School of War - Ep 150: Katherine Kuzminski on the Draft

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Katherine Kuzminski, Director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at CNAS, joins the show to discuss recruiting and mass mobilization in the event of war. ▪️ Times      •      01:33 Introduction      •      02:08 Why worry about mobilization?     •      03:54 Meeting the threshold      •     06:58 Low yield     •      11:37 A loss of identity     •      15:42 Aging up     •      21:38 The Russian model      •      23:55 Israeli lessons     •      26:38 Working with what we have     •      32:05 Infantry concerns     •      35:05 Women in the draft     •      39:12 Deterrent value     •      41:20 Sustaining industry     •      43:45 An “I” society Back to the Drafting Board Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

Here's a topic you get the impression that no one really wants to think about until the moment is upon us when we all need to think about it. The draft. All but dead since the introduction of the all-volunteer force 50 years ago, its ghost and basic structure remain alive with the selective service system, which male American listeners registered for, remember, as they entered adulthood. What would happen if we needed to turn the draft back on? Let's get into it. 17, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale.

We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We have people who not see buildings. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For maps, videos, and images, follow us on Instagram. And also feel free to follow me on Twitter.

B. McLean. Hi, I'm Erin McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to be joined today by Kate Kisminski, who is the Deputy Director of Studies and Director of the Military Veterans and Society program at the Center for a New American Security. And her research of late has focused on mobilization, and she is the author of a report that came out this summer called Back to the Drafting Board, U.S. draft mobilization capability for modern operational requirements. Kate, thank you so much for joining the show. Thanks for having me. So this is the first episode we've actually done that focused on these issues. And I'm of the view that they're incredibly important for being so out of sight and out of mind for so many people,

I think. And so I commend you for your work and bringing it back into the picture beyond the small group of professionals who actually think about mobilization for their living. Maybe that's actually a good way to start is why in the year 2024, when we are as far into the all-volunteer force as we are and maybe spend a minute saying what that is. Why should anyone be thinking about mobilization? Isn't that kind of crazy? Yeah, and I think that's a fair critique. And certainly our report was not advocating for a draft. And we can get into some of the reasons why culturally we've heard we should bring a draft back and why I think those are wrong. But the United States shifted to an all volunteer force from a mixed force of volunteers and conscripts back in 1973. So the 50th anniversary

was last July. And what that means is that in the last 50 years, we haven't had to test our ability to enforce a draft if we were actually in a situation where we needed one. It certainly came up in conversation among D.C. policy wonks during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But when we think about the types of wars that end up requiring a draft. And Vietnam is a bit of an aberration from that. When we think of World War I and World War II, the peacetime draft during the Cold War era and what that looked like, it really was a belief that the United States needed to be able to mobilize all resources possible in the event of an existential threat. And that's where perhaps the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the debates over the war in Vietnam,

stray a little bit from what we typically think of as what would meet the threshold politically to execute a draft. Talk us through, you know, how the selective service works, you know, if there were, well, maybe actually that's a good, even prior question is what, what is the kind of event that you foresee that would lead to a mobilization and how is it supposed to work? If we pulled the trigger today, it's summer, bad things tend to happen in summer, historically speaking, there was some sort of event. What's the nature of that event? And what would happen? Yeah. So it would need to be a threat that actually posed an existential threat to the United States. And there's vigorous debate over whether or not a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would meet that threshold.

Certainly a invasion of the United States West Coast would be an existential threat that would trigger this kind of response. It requires quite a bit of political capital, which I think is a really good thing. it should be a really difficult decision and politicians should have to truly put their necks on the line to make this decision. It requires collaboration between the president and Congress, and so it would require Congress updating the Military Selective Service Act. It would require sign off by the president as well and be passed into law. At that point, the Selective Service, who runs registration, currently all-mail registration, all men between the ages of 18 and 26 are required to register for selective service. And that even includes non-citizens of the United States, all 18 to 26-year-old men residing in the United States unless they have some sort of exemption are required to register as well.

