The Future of Conscription: Some Comparative Reflections
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Future of Conscription: Some Comparative Reflections James J. Sheehan Abstract: This essay provides a historical and comparative perspective on contemporary American mili- tary institutions. It focuses on the origins, evolution, and eventual disappearance of conscription in West- ern Europe. By the 1970s, Europeans had developed civilian states in which the military’s traditional role Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/3/112/1829938/daed_a_00102.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 steadily diminished; the formal abolition of conscription after 1989 was the ½nal step in a long, largely silent revolution. A brief survey of military institutions outside of Europe suggests why mass conscript armies will remain politically, culturally, and militarily signi½cant in many parts of the world. Seen in a global context, the American experience appears to combine aspects of Western European civilian states with the willingness and ability to project military power. [Conscription] is always a signi½cant index of the society where it is found; to view it solely as a method of conducting war is to see very little of it. –Victor Kiernan1 When Alexis de Tocqueville listed the advan- tages of democracy in America that came “from the peculiar and accidental situation in which Providence has placed the Americans,” he had no doubts about which was most important. Ameri- cans, he wrote, “have no neighbors, and conse- quently they have no great wars. nor great armies, nor great generals.”2 Shielded from potential ag- JAMES J. SHEEHAN, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1992, gressors by its two great ocean glacis, the United is the Dickason Professor in the States was, for much of its history, able to avoid Humanities and Professor of building those mass armies on which European Modern European History, Emeri- states lavished so much energy and resources. tus, at Stanford University. His When, during the Civil War and World War I, great publications include Where Have armies were built, they were dismantled as soon as All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transfor- the war was over. We should not underestimate the mation of Modern Europe (2008), Museums in the German Art World reluctance with which Americans abandoned this from the End of the Old Regime to the tradition: the Selective Service Act of 1940 was Rise of Modernism (2000), and Ger- renewed a year later with a one-vote majority in the man History, 1770–1886 (1989). House of Representatives and included a prohibi- © 2011 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences 112 tion on sending draftees out of the West- tence, of the nation might be at stake. James J. ern Hemisphere. The abolition of the Among the great powers, only Britain did Sheehan draft and the creation of an all-volunteer not adopt conscription, relying instead army in 1973 were in response to the on naval power and a small professional immediate crisis of Vietnam, but these army. Outside of Europe, Japan was the actions also represented a return to ½rst non-Western state to adopt con- deeply rooted traditions in American scription, based on a careful study of the political culture. Prussian model. In 1873, as part of a larg- In the 1830s, as Tocqueville was writing er program of political and social mod- his great book on American democracy, ernization, Japan introduced compulsory European states were in the process of military service, including three years on creating new kinds of armies, founded on active duty and four in the reserves. From Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/3/112/1829938/daed_a_00102.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 e some form of conscription. The term then on, the army became the key instru- y itself ½rst appeared in a French law of ment in Japan’s initially successful but t 1798 that called for compulsory military ultimately doomed attempt to be a great service for all young men between twen- power. In the twentieth century, govern- ty and twenty-½ve. The system evolved in ments throughout the world imported the nineteenth century, ½rst in Prussia the idea of conscript armies, which, like and then throughout Europe. The theory so many other European institutions, and practice of conscription were insepa- seemed to be an essential part of what it rable from the larger ideals and major meant to be a modern state.4 institutions of the modern state. First, conscription is essentially democratic Although the creation of mass armies because every male (in theory, although was an essential function of European rarely in practice) is liable to be called on states, their uses were limited. Through- to ½ght. Military service is linked to citi- out the nineteenth and early twentieth zenship, that complex blend of rights and centuries, governments were unwilling obligations that binds people to their to dispatch their citizen-soldiers to ½ght state. The citizen army, therefore, is not “small wars” of colonial conquest or simply a military institution, but also a paci½cation. “Conscripts,” the German way of expressing and acquiring those statesman Otto von Bismarck once re- patriotic commitments essential for the marked, “cannot be sent to the tropics.” nation’s survival. Second, conscription Like Britain, whose army was constantly requires the administrative capabilities deployed in defense of its empire, every and material resources that states did not colonial power left these overseas battles possess until the modern era. For the sys- to professionals or, whenever possible, to tem to work, governments had to be able native forces recruited from local popula- to identify, select, assemble, train, equip, tions but usually commanded by Euro- and deploy a signi½cant percentage of pean of½cers.5 their male population, retaining some of Yet conscripts fought the two world them on active duty for several years with wars of the twentieth century and, the rest on reserve status for several despite the horrendous losses suffered by more.3 their citizen armies between 1914 and In the nineteenth century, European 1918 and again between 1939 and 1945, states developed conscript armies to pre- every European state either retained or pare for massive territorial conflicts in restored conscription after World War II. which the fate, perhaps even the exis- Britain, which had only belatedly and 140 (3) Summer 2011 113 The reluctantly introduced a draft in both amount of lethal hardware in history. Future of world wars, preserved national service Nevertheless, to more and more Euro- Conscription until 1960. Perhaps even more remark- peans, the possibility of a continental ably, Nazi Germany’s three postwar suc- land war seemed increasingly remote. cessor states–West and East Germany The sort of limited war that had been and the Austrian Republic–eventually fought in Korea and was still going on in reintroduced conscription. On both sides Vietnam hardly seemed possible in the of the Iron Curtain, therefore, the mem- only place in the world where the super- bers of nato and the Warsaw Pact pre- powers directly confronted one another. pared mass armies in anticipation of a The risk of escalation to nuclear catastro- new land war between East and West. At phe was simply too high.6 the same time, Western European states These changing assessments of the mil- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/3/112/1829938/daed_a_00102.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 all sent conscripts in a succession of ½nal, itary situation are clearly reflected in futile efforts to defend their overseas pos- public opinion polls: when asked what sessions. Of the 135,000 troops dis- they wanted their governments to do, patched to the Dutch East Indies in 1945, Europeans consistently stressed domes- two-thirds were draftees; conscripts also tic issues–a stable currency, education, represented a signi½cant percentage of health care, retirement bene½ts, law and the French army stationed in Algeria in order–and rarely mentioned national 1961. Political opposition engendered by defense or effective military institutions. the loss of citizen-soldiers in defense of These polls do not suggest that Euro- colonial rule was one reason why govern- peans no longer cared about being con- ments were forced to abandon those quered; they simply didn’t think that it campaigns–as well as, eventually, their was going to happen.7 empires. Not accidentally, Portugal, the The end of imperial wars and the wan- least democratic of the colonial powers, ing salience of security concerns pro- was also the last to surrender its overseas duced a silent revolution in European possessions. politics, a revolution that can be mea- By the end of the 1960s, the security sured in budgets, where defense spend- environment in Europe had begun to ing stagnated, in popular attitudes to- change. Except for Portugal’s struggles in ward the military, and in the symbols and Africa, the colonial powers had already ceremonies of public life. The army, once liquidated their imperial enterprises, regarded as essential for both national some of them centuries old, and had defense and national identity, moved to done so with remarkable speed and rela- the margins of most people’s conscious- tively little political resistance. Equally ness. “Security” ceased to denote issues important, the Cold War order imposed of national defense and came to be iden- by the two superpowers essentially ti½ed with individual welfare. removed the danger of conventional war This revolution in Europeans’ views between European states; in the West, of security gradually–and once again, this new state of affairs made possible silently–transformed their conscript the growing cooperation of national armies. Every Continental country re- economies and rising aspirations for tained conscription until the 1990s.