The Hard Questions About the Selective Service Have Nothing to Do With Women in Combat
Representative Duncan Hunter’s proposed legislation requiring women to register for the draft is intentionally provocative. It comes in the wake of both the chief of staff of the Army and Marine Corps commandant’s testimonies on women in combat before the Senate Armed Services Committee. A brilliant political move on Hunter’s part, the legislation, which he plans to push for a floor vote — and is likely to vote against himself — would force a needed conversation about women in combat. Specifically, it drives questions regarding issues of both standards and equity associated with opening all combat positions to women — a decision Hunter, a former Marine with multiple combat tours, strongly opposes. His motivation to introduce the legislation is clear from his recent comments: “Let’s see if the American people want their daughters and sisters drafted, if it ever came to that.”
While Hunter intends to be provocative, perhaps he’s not being provocative enough. Perhaps the question isn’t whether or not women should have to register for Selective Service — but whether Selective Service should exist at all.
Some in Congress are boldly raising the conversation. Representatives Mike Coffman, Peter DeFazio, Dana Rohrabacher, and Jared Polis proposed legislation to end Selective Service, with Coffman stating, “either you require registration for men and women, or you do away with the system altogether. And I’ve chosen to do away with the system altogether.” The representatives note two advantages to eliminating Selective Service: a savings of approximately $24 million per year, and — more importantly — the military strength associated with a professionalized volunteer service.
The movement away from the draft and the transition to the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 brought with it the professionalization of the U.S. military. The key mechanism driving this professionalization was a move away from compulsory labor to a market paradigm for purposes of military recruitment. While more expensive than its predecessor, the system has produced the finest fighting force in the world.
The professionalization of the force has been made possible through the enforcement of high standards. The Pentagon states that only 29 percent of Americans between 17 and 24 — the key recruitment demographic — are qualified for military service based on health, physical performance, and education. High standards and market economics go hand in hand: In the AVF, potential recruits must compete under exacting standards in order to commission or enlist. Opening the pool of eligible candidates for all combat positions to qualified members of the female half of the population increases the level of competition for combat billets. While such increased competition won’t likely result in a combat force where women make up 50 percent of front-line troops, it will drive the quality of competition within the labor market up.
The lynchpin for success, then, is the consistent implementation of high standards — the root of the debate over women in combat. Critics of the decision to open all combat positions to women cite two main concerns: Some focus on cultural impacts, primarily the potential effects on unit cohesion; others focus on the inability of women to compete physically. But both of these concerns can be assuaged by the implementation and enforcement of a single high standard regardless of gender: Removing perceptions of a double standard would increase unit morale, while exacting physical standards ensure that men and women alike are up to the task.
The debate over whether women could even perform in combat units served as a forcing mechanism for the military to clearly define and justify gender-neutral occupation-specific standards for all servicemembers — not just women. While the services arguably should have clearly defined these occupational standards long before the women-in-combat debate, and while the ensuing new standards may now perpetually be tied to the question of women in combat, the services are now in a stronger position than they were previously, armed with the data they need to continue professionalizing the force. After all, with clearly defined occupational standards, men — who make up the overwhelming majority of the current combat force — will have to perform not only to the service standards (such as annual physical fitness tests), but those of their specific Military Occupational Specialty.
If rigorous standards are the baseline by which the U.S. military has become the preeminent fighting force in the world, the existence of a compulsory labor system such as a potential draft is not the answer.
Proponents of the draft rightly highlight the growing divide between the nation and the force that defends it. This civil-military divide has pernicious effects on decisions regarding the use of military force. Others acknowledge that Selective Service is an insurance policy for a major war that goes beyond the capacity of the AVF. But the sobering reality is this: In the post-9/11 era — while the AVF endured extreme stress, while the stop-loss policy was enacted, while the National Guard and Reserve forces deployed at record rates, and while experts raised fears that the pace of deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were “breaking the force” — there was no extended debate in Congress pushing for a draft. While certainly short of total war, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan presented ample opportunities to entertain a legitimate policy debate over the feasibility of calling up a draft. Further, the Department of Defense has made clear with its shift toward the Third Offset Strategy that it intends to face the growing threat of future total wars with great power adversaries by exploiting technological advantages — a strategy that depends on a highly skilled, technologically proficient fighting force; a draft would be detrimental to the success of such a force.
