From the thread "Who should the U.S. take out next?"




In my opinion, the U.S. military is curently so much stonger than the military of our potential enemies that the draft is HIGHLY unlikely to be used in modern times. Mrs. Pigpen feel that a war with North Korea would result in a draft in the U.S.

Do you think the U.S. will need the draft? Do you think Congress should abolish the draft?

I agree with Mrs. P. We are currently stretched and NK has a bigger man army than we do at the best of times...we are, however, better armed but as we see in Iraq that only goes so far.

I do believe that ANY further conflicts we engage in while we are in Iraq and Afhganistan will result in a draft situation unless we are able to involve the international community to handle the majority of any added burdens...and I don't see that happening any time soon.

I agree that our military is stronger and vastly superior to any on the planet, but it still comes down to how many boots on the ground compared to how many fronts we're engaged on. If we add another, with still being in Afganastan, Iraq, the border between N & S Korea we'll need to start up the draft to compensate. I don't agree with the current administration, but I also wouldn't want our boys and girls to go ill prepared and under manned. It's a double edged sword...

I voted yes to "WILL the US use the draft..."

If we stay on the current foreign policy course, it's going to become inevitable, although I hope popular opposition would win out, it woudl only take a major "911" or "Pearl Harbor" or "Sinking of the Lusitania" event to remove that opposition and the draft will sweep in on a wave of patriotism.

I would vote no to "SHOULD the US use the draft..."

Here's some reasons:

1. The draft is slavery. Plain and simple. Involuntary servitude is wrong when enforced by indivdiuals. It is just as wrong when enforced by the collective.

2. The draft represents a completely unfair shift of the economic burden of war to the draftees. The obvious way to avoid the draft is to pay more for soldiers. Higher pay = more recruits. If we draft because we are unwilling to do this, then we are taking the costs we are unwilling to pay for war and shifting them to individuals who are drafted - since they must put aside their education, jobs, and perhaps lives, to fight the war we don't want to pay "market value" for.

3. The draft is completely unecessary for maintiaining the appropritae role of the military - protection of the US. We have troops in dozens of countries that can more than afford to protect themselves.

Good topic.

I too would strongly OPPOSE a draft at this time since the only thing making it necssary would be the fact that we've been following such an irresponsible foreign policy. If we had to have one heads would have to roll in the government for allowing it to get that far.

As far as North Korea, according to the CIA's online world fact book, they spend $5.2 billion on their military in a year. The U.S. spends $276 billion. The U.S. military has access to technology that is far beyond what the North Korean military does. The US spends 50 times as much on defense as N.K. Not to mention the fact that our dollars go farther in terms of military strength because of technology. I would also debate the fact that it comes down to how many boots are on the ground. One of our soldiers likely has many times the fighting power as one of theirs.

This is the basis for my case against the draft occurring if we were to go to war with North Korea in the coming years.

As far as the rest of the world goes, the second highest expenditure on military is China at $55 billion. Iran spends $9.7 billion (or 3.5% of the U.S military expenditures); Syria spends $0.86 billion (or less than 1% of the U.S. military expenditure.

Defense spending is clearly a good proxy for military strength. You can at least make rough judgments using spending.

So we can see that without drafting soldiers, the U.S's military is stronger than all the rest; and certainly stronger than the three most likely enemies (Iran, Syria, and North Korea.)

This is why I do not see a draft as a possibility.

I wouldn't want to walk into a war knowing that we didn't have the man power. That's all I can say.

Simply saying that something is "clearly" evident does not make it so. You haven't demonstrated your assertion to be true. Your statistics DO show that the American government spends more on the military; but that's it. I would be curious to see what those numbers were like during the Vietnam War. Surely the U.S. government grossly outspent the Vietnamese Army, yet a draft was necessary there. That would be a pretty strong indicator that spending is not a simple proxy. Care to provide some evidence to the contrary?

Since you like evidence so much, campbejm, how about some evidence for the statement you made:



A draft was necessary? Granted, the draft was utilized. On what basis would you call it necessary? Necessary in order to lose a conflict we shouldn't have been involved in?

The draft was only "necessary" in Vietnam because not enough people would voluntarily go to work for the government fighting a war they didn't strongly support. This presented the government with a "problem": not enough people to fight their war. Their "solution" was the draft, otherwise known as slavery.

Necessary?!?!?!?!?!

Umm, I said that, and I'm on your side.

Ooops. Sorry, campbejm and ultimatejoe. You guys look so much alike!

I wouldn’t either. However it seems clear that we do. I'm using dollars as a proxy for strength. The ability of a military to defeat an opponent not only depends on numbers, but also how effective each soldier can be.

