Toward a Consensus on Military Service

Toward a Consensus on Military Service: Report of the Atlantic Council's Working Group on Military Service examines the experience and prospects of the U.S. peacetime military volunteer force. It presents a Policy Paper that offers a broad range of recommendations designed both to strengthen that force and to prepare the way, should circumstances require it, for a resumption of compulsory military service. The book begins by providing a geopolitical backdrop for the issues of U.S. military service examined in subsequent chapters. It analyzes basic U.S. national interests, Soviet power and policy, and East-West relations. This is followed by separate chapters on the antecedents of force-manning in the U.S.; current and evolving concepts of U.S. security requirements; the all-volunteer force; and military manpower policies. Subsequent chapters examine long-term military manpower trends and criteria for a peacetime military force; compulsory service options; and social and ethical issues that have colored the historical American debate over how the nation should raise its armed forces in peacetime.