Representative Hunter is concerned that the full inclusion of women in combat positions will affect combat effectiveness. Yet a much larger threat to an effective U.S. military is the influx of conscripts into the force. Let the progress provided by data-driven standards serve as a catalyst for the next iteration of a market revolution in military recruitment and personnel management, and take Selective Service off of the table.
Katherine Kidder is the Bacevich Fellow at the Center for a New American Security with the Military, Veterans, and Society Program.
Photo credit: Staff Sgt. Liesl Marelli, U.S. Army
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If a young man were denied a position in say the federal civil service because he had failed to register for the draft and the position instead was given to a woman with the same age and qualifications as he, I would think he could file a suit for discrimination. And I would think that the federal courts, given the lifting of all the combat exclusions for women, would find that the draft is unlawfully discriminatory. So the only thing we can’t do is allow selective service to remain the same. I would vote for including women. Let it be up to future Presidents and Defense Secretaries and Generals to decide how to employ the pool of young men and women should the terrible day come when we once again need to draft our young to defend our nation.
I totally agree. If we want to do away with the Selective Service System, that is something to debate, but whether we keep it or not, women have to be treated equally.
There is no reason to incur the extra cost of drafting women. If we can’t get by with the 16M males already registered then WE have a problem.
It is not that 16M is not enough is it why are the 16M females getting a free pass. Under the equal protection clause of the Constitution, you can not discriminate based on gender. The 1981 Supreme Court decision allowed the all male registration because at that time women were banned not only from combat, but from virtually all military positions where the threat of death was imminent. So about 90% of the women who have been deployed since 2001 did so in jobs closed to women in 1981. It is just that the National Coalition of Men (NCM) took the chance that the military would remove all restrictions on gender before any draft would be imposed and now have a lawsuit pending in the ninth circuit court, some say that is the most liberal in the country. To be practical, if 100,000 are inducted then 50,500 must be women (or about that) so therefore that many men have been spared the call up because there are no longer being discriminated against.
I disagree with the premise that having selective service is the larger question — because we can and usually in the past have most people drafted into non-combat roles. While I don’t oppose women in the military and recognize that in today’s world there often is no distinction between front and rear areas (which may in fact be the real historical norm) I would prefer not to commit women to ground combat roles for a variety of reasons. But surely they can and should serve their country in time of war — and for that matter national service should not merely be thought of as deploying on military expeditions. I could see a lot of benefit to all young Americans serving some brief commitment to their country, I note that during the Vietnam War (a war that was not as universally unpopular as most believe) our draftees had an extremely low boot camp wash out rate — an alarmingly large number of present day volunteer recruits fail to meet the easy physical standards. The prospect of a national test for the whole population might serve to motivate the young to maintain their physical readiness and brief stint in the National Guard may give them a better appreciation for what those who volunteer experience and be aversion therapy when they hear political proposals to grow the scope and reach of government.
Have to disagree; whenever I fill out a job application for a defense contractor, I have to put my Selective Service number in. My wife, does not because she doesn’t have to register. We’re both retired Army yet I get penalized if I don’t use that number. As for the potential for a draft, to date, other than one or two Congressmen who want to have a draft, no one anywhere wants to do it. So the question becomes, why are we spending $24 million per year on a program that no one wants or intends to use short of a war with China or Russia? As I noted, my wife served in the Army (20 years) and she volunteered. If the Selective Service is to stay, then women should be required to sign up. After all, why is it ok for women to volunteer for military service but not be drafted? Isn’t that a double standard? And lets get real here, women have been in combat situations in an ever growing number in all of our nation’s conflicts stretching back to the Revolutionary War. Up until the Civil War they were disguising themselves as men. Since Desert Storm, they have fought with men in units where they “aren’t allowed to be assigned” to but the military simply by-passes that rule by attaching women to combat units. The female medic who earned the Silver Star in Afghanistan in 2008 was in such a role and our own Special Forces had women attached as recently as 2014 (go read “Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield). Bottom line: if women are not going to be allowed to register for Selective Service, the program is impeding development of a single standard AND its sucking up money. Finally, the last standard to go should be the mixed gender PT test. If the goal is to have gender neutral, MOS specific standards then drop the dual standards for the PT test. The Army has struggled for years to create an MOS specific PT test and failed because you’d have dozens of standards. Make it one standard for all; if you meet or exceed the standards, you can play. if not, move on.
