President Obama and the Pentagon announced Thursday they support requiring women to register for the military draft. Congress debated putting such a requirement in the National Defense Authorization Act, which is up for a House vote Friday, but opted instead to study whether the draft is necessary at all.
The debate over whether women should be treated equally in the eyes of the draft is interesting, but it misses the more important question about why draft registration still exists at all. The only reason we require all adult men to register for Selective Service is in case World War III breaks out and Americans don’t want to volunteer.
The moral case against the draft is obvious: Why should a man (or woman) be forced, under penalty of jail time, to fight in a war they don’t believe is worth risking their life over?
Less obvious, but still important, is the economic case against the draft.
Even if World War III did break out tomorrow, relying on a paid-volunteer military would still be more effective than forcing people into service. One of the first people to explain why was Walter Oi, an economist who died in 2013.
Oi’s life is a fascinating story, starting with his family’s internment during World War II thanks to his Japanese ancestry. He eventually lost his sight, earned a Ph.D. in economics, helped end the draft, and joined the Department of Economics at the University of Rochester where he entertained his colleagues and shuffled around the office with a guide dog.
The moral case against the draft, although seemingly more important than the economic case, was never able to convince officials in the Department of Defense to reject conscription. As the late William Meckling said in 1990, it was Oi’s economic case against the draft that made the difference. “It transformed the conscription discussion from dogmatic assertion to careful study of the consequences of abandoning conscription.”
Of course, the military could draft itself to a large number of soldiers. But that’s not the same as having a high-quality military. Oi showed that drafting soldiers led to a loss in well-being that cost the country $6 billion to $8 billion a year (after adjusting for inflation since 1967). It’s unclear if that cost would be higher or lower today, but it would still be substantial.
Who do you think makes a better soldier: The one who volunteered out of passion for the cause, or the one who’s only there to avoid jail?
All soldiers, drafted or not, were paid. The idea was that it’s better to raise soldier pay and induce more people to volunteer because of marginally higher salaries than it was to pay dirt-poor salaries to more people who don’t want to be in the military.
In any case, there’s no reason for selective service to exist anymore, because we shouldn’t even be considering a draft. World War III is probably not right around the corner. The draft wouldn’t work well even if it was. And the public would probably hate it.
Relegate the debate over women in the draft to a hypothetical question and end the threat of a draft altogether.
Jason Russell is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner.