The selective service then has 193 days to produce the number of service members to the front door of MEPs, at which point they're handed over to the military services. And the rough rule of thumb is about 100,000 individuals in that 500,000 in that 193 days. The selective service themselves as a planning function thinks that they'll need to send notices to about 500,000 individuals to yield that 100,000. I tend to think that that is very optimistic. And again, we have not tested this in the last 51 years that this. this point. And then once the individuals are cleared through maps, they go, they're assigned to their respective services for basic training. The draft boards at the local level get a distribution of how many individuals from that location are going to say the Army or the Air Force, or Army or the

Marine Corps, which are the two services that we would expect to see a bump in conscripted forces. But when we look at the operating environment in a future Pacific contingency, we may actually see that the Navy or the Air Force needs more conscripts joining. When you say you think it's optimistic that you'd yield 100,000 MEPs present bodies, MEPs being, of course, this is the sort of medical processing for military intake. I have fragmented memories of humiliating exams and being forced to duckwalk while poorly clothed from my own military experience. I can tell there's some trauma there.

100,000 to 500,000, that is optimistic in your view, not because 400,000 plus have fled to Canada, presumably, that maybe some have. But why do you fear there will be such a low yield? Yeah. So a couple of things that we see simultaneous to this, the thought of what mobilization might look like in the future, we can take a look at the current challenges in recruiting across the services. And again, a draft is not intended to meet those peacetime requirements. But we see that roughly 23% of Americans are eligible for military service. So, you know, 100,000 out of 500,000 right there is about 20%. And then we look at propensity for service, which has declined precipitously over the last few decades and is now hovering at about 9% of American youth who are interested in military service. So when you look at the

Venn diagram of who's eligible and who has a propensity to serve, that's really low, when you add on a level of compulsory service, there may be more pushback than we saw even in previous generations. Again, we haven't tested this in 50 years. And there are some shifts across American society about the role of the individual versus the role of the nation that I think we may actually see a higher proportion of folks who file for whether it's conscientious subjector status or other exemptions to move from military service to more public. service or support. And then, you know, there's some inherent outdated pieces to how selector service would be implemented. It requires sending a letter in the mail. I think as a culture,

we were better about, you know, updating the post office of our address in previous years than we are now. And that's not how people primarily correspond in in official means anymore. So there could just be delays in getting those notices to individuals. And then, you know, just thinking through exposure to military service is more foreign to most Americans now. And so it may drive more pushback on the political side on whether or not a draft should be implemented. And there may be some pushback or resistance even if it is implemented. And then the last piece that falls on the professionalize all volunteer force, all volunteer force is not prepared to receive a number of conscripts into this professionalized military structure. And it's not something that they train for.

They train to work with other professionals. They don't train to work with someone who's coming through the door who doesn't know how to shoot a weapon who may not even want to be there. Yeah, I have a vivid memory of on several occasions as a young officer being in situations. And it's not like dramatic, like unpleasant training situations, just grueling and not very fun situations in the United States. And challenging whichever group of Marines I was with like, okay, who volunteered to be here? Which whichever one had to raise their hand, which the next thing was basically, okay, well, quit griping then. Like, we're all grown men who made a choice here. And I have perhaps the unpopular.

I'm basically with you or where I take you to be. And you should say more about what your precise position is, which is to say, you know, the all-volunteer force seems. basically to have been and under current circumstances is a good institution. But obviously we should have a functioning mobilization capacity and there are legitimate concerns that we don't, which is sort of what I take your position to be. I'm interested in the people whose position is actually that some sort of national service would be better. And I think it's not my position, but I think there's a case to be made there, I have the perhaps unpopular view that to your point about military service being so alien to so many people, that the end of the draft was probably net good for the military,

you know, for all the, for the reason. I just cited for any sorts of other reasons we could talk about, but probably bad for American society, that the exposure to the relative hardship of even peacetime military service, the inculcation of a sense of duty, a sense of gratitude when you're not having to deal with all the nonsense of DS that just comes up with being part of a big organization like the Army or the Marine Corps or whatever. in the sense of national purpose, you know, like everyone in the 50s, you know, everyone from Brooklyn had met someone from, you know, the middle of nowhere, you know, in eastern Nebraska or something.

