This of course forms the context for the creation of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF), the effective conversion of the United States military into a professional, fully standing military, which I’d argue is the single most dramatic shift in the civil-military relationship in American history, the full impact of which is not yet clear. For almost 200 years, the United States military had been an essentially civilian force which relied on conscription. For the decades prior to the creation of the AVF in 1973, conscription had been a fact of life. While the United States had demobilized substantially after WWII, there had been at least some conscription in every year from 1940 to 1972 except for 1947. In every year between 1950 and 1972, conscription had never been lower than at least 80,000 new conscriptions a year.
This was a huge change. For such a major change, I find that it draws surprisingly little attention. The 50th anniversary of the AVF passed with relatively little fanfare in 2023. I’ve mentioned For the Common Defense (1984, 1994, 2012) as the dominant textbook for introductory American military history: the shift to the All-Volunteer Force is dealt with in a single page (page 568, for the curious). The textbook I’ve seen most recently used for US Naval history (and which I used), J.C. Bradford and J. F. Bradford, America, Sea Power and the World (2016, 2023), doesn’t even give it that much: the shift is discussed in a single paragraph on page 351 (308 in the 2016 edition).1
The likely impacts of the shift to an AVF were studied prior to implementation in the Gates Commission, a report that had a preordained conclusion – it was convened to provide Nixon the cover to do the thing (end the draft) he had promised to do already in his campaign – and which honestly I find disappointing in its approach, which is mostly “happy talk” designed to justify what Nixon had already decided to do. It is striking to me, for instance, that the Gates Commission did not include a single historian to perhaps discuss how the shift towards fully professional militaries had gone for republics in the past. Instead, the focus is on the economics of the shift, with fairly blithe assertions that the civil-military relationship would remain unchanged despite the fairly obvious implausibility of that given the shift from “everyone serves” to “only a small portion of society serves”.2
As I’ve noted elsewhere, the Romans also seem to have thought that they could professionalize their army without reducing its ability to scale up in an emergency or altering the civil-military relationship and for quite a few decades that more or less worked, while the old norms held. But as those old norms decayed, the institution increasingly became what you’d expect from its institutional structure: a permanent political faction, advocating for its own interests, often with violence, to the point that the emperor Septimius Severus’ advice to his sons as he lay dying in 211 was, “Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men”,3 a fairly open admission that the soldiery was not just a political constituency, but the most important one. It took time for those norms to shift, but when one is building or rebuilding institutions, the long-term is the term that matters.
I do not think necessarily that this is the direction the All-Volunteer Force must go. It has two and a half centuries of strong norms pushing it away from this direction. But careful maintenance of the civ-mil bargain is made all the more necessary when the military is effectively fully professional. For my own part, all cards on the table, while I greatly value the service of the United States’ military personnel (there’s that third part of the bargain!) and think they serve honorably, I am quite skeptical of the long-term implications of the All-Volunteer Force. Its creators assumed that fully professionalizing the military would not impact the civil-military relationship and that it would always be possible to shift back to a mass-conscript army in the event of a major war, but historical examples suggest it is not so easy.
But the All-Volunteer Force is not the direction from which I see now the principal threat to the civ-mil bargain.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: The American Civil-Military Relationship”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2025-07-04.
- In that book’s defense, the Navy has a really big set of reforms associated broadly with CNO Elmo Zumwalt that happen at basically the same time and are connected and it opts to focus on those. I will note that the position of the paragraph has changed because the updated 2023 version of the book has opted to grapple more extensively and more successfully with this period as one of increasing diversity in the navy, with a chapter by Kristy N. Kamarck on that specific topic. It is a marked improvement over the first edition, though I think both FtCD and the Bradford and Bradford remain too hagiographic, too willing to sweep the military’s problems under the rug and only comment on military diversity when they can tell the story as a happy tale of progress.
- Especially as that small portion tends to be concentrated, a thing the Commission essentially refuses to consider as a first principle of their analysis; they assume cheerfully that the AVF will naturally continue to reflect a cross-section of the United States. In some ways that is true, but in other ways it is very much not – there certainly are “military families”, where service tends to “run in the family” in the United States now – and the emergence of those patterns would have been a pretty obvious thing to expect, given that the same trend is extremely visible in the Roman army of the early empire.
