Not that I feel any real need to justify my claim regarding the uniqueness of 1940-73 but as a starting point I will submit that between 1941 and 1945, the US was engaged in a war that was fought on both sides of its ocean borders (Asia and Europe/MENA) with countries boosting armies that were peer competitors of, or better than, any other army in the world at the time. I think the German and Japanese armed forces were substantially better trained and equipped than the US Army until such time as they were attrited by the generally much-lower-tech, mass-produced materiel coming from the "Arsenal of Freedom" that was protected from attack by two major oceans.

By the way, I can tell you from experience as a soldier on casual duty status while awaiting orders, "mowing lawns in the brigade footprint" is far from meaningfiul employment. I suspect it would cause more harm than good to put a number of disaffected, because unemployed, youth to such work. Let's talk about diluting the the fighting strength, as the brigade has to use its troops to watch over the under-employed youth who are acting out in the brigade cantonment area. But I suspect my experience as a troop during those golden years of the draft are just anecdotes to be discounted, as are my subsequent experiences as an officer while the Army moved from a mixed force through VOLAR to the AVF (or all vounteer Army as we called it when I retired).

[AmericanPride]

You have hoisted yourself by your own petard, refuting your own argument from analogy. Rather than showing why the 1940-73 period is not sui generis or, in other words, is similar to the current time, the above quotation by you points out that the economy of today is relevantly dissimilar from the economy that you alleged received such a boost from conscription between 1940 and 1973.

No -- I clearly stated that while there are differences, neither you or I have established to what extent they are relevant. According to your strict interpretation, we might as well discard all of history as a useful tool in discussing policy and it's consequences since history never literally repeats itself. I'm open to a discussion about those economic factors I named (and others if you have them) since I'm not wholly convinced they are irrelevant.

Not that I feel any real need to justify my claim regarding the uniqueness of 1940-73 but as a starting point I will submit that between 1941 and 1945, the US was engaged in a war that was fought on both sides of its ocean borders (Asia and Europe/MENA) with countries boosting armies that were peer competitors of, or better than, any other army in the world at the time. I think the German and Japanese armed forces were substantially better trained and equipped than the US Army until such time as they were attrited by the generally much-lower-tech, mass-produced materiel coming from the "Arsenal of Freedom" that was protected from attack by two major oceans.

While this is factually true, it doesn't contradict or refute the positive economic outcomes gained from mobilizing millions of men between 1940 and 1973. US spending in the GWoT exceeded that of WW2, and faces more numerous disparate threats that require a large, flexible force to manage. What was relevantly unique about WW2 was the scale of destructive power unleashed, but, as you stated, this had no direct impact on the US.

By the way, I can tell you from experience as a soldier on casual duty status while awaiting orders, "mowing lawns in the brigade footprint" is far from meaningfiul employment. I suspect it would cause more harm than good to put a number of disaffected, because unemployed, youth to such work. Let's talk about diluting the the fighting strength, as the brigade has to use its troops to watch over the under-employed youth who are acting out in the brigade cantonment area. But I suspect my experience as a troop during those golden years of the draft are just anecdotes to be discounted, as are my subsequent experiences as an officer while the Army moved from a mixed force through VOLAR to the AVF (or all vounteer Army as we called it when I retired).

I agree with you that there is much time wasting in garrison. The point is that an 18 year old mowing lawns is at least making a paycheck and putting his disposable wages back into the economy. This is not true for the 16.7% of unemployed youth for whom jobs simply do not exist. As for your personal experiences, they're great. But yours, like mine I described elsewhere on this site, are not established to be the norm by virtue of us experiencing them.

[wm]

No -- I clearly stated that while there are differences, neither you or I have established to what extent they are relevant.

You said that the differences "may or may not be relevant," which is a tautology. Using a disjunction with two contradictory terms as its disjuncts provides no real information content. It is, instead, rather obfuscatory, does not really further understanding, and does not advance the search for truth.

I think that the relevance of the differences you described, viz., "increased financialization of the economy, higher concentrations of wealth in the upper echelons of society, and extremely low effective tax rates for the wealthy and corporations" is rather patently obvious. The impacts of dumping a rather large pool of mostly semi-skilled laborers who are more used to breaking things than to building them (which is at bottom what a demobilized military force is with regard to the civilian economy--whether in 1945 or in 2012) will be significantly different in a service-based economy (2012) than in a industrial/product-based economy (1940-1973). Service-based economies require skills that are not those normally connected with "servicing targets," as an euphemism for combat goes. They include people skills and salesmanship skills, the kinds of things currently identified as lacking in the force that needs to "win friends and influence people" to counter an insurgency successfully.

By the way, your exposition to date has not made clear how a large influx of laborers will realign the "effective tax rates for the wealthy and corporations" or draw "wealth from the upper echelons of society." Changing tax rates requires legislation and realigning wealth requires either a willingness on the part of the wealthy to part with their money or legislation to force income redistribution (for example, a simple graduated income tax system with no exemptions whatsoever).

According to your strict interpretation, we might as well discard all of history as a useful tool in discussing policy and it's consequences since history never literally repeats itself. I'm open to a discussion about those economic factors I named (and others if you have them) since I'm not wholly convinced they are irrelevant.

As I trust my second paragraph, supra., demonstrates, I have not applied a strict definition to determine relevance. I also have not played fast and loose with statistics, based on questionable assumptions, that amount to over-generalizations. I have tried to ensure that I use the amount of precision appropriate to the subject matter at hand.

Even though my avatar is of Don Quixote, I have decided to stop tilting at this windmill. This will be my last response to your mutating arguments for what seems to me to be a dogmatic, ill-founded position.

[wm]

American Pride has been trying to make an argument from analogy to carry his point that a draft would be good today.

To recap AP's argument: A draft in 1940-73 was good for America becase it revitalized the American economy during that period. Therefore, a draft in 2012 will be good for today's American economy.

What he has not shown is how today's American economy is relevantly similar tothat of the period 1940-1973, which he holds up as the basis for his undemonstrated analogy.

I have asserted that the 1940-73 time frame is sui generis. I find especially interesting the fact that American Pride has not tried to rebut that claim.