Like, no offense to the great state of Nebraska. There was kind of a social cohesion element and a healthy, sorry, that's a good of myself, a healthy attitude towards the military. No one romanticized the military, but also no one demonized the military because it was, everyone just knew. It was just a bunch of people. And all of that is gone. It's just gone.

We have basically the opposite. of all those things. Yeah. I'm sympathetic to it. Yeah. And when the United States was considering moving from this mixed force of conscripts and professional service members, President Nixon called for a commission called the Gates Commission, who really dug into this deeply.

And they came up with answers and responses to all the frustrations that transitioning to an all volunteer force might present. And they actually said, there's a high risk. that you, if you have a professionalized military, you will see this further separation between the military and society. However, the purpose and function of the military is to fight and win the nation's wars. And so that's a risk that we're willing to take. We also see that over five successive decades that that has been the case. And part of that is on society, not knowing their military. And part of that is on the military, you know, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,

I could grocery shop at the commissary, go to religious services on an installation, send my children to school on a military installation, and never have to engage with the public. So there was a separation on both sides. But I think, you know, to the question of national service, I do think that there's a very good argument, and there were certainly the Commission on Military, National, and Public Service that was implemented back in about 20, 17 to 2019. Their final report was released, unfortunately, the week after the world shut down, but had a lot of great recommendations. They had interviewed individuals around the country, helped town halls, had former members of Congress, former defense officials as as commissioners,

and really tried to drive this message that national service was important. A critique that has been levied, though, is that maybe that took on too much, right? So if you're replacing military, service with national service, you still need the military to be able to function in its critical mission of citing and winning the nation's course. But I do think that there's a way to re-engage Americans on both the rights of being an American citizen and the responsibilities, and that can look like service in a number of different ways. I mentioned earlier that there are a number of reasons that you'll see op-eds floating around about why we should re-institute a draft. And I don't agree with some of the arguments there. So one is, you know, we need to bring back a draft because Americans

need to know how much it costs to be an American. And I think there are other ways. I think public service is a good avenue for that as well, because at the end of the day, I want my military to be effective. There's also been a call at times for, you know, we're facing this military recruiting crisis. Let's bring back the draft to fill that gap. And to that, I say, again, we want our professional, all volunteer force to be pulling folks who meet the standards who want to be there and who are willing to commit to something much bigger than themselves. And so I do think that that could present challenges and effectiveness in the future. So yeah, it's a, it is a tricky, a tricky tightrope to navigate when you think about, are there other ways that we can reengage the American population

in what it means to be an American and what we owe to each other as a nation? that might not always look like military service. Yeah. So let's sort of stick within the logic of your research and your plan here. We have a functioning all volunteer force that could be dealt contingencies that it's just not up to. It's not really designed to be up to. So we have to make mobilization work. And it seems like a very commensical position to me.

One of the most interesting, I think, points in your report is your suggestion that the draft should skew older. Should it be implemented for, for example, a China contingent. I want to ask you to speak about that and just, you know, speak more broadly about, you know, what are your assumptions about the nature of conflict today that leads you to that conclusion? Yeah. So if we look at the multiple war games that have been done classified, unclassified, open source by parts of the military, by sink tanks, by FFRDCs across the kind of defense policy space, we see a rate of casualties that will outstrip the old volunteer force in a matter of weeks. And that's something we haven't had to confront since World War II truly. And it's not a pleasant thing to think about,

but it is the job of planners to be thinking about the things we don't want to think about. I think, too, there's been a real shift. And I spend a lot of my time and research emphasis looking at military talent management. How do we get the best? How do we keep the best? How do we match the right person to the right job at the right time. And that's a really great concept for building the military that is going to deter and succeed if deterrence fails. But the reality is that that model does not work if you are taking 10% casualties a day in the opening salvos of a war with a highly advanced military. And so it's also instructive to take a look at what is happening in Russia and Ukraine on both sides, right? The societal impacts and the military effectiveness impacts of

