Thus, until the people’s eyes are opened a draft enables politicians to prosecute wars more vigorously. Which is probably why most advocates of compulsion are foreign policy hawks. Despite substantial opposition to the Vietnam War, troop levels peaked at 543,482 on April 30, 1968. Conscription made that possible. Despite criticizing Johnson’s policies, Richard Nixon continued to fight the war with draftees during his entire first term. Overall, 2.6 million military personnel served in Vietnam and another 800,000 in the broader Indochina theater. Of them, 58,000 died and another 150,000 were wounded. A large number of them, other than career NCOs and officers, conscripted directly or indirectly (“volunteering” to avoid being impressed). Novelist Elliot Ackerman argued that “a draft places militarism on a leash.” It certainly is a long one!

In contrast, a volunteer military allows those potentially at risk to halt a war, any war, by refusing to join or rejoin. Strains were evident in both the active and reserve forces during the Iraq conflict as American military personnel found they had been lied or misled into something very different than the promised cakewalk. Observed author Brian O’Brien, by 2005, just two years in, the conflict “had broken the U.S. Army. Young people had stopped enlisting. Captains and junior NCO, the leaders most needed in the fight on the ground, were leaving the ranks for good rather than face another combat deployment. Our leaders knew that each new American death was a liability and that tactics needed to change.” The increasing difficulty of meeting manpower objectives without significantly lowering standards encouraged the Bush administration to accelerate the search for an exit.

Facing a more cynical public and pool of potential military recruits in the future, an administration unable to make a persuasive case for war might find itself more quickly confronting falling enlistment and reenlistment rates. Such an impact almost certainly would be felt far sooner than rising opposition to a draft. In essence, four million 18-year-olds could do in a couple years what might take scores of millions of voters a decade or longer to accomplish.

Ironically, Bacevich wrote that today “ordinary Americans” are left to decide how much existing wars “should matter. Their limited willingness suggests their answer: Not much.” He worried that this allowed policymakers to turn conflict into a “normal condition.” However, this disaffected public, most importantly the military volunteers primarily at risk, could shut down wars almost immediately by just not showing up.

In addition, is the important point—though almost entirely alien from the Washington policy debate—made by Henderson. Forget the practical political impact of conscription. We should abhor turning draftees into “human shields.” He added: “it is profoundly immoral to put innocent young people at risk so that their parents will get politically active.” Coercion punishes the wrong people.

Military service is honorable. But it should be voluntary. Conscription would yield a less effective force. It would not, however, restrain policymakers’ promiscuous war-making. American policymakers remain biased toward war, at great cost to the U.S. But that only strengthens the case for maintaining the AVF.

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of several books, including Human Resources and Defense Manpower (National Defense University) and Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire (Xulon Press). He is a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, where he worked with the administration’s Military Manpower Task Force. He currently is Scholar-in-Residence at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.