05 Dec 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.
I rather agree with Jacob Weisburg who argued some time ago in Slate, that ‘relying on an all-volunteer force [is] painfully undemocratic and unfair’ (and while I’m a Liberal, I’m not a ‘liberal nationalist’). That is, the case for reviving the draft must rely on arguments from fairness and egalitarianism: cf. James Tobin, ‘On Limiting the Domain of Inequality,’ Journal of Law and Economics 13 (1970): 263-267. Consider, for example, the following from Jack Lessenberry: ‘The middle and upper classes are insulated from this war, which is being fought mostly by poor jobless white kids from places like Flint, as Fahrenheit 911 made devastatingly clear. Inner-city blacks, Hispanics, and other new immigrants are also doing their bit for democracy by being blown up by roadside bombs. But few or none of them have fathers who are congressmen or college deans, and so we ignore them. Richard Nixon, who was far brighter than Dubya, thought during the Vietnam War that if we went to an all-volunteer military, the vast majority of the protests would dry up. The all-volunteer army became a reality just after the peace settlement of 1973, and there hasn’t been a mass anti-war movement since. Those of us who marched against the Vietnam war did so in large part for self-serving reasons: because we didn’t want to go, or we didn’t want our brothers or boyfriends to go. When that threat ended, most of us brought out the brewskis and the Risk game board and began partying hearty. Now we are moving to a world where we have a professional army that increasingly doesn’t look like America. In turn, America doesn’t pay very much attention to it. This strikes me as having the potential to be a very dangerous thing, for reasons that have little to do with Iraq.’
I find both Mr. Weisburg’s and Mr. O’Donnell’s (by extension) argument that an all-volunteer force is “undemocratic and unfair” to be patently ridiculous.
First of all, the undemocratic charge can be easily dismissed as there seems little dispute that it is the will of the people not to impose a draft. No poll has shown any support for this in decades.
“The middle and upper classes are insulated from this war, which is being fought mostly by poor jobless white kids from places like Flint, as Fahrenheit 911 made devastatingly clear.”
I must admit, the phrase “As Fahrenheit 911 made clear” is amusing by and of itself. Was there any factual content in that rather tiresome propaganda piece? If anything, the middle class and upper class are over-represented in the military, and the poor are under-represented:
Source
Racial recruitment trends closely mirror national demographics, with only a slight bias towards minorities.
“Now we are moving to a world where we have a professional army that increasingly doesn’t look like America.”
How so? Additionally, explain what possible rationale you could use for forced demographic balancing of the army towards such an ideal?
I fail to see how anything could be more fair than a volunteer military, save one you could leave at any time, which isn’t permissible for practical reasons.
All those present in Iraq chose to be in the military, wherever it would be sent. All those who joined after 2003 presumably were aware that Iraq was where they would very likely end up. What assignment could be more fair than personal choice?
I ultimately agree with Matthew, that a volunteer army is entirely fair, and with Peter, in that the American public is in no mood for nationalism. And, contrary to my custom, I have to disagree with Patrick on this one, so far as he seems to advocate in favor of the draft. For, in my opinion, framing the draft debate with considerations for “fairness and egalitarianism” is the wrong approach; the draft debate needs to be examined much more deeply.
The imposition of a mandatory draft raises a lot of questions:
Can we demand service? Is civic service a duty that all citizens implicitly agree to by virtue of being citizens? Does service to one’s country also require that a person be patriotic, or that he support his country’s policies and practices? If a person is unpatriotic/doesn’t support government policy, does he still have a duty to serve his country? Should he?
And, separately, if we can demand service, to what extent may service be required? Can we require that people “volunteer” a few hours’ time every month; that they give up a percentage of their paychecks to support specific causes; that they harm/maim/kill others; that they risk their own lives? Are there limits to how much can be demanded of us by our government?
As Patrick points out (and depending on your statistics), it *may* be undemocratic to enlist an all-volunteer army, whose members are drawn largely from the lower class. But consider: It is also undemocratic to demand civic duty and patriotism. Sure, it would be nice if military service was equally required of everyone, but that only takes care of the equality issue. It does not take care of the larger issue, which is whether service can be required – of anyone – at all. The fact that civic service is a requirement at all undermines (in my mind) what it means to serve.