National Service and the All

In “Midlife Crisis? The All-Volunteer Force at Forty,” we illustrated the regional and partisan imbalance in today’s all-volunteer force (AVF), and we argued that restoring the draft is neither an effective nor a practicable policy solution to this problem. In response, Colonel Hauser has argued for restoring the draft, substantially increasing the number of U.S. ground forces and reinvigorating Congressional foreign policy-making. In this article, we question the practicability of Colonel Hauser’s proposals, and we argue that a restored draft would not improve national character, facilitate sounder foreign policy decisions, or reduce costs relative to an AVF