having to figure out how do you mobilize quickly to succeed in conflict. One of the things that is within the current purview of the president, if a draft were enacted, the population that registers for the draft is men between the ages of 18 and 26. And it's correct practice to pull from 20-year-olds at the moment that a draft is enacted. You essentially go through all individuals who turn 20 in that year, and then you move up, and then you move down to the 18-year-olds. There's a certain set of assumptions in that, and that warfare is inherently physical, and that young men's bodies, and I do mean young men's because that is who the draft

of effect, young men's bodies are, you know, less broken and stronger than those on the older end of the spectrum of who's already potentially called up by a draft. But it could be when we look at future conflict that it's highly technical. You know, the use of drone warfare, the use of precision may lead us to want a more educated, more experienced individual. And the president can call for the upper end of those already subject to the draft, so those 24 to 26 year olds, and can set that guidance. Congress and the president can also expand the age range at which individuals are required to compulsory service. And we saw that in part in World War II that we were drafting older individuals.

But the president has a wider purview within who's already up for a draft. And it may make more sense if we are pulling older draftees for more technical experience. perhaps we also want to have more information going into a draft about what skills and experiences they bring to the table or, you know, if it's someone that we know is medically not able to serve, why would we send them a notice in the first place? Perhaps we might want to not consider them in the initial tranche of draft notifications. And so as you point out, we have sort of real world live experiments going on right now. And in Ukraine, my understanding is it's much older. In fact, they're not, they're not conscripting, I don't know actually what the line is here. Is it below 25 or something like that? And that's a recent decrease. So it used to be 27 and a few months back turned to 25. And is it, are they doing that? Why are they doing that? What is there? Yeah. So that's the really interesting thing about looking at nation's conscription policies that tells you something about the different Zal. values, because we also have to balance what do we need at home at the same time as what do we need

in the fight. So when we think about who are the drivers of economic growth in the United States, that is a consideration of why we might not want to conscript older individuals. There's the ability to meet physical standards, but there's also the reality that we have to keep the nation running at a time of war. And then there's, you know, there's pure population demographics and thinking about what is your option to ensure the nation's survival from an evolutionary standpoint. And so what it tells me about the Ukrainian model is that the young, vigorous men are actually a huge part of the economy, and they can't sacrifice the total economy at the same time that they're trying to fight for their survival. So that could be at a root cause of why that skews much older in Ukraine than it does here in the United States.

Is demographic reasoning a part of it at all? That is to say, like, literally population size management, not to get super great. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's also, I do think that that is a piece of it, right? Thinking about, you know, and we see this in a lot of the political science literature about areas where we see a lot of fighting is that sometimes, sometimes it's a way to control a bunch of young men who may have lost their parents if life expectancy isn't very high. So in some countries, the model is that's a way to funnel that energy towards the state's ends. And in other cases, it could be, yeah, thinking about the ability to have families, right, we're more concerned that young men are starting families in older men, though not exclusively. That could have a play role in the Ukrainian model. What about the Russians? How do they go about this?

Yeah. So conscription in Russia is highly controversial. And, you know, conscription when you are on a defensive footing is a very different proposition than conscription when you're on an offensive footing. When you're fighting for your own survival, there's more support, at least in the beginning. And we certainly saw that in the Ukraine model. In Russia, conscripts are not supposed to be fighting across borders without sufficient training. And so there were a number of folks at the beginning of the conflict who were told they were going to a training exercise and ended up crossing into Ukraine. There's also a lot more sensitivity, I think, politically.

And again, I think because they were on the offensive and not on the defensive. There was a social penalty for Putin. And he's doing whatever he can to not have to call up another round of conscript. So looking at how do they recruit? what are the incentives they can use to recruit? Are they recruiting from prisons? Are they recruiting from individuals who otherwise don't have access to health care? Those are real mechanisms that he's had to use.

