Human Resources and Military Manpower Requirements

Abstract

This article is premised on the belief that future military manpower strategy can best be understood by examining past manpower history. There have been three basic approaches since the founding of the United States: first, from 1789 to 1929, armed force size as a function of short-term national emergencies; second, 1930 to 1980, armed force size as a function of general economic planning no less than political crisis; and a new period, beginning in 1981, in which manpower requirements are determined. by technological equivalences and public/private sector mixes. The major policy issues of manpower-voluntarism and conscription, private rights and public defense, crisis management and long-range mobilization-are seen as illustrations of these historic trends and economic structures. This article concludes with new expectations for military manpower requirements in a postindustrial and yet subnuclear era of protracted East-West conflict.