It has become too easy for U.S. presidents to use military force overseas. Since 1973, the commander-in-chief has been able to deploy troops abroad without calling young men and women up through the draft. Presidents have relied on military technology, air power, and professional soldiers to project force while much of the electorate remains insulated from consequences of these decisions, including fears about how such decisions might affect members of their own families.
When President Donald Trump involved the United States in a major, protracted conflict in Iran, he could be relatively confident that the issue would not become a dominant force among voters. Although the decision generated controversy and division, including among Republicans who still adhered to the “America First” agenda, the consequences were unlikely to be front and center for most U.S. families. Few would have to contemplate the risk of air operations escalating into a large-scale ground war involving their own children, other than those who had signed up to serve. The absence of a draft has in effect created a firewall between U.S. military actions abroad and the daily lives of most Americans.
It has become too easy for U.S. presidents to use military force overseas. Since 1973, the commander-in-chief has been able to deploy troops abroad without calling young men and women up through the draft. Presidents have relied on military technology, air power, and professional soldiers to project force while much of the electorate remains insulated from consequences of these decisions, including fears about how such decisions might affect members of their own families.
When President Donald Trump involved the United States in a major, protracted conflict in Iran, he could be relatively confident that the issue would not become a dominant force among voters. Although the decision generated controversy and division, including among Republicans who still adhered to the “America First” agenda, the consequences were unlikely to be front and center for most U.S. families. Few would have to contemplate the risk of air operations escalating into a large-scale ground war involving their own children, other than those who had signed up to serve. The absence of a draft has in effect created a firewall between U.S. military actions abroad and the daily lives of most Americans.
The United States did not maintain a permanent draft for most of its history. Until Congress prepared for war against Japan and Germany in 1940, the nation relied on temporary wartime conscription, volunteer enlistment, and state militias to staff its combat forces. Public skepticism toward a standing draft reflected a broader aversion to a strong federal government. Geographic isolation, with the country protected by oceans on both sides, further reduced pressure on elected officials to sustain constant wartime footing. The result was that even after the Civil War and World War I, the country abandoned mandatory selective service once conflict ended.
Global war in Asia and Europe ultimately shifted public opinion. During the 1940 election, both President Franklin Roosevelt and his opponent, Republican Wendell Willkie, recognized that a peacetime military draft would likely be necessary, yet each understood the significant political risks of supporting the Selective Training and Service Act that had been proposed by New York Rep. James Wadsworth and Nebraska Sen. Edward Burke. Opposition to the legislation was intense. Religious leaders condemned it on moral grounds; unions feared it would be used as a cudgel against organized labor; progressives worried about a repeat of World War I, when then-President Woodrow Wilson’s administration used wartime conditions to suppress political dissent; and isolationists were convinced that a draft would guarantee permanent entanglements overseas.
After France surrendered to Germany in June 1940, public opinion began to shift, and Roosevelt privately concluded that a draft was essential. In August, he finally announced his support. Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act, and Roosevelt signed it into law on Sept. 16. The legislation required 21-year-old men to register with local draft boards for 12-month tours of duty and 10 years in the reserves, while setting up a national draft system. In 1941, Congress extended the length of military service and increased the number of men who could be drafted. Although efforts emerged after World War II to dismantle or replace it with a system of universal military training, conscription remained in place, almost uninterrupted (the system was temporarily allowed to expire in 1947), for decades. The range of eligible ages later expanded as well.
During the second half of the 1960s, the draft system came under intense fire. For many Americans, conscription had become inseparable from the disastrous and increasingly controversial war in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam War eroded the support that had sustained the draft since 1940. Each time that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told the nation that there would be a new draft call, the public was reminded of the direct human costs of President Lyndon Johnson’s policies. As Johnson bluntly told Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler, McNamara’s announcements “[get] every goddam father in the country upset, and every mother and every wife.” Even McNamara privately recognized the growing anger in the electorate and the deepening inequality in who was being sent to serve.
As young Americans began burning their draft cards, criticism of conscription intensified. Many argued that the government had no right to force young men into what they saw as a deadly and unnecessary war, while others highlighted the stark inequities of the system: Wealthier families often secured deferments for their sons, opportunities largely unavailable working class and poor Americans. The Selective Service’s structure comprised more than 4,000 local boards, which meant that there were no universal standards. A man’s classification could vary dramatically depending on where he lived.
One of the most famous acts of draft resistance occurred in April 1967, when the heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, who had changed his name from Cassius Clay after joining the Nation of Islam, refused to sign up. “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?” he asked. Ali applied for conscientious objector status but was convicted, sentenced to five years in prison, and fined $10,000. Although the Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971, Ali was barred from boxing throughout the appeals process.