And pay has been something he's had to use because he does not want to have to do another round of conscription. And then one last comparative example, and then we'll bring them back to the United States. But, you know, these Israelis obviously have long relied on compulsory service for their security needs, but on some level, I mean, it is a defining institution. The IDF is a defining institution for the nation. I mean, to a greater extent that I'm aware of of anywhere else. Maybe there are other places you'll tell me. And it comes with real pros, I think, in terms of social cohesion. It comes with some weird political effects, which we, you know, we can get into. And then, like, interesting battlefield pros and cons. One of the obvious cons you're sort of seeing now as this

conflict since last October goes on and on is that if you have a force, that is really, you know, reserve heavy, you know, conscripts who ultimately end up in the reserves in the longer run, that starts to really hamper your ability to conduct sustained operations. But when you look at Israel as a model, what do you, what do you see that we should learn from in the United States or good or bad? Yeah. And there's a couple of things. And there's some relevance to in Finland, in Sweden, where conscription looks very different than in Israel, but where it's not only the social fabric, it's your upward mobility as a professional after you serve in the military is very much connected and very much valued. And so you build networks that really benefit you in the long run.

And I would say that in the United States Army or military writ large that you do see those networks and effects playing out, particularly for officers more so than prior enlisted. But it is interesting to see, too, that conscription has been controversial in Israel. in recent months, they have had to pull in the ultra-Orthodox community as conscripts who had been exempt from conscription since the country's founding. And so I do think it shows that when there's a truly existential threat, it forces countries to make those tough decisions and think about things. The other unique factor of the universal conscription model in Israel is that where the United States is highly selective and who can serve, we have very specific. specific standards, and a lot of times it's used to keep people out of military service. In Israel,

they have to find a way to integrate every part of society into the military, with the exception of those who are exempt. And so you see things like intel units made up with individuals who are on the autism spectrum because they're using the skills of the individual, whereas in the United States, that could be something that keeps you from serving the military. You know, it's not great, I mean, I don't really know the numbers here, so maybe it is crazy, and you'll tell me if it's crazy. But to me it seems not crazy to think about a scenario where you have a Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan. It fails, but the war goes on. Maybe something simultaneously happens in the Korean Peninsula.

Maybe there's other things that happen across Eurasia. And for whatever reason, things become protracted. We took a lot of casualties up front. We have mobilization, and we start to run into the problem of broad unfitness to serve, whether because of, you know, drug, dependency, obesity, you know, whatever the social ill is. You start, you, you're a year in or whatever, and you start to actually run upon some limits. And so I guess age is one, one way to adjust that. But what, what about, I don't know if it's lowering standards exactly, but maybe it is lowering standards, but also figuring out ways to, to take the material that appears at the threshold of

MEPs and just rethink how you're shaping it. Because you've got to make it work. How do you think about these things. Yeah, yeah. So there's a couple of pieces to that. And I, I'm mindful, you know, at any time there's a reconsideration of current standards and the services and the Department of Defense have really wrestled with this over the last four years as they've faced a recruiting, a challenging recruiting environment. I'm mindful to not use the word lowering standards because sometimes it is doing an evaluation of what is available in your society. the military should be a reflection of society and thinking about how do we get what we need from what we have. I think where there's less risk for the services, and they are, they're doing calculated risk tradeoffs whenever they're considering,

should we allow an individual into the military who has a pattern of marijuana use, even if we make a rule that they cannot do it while they're in uniform, should we reconsider our stance on those. with ADHD who are medicated. And so one area where there's lower risk is to consider what are the conditions that if you develop them in military service, you would receive treatment from a military medical facility, but that bar you from service in the first place because we do have some data. We do have services available, right? So if you were to be diagnosed with ADHD in the military, you could seek treatment at a military health, a military hospital. But if you are coming into military service with that diagnosis, it's much more challenging to make it through the process. There are riskier things.

