Book Review: Rough draft: Cold War military manpower policy and the origins of Vietnam-era draft resistance by Rutenberg, A. J.

Abstract

A cottage industry of media pundits, business executives, retired military officers, ex-bureaucrats, and former politicians has emerged over the past decade, harkening back to the mid-20th century searching for lessons in civility borne of national service and shared sacrifice. Inspired by this sense of public nostalgia and bygone call to service, the 114th Congress (2015-2017) chartered a blue-ribbon commission to "review the military selective service process" and public service writ-large (Benton, 2019, p. 16). While the draft ended nearly 50 years ago, the long shadow of the Vietnam War and the Selective Service System (SSS) still loom large in the American psyche (Heck, 2020). As the U.S. military faces its worst recruiting crisis since the inception of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 (Spoehr, 2022), Amy J. Rutenberg's excellent book, Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance (2020), is a timely and relevant contribution to the defense and society field.Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, various former officials and media outlets have called for some form of national service. For example, Robert Litan, a former Clinton administration official and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, made the case for universal service-military or civilian-less than a year after 9/11 (2002). Former U.S. Representative Charles Rangel, a Korean War veteran, echoed this sentiment by proposing several pieces of legislation to re-instate the draft during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2014). For his part, retired Army general Stanley McChrystal argues that "every American should serve for one year" in or out of uniform. Doing so, he suggests, would rebuild the "trust and consensus" necessary for American democracy to thrive (2017). To that end, McChrystal co-chairs a bipartisan initiative called "Serve America. Together.," which espouses that a year of service should be a "common expectation and opportunity for every young American" (2019). Even The New York Times Editorial Board concedes, "Many aging Vietnamera veterans attest to the sense of community that came with either involuntary military service or the alternative service routes that those who refused the draft opted for 1141891A FSXXX10.