At the end of the Vietnam War, Congress abolished the draft, ending the Woodrow Wilson endorsed conscription policy passed by Congress in 1917. It followed the recommendations of a Nixon-initiated Commission on an All-Volunteer Force (Gates Commission). Three economists served on the commission: W. Allen Wallis, Milton Friedman, and Alan Greenspan. Although we have embraced an all-volunteer army, we still require Selective Service registration for males age 18-25.
By the Numbers
It's difficult to compare statistics on US armed forces across this 100+ year history. This is because of the emergence of the standing army and US military presence around the globe.
For example, during the Vietnam era (1964-1973), the US armed forces consisted of 8.7 million on active duty.
Of this number, 2.6 million served within South Vietnam borders; 3.4 million served in southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and South China Sea waters).
Draftees are a relatively small percentage of the total armed service population during this period. Except for isolated statistics (88 percent of infantry riflemen), data are not easily found which support or refute the theory that draftees were proportionally more likely to be deployed to Vietnam.
However, they died in higher proportion. "[D]raftees made up 16 percent of battle deaths in 1965, [but] they were 62 percent of deaths in 1969."
In fact, it is not until the Korean War that one can find statistics that break out "in theatre" numbers from the total armed services.
For Korea, 32 percent were in theatre; for Vietnam, 39 percent; and for the first Gulf War, it was 30 percent.
Status of the All-Volunteer Army
The All-Volunteer Army (AVA) put the Army in the same position as the other four branches of service. Today there are two issues are impacting the AVA: missing recruitment goals and involuntary contract extensions.
In March 2005, the Christian Science Monitor reported that
- A study conducted by the Army last year [2004] and posted recently on a Defense Contracting Command website (but since removed after news stories discussed the study) indicates that women and young black men are increasingly staying away from the Army. The poll, based on interviews with 3,236 youth ages 16 to 24, showed that "recruiting an all-volunteer Army in times of war is getting increasingly difficult."
The stats: blacks make up about 23 percent of today's active-duty Army, according to Fox News. This is disproportionate to their 13 percent of total US population. The percent of blacks in each year's recruits has dropped steadily since 2001 (22.7 percent). For 2004, the percentage was 15.9 percent. In February 2005, the percentage was 13.9, closer to proportional representation.
The AVA is not a representative snapshot of America: only three of five soldiers are white; two of five are African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American or Pacific Islander.
This decline comes in the face of ever more generous enlistment bonuses and more recruiters in high school and campus halls, courtesy of a Congressional mandate that schools must allow recruiters on campus.
Missing recruiting numbers puts pressure on current soldiers, because the military is extending tours of duty and contracts. Extending contracts has been called a backdoor draft.
The Seattle Times reports that an Oregon National Guardsman, who finished his eight-year enlistment in June 2004, was told by the Army in October to ship "to Afghanistan and reset his military termination date to Christmas Eve 2031."
Santiago's unit refuels helicopters, not what most of us would think of as a high-tech position. The Army added 26 years to his enlistment; his lawsuit says "Conscription for decades or life is the work of despots. ... It has no place in a free and democratic society."
His lawsuit, Santiago v Rumsfeld, was heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle in April 2005. It was the "the highest court review of the Army's 'stop-loss' policy, which affects about 14,000 soldiers nationwide."
In May 2005, the court ruled in favor of the government. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, about 50,000 soldiers have been subjected to stop loss, according to Lt. Col Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman.