- Dio 77.16
June 22, 2026
QotD: When the US switched to the All-Volunteer Force in 1973
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[…] WHILE I PREFER A VOLUNTARY MILITARY, EVERY CHOICE HAS CONSEQUENCES: When the US switched to the All-Volunteer Force in 1973. […]
Pingback by Instapundit » Blog Archive » WHILE I PREFER A VOLUNTARY MILITARY, EVERY CHOICE HAS CONSEQUENCES: When the US switched to the A — June 24, 2026 @ 01:01
An EXCELLENT book that does cover the transition between conscript and volunteer forces is Prodigal Soldiers, by James Kitfield. Subtitle is “How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War”. Opens with the successes of the First Gulf War, and describes how the flag officers of that conflict were shaped by their experiences as junior officers.
Back in the day it was required reading at Air Command and Staff College (which is where I was introduced to it.)
Comment by dave — June 24, 2026 @ 04:59
A major error here:
Although induction of conscripts ended in 73*, until they were discharged 2 years later or re-enlisted for further service, the Army was not “all volunteer” in any manner. Y
I know this first hand, because I was drafted in August 1972, and discharged in July 1974. I do recall that the Army and Politicians would incorrectly call the forces “all Volunteer” but that didn’t make it so.
*Minor issue: The draft ceased in 1972, and after that date (Oct 72?) no more call ups were issued. There were some delayed inductions into 1973, but this small number were coming in from induction notices issued in 1972 (and perhaps a small number from earlier draft years). I think ’72 is a better date to mark the end of conscription in the United States. But the Army didn’t begin being 100% voluntary enlistees until 75.
Comment by Dickerson — June 24, 2026 @ 05:40
Your thesis is completely wrong. The draft has existed-but generally only for significant conflicts. The existence of a draft during peacetime (ie 1945-1973) is the anomaly: not its absence. In other words, the all volunteer army in 1973 was a return to normal.
Google it.
Joe
Comment by Joe — June 24, 2026 @ 07:09
This post represents a misreading of the historical development of America’s understanding of the military and how it has been structured. Prior to the Civil War, the colonies, and then the United States, relied entirely on a combination of a militia system and volunteer forces. While all able-bodied adult men belonged to the militia, it was a very occasional force and entirely defensive. Repel invasion, put down rebellion, all within the state or even more local are where it occurred. Barely trained, although there was some drill. Officers and noncommissioned officers were elected. During the Revolution and the period up to and including the Spanish American War, the US relied on volunteer units. The federal government had a professional volunteer navy (though we relied on letters of marque and reprisal well into the 19th century) which was small, but highly effective, and a very small professional volunteer army, most of whose officers were trained at West Point.
What there was, especially in the South, was a strong notion of the ‘citizen soldier’ along the lines of ancient Rome – the yeoman farmer or artisan who left his plow or bench in time of peril to defend the country. He might be trained to lead – hence the many state and private military academies such as VMI, The Citadel, and Norwich University, all of which still exist today – but he was essentially a civilian.
The first drafts in the US came on both sides of the US Civil War (in 1862 in the CSA, 1863 in the US) when the initial large volunteer armies of both sides suffered losses that were not adequately replenished by volunteers. Both drafts were highly unpopular. The draft riots in New York had to be put down with significant force. Almost immediately after the end of the Civil War, the volunteer regiments were disbanded and the US reverted to a very small and underfunded professional volunteer navy and a volunteer professional army sufficient (barely) to successfully overpower the remaining Indians in the West.
The US did not institute conscription again until WWI. The Spanish-American War was fought with a professional volunteer navy, a small professional volunteer army, and largely with volunteer regiments. After WWI, conscription was ended and not revived until 1940, when there was again significant opposition. In the interwar period, as after the Civil War, the American military was reduced greatly in size.
Although the military was reduced in size after WWII, given the changes in America’s commitments after WWII and the recognition of the Soviet communist threat, conscription was retained. THAT was the break from longstanding American tradition. Conscription was maintained for just over 30 years (‘40-‘73) and became highly unpopular when conscripts were used to fight unpopular wars in Korea and Vietnam.