Given the facts:
1) The U.S. spends 50 times as much on its military as N.K.
2) The N.K. military's best equipment are things like the T-62 Russian tank (production stopped in 1975).
3) The bulk of the N.K. air force are Mig-17's and Mig-21's which are from the years just after world war II.
4) (And this is the big one) the U.S. military has more experience and better training than the N.K.'s. (and for all of you thinking ‘Vietnam’ MUCH more knowledge and training than those days.)

it is clear that U.S. soldiers are more effective than N.K. soldiers.

For these reasons, I do not think, in the event of a war with N.K., that the government of the U.S. would start drafting. Our military is strong enough to remove Kim-Jong-Il if we go to war.


As for using military spending as a rough proxy for strength:

This IS self evident, but I will spell out the logic that leads to the usage of spending as a rough proxy for strength.

1) Nations who desire militaries can either choose how much they will spend on a military or they choose how much military strength they want.

2) If they chose how much they will spend, they will then try to maximize strength for that given dollar amount. If they chose how much strength they want, they will then try to get that strength as cheaply as possible. (This is evident by the ‘lowest bidder’ function of government.)

3) What this implies is that military strength varies with efficiency of spending and amount spent. (Strength also clearly depends on access to technology.)

To restate that: Strength is proportional to amount spent subject to the ability of a nation to turn dollars into military might. (We can tell that strength varies proportional with might because by definition, $0 spent implies 0 might and more than $0 spent implies some positive military strength.)

Efficiency is what makes spending a rough proxy for might. There is clearly variance between the efficiency with which different nations can purchase military strength. However it is highly improbably that a nation will purchase with 100 times the efficiency as another nation. (For this to happen, you would have to have a nation with extremely low intelligence relative to others, with an extremely incompetent government. Because after all, what one nation could learn from just watching another nation would make this 10 or 20 times at the worst.)

So in our case, it is extremely improbably that North Korea purchases with such efficiency that they can get 1 unit of military strength at a 98% discount relative to the ability of the U.S. to purchase military strength. As long as you believe 100 dollars of U.S. spending goes at least as far as $2 of N.K. spending then you can conclude that the U.S. has more military strength.

In reality, N.K. likely purchases with LESS efficiency that the U.S. For instance, say our technological advantage means 1 U.S. soldier has the might of 2 N.K. soldiers (low ball for sure.) Let’s assume that N.K. purchases with the same efficiency as the U.S.

The N.K. would then have to spend 7 times their GDP to equal the military might of the U.S.

My point is this: anyway you slice it the difference is so great that N.K. would not stand a chance.

The draft, with its stigma from Vietnam, would not be necessary or politically viable.

I think it's dangerous to count on money being equivalent to man power when we are discussing war. I don't agree that one can necessarily be replaced with the other and as far as I'm concerned it's better to be safe than sorry.

Edited to add: We could nuke anyone and win if we had to. We could do without soldiers almost all together. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.

I'm not counting on dollars as a perfect (or even near perfect) indication of military strength. My argument is that defense expenditure is SO lopsided in this case that it is certain that the U.S. military is stronger and able to defeat Kim-Jon-Il without drafting citizens. All that stuff in my previous post was an attempt at explaining something that seems to be evident.

I think spending 50 times more than North Korea on our military and having a GDP that is 800 times the size of North Koreas is so lopsided that we can say the U.S's army in its current state (i.e. without conscripts) could win that war.

We aren't stretched enough to be concerned about re-instating the draft. We just need to control the number of forces we send to various conflicts and also pray that enlistment increases or keeps staying in the positive levels

We also need to get more nations to support our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and to replace our troops in Kosovo and Bosnia and keep North Korea tamed until we can rebuild to take on Kim Jong

Either that or we could stay home and protect our soil, as our forces were intended to do.

We need to stop overextending our forces. Frivolous wars and combat missions are costing us dearly in money, troop morale, and world support. If a war isn’t important enough to potentially risk the lives of our own civilians, it shouldn’t be fought. If the possibility of a draft would be a dissuading factor to military involvement, that war shouldn’t happen. The reality is, even though we spend a bajillion dollars for the specific purpose of avoiding civilian life, accidents do happen, missiles malfunction and miss their targets, and good innocent people will die and suffer when we make the decision to war. It might be a mother and child, or conscripted soldiers with no choice but to charge that hill under a hostile dictatorship. Our soldiers did not sign up to fight and die for frivolous reasons, they signed up to fight for our national defense.