Some of this is nonsense. The volunteer Army (and I had something to do with it’s development) will never suffice in case of a major war. All the talk about technology replacing the infantry soldier is surreal. Perhaps in 2116 the robots will just fight each other while humans watch, but even then , the grunts will have to establish human control of the battlefield. As far as women in the infantry goes, the supporters focus on equality in meeting physical standards. But that is only a minor issue. Yes, some women can meet standards. The more important and tougher issue is can twenty year old men driven by sexual urges bond with women in the same non- sexual but loving relationship they do with each other in infantry units during intense and repeated infantry combat? I don’t think so. The presence of women, under circumstances that tend to reduce our thin veneer of civilization, will lead to male competition for their favors, favoritism and more problems for the chain of command.
The problem with this whole issue is that all the folks deciding this issue have never been in a lengthy infantry fight or campaign, are focused on female equality and ignoring their responsibility to the soldiers in the unit. Soldiers will inevitably die as a result of this poorly reasoned decision.Reference
I was waiting for the “sexual urge” BS to come up. Have you served in a combat arms unit? I have. Have you served in mixed gender units? I have. My wife, also, served 20 years in the Army (me 24 years) and was part of and lead mixed gender units. The flaw in your comments are that men will “rush to protect the women” and abandon the mission or simply be sexual predators lying in wait for women to show up; worse, that a huge level of favoritism will emerge and the men will ‘circle the wagons to exclude the women.” The reality is far from that outdated thought pattern; simply ask the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michelle Howard. As for the “soldiers will inevitably die” if women are added to combat units, wrong! Perhaps you can ask the male Soldiers who fought with SSG Leigh Ann Hester in Iraq–she earned a Silver Star for that battle and she was a Military Police Soldier–if they were all hormoned up or if they had no sense of unit cohesion, comradery, or a unit bond because there was a female Soldier leading them? She lead with distinction as do many women and men so your approach is wrong. Or perhaps you could ask the Cavalry Soldiers who PFC Monica Lin Brown attached to their units in Afghanistan the same questions? Ask them how they felt about her as she was pulling wounded males to safety and shielding the males wounded with her body while she was working on them (and also earned a Silver Star for it)? As to the heavily implied, “all male Soldiers are lying in wait to rape and sexually assault women” I find that extremely offensive as a former service Soldier. We have issues about those types of criminals, as does the civilian and corporate parts of the US (only they have more problems because they lack the high standards we have in the military) and they get addressed. As for “ignoring their responsibilities” wrong and a fail. Female Soldiers have been leading male Soldiers for decades; I challenge you to show any statistics where male Soldiers have been ignoring the orders female gave them and instead ignoring their duties. Those Soldiers are given UCMJ punishment, or are no longer Soldiers.
The metric to understand with Selective Service is that it would not send everyone drafted to combat arms. It didn’t in WW I, WW II, Korea, or Vietnam. While the bulk of those drafted during those conflicts did go to combat units, many did not and instead went to support, medical, logistics, intelligence, etc units. At the same time, if the Selective Service is to remain exclusionary to women, it flies in the face of gender neutral standards and would, potentially, impede units should a draft ever occur (not that a good chunk of the overweight target age group would actually make it through basic training) because the pool of available draftees would be reduced. And by the way, why is it Rep Hunter is ok with mothers and daughters volunteering to join and get killed (200 have died in Iraq and Afghanistan to date) yet he isn’t okay with it should they get drafted? How hypocritical that he would attempt a “heart string tug” to ‘start a dialog” when the reality is, he probably served next to women attached to his unit already (being attached is the way the military ‘end runs” the women in combat exclusion rule previously).
