End the All-Volunteer Force

[AmericanPride]

Oh, Van, one last note: aside from the clear economic advantages gained from health-care reform, the other thing to consider is the impact on the eligibility of young middle class men for military service. This problem received some media attention, last year, making it clear that health and education reform are both essential to maintaining and improving military readiness.

[AmericanPride]

Based on your previous record, I'm not sure if you will.

I'm not really concerned about my reputation on a fairly anonymous online message board.

"In March 1863, the federal government elected to centralize and normalize conscription. The process adopted by the government divided conscription areas by congressional district. If a district failed to reach the quota number of volunteers, a draft lottery was then initiated. Once conscripted, the potential draftee underwent a series of examinations to determine medical fitness and the existence of hardship. Upon passing these requirements, the draftee had ten days to hire a substitute, pay a three-hundred dollar commutation fee, or join the army. Of the 292,441 names drawn during 1863, about 190,000 men were waived due to medical disability or hardship, 52,000 paid the commutation fee, and about 26,000 provided a substitute. In the end, 9,811 men, or three percent of men became conscripts.(emphasis mine)"

Now this is the kind of response that I was expecting from people of this site's caliber. And the figures for 1864?

A cursory search doesn't turn up much regarding this flow of personnel, but that's where you'd have to start to determine if that slice was significant. My take at this stage is that it was not significant.

I agree, which is why I have gone no further than claiming that 8.5% of Union soldiers were conscripts, and on the basis of that figure alone, draftees had a substantial impact on the war's outcome.

A well-researched article on the impact of the draft in two Wisconsin communities can be found here. One line in his concluding paragraph is interesting: "I believe it is important to note again that the purpose of the draft was to stimulate volunteerism through the threat of conscription."

That's an interesting finding, and demonstrates the utility of the draft in more than simply directly fulfilling manpower requirements.

[Steve Blair]

Now this is the kind of response that I was expecting from people of this site's caliber. And the figures for 1864?



I agree, which is why I have gone no further than claiming that 8.5% of Union soldiers were conscripts, and on the basis of that figure alone, draftees had a substantial impact on the war's outcome.

You can dig up 1864 on your own, I expect. And I repeat that 8.5% (at most) does not mean a substantial impact. If you check out the linked article, it goes into much more detail regarding the situation in Wisconsin (a strong Union state, as were most of what were then the Western states).

[AmericanPride]

You can dig up 1864 on your own, I expect

I asked out of curiousity, not because annual numbers are relevant to my argument (they aren't). Bottom-line, up to 8.5% of soldiers were drafted; even if a substantial number were paid substitutes, those are still individuals inducted through the draft system. If we really want to get into the nuts and bolts, we can find out where those draftees (or their paid replacements) ended up during the conflict. But I can see you are just as content with simply assuming they were insignificant to the conflict as I am in assuming they were significant. And that's fine. The most relevant measurement of conscription's benefits is during 1940 - 1973.

[AmericanPride]

In 1991, Cato Institute's Doug Bandow made an argument about America not needing conscription. In it, he asserts:

Although public dissatisfaction eventually ended American involvement in Vietnam, it took years for political opposition to build, a period during which tens of thousands of Americans died needlessly. An AVF might have ended the war far sooner, since young people would simply have stopped volunteering.

I wonder how the numbers bear out in recruitment/retention figures compared to the popular opinion of the conduct of the Iraq War II. But then again, is there really any direct correlation between recruitment/retention and public opinion? After all, the military burden of the last 10 years has been carried heavily by one demographic and is not necessarily reflective of national opinions. And low retention levels ended up only affecting recruitment standards and enlistment bonuses.

Of course, for Bandow's argument to be valid on this point, he must assume that ending the conflict on unfavorable terms is preferable to having a draft system in place (which says alot about his view on national interests).

Bandow eventually concludes:

Our prob- lem today is not a military filled with those who want to be there but a political leadership willing to risk war for peripheral interests. A draft cannot change that. If it could, we would not have had to construct a memorial to 58,000 people who died in a purposeless war two decades ago.

I don't think Ricks (or myself) would argue that an all-volunteer military is inherently problematic, but instead that it carries risks of it own, some of which are very costly and questionable and could be addressed by an alternative system.

[wm]

The most relevant measurement of conscription's benefits is during 1940 - 1973.

The period 1940-1973 is sui generis. As such, one extrapolates from it to the present day at one's peril.

A single instance of a period of benefit does not establish any kind of correlation that future periods of conscription will produce similar benefits. 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.)

[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).

[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.