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Every day Russia threatens to retaliate against NATO for supplying Ukraine.
China has all but cut off diplomatic ties with the US over Taiwan, and its military
has surrounded the island multiple times for military drills.
The world seems to be teetering closer than ever to a third world war, but what if it
really happened?
Could you be drafted to fight in this future conflict?
First, what is the draft and are you even eligible for one?
For most of human history militaries were staffed by part-time soldiers, typically peasants
who were drafted into service for fighting in between the planting and harvesting seasons.
This was by design, and most war was limited to this time because without farm workers
to plant and harvest crops a nation would starve.
At the very least its economy would suffer greatly, and the expansion of war into a year-round
affair didn't really happen until political states grew wealthy enough to be able to afford
the offsetting of this cost via importing food from other places.
Even then, if you had a very specific and valuable specialization such as blacksmithing,
you would almost certainly not be drafted except in extreme emergency- blacksmiths and
other specializations were too rare and valuable to the state to be worth either risking on
the front lines or having their work disrupted on a months or years-long campaign.
Even as nations became economically large enough to offset the cost of losing a significant
amount of their workforce, most warriors were still draftees rather than professional soldiers.
This was due to the sheer cost of training and equipping a full-time force.
We tend to think of ancient economies in terms similar to our own, but the truth is that
the wealth of even the greatest ancient empires paled in comparison to that of a modest nation
today.
Ancient Rome, probably one of the richest empires in the ancient world, only had a GDP
per capita of about $570 modern dollars.
Today Burundi is the world's poorest nation, and it still has a GDP per capita of $1,711,
making the average Burundian three times wealthier than the average Roman.
What that meant was that for ancient empires, maintaining a professional, volunteer force
was a costly affair- and many simply couldn't afford it.
Rome itself could only afford to abandon conscription during the Imperial period, when the vast
majority of its forces were professional volunteers serving for as many as 40 years.
Not only was the cost of paying, training, and equipping a soldier high, but for many
empires removing thousands or tens of thousands of military age men from the economy permanently
was simply impossible.
After all, each soldier was another member of society that wouldn’t contribute to the
economy.
Instead, armies resorted largely to conscription in preparation for and during war, and the
hiring of mercenaries which had a much higher up-front cost but were still cheaper than
raising an army from scratch.
Mercenaries were for most of human history the bulwark of many armies, and it wasn't
until the world entered the Westphalian nation-state age that mercenaries began to go out of style,
being replaced by full-time professional armies funded and maintained by the state.
Today most nations have adopted the model of a professional military, though many such
as Russia still maintain conscription to make up a significant amount of their military
force.
Even nations such as the United States of America, which has a fully volunteer military,
are fully prepared to institute a draft in case of national emergency.
Today, the United States maintains the Selective Service System, an independent agency tasked
with sorting out the logistics of enacting a national draft.
The SSS requires all male US citizens and immigrant non-citizens between the ages of
18 and 25 to be registered within thirty days of their 18th birthday.
For the next seven years, those registered must also notify the SSS of any changes to
their public record, such as a change of address.
The agency was established by the selective service act of 1917 by President Woodrow Wilson
after the US Army failed to meet its target of expanding its forces to 1 million men after
the declaration of war on Germany by the US.
Now the President had the power to conscript men between the ages of 21 to 30 for a period
of twelve months, and selectees were placed in one of five classifications.
Men in Class 1 were the first to be drafted, and would typically consist of healthy, bachelor
men.
Men in lower classes would be drafted last, and deferments existed for medical conditions
and especially for men who were fathers or husbands.
A year later the age limit was increased to 45 as the war dragged on, and the draft would
finally be ended in 1920, a few years after Germany's surrender.
There's a common myth that the US was caught completely unprepared for the Second World
War, but this is far from true.
In fact, despite having a strong isolationist streak, the United States was preparing for
the eventuality that it would be once more dragged into Europe's war, and thus the selective
Training and Service Act of 1940 became the first peacetime conscription in US history.
The act required all men of ages between 18 and 64 to register with the Selective Service,
and originally it conscripted all men of ages between 21 to 35 for a service of at least
12 months- with some exemptions of course.
As the war in Europe intensified, and Japan became increasingly antagonistic, the service
period was extended to 18 months and the age bracket was increased to 18 through 37.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the service length of the draft was increased
to last as long as the war lasted, plus an additional six months in the reserves.