And this is where, you know, when you think of the Air Force has considered a period of time, if you show up to MEPs and you test positive for marijuana use, you can come back in 60 days and you have to test clean and then you can enter. That's a pilot program and it's new. The question it raises from a commander's perspective is not necessarily about drug use itself, but if you knew that you were going to your MEPs appointment and you chose to break the rule, what does that tell me about your character? And so there is this challenge in military service or in screening for military service on how is this person going to be in my unit? what is the increased risk of any type of behavioral issue that's going to take the commander or the senior NCO's attention away from the mission at hand? And so those are real debates

that are happening right now within the services. Certainly expanding age. You know, another, another area is thinking about, okay, what is the role of women or perhaps in today's society, how do we consider the inclusion of all Americans in the responsibility? and just take the gender question out of it. To be quite honest, when we started this project, I wanted to stay away from the social debates of that topic. But as the research evolved, it became clear not from a equity standpoint, but from the fact that every day and every moment is going to count if we do have to enact a draft.

And there is a good legal underpinning to someone raising, a complaint and the courts actually stopping or placing a hold on the draft while we figure out this question, is it constitutional to have an all-male draft when women have been able to serve in any combat capacity since 2015? And there will be individuals who at that point have standing. So right now there's no man who has legal standing to say that he's materially being affected by registration, but if a conflict were to kick off and the draft were to be enacted and there is a Supreme Court case that has to go through that not only raises questions about the credibility of who has to pay attention to their draft notices, but causes lengthy delays

that are going to impact the battlefield. Yeah, that's a fair point. That's like a coming attraction. It's just destined to happen within the first few days of this occurring. You know, I mean, your knowledge of the law is obviously better than mine on this question. It just strikes me that the core policy issue, and it's really a question of like national character as much as anything, is once we settle the issue legally one way or the other, what are you going to do here? You know, traditionally drafts and conscription, the kinds of scenarios that we're talking about are to fill the ranks of things like the infantry.

Ground combat forces, forces where, you know, training is less than to, you know, be a, you nuclear engineer on a sub or working on the reactor in some fashion. Like you don't, you know, you're going to try to avoid draftees, I think, for those jobs. So you're trying to fill the lower skill, I say this is an infantryman, lower skilled jobs that are physically demanding, et cetera, et cetera. And our female draft, I think, so always say if female draftees are not then required to go to those formations, I think it will still be enormously and maybe appropriately controversial, but less controversial. if you are compelling female draftees to go to the infantry. I mean, that's a whole other level of social dissension, I think. That's right.

And problems. Yeah. And I think that is an absolutely fair critique. Right. So one of the, there was a case that tried to make its way into the Supreme Court back in 2019, that the Supreme Court did not hear because they said this is Congress's problem and Congress is actively waiting on the feedback of this commission. that was run over the past few years.

Really, it's that no member of Congress wants to stick their neck out on anything having to do with the draft. And the Supreme Court doesn't want to stick their neck out either. But the question is not whether or not the legal question for the courts is not whether or not women should have to be in the draft. It's whether or not an all-male draft is constitutional, which is it is a distinction with some difference. And then it will be up to Congress to figure out what will the law require. And again, I think if we're passing this law in 2024, even just taking out the gendered language is probably useful. But I do think that there are also reasonable arguments as to why that might not make sense or from an operational perspective, the difficulties that that may raise. I think there is a piece that is on the services themselves, too, to do a bit more planning about what are those requirements that we're going to be silling.

What does the demand on the infantry look like? What does the demand, you know, women are in field artillery and we have quite a few efforts underway with respect to both precision strike capability, but long-range fires, right? So we could see roles for women in those that are consistent with what is currently in practice. And then thinking through, okay, well, what are the MOS-specific standards that an individual man or woman needs to meet in order to meet a requirement? I think one of the more interesting findings from the Marine Corps integration study that they did back before women were integrated into units was not how few women were qualified for. to meet the standards of, say, infantry, armor, artillery. But the more shocking thing was how many men were currently assigned in those positions simply because they were men who did not meet those standards. And so rethinking what is the actual standard that we're testing for

in order to fill the ranks of different MOSs to ensure success. I'm embarrassed to not know the answer to this question. It's just a sign of how long I've been out of uniform. But across the services right now, or maybe it's just an Army Marine Corps question, are there any women serving in combat arms roles in a compulsory fashion? That is to say, you know, like in the Marine Corps, you come into the base school, you compete for your MOS. Is anyone just assigned infantry or field artillery or whatever who's a woman without raising their hand and saying actively, I want to do that? Because obviously it happens to men. That's right. That's right.

