Broken Contract: The Limits of the All-Volunteer Army

One of the lessons of Iraq is that our nation’s All-Volunteer Army (AVA) has suffered significant long-term damage waging a long war it was not designed to fight.

When the Nixon administration ended the draft and switched to the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973, the service most affected was the Army. For all practical purposes, in the period of conscription that lasted from 1948 to 1973, the Army was the only service that had to rely on the draft to fulfill its manpower needs. (The Marines had to draft small numbers in the waning years of Vietnam and the Navy took in conscripts briefly in the mid 1950s.)

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This article was originally published in American Security Project.