As the title might indicate, this edited volume comprehensively examines various aspects of what can be learned about the All-Volunteer Force (AVF), begun in 1973, from its history over a half century. In a chapter on the AVF’s viability, Major General Dennis Laich, an opponent of the AVF and advocate of restoring conscription, quotes Elliot Cohen, a prominent foreign policy analyst, as framing the AVF debate between the libertarians and the egalitarians, saying: “liberals [libertarians] hope to minimize coercion and egalitarians to spread it evenly” (p. 168). That is a good way to frame the issue because libertarian economist Martin Anderson, Richard Nixon’s economic advisor, was instrumental in selecting members of the Gates Commission to examine whether to discontinue Cold War–era conscription as the Vietnam War dragged on. And libertarian economists Milton Friedman, Allan Greenspan, and Allen Wallis were all instrumental in convincing the commission to adopt the AVF.

These economists correctly regarded conscription as a tax on those shanghaied into military service, which was regressive and inequitable. Also, they noted that with conscription, military labor was being used inefficiently because artificially low wages were being paid. Their main argument was that although the cost to the government of coercing young men into the military and paying them very little was low, the opportunity (societal) cost was much higher—even higher than just paying the higher compensation in an AVF. Other arguments were also made for the AVF:

• Paying market-based compensation would provide incentives for better personnel performance.
• Turnover costs are lower because service members stay in the military longer.
• The costs to society of draft avoidance are eliminated.
• Artificially depressed wages cause the military to employ too much labor and too little capital (machinery). (This point is especially important because military history shows that in conventional warfare, oftentimes a smaller high-tech force with more advanced weapons can defeat a larger force with inferior weapons.)

Economists, being practical, missed an even larger philosophical argument: it is a contradiction in a supposedly free republic to compel citizens to perform a dangerous form of essentially slave labor.

Also, from the founding of the republic, although state militias sometimes required universal white male participation, the Constitution’s framers, and many generations of American leaders up until the Korean War, distrusted large standing armies at the federal level during peacetime. Thus, conscription was a rare, desperate measure when masses of soldiers and sailors were needed for big wars—the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the beginning of the Cold War during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Thus, conscription has been the exception—in force during only 35 years of the republic’s more than 200-year history.

However, authors in the book, including Maj. Gen. Laich, do point out several problems with the All-Volunteer Force. The first is the most important: Since the inception of the AVF in 1973, U.S. military interventions abroad have increased more than five-fold per year from those of the quarter century of conscription after World War II. This increase results because there is less public pressure to avoid the overuse of military power overseas. For example, during the Vietnam War, with children of the middle class (a large, politically powerful group) and lower classes being drafted to fight a seemingly endless war, protests were loud, sometimes violent, and effective in eventually shutting down American participation in the war. In contrast, during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the long nation-building war in Afghanistan generated almost no protest, and President George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq spurred worldwide protests but did not rise in the United States to the level of those during the Vietnam War. In fact, historian David M. Kennedy reported that he personally heard President Bush tell Oval Office visitors in 2006, “If I had to do this [invade Iraq] with a draft army, I would have been impeached by now” (p. x).

Second, the commission admitted that the AVF might isolate a professional active force from civilian society. Without a draft bringing average Joes and Janes into the active military, the values of the warrior class in the military would likely diverge from those of a consumer-based society. This separate warrior class has developed and has been sustained because relatives of military personnel join the military at far higher rates than other civilians.

Third, young people these days have a low propensity to serve in the military and more are unqualified because of obesity, drug use, low scores on entry tests, etc.—thus reducing the pool of possible inductees. Therefore, ever greater and greater pay and benefits need to be paid to get those in the shrinking pool to join up and remain in the service. Thus, military personnel costs are soaring, crowding out money for military operations, weapons research and development, procurement, and maintenance, and construction of defense facilities.

The first problem was foreseen by the Gates Commission when it predicted that the AVF might encourage military adventurism, but the concern was then dismissed as being countered by a vigilant citizenry. That high level of citizenship has not been achieved, and presidents since 1973 have run wild with questionable military interventions of all sizes unconstrained by public protests, let alone concern. For example, the Afghan War lasted two decades; the invasion and unpopular counterinsurgency quagmire in Iraq lasted eight years, but then the U.S. military went back for a second round and is still in the country. The commission also admitted that a separate military culture might be isolated from civil society. Lastly, the commission knew costs of the military would be greater with AVF, but this would pale in comparison to the lower costs experienced by the society as a whole. However, the problem of rapidly rising AVF personnel costs eating the lunch of the rest of the Department of Defense budget was seemingly not predicted.

Overall, the economists who helped motivate the creation of AVF were largely justified in doing so. Warfare is dangerous and difficult enough but is even tougher to carry out with demoralized people who are corralled into serving against their will. Maj. Gen. Laich aside, most of the political and military leadership, certainly the troops, and civilians who are not dragged from their lives and careers are all happy the AVF was instituted. And the three major drawbacks with the AVF can be mitigated by other measures.

With conscription, the threat of virulent societal protests, if unneeded unilateral executive military interventions result in numerous casualties or become quagmires, might dissuade presidents from undertaking them in the first place. However, more executive restraint might be obtained by other means: Congress taking back its constitutional war power to require approval in advance of any U.S. military intervention, with the lone exception being if the president needed to rapidly defend the United States from imminent attack (as the Framers intended). The more capable AVF force would still be needed to competently fight the fewer, but likely more consequential, wars that Congress would sanction.

Other ways to impede the current reckless executive use of the military, better break down barriers between the military and society, and reduce costs of the AVF would be to adopt a more restrained U.S. military strategy, cut back the force needed to carry it out, and reorganize it. The United States would let wealthy U.S. friends and allies, such the Europeans and Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and India do more for the regional defenses in Europe, East Asia, and South Asia, respectively. The United States would only come to their assistance with troops if the threat was dire (that is, the U.S. would adopt a balancer-of-last-resort strategy). With this more restrained strategy, U.S. forces could be reduced, especially ground forces in the Army and Marines, with fewer cuts in the Navy and Air Force. In addition, more units in most services could be moved to the National Guard and Reserves—for example, heavy armor and mechanized units. In wars in the last two decades, Guard and Reserve forces were used extensively with active forces and proved their equal to the latter. Training for Guard and Reserve forces could be augmented. Also, with citizen-soldiers of the Guard and Reserve making up a greater portion of the Armed Forces, the gap between the military and civilian society could be mitigated. Finally, with Guard and Reserve units, because they are citizen-soldiers who are trained well but activated only when needed, the per capita cost per unit is 28 to 32 percent of an active unit; thus, a greater percentage of Guard and Reserve units in the Total Force would dramatically reduce the cost of the AVF.

Another way of reducing the AVF’s now rising costs would be to cut back benefits or privatize their delivery. For example, the military directly provides military housing, commissaires for subsidized shopping, and an expensive, separate healthcare system for military personnel. Rapidly rising healthcare costs are a major driver of ballooning personnel costs for the AVF. The Department of Defense could save lots of cash by doing away with these captive systems and have AVF members buy those services on the commercial market, even if the government subsidizes them. The Congressional Budget Office has shown that military personnel make decisions to join the armed forces or stay in them more on the basis of pay rather than benefits. Benefits, inefficiently delivered, could be reduced in lieu of increased pay, thus aiding recruitment and retention at a lower overall cost.

All in all, this volume is better at examining the pros and cons of the current AVF rather than going beyond that analysis for a wider examination of possible radical changes to what the United States does in the world, what size of forces would be needed for a more restrained posture, and changes to the structure of those forces or Department of Defense and service support systems to save the AVF from ballooning costs.