I have no problem with military cutbacks, if the deployments decline as well. This has not been the case as deployments have increased astronomically. In the five years preceding the Kosovo conflict deployment rates increased 500 percent from the previous ten years, with an accompanied 40 percent decrease in forces…obviously, deployment rates have increased since then, and spending is now increasing as well, but you can’t turn a sewing machine factory into a warplane factor overnight, unlike during WWII, and training and new equipment takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. Our forces are overtasked right now, and airplanes and ships are being cannibalized for parts….this has been going on for years.
Regarding an invasion of N Korea, which was the issue addressed in my quote, I'll elaborate on that one specifically:

The following is a good link which offers a reasonable perspective of N Korean military capabilities. I hit the very beginning highlights, but I would suggest everyone who wants to know the situation read it in its entirety. The report has a lot of supplemental sidenotes in which our military accesses their view of the validity of the analysis.
Korea's War Strategy Against U.S. Attacks
1. North Korea Can Engage the US in Total War

2. North Korea's Massive Retaliation Strategy
First, total war is North Korea's avowed strategy in case of US preemptive For this reason, North Korea's war plan is offensive in nature: 3. North Korea's Military Capability
a) North Korea makes its own weapons

b. North Korea has its own war plans

c) North Korean soldiers are well indoctrinated, and combat ready
The US has a total of 10,000 troops in S Korea…37,500 total military personnel
i. Artillery
* Underground Tunnel Warfare
North Korea is the world most-tunneled nation.
*[B] Special Forces
North Korea has the largest special forces, 120,000 troops, in the world.
Numerous WMD capabilities as well as defense capabilities described in the article
Overall, the potentials are beyond chilling, and a simple dismissal of the possibility of conscription in the event of an all-out war with N Korea is misinformed. There is a very high likelihood (which I believe would almost be an inevitability...assuming that China does not decide to intervene, which would lead to Armageddon)

There is another article which offers a different view after that, entitled,”The Mythical North Korea Threat”. By Carlton Meyer, an ex-marine. If the threat is so mythical we should bring all the troops home. It certainly doesn’t justify an invasion, and would save a lot of money in the process.
I hope he’s right, but I don’t believe a retired marine would have as much current knowledge as a military analyst today. He is also dead wrong when he suggests that we are maintaining “two-war” capability. That ended years ago, and no informed person suffers under the delusion that we would be so capable today…unless one of the wars was in Haiti, or something. He also suggests that we still hold plans to send 450,000 GIs to Korea in the event of an attack, which today is about all the troops we have total.

To answer your other question in general, “Should we have the draft?” There are good points and bad points to that. On the good side, the draft would make politicians significantly less likely to involve us in frivolous combat operations and the public would be less likely to support it. On the bad side, our military is very capable and certainly doesn’t need or want a bunch of unmotivated and potentially incompetent soldiers. The best course would be no draft AND more diplomacy and less military involvement. I can't see us continuing on the current road without a draft, but I am optimistic things will turn around.

Edited to add: I just read through some of the responses and see someone brought up military spending. We don't play by the same rules as the N Koreans. Massive slaughter is very cheap, our weapons cost a lot because they are selective....but there's no need to match us by even a ratio of 1 dollar to each of our thousand with the use of WMD and the view of humans-as-expendible-fodder. For example, 9/11 was pretty cheap.
If Gen. Thomas A Schwartz, a former US army commander in Korea, stated that the US army in Korea would be destroyed in less than three hours he probably knows their capabilities, and he certainly knows ours.

I've seen this argument a few times before, and it certainly makes sense.

But I don't think this can ever override the basic injustice of forcing an individual into armed service - or any service - which is really a form of slavery.

The alternative to the draft is to raise the pay for service to a level that generates enough supply. That way recruits are making a free choice based on what's in it for them personally.

This would also have the benefit of making frivolous combat operations less politically viable, because government would have to pony up the real cost, resulting in real economic tradeoffs (tax increases or spending cuts).

The draft is a way to get something without paying for it. That can never be done without violating someone's fundamental rights. In the case of the draft, that someone is the drafted soldier.

The draft is reprehensible and is no less so because it might increase political pressure against frivolous engagements. It is always possible that terrible things result in some good. But the balance in this case isn't even close.

Considering what's happening regarding Turkey's upcoming role in Iraq I have to say I'm really against having a draft at all. This is a perfect example of the unfairness and immorality of it all.

Turkey's soldiers are conscripted...and now that their government has decided to contribute troops to the war in Iraq they are forced to not only fight for their country but to fight someone elses war...a war that 90% of the Turkish population opposes. One that threatens to destabilize the fragile peace the Kurds and Turks finally reached after 8 years of war ended only a short time ago. They are going to be forced to protect people who are strongly opposed to their involvement and become targets of the same attacks the US soldiers are facing.

Aside from the fact that the whole thing is politically unwise...is it moral right or fair to the soldiers themselves? Can the US really be sure that our congress would not someday put our own troops in such a position? I may not have thought it could happen before...but since Turkey is doing this not only with our approval but at our request I think we already have our answer.

Certainly, I agree. Unfortunately, there comes a point at which there is no choice. If there is ever a true national threat, it's all-hands-on deck, or the survival of the nation would be at stake. If we continue to spread our forces too thin and engage in frivolous police occupations around the globe, there is no amount of money that will fill the dearth in personnel (with volunteers).