While Johnson signed legislation in 1967 that authorized the president to propose national draft standards, local boards retained the discretion to ignore those guidelines. Johnson backed away from proposals that would have reduced the number of graduate and undergraduate deferments—and the final bill increased undergraduate deferments instead.
The president who ultimately ended the draft was Republican Richard Nixon, who defeated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 after promising, without specifics, to bring the war to a close. Though far from a dove, Nixon understood how deeply unpopular the conflict had become and recognized that unless he eased the political pressure surrounding Vietnam, his administration would be mired in the same problems that consumed Johnson. Over 290,000 men were drafted in 1968. Nixon believed that the anti-war movement represented a vocal minority and that the “silent majority” opposed the protests, but he still grasped the magnitude of the political challenge the war posed. Through his policy of “Vietnamization,” the administration began withdrawing U.S. troops and shifting the burden of combat to South Vietnamese forces.
Nixon began signaling his willingness to eventually end the draft in 1969, announcing that he would allow the law to expire in 1973. He aimed to transition to an all-volunteer force. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, the administration’s point person on the issue, spoke of gradually reducing draft calls to lessen political resistance to ending the system. During the first year of the presidency, Nixon signed legislation establishing a more robust national lottery system and randomizing the order in which men were called. He also replaced Lewis Hershey, the controversial director of the Selective Service System, with former university president Curtis Tarr, who pursued administrative reforms. Two years later, Nixon eliminated student deferments. “For eight years,” he told Republicans, “Democrats talked about draft reform; we have done something about draft reform.”
To defend his decision, Nixon drew on the arguments of a group of conservative economists who claimed that the draft was inefficient. Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago likened conscription to an unequal tax imposed on men unable to earn in the labor market, and he argued that the system bred resentment with the military. Martin Anderson, one of Nixon’s top advisors, contended that the draft produced an inferior fighting force. These economic arguments were useful, but the most important political consideration was Nixon’s belief that ending the draft would undercut the energy of the left. “Ending the draft gives us breathing space in Vietnam,” Nixon said.
Additionally, a study led by former Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates Jr. outlined the advantages of an all-volunteer force. The Gates commission recommended in February 1970 that the nation adopt an all-volunteer military and estimated the additional cost at roughly $3 to 4 billion per year.
Despite widespread opposition to the draft, moving toward new system was far from easy. Senators across the political spectrum—from southern conservatives to liberal Democrats like Sen. Ted Kennedy—argued that there was civic value in requiring all Americans to devote time to public service, a practice common in many other countries. Military leaders worried they would not have enough people to fight a war that was still raging, and the National Guard and Reserves feared their ranks would shrink without a draft feeding into them. Yet even many senior officers recognized that the military’s public image had been badly damaged and that bold reform was necessary to restore confidence in the institution.
On Capitol Hill, a complicated coalition of liberal Democrats and Republicans joined with conservatives (including Sen. Barry Goldwater) to support the president. They voted to extend the Selective Service Act with the intention to allowing it to expire two years later. The delay gave Nixon political cover: In the 1972 campaign, he attacked Democratic opponents of the draft as weak on defense, even though he was preparing to dismantle the system himself. Publicly, Nixon defended the draft; privately, he moved steadily in the opposite direction. His gradual reduction of draft calls and phased troop withdrawals allowed him to play both sides of the debate.
Afte Nixon defeated Sen. George McGovern in 1972 by a landslide, winning 520 electoral votes and over 60 percent of the popular vote, he was freed from the political constraints that had slowed down the final transition away from conscription. On Jan. 27, the same day leaders signed an agreement ending the war in Vietnam, Laird declared an immediate end of the draft. The system enacted in 1940 was effectively finished. On June 30, 1973, Congress allowed the draft law to quietly expire. With little debate, the conscription system of the World War II era came to an end.
There were critics of the decision. Some newspaper editorial boards dismissed the move as driven by political consideration. Joseph Califano, one of Johnson’s top advisors, argued that an all-volunteer army would “write into law the concept of one man’s money for another man’s blood.”
But the criticism was outweighed by the broad public support. After years of Vietnam and social upheaval, few Americans were willing to defend a system widely seen as broken—and implicated in the deadly quagmire that consumed a generation. While President Jimmy Carter reinstated a requirement in 1980 that young men had to register with the Selective Service System, the draft remained in history books.
Since the draft ended, presidents have worked to build a strong and robust professional army. After a decade of lower budgets, the Reagan administration expanded resources and conducted a public relations campaign to revitalize the image of military service.
Without a draft, the political dynamics of warfare changed. Presidents no longer faced the same immediate, personal connection that a majority of U.S. families once felt when the nation went to war. The absence of compulsory service has given presidents a freer hand to make decisions that might otherwise provoke a major electoral backlash, since military operations no longer touch the daily lives of most families—either those with children sent into combat or those that fear that possibility.