http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0503.carter.html
America can remain the world’s superpower. Or it can maintain its current all-volunteer military. It can’t do both.
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In short, America’s all-volunteer military simply cannot deploy and sustain enough troops to succeed in places like Iraq while still deterring threats elsewhere in the world. Simply adding more soldiers to the active duty force, as some in Washington are now suggesting, may sound like a good solution. But it’s not, for sound operational and pragmatic reasons. America doesn’t need a bigger standing army; it needs a deep bench of trained soldiers held in reserve who can be mobilized to handle the unpredictable but inevitable wars and humanitarian interventions of the future. And while there are several ways the all-volunteer force can create some extra surge capacity, all of them are limited.
The only effective solution to the manpower crunch is the one America has turned to again and again in its history: the draft.* Not the mass combat mobilizations of World War II, nor the inequitable conscription of Vietnamfor just as threats change and war-fighting advances, so too must the draft. A modernized draft would demand that the privileged participate. It would give all who serve a choice over how they serve. And it would provide the military, on a just in time basis, large numbers of deployable ground troops, particularly the peacekeepers we’ll need to meet the security challenges of the 21st century.
America has a choice. It can be the world’s superpower, or it can maintain the current all-volunteer military, but it probably can’t do both.
* empahsis mine
Because a draft is guaranteed to create a completely capabable military, not a demoralized army of forced soldiers putting their asses on the line for something they did not ask or even volunteer to do. Part of what has made the American military so unique and effective over the last 150 years is it’s all volunteer status, the fact that everyone who is in there WANTS to be there on some level. Whether it’s because they believe in the military’s values, see it as a way to get an education or simply like the shiny guns, they are there because they want to be and fight because that’s what they signed up to do.
So what if, instead of instituting a draft and forcing people who don’t want to be in the military to serve, you create a system to where joining the military is more appealing?
Serve six years, your college education is free. Sure, you can get out, but you’re in the Reserves and can be called up, but you get FREE college. And better pay. And more.
Ah, but Carter and Glastris proposed a half assed effort at this:
A better solution would fix the weaknesses of the all-volunteer force without undermining its strengths. Here’s how such a plan might work. Instead of a lottery, the federal government would impose a requirement that no four-year college or university be allowed to accept a student, male or female, unless and until that student had completed a 12-month to two-year term of service. Unlike an old-fashioned draft, this 21st-century service requirement would provide a vital element of personal choice. Students could choose to fulfill their obligations in any of three ways: in national service programs like AmeriCorps (tutoring disadvantaged children), in homeland security assignments (guarding ports), or in the military. Those who chose the latter could serve as military police officers, truck drivers, or other non-combat specialists requiring only modest levels of training. (It should be noted that the Army currently offers two-year enlistments for all of these jobs, as well as for the infantry.) They would be deployed as needed for peacekeeping or nation-building missions. They would serve for 12-months to two years, with modest follow-on reserve obligations.
Whichever option they choose, all who serve would receive modest stipends and GI Bill-type college grants. Those who sign up for lengthier and riskier duty, however, would receive higher pay and larger college grants. Most would no doubt pick the less dangerous options. But some would certainly select the militaryout of patriotism, a sense of adventure, or to test their mettle. Even if only 10 percent of the one-million young people who annually start at four-year colleges and universities were to choose the military option, the armed forces would receive 100,000 fresh recruits every year. These would be motivated recruits, having chosen the military over other, less demanding forms of service. And because they would all be college-grade and college-bound, they would haveto a greater extent than your average volunteer recruitthe savvy and inclination to pick up foreign languages and other skills that are often the key to effective peacekeeping work.
Require service to go to college and thereby better enhance your chances of success in the world? Or you could opt not to join the military and be limited to flipping burgers or working retail the rest of your life. Thanks, guys, way to make that military more appealing.
This does NOTHING to solve the issue of morale or avoid anyone joining feeling like they are forced to be there. “I’m just here for a year and then I’m out, so I’m going to do the bare minimum to get by,” is not the mentality we need our armed forces to have.
There was a time when serving in the military meant something. If you served you were practically guaranteed a job when you were done. But that is no longer the case, society and business needs have moved beyond that the military teaches, leaving many that serve behind those that simply go to college instead.
Fix that and you might have yourself a larger all-volunteer force.