No Safer; No Fairer

CONTRARY TO Reagan administration rhetoric, the President's decision to extend draft registration has taken the nation one step closer to peacetime conscription. The signup that was once termed immoral is now moral; why not the same for the draft itself? Reagan has said that only "the most severe national emergency" would force him to revive conscription. But does that mean a shooting war, or will one of those mysterious "threats to national security" do the trick? Clearly, it's a matter of when the political pressure in favor of a draft overwhelms the President's dubious enthusiasm for the all-volunteer force. With Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and his hawkish honchos on Capitol Hill gunning hard, a draft within the next several years wouldn't be at all shocking.

Arguing against conscription is more difficult than illustrating the pointlessness of registration. The draft would accomplish several worthy goals. By forcing educated, white males from middle-and upper-class backgrounds into uniform, the government could begin to correct the over-representation of minorities and the poor now serving in the military. Badly depleted reserve divisions could be replenished, improving the country's capacity to respond to a genuine foreign threat. And in theory, it could be done equitably, unlike previous drafts. Various legislations have proposed universal service programs: no exemptions, short terms of active duty, and alternative non-military options in fields such as health and social care.

Unfortunately, the drawbacks of a peacetime draft outweigh its benefits. Nearly a million young men have failed to register. Some may sign up now that Reagan has promised Justice Department prosecutions, but the experience of Vietnam shows that conscription would make criminals out of hundreds of thousands of the nation's youth. If the government attempted to hunt down and jail that many people, it would transform the country into nothing less than a police state. The late Sixties and early Seventies also taught that the draft is used as a means of suppressing domestic dissent. There are many who remember the special attention anti-war organizers received from the Selective Service and local draft boards.

Moreover a draft would propel an already existing movement toward wasteful and dangerous militarism. Nunn and Co. argue somewhat smugly that even if the peaceniks bottle things up this year, we will eventually need conscription to supply the 200,000 additional troops mandated by Reagan's Pentagon bonanza--especially if demographic predictions hold and the pool of 18-year-olds drops in the future. Well, the point is that we don't need more soldiers, just as we don't need more new types of high-tech gadgetry that can't get off the ground or out of the mud. Recruiting and retention rates for military personnel rose dramatically last year; there was even marked improvement in racial and economic representation. These trends must be nurtured with higher pay and productive benefits, like guaranteed tuition support after discharge.

Put simply, most draft proponents are above all concerned with reestablishing American authority abroad. They desperately try to convince themselves that another symbolic weapon will impress upon the Soviets that we mean business. That argument buttressed the draft registration decision, but it is equally misleading in connection with conscription. A draft will not get any Soviet tanks removed from East Germany.

In the hands of a trigger-happy administration, a draft could be used to smooth the way toward ill-advised U.S. adventurism along the lines of Lyndon Johnson's Southeast Asia strategy of 1966 and 1967. Volunteers became rarer during that period, but LBJ could depend on a steady flow of conscripted bodies to keep the troop planes full.

Without a draft, this country will have to struggle to improve its armed forces. Money now thrown away on fantasies like the MX will have to be carefully redirected toward sensible manpower needs. (And there should still be plenty left over to cut from the Pentagon budget altogether.) The alternative of mandatory conscription is wholly unacceptable.

This is the second of two editorials on registration and the draft.