Is America Bringing Back the Draft?

Soon, every man aged 18-26 in America could be forced to serve in the military. On June 14th, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 8070, which amends the National Defense Authorization Act with a mandate that 

every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System.

The law that Congress is in the process of amending is called “The Military Selective Service Act.” In practice, this amendment could open for all young men in America to serve in the military, much like it was mandatory from 1940 to 1973. 

After the draft ended under President Nixon, it became associated with the ill-fated war in Vietnam. Partly for this reason, it earned a bad reputation that was amplified by, among others, Frank Zappa in his song “I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted.” The song was allegedly written in response to a debate under President Carter over the possible reinstitution of the draft. 

Bruce Springsteen also took a jab at the draft with his song “Born in the USA“:

Got in a little hometown jam, so they put a rifle in my hand, sent me off to a foreign land, to go kill the yellow man

Since President Reagan, the U.S. government has been focused on building a strong professional military where the best men and women are picked among volunteers. With the vote in the House of Representatives on June 14th, that era seems to be coming to an end—and the reason for this is unmistakable. As The Gateway Pundit reports, the bill to forcibly draft all young men into Selective Service

was introduced by Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.). Houlahan is a former Air Force officer. It was endorsed by HASC [House Armed Services Committee] Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and approved by a voice vote of the full committee without audible opposition.

In other words, this is the legislative response to a desperate plea to Congress from the military: we can’t attract enough volunteers, so please help us fill our dwindling ranks. 

The draft amendment gained support from 219 Republicans and six Democrats. The heavy political bias in the support vote is a bit surprising given that the Democrats are fervent advocates of a more active American role in the war in Ukraine. The only explanation for their opposition to this bill is that they know it is going to be unpopular among young voters. Since Joe Biden is losing support among this very demographic, the Democrats may be planning to use their official opposition to the draft as leverage against Trump in November.

It is hard to judge which side of the draft vote is more cynical—that which wants to force inept, even war-resistant young men into the military ranks, or the side that beats big war drums but pretends to be peaceful in order to win an election. 

Both these sides lose out morally to the very few Republicans who opposed the draft bill. One of them is Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who explained her opposition vote on X. Mentioning the continued efforts by Congress to support the war in Ukraine, she noted the timing of the House approving another $300 million for Ukraine and passing the draft mandate. With one sentence, she summed it all up:

I think we all know where that could lead.

Given full Republican support in the Senate, the draft bill needs at least one Democrat to vote for it—unless, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris, who chairs the Senate, joins the Republicans. Either way, the fate of the bill in the upper chamber will depend on how Biden is doing with young voters in the opinion polls. If they are behind him in good enough numbers, the president’s handlers will tell him to sign the draft mandate into law. 

At that point, the Pentagon will start forcing young American men into the armed services. Once there, they can be shipped off to any war, anywhere in the world—including Ukraine. Or, in the words of a premonition-inspired article in Yahoo News on June 12th. Two days before the House vote, it tied the military recruitment problems to the idea of reintroducing the draft:

The military hasn’t been reaching recruitment goals to refill its ranks, and shortfalls are now impacting some branches more than others. Politicians on both sides agree that the military recruitment shortfall is a concern. Could a national service mandate … fix the problem?

It is going to be tough to implement the draft. Back in February, the Pew Research Center reported that a majority of all Americans aged 18-29 have a negative view of the military. This is also the age group that, according to Newsweek, has the weakest will among all age groups to fight to defend their country.

Personally, I find this lack of will puzzling. As an American immigrant (for well over 20 years) and naturalized citizen, if I was asked to pick up a rifle and defend this country, I would gladly do so. It is probably not likely that someone old enough to be a grandfather would be called upon, but that is not the point. I love this country and would fight for it if I were called to do so.

With that said, I have personal experience with a military draft and I can therefore see the problems that the U.S. government will probably be faced with. My native country, Sweden, had a draft when I grew up. All boys were called in for draft assessment at the age of 17, whereupon the military determined what service we would be best suited for. 

Since the draft was mandatory, it was a felony to refuse it, which put some young men in a problematic situation. I was one of them. My reason had not so much to do with not wanting to defend my country—it was more personal than that. I just knew that I would not make a good soldier. 

Throughout my life, I have had problems taking orders from people who—in my humble mind—are less competent or less intelligent than I am. Regardless of how unwisely I may have lived by that principle when I was younger, that was how I saw things. 

Knowing that I would not be able to take orders without questioning them, I told the draft officer that I considered myself a conscientious objector. I asked to enter the civil defense service instead, a hard-to-get legal option which I was eventually granted.

