Document Created: 26 Apr 2007
Air
& S pace Power Journal-Spring 2008
I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force by Bernard D. Rostker. RAND Corporation (http://www.rand.org/pubs), 1776 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, California 90407-2138, 2006, 832 pages, $48.50 (hardcover), $68.50 (hardcover with DVD).
I Want You! is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study that explores this nation’s transition from a conscripted military to an established, all-volunteer force that continues today despite three decades of opposition and economic pressures. Words hardly do justice to the thoroughness of Bernard Rostker’s research. He has produced an impressive work of scholarship for the serious student. Not just a lengthy narrative, it is a well-organized and well-written study backed up by 2,300 primary documents. The notes in the print version are more than sufficient to support the text. However, the DVD version is much more useful and well worth the extra expense. Not only can readers perform searches of key words and phrases but also they can avail themselves of direct links to 1,700 of the 2,300 sources.
Some readers may be surprised to learn that conscription is not the norm in American history. Only in 35 of America’s 230 years—spanning the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War—has the nation used conscription to raise and maintain the military. The 18-month period of volunteerism that followed World War II was replaced by a 25-year draft that became increasingly unpopular because of its inconsistent application. In the 1960s, for a variety of reasons, people began to view the draft as an involuntary tax upon a small minority of young men of draft age. Discussions and studies about how to end the draft and implement a volunteer force began to gain momentum in the decade before 1973. Some studies indicated the desirability of an all-volunteer force, but most concluded that the time (i.e., the political climate) just wasn’t right.
Not until presidential candidate Richard Nixon stated his intention to end the draft did these discussions move to the mainstream. Once elected, he pushed the measure to fruition despite strong opposition. The coalition of opponents included military leaders, politicians, and influential civilians of all political persuasions. One of the most strident points of opposition, as expressed by Senator Edward Kennedy (p. 95), emphasized the false concern that an all-volunteer military would leave our national defense on the shoulders of a mercenary force of poor and minorities while the elites reaped the benefits of American citizenship. Young congressman Donald Rumsfeld became an early proponent of the all-volunteer force (p. 35).
The success of this force was not a foregone conclusion. The first decade of its existence proved especially hard. Economic woes and the Vietnam syndrome played havoc with the armed forces. The post-Vietnam military had become hollow. Standards were generally low, and pay was poor. Excessive inflation quickly overtook an initial, significant boost in military pay. The cutting of recruiting budgets during an upturn in the economy made it harder to entice quality young people in a competitive labor market. By 1980 the situation had become so bad that even Nixon suggested a return to the draft. A concerted effort on all fronts, under the leadership of Pres. Ronald Reagan, however, brought improvement. Victory in the Cold War and the Persian Gulf justified the all-volunteer force. Those successes were soon threatened in the 1990s by a 25 percent drawdown of the military and a robust economy that again drew quality recruits away from the military. Today, the all-volunteer force faces unprecedented stress, and one regularly hears the call for reinstitution of the draft—albeit most frequently from individuals pushing a larger political agenda. Even so, while the services struggle to recruit sufficient numbers, retention rates remain stable despite the dangers of the current global war on terrorism.
Despite the all-encompassing nature of this book regarding the technical establishment and maintenance of the all-volunteer force, it fails to address some larger sociological questions. Granted, they do not fall within the purview of the study, but one should mention them in the interest of full discussion. Regardless of the success of an all-volunteer force, it raises the question of whether every citizen has a moral obligation to participate in his or her own defense and whether that obligation should be established by law. We live in a nation where fewer than one in 100 citizens serves his or her country. America is at war, but our leaders fail to make the case that war requires sacrifice by all of its citizens. Some worry about a growing gap—a chasm perhaps—between the American military and the society it defends.
Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer address this question in AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from the Military—And How It Hurts Our Country (2006), maintaining that the elites not only absent themselves from service but also actively discourage service by themselves and others like them. They suggest that we are moving toward the very force that early opponents of the all-volunteer force feared—one made up mostly of lower-income and minority Americans. Dr. Rostker simply notes that elites traditionally don’t participate in national defense and have done so only during those times of national emergency like the Civil War and World War II. Nevertheless, his book does not address our current environment of elites’ avoidance of military service, exacerbated by active discouragement, or comment on whether that should affect the all-volunteer force.
Even so, I highly recommend I Want You! to anyone with a deep curiosity about our professional military. Even though volunteerism is the American norm, we must consider the all-volunteer force an experiment whose outcome remains uncertain, as does Dr. Rostker: “Is the all-volunteer armed force sustainable? Only time will tell” (p. 756).
CSM Jim Clifford, USA, Retired
McDonough, Georgia
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