Milton Friedman on The draft and the volunteer army
Few matters are more important for the political, social and moral health of this country than ending compulsory military service and returning to this nation’s long tradition of relying on the voluntary services of patriotic Americans to maintain a loyal and effective armed force. It will be a tragedy if legislative legerdemain is permitted to frustrate the achievement of this objective.
Context. From a September 1971 Newsweek column on the House-Senate conference report on the bill to extend the draft and pave the way for an all-volunteer armed force, written while the Senate had yet to vote on it. The column’s closing paragraph.
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Milton Friedman, “The Draft Uncompromise” (Newsweek, September 6, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, September 8, 1971, p. 31094, introduced by Representative William A. Steiger of Wisconsin under the header “[From Newsweek Magazine, Sept. 6, 1971]”, 1971), Congressional Record, September 8, 1971, p. 31094. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/ending-compulsory-military-service-legislative-legerdemain-1971
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As a longtime proponent of an all-volunteer armed force, I regard the end of the draft as one of President Nixon’s and then-Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird’s finest hours. No other measure has done so much to end the divisions that were threatening to tear this nation apart. No other measure has done so much to reduce the real cost of defending the nation.
Context. From a 1974 Newsweek column answering press reports, a year after conscription ended, that the all-volunteer armed force was failing.
Volunteer Armed Force: Failure or Victim?Column, 1974, Newsweek, February 11, 1974; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, February 27, 1974, p. 4572, introduced by Representative William A. Steiger of Wisconsin, who cites it as appearing “in the February 11 Newsweek”, Congressional Record, February 27, 1974, p. 4572Checked against the sourceRead the originalAs these remarks indicate, the Social Security program involves a transfer from the young to the old. To some extent such a transfer has occurred throughout history—the young supporting their parents, or other relatives, in old age. … The difference between Social Security and earlier arrangements is that Social Security is compulsory and impersonal—earlier arrangements were voluntary and personal. Moral responsibility is an individual matter, not a social matter. Children helped their parents out of love or duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else’s parents out of compulsion and fear. The earlier transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken them.
The military coup just engineered in Greece was by an army manned by conscripts. So was the recent military takeover in Argentina. Napoleon and Franco rose to power at the head of conscripts. Britain and the U.S. have maintained freedom while relying primarily on volunteers; Switzerland and Sweden, while using conscription. It is hard to find any relation historically between the method of recruiting enlisted men and the political threat from the armed forces.
Context. From a May 1967 New York Times Magazine article, written as Congress weighed renewing the draft, arguing that the United States should end conscription and man its armed forces with volunteers. He is answering the objection that a volunteer army would endanger political freedom. The danger is real, he says, but it comes from large armed forces and the industry that supports them, not from how enlisted men are recruited; free institutions are not made safer by filling the ranks by compulsion. “The military coup just engineered in Greece” is the colonels’ coup of April 1967.
The Case for Abolishing the Draft—and Substituting for It an All-Volunteer ArmyColumn, 1967, The New York Times Magazine, May 14, 1967; reprinted in full in the Congressional Record, Senate, May 15, 1967, pp. 12546 to 12548, inserted by Senator Gaylord Nelson., Congressional Record, May 15, 1967, p. 12548Checked against the sourceRead the original
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