Book Review: Rough draft: Cold War military manpower policy and the origins of Vietnam-era draft resistance by Rutenberg, A. J.

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221141891
• Author: Brandon J. Archuleta
• Date: 01 October 2023
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221141891

Armed Forces & Society

2023, Vol. 49(4) 1061 –1064

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X221141891

journals.sagepub.com/home/afs

Book Review

Book Review

Rutenberg, A. J. (2020). Rough draft: Cold War military manpower policy and the

origins of Vietnam-era draft resistance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

276 pp. $30.95 (paperback), ISBN 9781501739583.

Reviewed by: Brandon J. Archuleta, US Army, Washington, DC, USA

A cottage industry of media pundits, business executives, retired military officers,

ex-bureaucrats, and former politicians has emerged over the past decade, harkening

back to the mid-20th century searching for lessons in civility borne of national ser-

vice and shared sacrifice. Inspired by this sense of public nostalgia and bygone call

to service, the 114th Congress (2015–2017) chartered a blue-ribbon commission to

“review the military selective service process” and public service writ-large (Benton,

2019, p. 16). While the draft ended nearly 50 years ago, the long shadow of the

Vietnam War and the Selective Service System (SSS) still loom large in the American

psyche (Heck, 2020). As the U.S. military faces its worst recruiting crisis since the

inception of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 (Spoehr, 2022), Amy J.

Rutenberg’s excellent book, Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and

the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance (2020), is a timely and relevant contri-

bution to the defense and society field.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, various former officials and media out-

lets have called for some form of national service. For example, Robert Litan, a for-

mer Clinton administration official and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution,

made the case for universal service—military or civilian—less than a year after 9/11

(2002). Former U.S. Representative Charles Rangel, a Korean War veteran, echoed

this sentiment by proposing several pieces of legislation to re-instate the draft during

the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2014). For his part, retired Army general Stanley

McChrystal argues that “every American should serve for one year” in or out of uni-

form. Doing so, he suggests, would rebuild the “trust and consensus” necessary for

American democracy to thrive (2017). To that end, McChrystal co-chairs a bipartisan

initiative called “Serve America. Together.,” which espouses that a year of service

should be a “common expectation and opportunity for every young American”

(2019). Even The New York Times Editorial Board concedes, “Many aging Vietnam-

era veterans attest to the sense of community that came with either involuntary mili-

tary service or the alternative service routes that those who refused the draft opted for

1141891AFSXXX10.1177/0095327X221141891Armed Forces & SocietyBook Review

book-review2022