This draft would be noticeable however for raising the issue of drafting women for the
first time in US history.
In 1945 President Roosevelt requested that the draft be expanded to include the drafting
of female nurses, as there was a critical shortage at the time.
This debate soon spread to the matter of drafting all women, period, though it soon ended in
the House of Representatives.
Instead, a modified bill drafting only female nurses was passed by the House but defeated
in the Senate.
The attention brought to the issue however generated a surge of volunteers, helping fill
a critical shortage.
The modern Selective Service Act has its origins in 1948, and would create a permanent national
system to enable the rapid mobilization of the US for war.
All men 18 years and older had to register with the Selective Service, and all men between
ages of 18 to 25 were eligible to be drafted for a minimum requirement of 21 months.
This would be followed by 12 consecutive months of active service or 36 consecutive months
of service in the reserves, with a maximum service amount of five years.
However, due to deep budgetary cuts to the US military after World War 2, only 100,000
men were conscripted in 1948, but in 1950 with the launch of the Korean War the draft
was once more instituted.
The Korean War expanded active-duty service time from 21 months to 24 months, and set
the minimum amount of military service at eight instead of five years.
Students going to college or in a full-time training program could request an exemption,
and these were more likely to be given to those studying economic or war-industry critical
fields such as engineering.
There was an attempt to include a Universal Military Training clause which would have
made all men obligated to perform 12 months of military service and training, similar
to how many European militaries operate even today, but the clause was never passed.
During the Vietnam War, as it looked more and more probable the conflict would expand
into one against the Soviet Union, the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 expanded the
age of conscription to the ages of 18 to 55.
President John F. Kennedy however signed Executive Order 11119, which granted an exemption from
the draft for married men between the ages of 19 and 26.
However, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, did away with the exemption for married men
who had no children.
Only married men with children or other dependents, or men married before the executive order
went into effect remained exempt.
President Ronald Reagan would finally revoke both executive orders in 1986.
On 1969, President Richard Nixon tried to address the growing disapproval of the draft
by switching to a lottery based selection system.
The first draft lottery was held on the first of December, 1969, for all registrants born
between January 1944 and December 1950.
Two more lotteries would be held, the second on July 1st, 1970, and the third on August
5th, 1971.
This would also be the year that the Military Selective Service Act was amended to more
closely resemble our modern system, with registration being compulsory for all men within thirty
days of their 18th birthday.
The new act would continue to classify registrants into different categories.
Those registered 1-A were eligible for general military service.
1-AO would be conscientious objectors who for ethical or religious reasons were only
available for non-combatant military service, such as medics and logistics.
1-O classified conscientious objectors eligible for alternate community service, and not for
service directly in a war zone itself.
With a stronger economy and larger population pool, deferments for students were ended altogether,
except for divinity students who received a 2-D selective service classification.
Men who had completed their military service and thus not eligible to be redrafted were
classified as 4-A.
In 1975 President Gerald R. Ford, who's own son had failed to register for the draft,
formally ended the compulsory registration for men between the ages of 18-25.
However, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter retroactively re-established
the selective service requirement for all male citizens aged 18-26.
In the modern age, attempts to dismantle the selective service system in 2016 failed to
pass the US House of Representatives.
Later that year a similar bill would also fail to gain traction in the US Senate.
However, the issue of drafting women was raised by the House Armed Services Committee, who
voted to add an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year
2017 that would extend the authority for draft registration to women.
The Senate Armed Services Committee also voted to add a similar provision- had either passed
it would have granted the president the authority, but not the requirement, to order young women
to also register for the Selective Service System.
In their place, a provision was enacted into law in December of 2016 that set up a commission
to study and make recommendations on the drafting, draft registration, general registration,
and the streamlining of procedures to include women with selective skills such as medical,
dental, nursing, language skills, cyber skills, and STEM skills for which the nation had a
critical need for.
The commission would also include recommendations on the drafting of individuals to critically
needed fields without regard to age, potentially removing the cap on how old one could be and
still be drafted.
What we are left with today is a system where all men between the ages of 18 and 25 must
register for the Selective Service System within thirty days of their 18th birthday.
This also includes certain categories of non-US citizens, such as permanent residents, refugees,
asylum seekers, and illegal immigrants.