I agree, My grandfather was drafted in WW2 and when he didn’t meet the qualification for front line service they simply had him work in an office. I’m certainly not capable of front line service but if I was needed to stack crates on an army base or push papers I could certainly make myself useful.
As a Viet Nam Combat vet:
Below, referencing the wash out rate today vs my era:
My basic training was a cake walk (Jan-March 1966, Ft Bliss, TX. One washout due to his own desire, and he was recycled.)
The truth is, once in combat, one learns and developes very quickly, and much faster and wiser than any “training” environment can provide.
How does one justify that all men can do the same jobs as women, or that they must have the same physical requirements, as if all are to be in combat?
Only one in ten might be actual combat, in a shooting war, and if not actual ground pounders (Army), the physical requirements are not nearly as strenuous.
(I believe the physical requirement equality issue is being used as a Red herring to deny women equal opportunities in the military. It’s a bogus argument, meant to shape the debate, rather than discuss equitably and honestly. As evidenced by the USMC’s “test”, where experience troops, with combat training, were pitted against mixed units of men and women without.)
There is no reason that women and men cannot be in the military via the DRAFT.
If one’s adz, and one’s children’s adzs, are on the line, the reasons for war would be more carefully considered.
During WWII, both my mother (WAVEs, accounting in DC) and father (Army Air Corps, trained pilots) served, and I in the infantry 20 years later. I had a girlfriend in college who had been a Marine Corps Sgt.
Draft all, let some do military, others civilian jobs, ala the CCC. And, National Service would go a long way in reducing the entitlement mentality now extant.
Additionally, the National Parks and the like could use the efforts of a bunch of kids needing some discipline and work experience, reducing the privatized construction and upkeep costs.
Furthermore, if there were a need for an enlarged military, the system would be in place to call them up with minimal training, quickly and effectively.
Like after WWII, the workforce was augmented tremendously by women in the force (Rosie the Riveters and women military volunteers), so would be the value to the US in the future, with large numbers of experienced women Veterans, or Nation Service women.
And, just as the GI Bill for education has helped millions of Vets go to school (I being one), these new National Service kids should be given similar, if not equal treatment.
The Six million GIs who went to school after WWII were instrumental in the expansion and development of the US economy after the war.
It isn’t just “women” or just the “draft”, it is about the potential they can have to improve the country in combination, while teaching the whole generation the manifold and real meanings of “service”.
Bill, I believe you have hit the nail square on the head………….Letting the young do some sort of National Service to help the country be strong and also learning skills, social and physical has never done anyone any harm. The Government has hundreds of departments that
could use young people, who might even join after their ”training”.
I’m not sure where you ‘have to disagree,’ with me or the article? I’m sure we do disagree though on the notion that men and women are interchangeable – my brother recently adopted a dog who was scared of men and had to be convinced before it would accept him. At least the dog was not as stupid as some of our policy makers. Can women serve in combat is a different question on should we allow or force them to and has nothing to do with whether we have a selective service program. You do not have to be against the notion of co-ed ground combat formations to support the notion that women should be included in selective service enrollment. Nor does woman’s role in the military directly undermine selective service. I see no reason to question Congressman Hunter’s motivations for introducing the measure, I just don’t see why women should not register for the draft regardless of whether or not they may be assigned to ground combat roles. And that was the point I disagreed with the author about, I’m not sure what issue you take with my reply.