And that they answer to that is no. And we see that specifically in the data with respect to service academies where they're placed. No woman is put in infantry unless she volunteers. And there is some inequity there, right? Either everyone should have the equal look of the draw based on the skills and standards they bring to bear for an MOS or no one should. And that is a fair critique of the current setup. Yeah, these are deep waters.

And, you know, there's the critique that you just outlined, which is sort of men saying, well, gosh, that's unfair. Why am I compelled to do this? you know, there's also all of civilian America and all the parents who may feel, you know, we might criticize them for false consciousness or whatnot, but they may feel differently about their daughters than they do about their sons in certain regard. And a political question about compulsion into combat arms. I keep coming back to the same point, but I don't know if you have any final thoughts on that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is a tough one for me, and I've sat on a number of panels that were in the lead up to the lifting of all combat. restrictions on women, that it would be so much more traumatizing to see a woman killed in combat than a man. And to that, I say, it is traumatic to see your fellow service member killed in combat, regardless of their gender and regardless of how well you knew them. And we see that play out in a lot of the PTSD literature and just in the need for a community. And so I think there's an underestimation of how affected anyone is by losing a family member

or losing someone in their unit. And in some ways, thank goodness, right? That's a burden and a weight that is not easy to carry, nor should it be. But I do hear that argument a lot that it would be more difficult for your daughter to be lost in combat than your son. And I don't buy that argument. I don't know if it would be more difficult that your daughter to be. I don't think that. I certainly don't have that view.

Yeah. I think it's more that you might, you know, in a way that people would be worried and, and feel, you know, have a heavy heart to see their sons conscripted and sent off to war. To know, I just, I just think you might see a different social reaction. I just think you just empirically, you might see parents reacting differently as an empirical reaction to the thought of their, it is not that the losing the one is easier than losing the other. That's not exactly how I would frame it. It's like literally how does the parent in their bones at a level of brainstem react? And I grant, I'm in deep waters here, but it's a suspicion.

Yeah. And it's certainly a political talking point that we've heard quite a bit, even in recent weeks, the debate over adding an amendment or having a new law about women and the draft. It's something that's come up perennially since I think 2016, if not earlier than that. And there's always the talking point of, you know, you're not sending my daughter to works. I think, too, there's deep down, there's probably some evolutionary psychology playing out. I guess that's what I'm driving at. Like there's something happening here in people's brains. times perhaps. Yeah. I think that I think that's fair. So when you were talking about maps and, you know, accommodations for people who are using drugs and all this kind of stuff, the thing that struck me as you were laying outlining this is, my God, how expensive all of this is that we're discussing. There's just mobilization done well, mobilization done poorly. No matter how you cut it, this is unbelievably expensive in the moment and then unbelievably expensive in the long run because you're going to assume obviously care, you know, for all

these veterans. And so obviously it would be better to deter war than to have to actually go ahead and do this. And it strikes me that serious thinking about the kind of stuff like what you're doing, that these kinds of policy issues and then exercises and planning to do them, could then provide some deterrent effect because presumably serious defense analysts in places like China and Russia and wherever pay attention to how we're doing this kinds of thing. And how are we doing, Kate? If you're a Chinese defense analyst, do you look at our thinking about mobilization? You're like, man, those guys are on a hair trigger. They're ready to go.

