Uncle John Wants You

THEY'RE FAMOUS down on Capitol Hill for the ability to revive issues that are better left six feet under. Lately, they've been resuscitating a subject most of us were happy to see bite the dust four years ago. In 1975, then-President Ford watched the Indochina conflict wind down to its agonizing end and put the country's Selective Service System on "deep standby" status. Meanwhile, Ford initiated the system of All-Volunteer Forces (AVF), a program aimed at keeping the nation's military system sufficiently staffed without resorting to conscription.

But some Congressmen have recently challenged the success of the AVF and the ability of the United States to respond adequately in the event of a conventional war. Nine bills now pending on the House and Senate floors suggest everything from reinstitution of registration for the draft as early as October of this year to compulsory "national service" for young people. The rationale behind most of the legislative barrage is symbolically simple-minded--we don't have enough men (and women) to fight in the event of war. Says Sen. John D. Stennis (D-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: "The so-called all-volunteer force system, under which all the military services now operate, is clearly the weakest link in the vital chain of our military security. We are simply not getting manpower in the numbers and with the quality that the military requirements of this Nation demand."

Sponsors of these bills argue that in the event of a major conventional war, the United States could not muster the 650,000 soldiers needed in the first six months. It would be seven months before the first man not in the Ready Reserves could report for duty, says one Senate aide, "and in modern warfare, that would be about six months too late." For the first time ever, all four military services failed to meet their recruiting quotas in the last quarter of 1978.

While it is clear that the AVF is not the panacea that many thought it might be, reinstituting draft registration is a misguided attempt at solving a complex problem. Registration supporters base their arguments on Pentagon studies that envision a scenario something like this: The Soviet Union (for some unexplained reason) sends massed troops into Western Europe. This sudden development--the United States intelligence community evidently knew nothing about it--mushrooms into "a prolonged war with extensive casualties." It seems that some of our representatives--who never speak in terms of the Vietnam debacle--forgot that the Department of Defense analysts who prepared these reports are the same ones hwo put us "waist deep in the Big Muddy."

Restoring draft registration procedures also threatens to increase the likelihood of United States intervention in foreign wars. Knowing that manpower is available would free planners in the Defense Department (and maybe even in the White House) to develop plans for large-scale intervention. It is not a very hard argument to follow: it's easier to play bully when you're the strongest guy on the block.

Bills that move us closer to the draft are clearly not based on a rational assessment of the audience they are aimed at. A generation born and raised on the monolithic visions of World War II and the Korean War, some analysts say, is trying desperately to convince itself that its sons and daughters feel the urge to serve. "Duty, honor, country and a sense of obligation to serye the Nation and mankind are very much a part of the ethic of today's youth," says Korean war veteran Rep. Paul J. McCloskey (R-Cal.). He insists the "young idealist" hwo opposed Vietnam "were the same type of individuals who volunteered to serve in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1939, before the United States entered the war against Germany."

Meanwhile, McCloskey and others advance the argument that the AVF is a serious financial liability. They cite studies showing that the Soviet Union allots only 23 per cent of its defense budget for manpower while 56 per cent of the military budget in the United States provides a less-than-adequate military force. If money is the heart of the problem--as they say it is--reinstituting registration procedures is a long and unnecessarily tortuous path to relieving financial strain. With an additional $2.5 billion earmarked for the AVF, the Defense Department could meet it's emergency manpower requirements, a December 1978 letter from Selective Service officials to members of the House Armed Services Committee reveals. Some say this $2.5 billion figure is far below what it would cost to track down, investigate and prosecute the thousands of young people who would opt for a five-year prison sentence in the face of compulsory service. Even staunch militarists like Stennis say they will support more appropriations for AVF if they can achieve the desired result. Perhaps the Congress should spend more of its time making the volunteer services more attractive and streamlining the program.

McCloskey's own bill, which suggests formation of a "national service" of young people, reveals the underlying philosophical contradiction in the current debate. McCloskey describes his bill--impelling a choice between active military service, one year of civilian service or inclusion in a lottery in case of war--as an "alternative" to proposals that only suggest reinstitution of draft registration. "We are sorely in need of a system of military recruitment that can provide essential manpower," says the man who challenged Richard Nixon for the Presidency in 1972 on the basis of the Indochina debacle. "At the same time, we are failing to utilize a vast reservoir of the nation's youth to meet social, economic, and environmental needs." At the Ford Foundation, McGeorge Bundy, under the guise of a report entitled "Youth and the Needs of the Nation," is bankrolling a lobbying campaign for the national service.

The programs which McCloskey would have young people join--the Peace Corps, ACTION, etc.--are based on concepts of voluntarism. And herein lies the contradiction: what a recent Library of Congress study labels the "highly questionable" constitutionality under 13th amendment which prohibits non-military "involuntary servitude." Even within a framework of military or civilian choice such as the one McCloskey offers, young people have no choice but to serve. The estimated $20 billion cost of compulsory service seems better spent on ensuring freedom of choice while making the volunteer army a more attractive alternative. The fear of the draft has returned and, in the post-Vietnam era, this is one ghost legislators might do better to exorcise away.