Fraught with profound questions about the obligations of citizenship, conscription has been a controversial issue at crucial moments in the American past. During the Vietnam War, the draft was almost as much an object of protest as the conflict itself. Then, a quarter-century ago, conscription ceased. Our author takes a look back.
Twenty-five years ago, the draft—an institution that had turned white-hot with controversy as it sucked Americans into an unpopular war—came to an end. President Richard M. Nixon, citing America’s "continuing commitment to the maximum freedom for the individual," had announced in 1970 his intention to end it. Three years later, he made good on that promise: draft calls fell to zero, and stayed there. Acting in the waning moments of a war that had bitterly divided the country, the president had seemingly bowed to the will of the people. He had even claimed that his decision to end conscription would "demonstrate to the world the responsiveness of republican government." It did nothing of the kind. Matching the temper of the times, the president’s motives for reverting to an all-volunteer military were devious and cynical. For Nixon, terminating the draft had little to do with national security, still less with democratic politics. It was merely a matter of tactics. By lifting from student protesters the threat of being compelled to fight in a war they hated, he hoped to bring quiet to American campuses and thus gain more time to extricate the United States from Vietnam with a modicum of national dignity.
The results of the maneuver were mixed. The antiwar movement did collapse soon thereafter. "It was as if someone had flicked a light switch," observed the acerbic Chicago columnist Mike Royko. "Presto, the throbbing social conscience that had spread across America went limp." Without the threat of involuntary military service, said Royko, "about 99.9 percent of those who had sobbed over napalm, Christmas bombings and man’s inhumanity to man suddenly began looking for jobs on Wall Street." Yet Nixon’s hopes for "peace with honor" in Vietnam would go unfulfilled, foundering on the shoals of Watergate.