Yeah. And this is something that we were trying to tease out over the course of this project. And certainly, you know, war itself is what political scientists would call a rare event, even though it feels like there is always a war somewhere. And so sometimes it is difficult to prove the deterrent value, right? We had a standing draft between World War I and World War II. And it certainly didn't prevent war in Europe or in, in, in the, Indo-Pacific. But I do think that there is a lot of value in signaling that we are ready and

capable to succeed in a protracted conflict. If another country shoots first, we are prepared to carry this out in the long haul. And why that matters, particularly in the Indo-Pacific theater, is that all of the open source reporting on Chinese decision-making says that they only want to enter into a conflict that they think they can win fast. and overwhelmingly. And so the more that we can signal that if you pick a fight, it's not going to be fast and we're prepared to carry it out in the long run, that in and of itself can serve as a political deterrent to PRC leadership, that it's not worth picking the fight. I think, you know, there are a lot of areas where the United States can improve, both in the way that it signals

its deterrent value and the underlying problem. processes that would enable us to be able to back that up. So I do think that the DOD and Congress has been paying more attention in recent years. They added a provision that DOD needs to start thinking about mobilization exercises more consistently. There's a working group within OSD that's thinking about this. It's bringing together the different service elements. And so we're on the path, but I think there's even some easy things that the U.S. can think about right now that can add to the deterrent value and or the effectiveness of our capability. So what are the easy things? What should we what should we do? What should we take off the shelf?

Yeah. So I think one thing that we forget, you know, first of all, the number of highly educated defense professionals, even people within the DoD orbit or in Congress who don't realize that the Selective Service is a standalone agency, that it does not report to DOD, and that in fact, it interacts with other parts of government that we don't tend to think about as part of mobilization. FEMA, the Department of Labor has a giant role in mobilization because we have to figure out what is it that we need to sustain an industrial base at the same time that we're executing a war. What is it that we need to maintain society? I think it puts it further up on the White House or the NSC specifically to take it upon themselves to, have mobilization exercises that include all of these facets of government.

Because certainly DOD and the military services are the most affected if a draft is implemented. But they don't have ownership over all the parts of not only whole of government, but whole of society that reside truly at the top. I see. So final question, I suppose, is, you know, this is a bit beyond the scope of your work, but I'm curious to know if you've thought about it at all. But, you know, past, if you look at World War II, for example, the way in which we mobilized was a part of a coherent national strategy to wage war with American society, which is to say, you know, as you know, decisions were made to have only a certain number of infantry divisions. You know, we were going to have fewer ground forces than actually we could have supported out of our population because we wanted to have a workforce at home that could, that could, that could, that could,

work the defense industrial base that could work the sort of reoriented American industry to continue to arm Russia, arm China, et cetera, et cetera, the allies. And, you know, sort of marvel at what they were able to do. If we're talking about scenarios of protraction, we obviously have other problems, defense industrial based problems that are beyond the scope of your work. We don't have the American industry at the same level or scale to reorient towards war-making potential. But, you know, to what extent do you think about that and do those concerns cross your mind? That I say the nature of mobilization when considering the home economy and what might be required in a war with China that would last two years, three years, et cetera.

Yeah, I think there's, and this is something that really has shifted over these last 50 years since we had to think about executing a draft or the last 80 years since we really felt the effects of truly mobilizing society. I do think a lot about some of the broader societal trends and, you know, thinking back even just to COVID, right? Thinking we have state and federal policies that actually identified what are those critical skills, who are the first people who are allowed to get the vaccine, who is allowed to show up in person to keep the United States afloat in the early days when everyone else was sheltered in place. So I do think that there is a need to rethink what is it that we rely on as a society

to take care of ourselves first, and then you add that additional layer of the defense industrial base on top of that. And then you add on the military requirements that you need to fill at the same time. And I think there has been a shift, you know, certainly Robert Putnam of Bowling Alone fame. He has a more recent book called The Upswing that is actually thinking about, you know, how did we go from an I society to a we society and where he would define us. back in a very individualistic era of society. How do we get back a little bit more of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, while also managing to hold vast to those individual rights and freedoms that we so take

seriously here in the United States? And I think it's a debate and a question that we have been wrestling with for, you know, certainly the best part, better part of the last decade, but also that has changed. and shifted in the last 80 years since the end of World War II. Kate Kisminski, author of Back to the Drafting Board, a report from the Center for a New American Security. Really, really interesting conversation. We should talk more about this on the show.

Washington should talk more about this. The time to get serious about this was probably about, I don't know, 10 years ago. So thank you. Thank you for helping us get serious about it. Thank you. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.