Reviving the Draft: Not Now, Not Ever

There has been some chatter recently in the blogosphere (at TNR’s Open University, and here, here, and here) and elsewhere about reviving the draft or some other sort of mandatory national service. Almost of all this is coming from center-left Democrats. Charlie Rangel has been talking this up for some time, and has reintroduced a bill which would reinstitute conscription. The Truman Project crowd is also behind this effort – with a book out (Awol: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service — And How It Hurts Our Country) from Truman Fellow Kathy Roth-Douquet on the subject.



Some of this (including Rangel’s effort) is grounded almost entirely in Iraq, on the well-founded notion that the war would end much more quickly if the country’s elites were losing their children there too. (An often cited fact in this debate: In 1956, 400 members of the Princeton graduating class of 750 served in the armed forces. In 2004, that number was down to 9.) As a matter of military manpower, however, the consensus is that it is unnecessary and perhaps even counterproductive, even as voluntary enlistments are drawn out.



But much more broadly, national service is a key component in the liberal nationalist project. Liberal nationalists rightly perceive some form of national service as crucial to building and maintaining a sense of national community, itself a necessary foundation to the modern liberal state. Without that sense of community, the redistributive capacities of the state are challenged, and not just with respect to material redistribution. (Curious that it’s not part of the conservative agenda as well – see this from Heritage, and “Democrat Would Draft Your Daughter” from Human Events – perhaps it suggests too much big government, a reticence dating all the way back to opposition to any form of standing army.) That’s why this effort is centered in the moderate Democrat platform – see Bruce Reed and Rahm Emmanuel’s The Plan – at least as a matter of faith. If Iraq gives the proposal greater plausibility, there’s no reason not to exploit the political circumstance to advance the much bigger-picture objective.



But the draft is unlikely to be revived, in the short or long-term. In addition to the technological developments that undermine the need for one (mass manpower just isn’t that important anymore), that sense of national community has now dissipated to the point that many if not most Americans would be unwilling to sacrifice their sons and daughters for the national cause. It’s hard to come up with a scenario in which we return to a context in which the draft is both necessary and acceptable. It certainly isn’t going to come about as a result of shopworn calls for a renewed sense of civic responsibility and a rediscovered social contract.