The Moral Hazard of Veterans Day
Without the Draft, Armistice Day isn’t for soldiers
Part of Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign platform was a promise to end the draft. His administration came through on the promise and it’s one of the few bright spots in a very dim stretch of American history. The idea of a war-time, all-volunteer force was not particularly new, but its employment in the United States was.
An army without conscripts was an Enlightenment-Age idea that was tossed around intellectual circles with the same seriousness as the society without class and the economy without currency. Nevertheless, by 1972 American men were no longer receiving draft notices and the United States once again forged the theoretical into the possible.
Conscription was once thought to be the only way to fill military ranks, and now it seems the United States may have successfully left the practice behind. Make no mistake, this is a good thing for all involved. The American military is more powerful for the dedication of our volunteers. No service member, myself included, would want to fight beside someone who didn’t volunteer to serve.
It’s better for civilians. There are a great many good people who are incompatible with soldiering, and there is no more dishonor in that than in being incompatible with farming, banking, or pastry crafting. Moreover, the volunteer force is better for American policy and image. Conscription would complicate the American Just War Theory that Middle East adventurism has twisted into several Gordian knots. Without severe national emergency, we don’t need the draft and won’t return to it.
However positive the Pentagon’s shift to an all-volunteer military was, there have been some drawbacks. The realities of conscription did tie average Americans to military policy in the same way that taxes tie us to fiscal policy. The enshrinement of the all-volunteer army as an American ideal has led to the transition from a citizen-soldier force model to a professional career soldier model.
In other words, the concept of military service shifted from a necessary civic duty of American men to an optional career path. Consequently, the death of the draft has had two major impacts.
1: The inherent moral hazard when policy makers choose to apply military force.
2: The growing disconnect between the military and civilian spheres of American culture.
Let’s investigate:
Moral Hazard | noun — any situation in which one person makes the decision about how much risk to take, while someone else bears the cost if things go badly. (e.g. Gambling with another’s money, most venture capital arrangements, and arguing for the invasion of North Korea in Youtube comments. See also: Congress of the United States)
Aside from some founding fathers, there has never been an American politician that has cast a vote for military action thinking that their vote was directly tied their own personal involvement. They and their sons were safe; others would fight.
American politicos always have and always will make policy decisions while avoiding the costs of failure. With the rise of the volunteer army, voters transferred their share of wartime risk to a professional and permanent army of volunteers. Without the draft, voters assumed the same moral hazard as policy makers.
Without even the possibility of mandatory participation, would the American public have tolerated our current Middle Eastern military engagements this long? If we, the public, faced the sort of tax increases, rationing, and shortages our forefathers faced in wartime, would we be so willing to play the role of world police? Maybe I’m just a weak millennial to even ask these questions, and my elders’ generations truly were the stronger.
My answer is to dig into the data — Contrary to the framing of this issue by most historians and media, the greatest generation didn’t volunteer, but was largely drafted into World War II. Almost eleven and a half million Americans were drafted in between 1940 and 1945. Just over six million volunteered for service.
What is classically seen in the United States as “The Good War” faced significant resistance from the pacifist and isolationist movements. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 created almost identical enlistment bumps despite being nearly sixty years apart.
So how do we model how America compensates her soldiers for their risks, while balancing budgets and an adequate sized military force?
Behold! I present my cutting edge tool for describing this phenomenon: The Supply and Demand Curve.
And it is here we discuss the second impact of the all-volunteer force. The increasing separation of the civilian and military sectors.
The draft was a numerical lottery system; it struck equally along racial, political, and geographic lines. (While the absolute highest-born and best connected could count on protection, 99.99% of the general population could not. The draft did not specifically target minorities and the poor, as has been so often asserted.)
As America shifted to a volunteer force, our military ceased to mirror national demographics and became whiter, more conservative, more southern, and more rural. War stopped being the necessary evil required in defense of our nation and started being the family business of an increasingly concentrated few.
This trend is most dangerous in the region upwards toward the high “C” on the above graph. The “C” area represents those for whom no argument is too strong and no threat too great to warrant the risk of their personal safety and career prospects. This argument is communicated succinctly and justified in Steven E. Landsburg’s “Price Theory and Applications”
In concrete terms, what this means is that [under a military draft] the Selective Service Board will draft young people who are potentially brilliant brain surgeons, inventors and economists — young people with high opportunity costs of entering the service — and will leave undrafted some young people with much lower opportunity costs. The social loss is avoided under a voluntary system, in which precisely those with the lowest costs will volunteer.
It’s a nasty sort of human calculus and a slippery slope to inherently value some Americans more than others. Beyond undermining the philosophical value of equality, Landsburg’s view is advancing a sort of privately held justification among the elites for warhawkishness paired with little thought to the human cost.
My response is short: I’m very glad Eisenhower, Grant, and Washington didn’t read Landsburg’s book. A better-written and more thorough exploration can be found with Prof. Reinhardt [Start reading at page 5]. The rise of an elitist intellectual class who obtain the benefits of American military protection while believing themselves too valuable to participate has become both inevitable and inexcusable.
I’m not trying to convince you of the inherent moral superiority of soldiering. Equally as dangerous as the above-mentioned elitist class is the quiet superiority of a self-perpetuating military caste. History has shown that cultures built through, centered on, and led by militaries are unable to adapt or function in the long term.
I genuinely believe that for the health of our civilization, the military must be subject to and directed by civilians, and that both sides must accept that the mutual frustrations this entails are simply a part of the arrangement. The military and civilian spheres need to remember our responsibilities to each other.
Hence Veteran’s Day.
This Veteran’s Day, thank a vet for their service, that’s fine. More importantly, spend a moment to consider the risks we transfer to them on our behalf. Remember that the incredible power the American military bestows on its electorate is an awesome responsibility. We must never be ignorant of the costs of military force or be quick to use it (if the only tool you use is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail). Neither must we meekly ignore the incredible options for peace and justice our military presents; our military can truly be a “global force for good,” as the Navy’s recently abandoned recruiting slogan promised.
With the burden of immediate danger lifted, Veterans Day is not for soldiers, but for us, the ones currently transferring the risk, to ponder the question:
How and when are we willing to spend American lives?
Bradford Barrett is a veteran of the U.S. Navy. Aviator. Policy thinker. Graduate of Texas A&M University. Student of Martial Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Military Science. You can follow him at: medium.com/@bradfordbarrett.
