Tag: military draft

All Volunteer Military

In May 1967, The New Guard magazine published an article by Milton Friedman on “The Case for a Voluntary Army.”  It was a compelling case and was adopted when the U.S. suspended its military draft in January 1972. But was it correct? “45 years later Nixon-Gates commission”

In the 1960s, the drafting of 18 year old’s to fight in Vietnam was avoided by those able to go to college. This was rightly challenged as discriminatory against the poor and college deferments were replaced with a lottery system that started in 1970, which picked the birthdates at random that would then be first in line to be drafted each year. I was granted the last of the college deferments.  “Draft lottery (1969)”

While a student of Friedman’s at the University of Chicago from 1965-70, I joined with several other libertarian classmates to form the Council for a Volunteer Military to promote Friedman’s call for an end to the draft. The Directors of the Council were: James Powell, National Director; Henry Regnery, Treasurer; myself, Executive Secretary; Danny Boggs, national Filed Secretary; and David Levy, Publications Editor. Our sponsors were: Yale Brozen, Bruce K. Chapman, Richard C. Cornuelle, James Farmer, David Franke, Milton Friedman, Sanford Gottlieb, Eugene Groves, Karl Hess, and Norman Thomas: an impressively diverse group.

In 1969 President Richard Nixon establish the Gates Commission to advise him on established an all-volunteer military and appointed Friedman to the commission.  Based on the Commission’s recommendations, President Nixon signed a law in 1971 that ended the draft in January 1973.

A Rand Corporation report on the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) by Bernard D. Rostker stated that: “Although the country had conscripted its armed forces for only 35 of its 228 years — nearly all in the 20th century — the American people were generally willing to accept this practice when service was perceived as universal. However, in the 1960s, that acceptance began to erode. There were five major reasons:

  • Demographics. The size of the eligible population of young men reaching draft age each year was so large and the needs of the military so small in comparison that, in practice, the draft was no longer universal.
  • Cost. Obtaining enough volunteers was possible at acceptable budget levels.
  • Moral and economic rationale. Conservatives and libertarians argued that the state had no right to impose military service on young men without their consent. Liberals asserted that the draft placed unfair burdens on the underprivileged members of society, who were less likely to get deferments.
  • Opposition to the war in Vietnam. The growing unpopularity of the Vietnam war meant the country was ripe for a change to a volunteer force.
  • The U.S. Army’s desire for change. The Army had lost confidence in the draft as discipline problems among draftees mounted in Vietnam.”

At the time Crawford H. Greenewalt, another member of the Commission, wrote to Gates that “while there is a reasonable possibility that a peacetime armed force could be entirely voluntary, I am certain that an armed force involved in a major conflict could not be voluntary.”

“Rand research briefs”

The AVF matched or exceeding the high expectations for it. The professionalism of our Army improved. We fought 13 wars with our volunteer force: Lebanon (1982-4), Grenada (1983), Panama (1089-90), Gulf War (Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel 1990-91), Somalia (1992-5), Bosnian War (1992-95), Haiti (1994-5), Kosovo War (1998-99), Afghanistan War (2001-21), Iraq War (2003-11, 2014-2020), Somali Civil War (2007-21), Libya intervention (2011, 2015-20), and Syria (2014-present). Each was limited enough not to exhaust the supply of volunteers needed.

But a different criticism of our all-volunteer force was raised that gave me pause. Our costly and futile war in Vietnam from 1955-75 was finally ended (without admitting the defeat it surely was) in response to the growing protests in the U.S.  No such protests were raised for our imperial adventures since then. Some observers began to point their fingers at the absence of a draft and thus a military/industrial complex better sheltered from public criticism. When we campaigned for the end of the draft and an all-volunteer military, we assumed that we needed to maintain an Army for our defense. Instead, our military was deployed all over the planet (800 bases around the world) with sufficient restraint (generally) to avoid strong public push back.  “National defense”  If the average middle class family’s children were not being drafted to fight unnecessary wars in far off places, they were not as likely to complain about the billions of their taxpayer’s money being pumped into the military/industrial complex.  This was an unanticipated side effect of ending the draft that we had not anticipated.

Both former President Trump and President Biden expressed their intentions to end our forever wars and, at least in the case of Biden, to strengthen our capacity to deal with the world with diplomacy. We should wish him well. And we should urge Congress to reinstate the Weinberger Doctrine, which limited the use of U.S. forces to when vital U.S. interests were at stake, and only as a last resort. “A Biden doctrine starts to take shape”

You can read my experiences in Iraq in my book: “My travels to Baghdad” and my experiences in Afghanistan in my book: “My travels to Afghanistan”.

