I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Army

Chapter One

What Have We Done?
A Summary of Then and Now (1960–2006)

A Model for Other Countries

While the Gates Commission accepted Friedman’s arguments, European countries that have moved to an all-volunteer force more recently were not very moved by the argument that conscription is “inconsistent with a free society.”⁷ In fact, the historical view on the European continent is that every citizen has an obligation to perform some service at the call of the state. The end of the Cold War, however, led to cost-motivated downsizing that sharply cut the number of conscripts, thereby sowing “the seeds of an upcoming public debate about who serves and who . . . [does] not” (Haltiner and Klein, 2005, p. 10). Echoing the debate that had occurred in the United States in the 1960s, “the problem of burden-sharing in defense matters grew acute and there was strong political pressure in favor of a complete suspension of the draft, [in such countries as] France, Italy, Slovenia and Spain” (Haltiner and Klein, 2005, p. 11). These new converts to an all-volunteer force found universal military service both unaffordable and inconsistent with maintaining a competent, modern military. Most recently, Anthony Cordesman, in his review of NATO military operations in Kosovo, found that

Kosovo seems to have reinforced the lessons that many military experts drew about the value of conscripts versus professionals after the Gulf War. . . . The level of technology and the tactical demands of Kosovo clearly required highly trained and proficient soldiers. . . . This experience helps validate the decision to phase out conscription to many French officers. It also raised growing concerns among German officers over their government’s insistence that conscription was necessary to ensure a democratic force. Some senior German officers feel that the net result is to alienate German conscripts while wasting scarce resources on useless low-grade manpower. (Cordesman, 2000, p. 260)

⁷ Jehn and Selden, in their review of the more-recent experience in Europe, argue that

Countries that have chosen to adopt voluntarism have cited only its expected positive effect on military effectiveness and, less often, the inequity of selective conscription. Absent from the justification for adopting an AVF [All-Volunteer Force] have been the economic inefficiency of conscription and the involuntary servitude which conscription represents. (Jehn and Selden, 2001, p. 13^{0.1 MB})

The effects on the state in terms of budgetary expenditures and military capability are what appears to drive the debate in Europe; the effects of conscription on the individual citizen and his basic rights do not often enter into the discussion. By contrast, these issues were an undercurrent of the debate about conscription in the United States. (Jehn and Selden, 2002, p. 99)

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