While tensions with Iran seem to have abated, the sheer deluge of World War memes and semi-ironic videos produced about the younger generation’s simultaneous apprehension and delight at being conscripted into combat got me thinking about what the prospect of a mass draft in the modern era would even look like.
We are, it goes without saying, in a world removed from the circumstances that led to the draft being activated in the First World War or even the Vietnam War. Modern wars are fought with increasingly smaller contingents of increasingly specialized troops, and militaries that rely on immense reserves of manpower are giving way to the high-tech operations of the information age.
Take as a point of comparison the relative numbers of personnel deployed in the Second World War, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. The United States deployed over 11 million troops in the Army alone during the course of WWII (although most of these were enlistees).
In Vietnam, a conflict that illustrates America’s subsequent involvements in the Middle East very well in terms of scope and scale of the mission, the US Army deployed less than 3 million to the conflict to the conflict proper and had a little over 8 million in active duty over the course of a nearly 10 year long war.
Now take Afghanistan, where the U.S. military has been engaged for the better part of ten years as well. Less than a million troops have participated in that theatre since 2001.
The trend is clear: wars are decreasing in terms of their manpower demand, just as we would expect to be the case given the smaller scope of today’s military missions and the advances in military technology.
There are other factors that make another draft highly unlikely. There is the fact that, in a quickly-unfolding global conflict, a sudden influx of millions of young men who have never held a rifle and can be expected to be severely lacking in military discipline would be looked on by the brass as more of a liability than an asset.
American society as a whole has also become quite frigid in its sympathies for military conscription. Conscription was technically abandoned by the United States in 1973 following the Vietnam War, and the policy of the U.S. government since has been to pursue an all-volunteer force.
The Selective Service remains in place only as a contingency in the case of the most dire emergencies. A tit for tat with Iran simply isn’t going to constitute that kind of crisis.
