Filling the Army's Ranks for the Iraq War

[Editor's Note: This essay is part of a series of Audits of the Conventional Wisdom, a project of the Center for International Studies at MIT.]

Some two years into the occupation in Iraq, the U.S. Army faces a serious staffing challenge. As of May 30, 2005, the active-duty Army had missed its recruiting goals for four months in a row. If things do not improve substantially, the service will have only 10 percent of needed enlistees pre-signed for basic training at the beginning of 2006; normally it begins the year with about one-third of its trainees already committed to contracts.

To improve its chances with America's young people, the Army has altered its advertising strategy and enlarged the advertising budget, added recruiters, and boosted enlistment bonuses. Defense leaders hope those measures will improve the recruitment picture enough this year to avert a staffing crisis next year. Nevertheless, some experts say that only a military draft can avert disaster.

The operation in Iraq is the military's first long, bloody war since 1973, when the nation ended conscription in favor of an all-volunteer force. Thus it might seem as though a return to compulsory service could fix the problem. But a look at what underlies the Army's recruiting challenges reveals that the American public is highly unlikely to support a return to conscription while the war in Iraq is ongoing. Moreover, a draft cannot solve the Army's immediate problem, since it would take time to turn on the spigot of draftees and train them.

The way to end the Army's staffing problems is to find an honorable end to the war in Iraq. Short of that, the Army will have to make do with remedies similar to the ones it is already undertaking.

The Public Will Not Support a Draft for Iraq

The United States has had an all-volunteer military through most of its history. Until the Cold War, the nation called young men up for compulsory service only for vast wars. The public supported conscription only to fight wars that were widely popular, and only when the number of draftees was so large that most eligible young men were required to serve -- thus making conscription seem equitable across the population.

Today, neither of those conditions holds. The war in Iraq is increasingly unpopular; and even if the Army were doubled in size to counter the insurgency in Iraq, it would still need only a small fraction of the nation's young people.

Army leaders and recruiters say parental support is key to recruitment. Unfortunately for recruiters, the share of parents who would recommend military service to their children fell from 42 percent to 25 percent -- a 17-point decline -- between August 2003 and November 2004.

That drop in parental support tracked very closely the decline in public support for the war in Iraq. Between August 2003 and December 2004, the fraction of Americans who thought the war in Iraq was worth fighting experienced a 15-point decline, from 57 percent to 42 percent.

Opposition to the war is taking a particular toll on the participation of black Americans in the military. Until recently, blacks were far more likely than whites to volunteer for the Army. Today that is no longer the case. In surveys sponsored by the Army, only 22 percent of young people say they are willing to fight for their country for any cause; black youth especially identify having to fight for a cause they don't support as a barrier to military service.

The 75 percent of parents who would not recommend their children join the military voluntarily are unlikely to want them drafted for Iraq. Recent opinion polls found some 70 percent of Americans opposed a return to the draft. In fact, the U.S. experience during the Vietnam War suggests that a draft would further erode support for the war -- and weakened support could spill over to a drop in public support of the Army.