Yes

by Stephen Pate

Created on: December 07, 2009   Last Updated: December 09, 2009

U.S. Army recruitment rates continue to fall, so people are questioning whether or not a volunteer army is sufficient anymore. I'm not really going to answer yes or no. My answer is it's going to have to be.

Many people support the reinstatement of the draft. They say that if citizens were drafted into the military, the United States' armed conflicts would be better fought because we wouldn't lack manpower. While that may be true, the quality of our manpower would suffer.

Conscription, or the draft as it's called in the U.S., was a good method of recruiting an armed force in pre-modern times. In pre-modern times, the infantry was the backbone of the armed forces, and therefore the backbone of victory. Commanders could win by throwing troops with only basic training against their enemy and fully expect to win if they had more than the other side.

That all changed in modern times. Now, it is not just the number of servicemen a military can command that determines victory, it is also the type of equipment that can be used. The more advanced the equipment is, the greater the level of education and training is required of servicemen.

Not every conscript has the basic education to be trained in the use of such equipment, and it can be difficult for the military branches to provide that training to a massive amount of men, especially men who forced to do so rather than volunteer to do so.

A volunteer army would be more motivated to be properly trained in the use of advanced modern military equipment than a conscript army. In a volunteer army, the military force can accept people with a certain degree of education needed to use the equipment assigned to him, rather than deny poorly educated conscripts. Also, a military volunteer will be more self-motivated to become educated in everything he needs to know to be a serviceman.

Likewise, rapid turnover in conscripted forces prevents proper experience and leadership to build up in military units. This happened in the Vietnam War, when tours of duty for conscripts only lasted for one year. One soldier said that the U.S. Army wasn't in Vietnam for 10 years but for one year 10 times.

This prevented experience to build up in non-commissioned officers, the backbone of the American armed forces, and helped lead the U.S. in not attaining a decisive victory.

A volunteer, however, can be expected to serve for longer tours of duty. Rather than have many conscripts being forced to serve for only one year, a volunteer will sign up to serve for at least three years. This allows the military to gain and retain experienced servicemen.

One experienced serviceman is worth several inexperienced servicemen in combat. Volunteers are more likely to stay in the military long enough to gain the experience necessary to be effective in fighting a war.

Another issue is the government respecting the religious rights of their citizens. Many people are military pacifists for religious reasons. However, conscription tends to violate these rights except for specific religious groups. For instance, Quakers and the Amish are religious groups well known to be pacifists.

However, members of other religions who practice personal pacifism must serve if conscripted, regardless of their personal beliefs. Conscription violates their personal beliefs, especially those who hold unique personal beliefs.

A volunteer should have no such personal objections to join the military. If the military pursued actions that violated his personal beliefs, he could just choose not to join. Nobody forced him to join the military, so a volunteer would have nothing to stand on should he object to military policy.

One major problem in relying on a conscripted military is that not everyone is conscripted equally. Men are usually conscripted but women are not. The young are usually conscripted but the old usually are not.

Conscripts who are family members of politicians or have political connections can pull strings to be assigned to relatively safe assignments, while conscripts who are poor and have no connections have no such advantage. This means that one subset of the population bears the brunt of forced military service.

This is exceedingly hypocritical considering that certain groups are not able to serve in all capacities in some volunteer militaries. For example, in the U.S. armed forces, women can only serve in a very limited capacity. They can only serve on combat ships, including in command roles, on naval surface combat ships.

Otherwise, women can serve only in staff positions in every branch of the Army except for infantry and armor, which they can only hold staff positions in at the division level or above. Also, the U.S. military has a don't ask, don't tell policy with regards to non-heterosexuals serving in the military.

This refers to the policy of the military won't discharge or ban all homosexuals who serve; instead, the U.S. military will discharge only those homosexuals who make their sexual orientation apparent to the military. Those who do so are discharged and no longer allowed to serve even if they wish to.

So how can one group of people be expected to be forced to serve in the military without a choice while other groups who wish to volunteer for service aren't allowed? This is the height of hypocrisy from our political leaders.

Before reinstating the draft, why don't American leaders first allow anybody, no matter their sex, gender, or orientation, to serve before forcing military service on those who don't choose to serve?

After all, a volunteer woman or a volunteer homosexual will be much more self-motivated in serving the military than a conscript forced to do so.

A major advantage of volunteer forces to conscripted forces is discipline. A volunteer force it much less likely to mutiny against their commanders than a conscripted force.

A volunteer has much more discipline and will more likely follow orders, especially dangerous ones, than a conscript does. This makes volunteers much more trustworthy to follow orders.

Conscripts, on the other hand, are much more concerned with self-preservation than attaining military goals. During the Vietnam War, enlisted men who were commanded by overzealous, inept, or overly harsh officers would kill them.

This was called fragging because the best method to do so was with a fragmentation grenade that would leave little evidence of the perpetuator. It became so prominent that underground G.I. newspapers sometimes listed bounties for the fragging of unpopular officers.

This undermined the command of the fighting forces during Vietnam and led to more difficulties in the war's execution than there would have been in a volunteer army.

When it comes to terrorist organizations, they use conscription in their enemies' nation as a reason to target the entire population. In Israel, each man is conscripted for 3 years and each woman is conscripted for 2 years, with a few exemptions.

Israel's conscription of men and women is one reason why the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas defends their use of bombing public civilian areas. Hamas claims that Israeli conscription makes combatants of all Israeli citizens. A volunteer force takes away such a defense from terrorist organizations.

Likewise, a volunteer force would help prevent militarism of a nation. If all citizens are forced to undergo military training, the military would have an incredible amount of influence over it's populace. This is contradictory to the nature of modern democratic nations.

One qualification for a democratic nation is civilian control of the military. All citizens being forced to undergo military indoctrination undermines this, reducing the amount of democracy in the nation.

A conscripted military reduces the evolution of the armed services into the professional force that volunteer militaries become. Professional servicemen study warfare over their careers, developing military service into a science. This makes their military more organized and professional, which will make it more successful in attaining military goals.

Volunteers are those who are most likely to pursue professional military careers. By being able to take the time to study military science, a volunteer military will be able to win against non-professional conscript militaries that focus primarily on the amount of manpower they can call up.

Lastly, refusing to volunteer for military service is one of the few ways the citizenry can exert popular pressure against the government when it comes to military policy.

For example, the United States is a representative democracy; all policy is made by elected representatives. But there is no way for U.S. citizens to bypass their representatives and create federal laws directly. There is no way for U.S. citizens to pass a federal referendum. Therefore the only recourse U.S. citizens have to undermine unpopular military conflicts is to refuse to take part in them.

In a conscripted force, our political leaders could engage in unpopular military endeavors despite the wishes of the people. With a volunteer military, the people decide how militarized their nation should be, and is therefore a part of democratic activism.

Is a volunteer army sufficient anymore because of dropping rates in recruitment in the U.S. Army? Well, as I said before, it will have to be. What the U.S. Army can't achieve with volunteers it won't be able to achieve with draftees either.

All that means is that our military will have to find new ways of thinking to enact their missions with the volunteers they have. That would garner better results than forcing people who don't want to fight to kill others, and lead us to having a much more successful military in the long term.

Learn more about this author, Stephen Pate.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.