The spectre of a military draft has haunted the US presidential campaign. Both sides are adamant that a draft is not imminent. But the New York Times reported over the weekend that the US armed forces are quickly running out of options.
Just months ago, Pentagon officials suggested that a new draft could be avoided if recruitment and retention numbers stayed high. But as fighting in Iraq escalates, signs are growing that those numbers may not be adequate in the coming years. Thus, the new talk about a draft.
It is clear, however, that Americans lack the political will to reinstitute the draft. Most polls show that the majority of Americans oppose a draft, even though many recoginze that citizenship is enhanced by a requirement to serve. But would a draft also dampen Americans’ enthusiam for preemptive wars? Tom Hundley has an excellent article in today’s Chicago Tribune (registration required) about the German army and the military draft in Germany. The thrust of Hundley’s piece is that the requirement to serve is quite popular in Germany, but the Bundeswehr lacks the will to fight.
Unlike the U.S., Britain and France, Germany still has a draft. Military service is mandatory for all males. But for every four men who are conscripted into the army, another five are classified as conscientious objectors. An even larger number avoid any kind of service with medical exclusions, many of which are fairly flimsy.
Has Germany become a nation of pacifists? Has the Prussian steel in the German spine gone soft?
Not quite. But as the Bush administration discovered in the lead-up to the Iraq war, Germans are acutely allergic to anything that smacks of militarism.
Most observers agree that the Bundeswher is very well trained and has performed superbly in its peace-keeping roles in Afghanistan and Kosovo. What the troops lack is a strong sense of patriotism.
By all measures, Germany’s professional soldiers are superbly trained. What they lack, according to Wolfgang Wippermann, a historian at Berlin Free University, is the overweening nationalism and patriotism of previous generations.
Of course, there are very powerful historical reasons for this attitude in Germany. And is it necessarily a bad thing? The draft was instrumental in turing the American public against the pointless war in Vietnam. Does anyone doubt that there would be a public clamor to withdraw immediately from Iraq if we didn’t have an all-volunteer army taking the heavy losses on a daily basis?