Previous options to indicate that one is a conscientious objector no longer exist, but
individuals can instead make the claim upon being actually drafted.
However, even though women are not currently eligible for a national draft, it’s almost
certain that an amendment would quickly be passed in wartime to include the drafting
of women.
This is largely because while women are still only allowed in a handful of combat arms fields,
modern war has become a high-tech affair, and millions of well-qualified women with
technical skills would be required to wage a modern conflict against a near-peer opponent
such as Russia or China.
So, would you be drafted to fight in World War III?
The odds are you will, though it very much depends on the nature of the conflict.
Currently, the only realistic conflict which could be 'termed' World War III would be one
involving the United States and its allies against China and Russia.
However, the world is not as it was in the 1940s, and even such a conflict would not
truly be global.
For starters, Russia lacks the capability to prosecute a war far from its own borders.
After taking staggering losses in Ukraine, the nation simply doesn't have the hardware
to conduct a war deeper into Europe.
The key here is hardware however, as the nation still has vast amounts of military age manpower
it could call upon- yet facing NATO's armies on foot and without combat vehicles would
be an act of national suicide, and this is where Russia's losses hurt the most.
Manpower losses are easily replaced for a nation as large as Russia, but modern and
expensive equipment is much more difficult to replace.
Especially when your nation is under severe sanctions.
As it stands, sanctions against Russia will make it all but impossible for it to fully
replenish its combat losses of hardware with modern equivalents, though the nation is using
its intelligence agencies to set up shell companies in an attempt to buy badly needed
and sanctioned high tech components such as microchips.
With a resurgence in European defense spending, and Russia stuck in a quagmire consuming weapons
and equipment at an alarming rate, it's likely that NATO's armies can defeat Russia on the
battlefield without calling for a general draft- at least for its western members.
Members on the eastern front, specially those bordering Russia, may need to call upon a
draft to quickly bolster their numbers before western NATO troops can arrive in force.
China's military is in a much better shape to fight a large war- however, a conflict
with China is also extremely unlikely to require a full draft in the conventional sense.
That's because war with China will be an affair carried out on the sea and in the air, with
very little if any action by the ground forces of the US and its allies.
The greatest land campaign that might be waged by US and allies would be a liberation of
Taiwan, but even this would only take place after the Chinese navy and air force has been
largely destroyed, leaving Chinese forces in Taiwan at the mercy of allied air power.
It's likely that current allied ground forces are sufficient for the task, especially as
the Chinese would be facing millions of Taiwanese draftees already.
With a war limited to the air and sea, a general draft is almost certainly unlikely in case
of war with China.
Since China can do little to threaten the US mainland, a war would be waged on its own
backyard, and with US forces easily cutting the nation off from badly needed oil imports
by sea, and destroying the Kamchatka oil pipeline from Russia through cruise missile strikes,
China would be unable to prosecute a large scale war for very long before its economy
completely collapsed.
The truth is that the United States does not have a rival anywhere in the world that can
generate the amount of combat power it can, and no force exists today that can wage a
war against the NATO alliance.
This is nothing like the strategic picture of the 1910s and 1930s, when the world was
filled with rival powers of nearly equal strength.
What is likely however is a national service draft modified to bring individuals into badly
needed high tech manufacturing sectors.
As the first large scale modern war, the Ukrainian war has shown the West how frighteningly fast
reserves of smart weapon systems are used up.
If the US was to wage a high intensity conflict against China and Russia simultaneously, stockpiles
of smart weapons might only last a matter of months, necessitating a massive rearmament
effort that the US is currently very unprepared for.
If combat losses then extend to weapon systems themselves, the US is in an even worse position
to replenish said losses given how very small its defense manufacturing capability has become
in recent decades.
Simply put, the United States is not in a position at the moment to replenish high rate
losses in advanced weapon systems such as submarines, aircraft, and Abrams tanks.
Individuals with the needed skills would almost certainly be drafted to expand this manufacturing
capability, and their service would extend even after the war is over as the US quickly
attempts to re-arm itself.
In fact, by the time that defense manufacturing was expanded to meet the rate of combat attrition,
it's almost certain that the war would be over anyways- though it would be critical
to quickly rearm and prevent another state from taking advantage of current US weakness
to launch a new war elsewhere.
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