Fantasies underlying push for conscription are delusional and dangerous
August 13, 2024 / / Antiwar.com - Doubling down on their recent war-game exercises and report on the (un)readiness of the U.S. to activate a military draft, Taren Sylvester and Katherine Kuzminski of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) have a new article in War on the Rocks, “Preparing for the Possibility of a Draft Without Panic,” laying out why they think the U.S. needs to prepare for a draft in order to be able to win an all-out war with China over Taiwan.
CNAS and War on the Rocks like to describe themselves as “realists”. But their arguments for stepped-up planning and preparation for a draft are strikingly unrealistic, in at least four respects.
First, Sylvester and Kuzminski – like the Selective Service System and the Department of Justice – entirely ignore whether, much less how or at what cost, a draft could be enforced.
The practical difficulty of enforcing a draft in the face of widespread evasion and resistance was the Achilles heel of the last U.S. draft, and has to be central to any realistic plan for a future draft.
You can’t just wave a magic cheerleader’s baton and get every would-be draftee, male or female, to march down to the induction office to ship out for Taiwan, Ukraine, Palestine, or points unknown. Like it or not, many young people won’t go voluntarily. If they would, a draft wouldn’t be needed.