Responding to terrorism: conscription is not the answer.

• Author: Bandow, Doug
• Position: National Affairs - Column

BEFORE SEPT. 11, 2001, it had been 60 years since the U.S. homeland had come under attack. As they did after Pearl Harbor, Americans turned to the military for their defense, but now, in contrast to the past, they are finding security in a volunteer military.

When the terrorists snuck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, they attacked the nation that has the most-powerful and effective military on Earth. Its weapons are the most advanced, and its troops are the brightest and best trained. The result is a catastrophe for any opposing force, as the Taliban and Al Qaeda quickly learned.

Yet, even as America's volunteer military was gearing up for its decisive victory in Afghanistan, some analysts were calling for conscription. For instance, the day after the attacks, Stanley Kurtz of the Hudson Institute wrote in National Review Online, "Maybe now, in the wake of this terrible act of war, we can break our great taboo and at least consider a revival of the, draft." He complained that "military recruitment is in a state of crisis for some time now." Without reliance on women in the service, he argued, a draft would certainly be necessary, "And that's without taking into account the increased demands on our armed forces that the war on terrorism will surely impose."

This is an extraordinary argument, that the globe's sole military colossus, America, needs a mass conscript army. Ironically, foreign nations are following the U.S. in abandoning the draft. France and Spain have dropped conscription, while Russia is professionalizing its military. Other states, such as Germany, are debating the same step, despite the opposition of powerful vested interests (for example, industries such as health care that are dependent on the labor of conscientious objectors). Even China's strategy for strengthening its armed forces is to cut numbers and increase quality, as did the U.S. after the advent of the All-Volunteer Force. No major power is moving in the other direction. Many of the forces most dependent on conscription tend not to be ones whose example we should wish to follow--the Taliban in Afghanistan, for instance, and Hutu rebels in Burundi.

The U.S. military possesses an extraordinary ability to use high-tech weapons to maximize destruction of opposing forces and minimize American casualties. As William Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicates, "What sets the United States apart from its adversaries is that we use information much better than they do. Properly used, that can be an unbridgeable gap."

Although high-tech weapons alone are unlikely to subdue an adversary and obviously cannot occupy a defeated country, they can ensure the defeat of opposing military forces. Furthermore, they preclude the need for large U.S. ground forces. In Afghanistan, sustained air attack was supplemented by the extensive use of special operations forces--of whom, all told, the U.S. today fields about 29,000 troops. Also active on the ground were the Marines, the smallest service branch--the one that has the reputation of being the toughest, but has nevertheless consistently had the best recruiting success. The various ground forces helped target air strikes, disrupt Taliban military operations, and search for Al Qaeda strongholds.

Moreover, America fields a professional force of extraordinary quality. Soldiers today are far brighter and better educated than the draft-era force. They are therefore much more capable of handling high-tech weapons.

Technical skills will become even more important in the future, especially since antiterrorism has surpassed conventional defense as America's most-important security goal. Masses of cannon fodder are of dubious value even in a typical conventional war, given the killing potential of well-trained soldiers using the latest technology. Conscripts would be even less helpful in attempting to track down an elusive foe, such as terrorists operating worldwide.

The value of special forces was obvious in the attack on the Taliban government in Afghanistan. They are the only ones that can help to train Philippine troops in their war with Muslim insurgents. Action in Somalia or elsewhere would require a similar, well-targeted approach, not a large occupying army.

Even the Army sees a need for quicker, lighter, and more-lethal forces in the future. That means an elite, not a mass, army and a volunteer, not a draft, force. As Philip Gold of the Discovery Institute observed in the Tacoma News Tribune, "The present military is in an Industrial Age, labor-intensive structure ill-suited to 21st-century technologies and threats. Properly organized, equipped and with more superfluous bases closed and many support functions privatized, it could easily drop to 1.2 million or less."

The military opposes conscription, not just because it tends to resist change, as some charge. Gordon Sullivan, former Army chief...