The Draft: Inevitable, Avoidable or Preferable?
Co-Sponsored by Washington Monthly
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March 30 , 2005
U.S. troops are stationed abroad in Afghanistan and Iraq with no end in sight. The National Guard and Reserve are missing their recruiting targets. If the U.S. military continues to be deployed at its current pace, the all-volunteer force will break down and some kind of conscription will become necessary. What can be done to avoid this fate? Or is mandatory national service with a military option actually the answer? The Washington Monthly has recently published an article titled “The Case for the Draft,” arguing that the time when we could rely on an all-volunteer force has come to an end.
Video & Transcript
• Mark Shields: Video
• Phillip Carter: Video
• Larry Korb: Video
• Panel Discussion: Video
• Q&A Session: Video
• Transcript: Full text (PDF)
Note: All video provided in QuickTime (MPEG-4) format.
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| Panelists |
 Phillip Carter is a former Army Captain who regularly writes on legal and military affairs for The Washington Monthly and Slate.com. His articles have also appeared in the NY Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Legal Affairs magazine, and CNN.com; he has also appeared as a guest on MSNBC, the Fox News Channel, and National Public Radio. Phillip currently practices law in Los Angeles with McKenna Long & Aldridge, where he is a member of the government contracts and international law practice groups. |
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 Lawrence J. Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Senior Adviser to the Center for Defense Information. Prior to joining the Center, he was a Senior Fellow and Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. From July 1998 to October 2002, he was Council Vice President, Director of Studies, and holder of the Maurice Greenberg Chair. Prior to joining the Council, Mr. Korb served as Director of the Center for Public Policy Education and Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, Dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, and Vice President of Corporate Operations at the Raytheon Company. Mr. Korb served as Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics) from 1981 through 1985. In that position, he administered about 70 percent of the Defense budget. For his service in that position, he was awarded the Department of Defense’s medal for Distinguished Public Service. Mr. Korb served on active duty for four years as Naval Flight Officer, and retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of Captain. |
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 Mark Shields is a nationally known columnist and commentator with unmatched credentials as an analyst of the U.S. political system. He can be seen every Saturday night as the moderator of CNN’s The Capital Gang, alongside Robert Novak, Al Hunt, Kate O’Beirne and Margaret Carlson. Mark Shields began writing his column on national politics for The Washington Post in 1979. The column is now distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate. In 1978, the political analysis team of Mark Shields and David Gergen became a regular feature of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. The 1989 Political Almanac named Shields and Gergen the “best television pundits of the presidential election year.” From 1993 to the Fall of 2001, the analysis team of Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot appeared together on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, seen every Friday and during primaries, national conventions and elections. Shields now shares that weekly feature with David Brooks, Senior Editor of The New York Times. Shields is a native of Weymouth, Massachusetts. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame and an honorable discharge from the United States Marine Corps. He has lived and worked in Washington, D.C. since 1984. |
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