An awkwardly worded question and a poorly phrased answer by a government official have launched speculation and debate about the possibility of a draft. Most of it is wrong or at least misguided, but reflects a growing uncertainty over what comes next in the ongoing fight with Iran.
The latest flurry of concern about a draft came after a Sunday interview between White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.
First, here is the exchange that started it all:
“Mothers out there are worried that we’re going to have a draft, that they’re going to see their sons and daughters get involved in this. What do you want to say about the president’s plans for troops on the ground?” Bartiromo asked, in reference to Operation Epic Fury, which began Feb. 28 with the U.S. military striking more than 5,000 Iranian targets as of Tuesday.
“The president, as commander in chief, wants to continue to assess the success of this military operation. It’s not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on table,” Leavitt said. “There’s no greater priority or responsibility to this president than, of course, protecting the American people and protecting our troops.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if Leavitt was responding to the question about deploying ground combat troops to Iran, or the possibility of a military draft. The exchange quickly went viral, even prompting a response from the White House, but not before it made the rounds online.
This is not the first time that fears over a draft have emerged during ongoing military operations. But the U.S. has not had a draft since the Vietnam War and is more likely to rely on the kinds of provisions it used during the Global War on Terror to boost manpower.
How does a draft work in the United States?
A draft is a formal process for military conscription, which in the U.S. is the Selective Service System. American men between 18 and 25 must register and can face fines, imprisonment, and become ineligible for federal jobs if they fail to do so.
If a draft was instituted, it would first take men turning 20, then those 21, and so on through 25, with 18 and 19-year-olds last.
To institute a draft, Congress would have to update the Military Selective Service Act with specific references to the current conflict, and then the president would have to sign it, Kate Kuzminski, director of studies for the Center for New American Security, told Task & Purpose.
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The U.S. had early conscription systems during the American Revolution and World War I, until a formal draft was established for World War II and again in the Vietnam War.
Registration for the Selective Service System had remained relatively optional until the most recent defense bill. Now, the Selective Service System can tap federal data, like information from the Social Security Administration, to automatically register young men. The agency is also directed to notify those who have been registered.
Congress has also long debated whether a draft should include both men and women. In 2016, for instance, two Republicans introduced the “Draft America’s Daughters” bill.
The president can’t unilaterally decide to implement a military draft, and “that’s on purpose,” Kuzminski said. Even if President Donald Trump announced a draft without Congress, she asked: “What current American man is going to follow through on a draft order that isn’t legal?”
“Even when it’s legal, we have people who avoid their induction notices. We have the example of Vietnam, where people pushed back on it, and because we see Vietnam as a ‘bad war, poorly executed war,’” she said. “But people pushed back during World War I and World War II as well.”
Why a draft is unlikely
Kuzminski said the “political decision” to institute a draft would likely come after the U.S. has already utilized its active duty force, activated Reserve and National Guard units, and called back the Individual Ready Reserve. All of these options would equate to nearly 3 million troops, she said.
“It’s an unsavory topic to think about if we’ve gone through that many folks,” she said. “And that’s before you’re even considering casualty rates affecting those who are in the conflict.”
But, Kuzminski emphasized that a military draft is “a political decision, not a decision that military leaders make.”
Since a draft is unlikely to be politically popular, Kuzminski said she doubts that a president or members of Congress would institute one, especially in an election year. She speculates that Congress and a sitting president would only risk voters’ wrath “if we had an invasion of the homeland,” she said, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor.And the military already can invoke other forms of compulsory service. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some service members had their military contracts involuntarily extended through a program called a stop-loss. Others were pulled back into active duty from the Individual Ready Reserve, while reservists and National Guard troops saw unprecedented combat deployments.
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