Gen. Douglas MacArthur was nothing if not a hawk -- but he also clearly understood that the Americans who suffer most when our country goes to war are the men and women who fight. "The soldier above all others prays for peace," he once said, "for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war."
At a time when the dogs of war are once again barking loudly -- having turned their noses from Afghanistan to Iraq over the last several months -- the American people find themselves increasingly disconnected from the men and women in uniform who "bear the deepest wounds and scars" when their elected officials opt for war. In a political reality where preemptive military force has moved from option to doctrine and where Congress has formally given the president wide latitude to turn doctrine into action, the will of the American people stands as the last restraint on our national might. It is therefore dangerous for the voters and leaders of the world's foremost military power to be so far removed from the human costs of war.
As a result, there has hardly been a better time to consider anew whether universal military service -- in addition to strengthening America's social fabric, as its proponents have long argued -- could also spur America to take a more thoughtful, considered approach to war.
How different our national discussion about preemptive war with Iraq would be if people had to look into the eyes of their own sons and daughters and decide whether their lives were worth risking. But with fewer than half of 1 percent of Americans serving in the military (and that's after the post-September 11 mobilization of the National Guard and Reserve forces), the number of Americans even acquainted with, let alone related to, a serviceman or woman is at a modern low.
Add to this the extraordinarily low number of American casualties in recent military operations (148 battle deaths in the Gulf War, none in Bosnia or Kosovo, and 41 so far in Afghanistan, including noncombat deaths) and it's no wonder that for the vast majority of Americans, war has become a bloodless, cost-free prospect -- an abstract exercise in moral reasoning divorced from personal or even financial consequences.
The situation in Congress is somewhat better, but even there the number of military veterans is at an all-time low. At present, only 38 percent of senators and 30 percent of representatives have any direct military experience. This is not a version of the "chicken hawk" argument or a contention that only veterans should have the right to send our sons and daughters off to war. But nonveterans are less likely to have friends or family in the military, thus adding to a national dynamic where the costs of supporting or opposing war are measured in votes rather than risk to life and limb.
A system of universal military service would bring the pain of war to the kitchen tables of America. This may sound harsh, but nothing else could turn a vote for or against war into a vote for or against risking a specific friend or loved one. And personalizing the burdens of war would harness democracy to ensure that any particular war is truly necessary -- truly a matter of action being less costly and more moral than inaction.
For this to work, we could not rely on a Vietnam-style draft rife with escape clauses mainly available to the well-off and the well-heeled. It should look more like the draft of World War II, where rich and poor served side by side. It should be flexible enough to accommodate demands such as family and education, perhaps requiring a year or two of service by the time a person reaches the age of 30. As part of a more comprehensive national-service system, there might be nonmilitary options in fields such as medicine, public safety, public education and social services -- critical jobs to which nobody could conscientiously object. But placing military service as the cornerstone of this system would transform the decision to go to war from a cost-free intellectual analysis into an appropriately grave choice with intimate personal consequences.
On a pragmatic note, the widespread dissemination of military skills -- everything from battlefield first aid to chemical warfare training -- could only enhance domestic security. But universal military service would also strengthen our social fabric by bringing the reality of America closer to America's ideals. Military service has always been a great equalizer, and there is intrinsic democratic value to making young adults from every corner of America and from all walks of life train together, serve together and depend on one another as brothers and sisters in arms. Historically a road to opportunity for America's poor, today's military is also a model of racial harmony, where members of all ethnic groups routinely hold supervisory positions and where interracial marriage is so common it is hardly noticed. Allowing that culture to permeate communities across the nation could only enrich American democracy.
Many military professionals oppose the idea of universal service on the grounds that unskilled conscripts are of little use in today's high-tech force. But many critical homeland-security tasks are more labor-intensive than skill-intensive. Their opposition to universal service also downplays the military's proven ability to transform young people who meet basic entrance requirements into highly skilled soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Of course, some argue that making service universal would mean necessarily watering down those entrance requirements.
But military recruiters have been challenged in recent years by a dearth of qualified applicants, mostly because qualified high-school graduates have been making other choices (in part because they don't know anyone who has served) and not because America suffers from a lack of young adults who meet the military's basic requirements.
This kind of dual investment -- in America's young adults and in America's security -- by itself would require a significant increase in defense spending. But as fiscal years come and go, the social-welfare effects of universal military service -- on areas such as job training, health care and housing -- would reduce the burden on traditional programs that provide these forms of support. In any case, Congress could find some of the money to fund this investment by either abandoning the president's $1.3 trillion tax cut that goes mostly to people who are already wealthy or not making the cut permanent.
Forcing families across America to share in the "wounds and scars of war" through universal military service would not be a recipe for a pacifist United States. How many Americans would have avoided taking on al-Qaeda and its Taliban protectors for fear of risking the safety of a friend or a loved one? But reconnecting the American people to the intimate personal consequences of a decision to go to war would raise the bar of persuasion for our national leaders, restraining, through democracy, the use of our singular might. Our nation, and the world, could then be confident that America's wars -- even our preemptive ones -- are necessary and not folly.
David L. Englin is a military officer stationed in Washington, D.C. He is co-authoring a book about policy ideas that would realign America's reality with America's principles. His views are his own and in no way reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense.