If I were young today, I might have made a different decision. However, I do know that men of the age group targeted by the House of Representatives in H.R. 8070 are stubborn, strong-willed, and often prone to opposition to authority just for the sake of opposition. Even though a large group, possibly a majority, of the drafted would dutifully serve in the military, there will be a substantial number who, for one reason or another, will refuse to do so. 

How big of a conscientious objector window should the government allow? Are people with my character traits, with an inherent resistance to following orders without question, really what our military wants? 

We do not draft young men—and women—to become police officers. We do not draft anyone to work in health care or any other societally critical function. For obvious reasons, we rely on the recruitment of the best suited. Just like with law enforcement, the jobs in the military are best done if the ranks are filled with those who combine a willingness to serve with the right qualities.

If the draft is reintroduced, there will very likely be a conscientious-objector window and other criteria according to which the draft assessors can sort out those who are the least suited for, and most opposed to, military service. However, this sorting mechanism cannot be too generous, or else the draft will defeat its own purpose, namely to expand the ranks of the military.

In other words, Congress appears to be on the way to putting large numbers of young Americans in the very situation that I found myself in: 

• On the one hand, they know they will not be good soldiers; 
• On the other hand, they know that since the draft is mandatory, they don’t want to refuse it and thereby commit a felony. 

This dilemma becomes more relevant the deeper the military’s recruitment problems become. If the recruitment deficit is large, the threshold for conscientious objectors will be high. In my case—back in Sweden decades ago—with an all-draft army, it was harder to become a conscientious objector than to be selected for special warfare training. Had I wanted to, I would have had an easier path into paratrooper school than to fire-and-rescue service under civil defense.

There are, of course, upsides to a draft. Back in Sweden, I had one friend who was about as enthusiastic about the draft as I was, but who chose to join the army. His year of mandatory service changed his mind completely, and he made a professional career out of it. But I also knew others who did not perform well, who slacked and cut corners and dragged their feet at every opportunity. 

How big would this problem be in America’s armed forces, if the Pentagon could use the draft to fill its ranks to the volumes it desires? Are the officers who command units at the frontline prepared to deal with soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines who are there because they see it as the lesser of two evils—the other being a jail sentence? Have they been trained in motivating men who did not choose to be there, to go into a battle where they know they may very well die?

To be blunt: what would the outcome of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 have been if a large majority of the American fighters had been drafted, not volunteers?

I can sympathize with Congress in their worries about the military recruitment problems. I, too, want America to have the strongest military in the world. But the recruitment problem cannot be solved with the draft. It is a much deeper problem than that.

One aspect is the aforementioned lack of patriotism, or even an apathy toward America, among the nation’s own young. It originates in a broad-sided cultural war on the foundational values of our constitutional republic. This war stretches from the long-standing despise for Christianity among Hollywood’s elite to our schools, where ignorant or ill-intended teachers, librarians, and school administrators want to sexualize our children. An anti-Christian culture and an exploitative attitude toward children have in common the notion that our country’s history, from its foundation of faith to its bedrock of nuclear families, is repulsive and racist and must be destroyed.

You don’t fight it by forcing young men into the military. You fight it by restoring faith in America among our young, by throwing sexual exploitation out of our schools, and by winning back our young for faith and family.

The military recruitment problem is also related to a cultural war on traditional masculinity. The cultural war on the nuclear family branched out in the 1990s into a barrage of medial, political, even judicial persecution of masculinity. Men were no longer supposed to be the breadwinners of their families; men in general—and white men in particular—were portrayed as potential rapists simply by being men. More recently, the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’ has conquered the minds of a whole generation.

The third reason for the military’s recruitment problem is squarely planted in the thick of our political swamp. Through its grip on the Republican party since the Vietnam War era, neoconservatism has exercised phenomenal influence over American politics, primarily foreign policy. The neocon philosophy is to drum up patriotism using war; the only path to patriotism that a neocon knows runs through a battlefield saturated with dead Americans. 

President Trump showed the American people that we can have a prosperous country and a peaceful world without starting new wars. The neocons opposed him, of course, especially after he ordered the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Yet the decline in support for the military did not happen on his watch. It has happened under Joe Biden’s tenure. One reason is the war in Ukraine, which has reminded Americans that joining the military means fighting endless wars abroad, not defending our country at home. 

So long as our young men and women can expect to be shipped off to Ukraine to fight Russia, a country they do not perceive as a threat to America, they will not be very enthusiastic about joining the military.

With that said, it is important to recognize that if military service becomes mandatory for all young men in America, they must follow the law and make the best of that service. We can only hope that since this effort to expand the ranks of the military is focused on men, not very many draft-age men self-identify as women.