PS. Some how I forgot that I had written on this before with a somewhat different proposal: https://wcoats.blog/2015/01/23/the-all-volunteer-military-unintended-consequences-and-a-modest-proposal/

The All Volunteer Military: Unintended consequences and a modest proposal

America’s war in Vietnam, its longest before Afghanistan, relied on the obligatory military service of its young men if drafted. When we turned 18, we were required to enroll with the Selective Service System and those of us who did not volunteer lived in terror for about ten years of eligibility that we would be “called up.” To protect the education of our more talented youth, deferments from the draft were given to those of us in college. Not surprisingly this did not go down well with those who could not or chose not to go to college and the fairness of the system was challenged. Thus, college deferments for anyone older than I was (lucky me) were ended and replaced with a lottery at the beginning of each year based on the selective service numbers we received when we first enrolled. Those whose numbers where at the top of the list were sure to be drafted and those closer to the bottom were sure not to be.

Because of the draft the majority of American families with sons were emotionally involved and connected to the war and as it became more and more unpopular this broad connection helped finally bring it to an end.

In 1967, a group of libertarian University of Chicago students and I founded the Council for a Volunteer Military to publicize the inequities of the draft and the benefits of an all volunteer military. We were not subject to the draft ourselves as our college deferments were grandfathered, and thus we were purely motivated by our sense of fairness and believe in the superior effectiveness of a volunteer Army. The Council’ directors were Jim Powell, Henry Regnery, myself as Executive Secretary, Danny Boggs, and David Levy (the one who is now a Professor of Economics at George Mason U). Our Sponsors included my teacher, Milton Friedman, as well as Yale Brozen, Richard Cornuelle, David Franke, James Farmer, Karl Hess and socialist Norman Thomas.

President Richard Nixon appointed Professor Friedman to a commission to study the viability of an all volunteer military headed by Thomas S. Gates, Jr. This led to Nixon’s replacement of the draft with higher pay and other employment conditions that made it possible to man our military with hired professionals. The result was a more expensive (the draft was effectively a tax on those drafted, who tended to be poorer to begin with) but significantly more effective military. After some years adjusting to the new approach, even the Generals praised the great success of our all-volunteer force.

As our military adventurism of recent decades has resulted in more and more American troops fighting and dying abroad, some observers have noted that the volunteer force left most American families unaffected directly by these wars thus undercutting the opposition they might otherwise express. This was obviously an unintended and negative aspect of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF). If there were no way to compensate for this negative consequence, the AVF would still be the best and fairest approach to manning our military. However, there is a simple way to help mitigate this negative feature, which has much merit in its own right.

Since 2001 our wars have cost us $1.6 trillion dollars ($10.5 million dollars per hour). This is just the direct budgetary cost and does not take account of the lives lost and other indirect costs and distortions to the economy, worsened relations abroad, etc. While the top 20-30 percent of income earners in the United States provide almost none of their sons and now daughters to fight these wars and thus might be more inclined to support them, they do provide almost one hundred percent of the taxes raised to finance our government. (In 2012, the latest income tax data available, about half of American families reported taxable income of which the top 50% paid 97.2% of all income tax revenue in that year. The top 5% of tax payers earned 36.8% of total adjusted gross income reported that year and paid 58.9% of total income taxes received.) None of the costs of these wars have been paid for by raising taxes or cutting other spending (except within the Defense Department, where equipment and weapons development expenditures suffered). The funds were borrowed from those buying U.S. treasury securities, adding to our debt that will have to be paid by our children.

My modest proposal, echoing one made a few years ago by U.S. Congressman David Obey, D-Wis., who on Nov. 19, 2010 introduced H.R. 4130, the “Share the Sacrifice Act of 2010,” is that any budget supplemental appropriations to cover the costs of fighting abroad must be paid for fully by an income tax surcharge. See Bruce Bartlett’s discussion of this issue: http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/25/shared-sacrifice-war-taxes-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html. By explicitly putting the cost on income taxes, any war and its financing will get the attention it deserves from the wealthier members of society who pay that tax. Taxing to pay for wars has the double benefit of adhering to principles of sound finance (properly paying for whatever the government spends), and of bringing the costs (at least the budgetary costs) of war to the pocket books of American voters.