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.
FowlerL. L. (2015). Watchdogs on the hill: The decline of congressional oversight of U.S. foreign relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
HauserW. (2017). Disputatio sine fine: Why America should restore the draft: A response to Liebert & Golby’s “Midlife crisis? The All-Volunteer Force at 40.”Armed Forces & Society. Retrieved fromhttp://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0095327X17695226
LiebertH.GolbyJ. (2017). Midlife crisis? The All-Volunteer Force at 40. Armed Forces & Society, 43, 115–138.
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LindsayJ. M. (2003). From deference to activism and back again: Congress and the politics of American foreign policy. In WittkopfE. R.McCormickJ. M. (Eds.), Domestic politics of American foreign policy: Insights and evidence (4th ed, pp. 183–195). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
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