ABSTRACT
The conventional wisdom is that the citizen-soldier tradition in the United States is today at its historical nadir. Leading scholars of civil–military relations often argue that the installation of the all-volunteer force (AVF) in 1973 marked the end of – or even, as they sometimes boldly claim, severed – the link between citizenship and military service. Manpower trends over the ensuing three decades – an increasingly long-serving and professional force, combined with greater reliance on private military contractors – are thought to have rendered that link still more remote. Notwithstanding the ritual of Selective Service registration, Americans do not expect their national government to call on them to sacrifice for the nation, and they do not believe that their rights as citizens do, or should, hinge on their willingness to die for the nation. Whether this conclusion is warranted is of no small import. The demise of the citizen-soldier tradition is associated with a host of purported ills: a corrosive culture of rights; American national disunity; and an unstable social system in which national burdens are not equally borne.
