What's wrong with the All-Volunteer Force (AVF)? Perhaps nothing...until Iraq. Three decades old, the AVF arguably worked, carrying us post-Vietnam through the Cold War, the minor conflicts of the 1990s, and into Afghanistan. For peacetime-even messy peace-and for small, quick wars, the AVF has been an acceptable answer. But our Iraq experience shows the deep flaws of the AVF concept.
The AVF contains three implicit promises, all broken in Iraq:
* Quantity: we will always have enough fighters to meet our requirements.
* Quality: they will always have the capabilities and training they need.
* Character: our military won't alter its relationship to our democratic society.
Iraq's strain on military quality and quantity are obvious to anyone hearing the daily news. The current debate in the Army is whether it is "broken." Our ground units are badly stretched; our Reserve and National Guard system set back for a generation, and the war's costs have badly hampered modernization. And Iraq is it-don't think about taking on Iran or North Korea. Militarily we are tapped out, victim of the AVF's dark side: it's sized for peacetime and can't handle sustained, high intensity conflict.
The AVF's character flaws are more subtle. First is the ease with which the it allows the President to make war. Give the chief executive his own army and by golly, he'll use it. Well, we did and he has, starting a war of choice in the Middle East and bogging us down for a dangerous future we could have avoided if he'd had to ask the American people to raise an army, the Constitution's splendid phrase.
And the military we do have is drawn by economic bargain and recruiting finesse largely from non-elite segments of our nation. It lives alone, a separate society parallel but distant from the rest of America. Few of our nation's political or business leaders have military experience, but whether they've served or not, the AVF guarantees that their kids will never be forced to sacrifice for their country.
The result: 30 years of the All-Volunteer Force have given the President a mercenary military unrepresentative of the nation it serves. These kids in uniform aren't our kids, so those close to us can dodge the risks of military service as we blithely accept war's cost in young lives shattered. What happened to the citizen-soldier, to John Kennedy's "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship?" The AVF killed all this.
Start with the Federalist Papers and the Constitution. Follow our nation's history through its big wars. Picture Willy and Joe. Hear the people's voice in the Vietnam debate. Now contrast those images of active democracy with the passive acceptance we give to the burden borne by those who joined the All-Volunteer Force and now find themselves consigned to extended combat absent any democratic debate about their fate.
Exposed by the Iraq War, two truths indict the AVF:
* It is foreign to our nation's heritage.
* It isn't working.
How do we fix this dysfunctional system? End it. We had the right answer 30 years ago. In our haste to be rid of the military draft in Vietnam, we abandoned the better model for manning America's modern military. It's the one we have now with its good gear and deep professional roots, but also with the draft reactivated, forcing those who would make war to clear it first with "we the people." Bring back the draft. Whether standing alone or part of a broader program of national service, bring back the draft.
Who benefits? First, the military services, with easier access to the talent and numbers needed and an effective surge capacity. National defense benefits, retaining responsiveness to immediate military needs but also requiring the people's backing of a decision that commits this nation to long-term combat. And our grand experiment called American Democracy benefits, by abandoning an imperial model of a totally mercenary military in favor of we citizens taking direct responsibility for guarding the fate of our nation.
The All-Volunteer Force is a pernicious concept, a test that failed. Iraq proves it: we've gone to war without commitment, we don't have our skin in the game, and we're losing our ass. Bring the decision for war back to the American people. Bring back the draft.
Captain Byron retired from the Navy in 1993 after 37 years active duty. He lives in Florida and is a frequent contributor to Proceedings.