Wow. Didn't know about that. I'm goint off topic, but imagine the resentment to the US among the general population that comes from that...



Don't you think that if a true national threat emerges, there will be enough volunteer support (troops and financial) to meet it? I think the willingness of people to commit their service and their resources is about the best test of what is a true threat and what isn't.

Well, yes and no. It takes a significant amount of time to build up and train a force to combat a true threat. Most of the military personnel who are now commiting themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan signed up to protect and defend this nation from true threats.

The very fact that our troops are overextended means that we are facing a potential crisis...our fate is at the hands of the rest of the world...if any other nation attacks us we will be forced into a draft situation. It's irresonsible to wait for that to happen. The over-extension of our troops means the time for action and reconsideration of our foreign policy is NOW instead of waiting until it's too late.

Adding insult to injury we've also been bent on making un-necessary enemies as well by isolating ourselves and insulting even our allies. We should all be outraged at the foreign policy failures brought on by the Bush doctrine and his Administration's miserable and embarrasing diplomatic record.

He foolishly puts us at risk in every way...yet he portrays himself as being the guardian and protector of American's safety. What a joke! Saying he's the strongest candidate when it comes to our national security is as backwards as saying his Clear Skies initiative was meant to protect our air.

No one here has mentioned, or maybe I missed it, the GIANT number of CIVILIANS in our military now days.

My husband is a civilian contracted to the US Army...he works on base, the work he is involved in at one time was placed in the pentagon itself but after the terrorist attack they considered that location too much of a high risk and so now it is on a secured Army base with 3 checkpoints. Men and women my husband works with, ALL civilians, were blown across the room when the pentagon was "bombed" My dh was told last week that it is very very possible that he will have to go on a "business trip" to Kuwait/Iraq.

My husband is not military...but I wonder 20 yrs ago or maybe even ten I think my husband's job would have in fact been performed by an enlisted. This is a factor never mentioned or discussed when mentioning the number of enlisted men and women in our military today.
In essence I feel this is the newer updated version of The Draft...and the idea of coming back to America and being able to to easily find a job in a recessed economy, be able to work with the most cutting edge tech and being able to in some manner help his country in it's time of need was VERY appealing to my husband, as I am sure it is to many others like him.

Thankyou for your husband's (civilian) service

We did have a thread a while back regarding private contractors and civilian employment in the military. My husband (military) works with many civilians in his job. The problem arises when a potentially very dangerous or extremely unappealing task becomes necessary. Civilians are free to leave arbitrarily, or fail to show up at all. Military personel cannot, or face imprisonment. In the case of dire and drastic national consequence, the fate of our nation could not depend too heavily on civilian employment. And of course, civilian soldiers are also banned from combat activity by international laws.

And many thanks to your husband too.

My point tho. is that I highly doubt, especially knowing how paranoid and secretive the N. Korean gov. is, that my husband's job would be performed by a civilian in the N. Korean military. No one ever takes the numbers of civilian contractors that our military relies on when comparing it to someone like North Korea.

Also my husband has some weird contractual agreement..where he is not allowed to quit during a time of heightened security etc. He is also regarded as essential personnel and when we have snow days or bad weather and the Metro is shut down and Fed. employees are told not to come to work ..being that my dh is essential he is still required to go to work.
I do not think the Northern Korean counterpart to my husband's position would ever see combat either..but I would imagine that the N. Korean is enlisted and that he is being counted in the N. Korean military numbers...where as my husband is not.

I understand what you're saying now, a good point which I hadn't considered. We have a larger force structure when the civilian employees are taken into consideration. I also had no idea there was a contractual agreement for times of heightened security. That's interesting, and comforting too.

Do you really think that someone who is drafted but does not want to be in the army and is not interested in the military and has no enthusiasm will do a better job than someon who wants to devote his life to it?

U.S.'s military is strong primarily

1)because there are people who are actually interested in what they are doing(since they signed up on their own and have made a career and decided to or have dedicated their life to it)

2)Technology. Thats what made the difference since ancient times.

Any president who institutes a draft will get voted out when their term is up.

That being said, if we did go to war with N. Korea, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a draft. The only way to get fed in N.Korea is to join the army: thats all the government puts its money into. An army of that caliber will hamper any war attempts without a fully operational set of troops. If we wish to continue our support of Iraq, we would need to issue a draft in order to cover both fronts effectively.

Read this.

You should have dug further.



and



Not so nefarious. It's contingency planning in the event of a need. Kind of like FEMA during a lull in disasters.

The more unpopular the war, the more necessary it becomes for soldiers to be conscripted to serve.

There will not continually be volunteers to step up and be counted when tours of duty are being extended in situations of guerilla warfare. This is becoming an unpopular war even with the hawks, who like invasions but not occupations of countries.

That's why the draft will be coming back. Thanks for the link, Danya.