by Daniel Gauss
If the United States reinstated the military draft, many defense experts and policy analysts argue that this would weaken the all-volunteer force by lowering personnel quality, hurting morale and negatively affecting retention. Yet, the administration of Donald Trump is moving to automate draft registration under Pete Hegseth, streamlining a system the military itself would prefer not to use.
Why modernize a program widely seen as unnecessary, or even potentially harmful? To answer that, we need to look at how draft registration was quickly reborn (1980) after the draft ended (1973) and registration was suspended (1975), and why registration has not been abandoned, even though it should have been.
President Jimmy Carter proposed reinstating military draft registration in the late 1970s, after it had been suspended just a few years earlier. Only someone oblivious to the lessons of Vietnam could have ignored the well-documented problems with the draft (lower morale, discipline issues and personnel quality) that severely plagued the military for years.
Post‑Vietnam, Army leaders, most prominently Gen. Creighton Abrams, became champions of an all‑volunteer force. Abrams believed draftees undermined discipline and unit cohesion, so he redesigned the Army around high-quality volunteers, proving the draft was neither necessary nor desirable long-term and establishing a model that the other services ultimately adopted.
Carter reinstated registration for the military draft anyway, apparently for self-serving political reasons…pure political theater to prop up a failing presidential run. Since then, maintaining the Selective Service has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, money spent to keep a draft machine ready that an all-volunteer force has made obsolete. Read more »