The world is getting a lot more dangerous. Recent events show that the Long Peace may be near its end. Further, it is now obvious that our existing military stockpiles, manpower and general readiness is too low to keep the peace.
It is better to be ready and not need it than to be unready when need arises.
So I suppose the United States, and other nations ought to renew conscription.
The lack American draft was horribly unjust and poorly-run. We can do better. I would propose a two-year draft of college educated people based on congressional district. We could also include a clause that none of these conscripts would be sent overseas without Congressional approval.
Honestly, I do not see any political path to getting this done. Still, I suspect our all-volunteer force is no longer enough.
The U.S. still has mandatory registration for Selective Service for young men; if the government decides they needed to reinstate the draft, they have the details and lists already at hand.
The nature of our military is different than it used to be, with a lot more reliance on high-tech weaponry, and (as I understand it) less reliance on large numbers of troops.
Conscription would be the fastest way to reduce the effectiveness of the U.S. armed forces. If we need to increase the defense budget, so be it, but every dollar spent on training and equipping conscripts is a dollar not being spent on things that would actually make our military more effective.
The military did not have enough stockpiles to supply the (smallish) war in Ukraine without cutting too deep into muscle. The military has also begun enlisting people who are unable to meet the traditional fitness and health standards. (The Army is introducing pre-basic training to get these people to a decent weight.) We have already done the easy stuff, by opening all specialties to women for example. Now I suspect it is time to do the hard stuff.
I think that if the military wants more members, it should offer greater incentives to young men and women to volunteer. Having a extra few hundred thousand young people forced into the military against their will, with no immediate threat, seems unproductive at best.
…what? I don’t think the limiting factor on our aid to Ukraine is either our own military’s needs, or a lack of throughput on the Military-Industrial Complex. We could give Ukraine tenfold what we give them now and still stay fighting fit. It’s a matter of politics, of what we don’t want floating around outside of NATO, and of escalation management; I’ve never once heard the claim that the US is running low on stuff to give.
As someone who unwillingly joined the Navy to avoid the draft back in 1967, I will say that it’s a horrible idea. Uprooting young lives and destroying life plans for the sake of fortifying a killing machine is just wrong.
Considering the last generally accepted “good” war was 80 years ago, and every major conflict since has been considered an abject failure of US foreign policy that has caused needless death and suffering, I don’t think the US government has earned the goodwill required to reintroduce the draft.
Looking further into it, it appears that there’s one thing we ARE running low on - artillery shells. This makes sense, because Ukraine is fighting an artillery-heavy war using an artillery-heavy army, and that simply isn’t what the US specializes in.
However, we have been ramping up production of artillery and also giving Ukraine alternatives like HIMARS - rocket artillery - since our factories are set up to mass produce rockets rather than artillery shells. By giving Ukraine HIMARS we can make use of the rockets we have plenty of.
Anyways, while the artillery shell shortage is real, I fail to see how instituting a draft would help? And we’d be better off asking NATO allies whose own armies focus on artillery to supply Ukraine with shells rather than abandoning rocket artillery which we have a comparative advantage in.
Manpower is the only part of that that would be affected by a draft, and it’s the least important in modern warfare. Russia has a draft, and how well are they doing?
If your success comes down to how many riflemen you’re putting in the field, you’ve already screwed up. Modern warfare with modern weapon systems requires specialist troops with higher quality training, not just more bodies.
Now, equipment and ammunition reserves, that’s important. But again, a draft won’t fix that. What you need are more factories, and more money, to keep those factories pumping out more equipment and ammunition, year-round, regardless of whether there’s a war on right then. And maybe build in a significant reserve capacity, so that when a war does go hot, you can ramp up production to better offset current usage.
Of course, that all requires even more money, and that requires us to tell the penny pinchers to sit down and shut up, for a period of time measured at least in decades.
You seem to love government regulation over what people other than you should do with their lives and bodies.
If we actually need more people in our bloated military, and you have provided no evidence of that being the case, give better incentives to the potentially willing to join instead of forcing the unwilling to participate.
Since you are gung ho about sending other people to go fight in America’s ill-conceived wars, why not lead by volunteering to go yourself? Or is that a bit too on the nose as far as “putting your money where your mouth is”?
Yes. This reminds me of all the business owners whining about how “no one wants to work anymore”. Uh, no, no one wants to work for you anymore. Improve pay and conditions and that will change.