One can make a case that VOLUNTARY military service is a good thing for youth, that most young men (and some women) would benefit from a term of 2-3 years of service as would the country, but the simple fact is that conscription is involuntary servitude. Other than in time of war – or imminent war one supposes – that’s prohibited by the Constitution and fundamentally inimical to liberty.
Comment by Cato Renasci — June 24, 2026 @ 08:38
Everything in life is a tradeoff.
There are many advantages to an all volunteer military, mainly to the military and in terms of effectiveness.
In an all volunteer military, the people who are there, want to be there. Typically because they want to serve their country. Sometimes just because they needed the job; but regardless of the reason, they signed the line and took the oath voluntarily.
That makes for a much more motivated, dedicated and effective force than one made up of a large number of people who don’t want to be there and don’t care a whit about learning to become an effective soldier (or sailor, marine, airman, or spaceman).
There are risks, of course. The founding fathers frowned on standing armies entirely due to those risks; but the form of government they created lends itself well to mitigating those risks to some degree. Nothing is foolproof of course, and it could someday come to pass that the military goes rogue, but firm civilian control over the military is baked into our form of Government.
One of the big issues that caused the Roman transition to professional armies to backfire is the fact that in the Roman Legions, it was the Generals who paid and rewarded the service of their legionnaires. The soldiers under their command typically came from the same region as the General and served under that general their entire careers. That made for troops loyal to their Generals more than Rome and was a prime recipe for said Generals getting too big for their britches.
None of those factors exist in the US military. Military leaders (and their personnel for the most part) are rotated in and out of commands regularly so they tend to not get entrenched for more than a few years. While it’s still true that extremely effective leaders can become beloved by the troops under them, they’re typically only there for a few years and that affection doesn’t tend to build to the level of blind obedience or fanaticism. Also US military members are not paid by or granted benefits from military leadership but by the civilian government, removing that incentive for devotion to the leaders.
As far as the ability to quickly build the military into a wartime footing – that is the purpose of the National Guard and various service reserves programs. Not only do they provide a ready force of relatively trained personnel to call upon during an emergency, but they provide a corps of people that, should reinstating the draft become necessary, can immediately begin inducting draftees and training them into a reasonably effective force.
With all that said, I would actually support a mandatory service period. I don’t think a draft of a portion of the population is a good idea because the system can be “gamed” to ensure that children of the rich and powerful are exempted (which is exactly what happened in our past) and also because it engenders anger and resentment between those drafted and those who were not. A mandatory service period of two to three years for everyone upon reaching adulthood, I would support wholeheartedly. Of course there would still have to be exemptions for disabled people but the exemptions should be fairly strict. There are plenty of administrative, non-combat roles that people with minor disabilities can fill, freeing up more able bodied personnel for combat and front line support roles.
At any rate, I don’t think the all-volunteer military as currently organized is as dangerous as you seem to think, and I believe instituting a draft would degrade effectiveness and efficiency to the level that it would be counter-productive. We currently have the strongest military in the world…not necessarily in terms of numbers, but in terms of effectiveness. Part of that is technology, but a very large part of it is the level of professionalism, motivation and dedication our all voluntary military engenders.
But, to be fair, I could be biased…I spent 21 years in the US military.
Comment by Sailorcurt — June 24, 2026 @ 08:51
This wasn’t the case until quite late in the Republic, and the rise of Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar would not have been possible before that time. Before the Social War, I believe, legionaries were not paid at all and their service in the legion was seen as part of their duties to the state. They were, however rewarded with loot at the end of the campaign(s) they served in and then the legion was disbanded. Successful generals, who then also presided over the distribution of loot, certainly could-and-did use their military success as a springboard to political prominence … it was normal and expected. Permanent legions were not a thing until very late in the Republic, and even early in the Imperial period, while the legions were long-service professional units, their senior officers and generals were not — Augustus and his successors did not want to revive the “successful general” path to power now that the Caesars had a monopoly.
Comment by Nicholas — June 24, 2026 @ 09:50