My comment was focused on two parts of your original comment: that you disagree with the premise that having selective service is the larger question and that you would prefer not to commit women to ground combat role. To the second point, they have been in combat roles and supporting combat units since the beginning of last decade. As I’ve since pointed out, several have received Silver Stars for being in combat and providing support to the combat units they were attached to. My wife earned a Bronze Star while in Iraq and was frequently in locations that were under rocket and mortar attack; and she was a volunteer. Which brings me to the Selective Service as a whole; having such a program that excludes all women from having to register is a road block to standards in the military. The issue needs to be bigger than Hunter’s “I’m not comfortable with wives and daughters being drafted” approach since he seems to be fine with wives and daughters volunteering to go downrange and be in combat situations. I do not feel men and women are basically interchangeable; I feel that if a man or woman is interchangeable in a position if they can meet the standards. There are men who are not in Infantry, Armor, or Field Artillary because they can’t meet the standards. Women have not been afforded the opportunity to even try, with some small exceptions and Rep Hunter’s own Service (USMC) conducted a highly suspect study on women in Infantry positions in the Marines (they compared male Marines with years of experience against female Marines with a month or two of infantry training and declared that women couldn’t meet the standards). Then the Marines refused to release the findings of the secret study until ordered to and then recently mea culpaed it in identifying their metrics as being skewed towards males. Women have served well in combat situations for the past 15 years, and 200 of them have died in combat because they are voluntarily working in combat situations across Iraq and Afghanistan. And what was the purpose of the dog example? That women have to be convinced or men have to be convinced and since neither are dogs, the example is not relevant; if it was focused on politicians, appears the dog is smarter. But then again, if I misunderstood what you were trying to convey, apologies; I believe women should be required to register since I have to. Then again, its been 42 years since we had a draft yet we continue a program for a draft that no one intends to ever use but costs $24 million a year; that translates into nearly $1 billion spent over the last 42 years and the result has been zero return on investment. Either make women sign up or kill the program and save the money.
Doing away with the Selective Service just to save 24 million a year seems a bit absurd considering how much excess spending in the billions exists in the federal government overall.Something tells politicians are looking for a non-controversial program to axe and create the illusion of savings than actually trim the true ‘money holes’ that exist.While the AVF has done its job the Selective Service should still exist since it doesn’t really cost that much,and is basically an insurance policy just like you insure against unlikely threaths all the time.
This debate is largely meaningless, mostly because we will never institute the draft.
The structure of our military would make it next to impossible to integrate recruits into modern conventional warfare, which is the only reason I could see a draft being viable..Too much training, too much technology. The lion’s share of fighting would almost certainly be done from the air, in combination with Armored units, special forces, and JTACs. None of those scream 18-year who really doesn’t want to be there.
In Iraq, a bunch of soldiers with minimal training MAY have been more useful, but we won’t institute the draft for a war of choice. Far too politically costly.
You cited cultural impacts and standards as the primary reasons for opposing full gender integration. I have another, better, more tangible reason. If full integration is to occur, the military needs to address an issue in its personnel system. As it stands, assignments cannot be “double slated”, meaning that more than one individual cannot fill a single billet. However, the military concedes the right of a woman serving to get pregnant. This is an issue because, while it may be detrimental to say, a personnel office, the removal of an individual from a combat role, like infantry, is much more detrimental. The job is more physical, and the removal of that person will be for a longer period of time. A pregnant woman can work in a personnel office for almost the entire duration of her pregnancy. The same is not true for a pregnant woman in an infantry squad. Her job, when not in combat, is to prepare for it. And that can’t happen if she is unable to complete long ruck marches, shoot weapons, and live in a field environment under stressful conditions. I know, critics of this argument will claim that men can sustain injuries that also remove them from the force. The difference is duration. Nine months of pregnancy, plus maternity leave and physical recovery time is over a year. That year is much longer than the typical 2-4 months for a broken ankle or torn ACL. Not to mention that this woman is now getting paid by the taxpayer to do what, exactly? She isn’t preparing for or participating in a combat role, despite holding a slot for one. So, how does this loop back to the personnel system? Well, in such a case, only one of two things can fix the problem. The military must either change its policy about the right for women serving to get pregnant (not likely), or human resources command must change its rules about billeting multiple soldiers in a single slot. This is also difficult because, for those stressing unquestioned gender equality, it means admitting that men and women are, in fact, different. This is a problem with gender integration that has been ignored for a long time, and needs to be addressed.