There’s an obvious reason why people evaded the draft in the Vietnam War- the belief that the war was pointless and thus pointless to participate in, pointless to risk one’s life in. However, this is not what I want to talk about. Society’s view on draft dodging and approval for the draft has changed much since 1914, and I believe that if a draft were imposed today it would gain little, if any, support.
In both World Wars One and Two, draft dodging was a nearly inexcusable act. Draft dodgers were called slackers and publicly shamed. They were seen as unpatriotic and disloyal to their country. Theodore Roosevelt, the American president at the time, referred to draft dodgers as “slackers, pure and simple, or else traitorous pro-Germans.” Out of all the people drafted in World War One, around 11% of Americans and 30% of Britons illegally avoided military service. World War Two saw much lower numbers, with the percentage of people illegally avoiding the draft in the US reaching around 4%. In both of these wars, draft dodging was not only uncommon but also unacceptable.
The Vietnam War was another beast. Draft resistance and draft dodging hit all-time highs, being more popular in this war than any other. One of the main reasons given for dodging the draft was a desire not to die, especially in an unjust war without an end. However, I believe that society’s growing disdain for the selective service system also played a part in the number of people dodging the draft. People are much more inclined to do something with society’s support than without it. It is this notion that leads me to believe that if mandatory military service was implemented in the western world, it would be rather unsuccessful. In the US, 31% of millennials would attempt to stop their conscription into the military if there was a draft implemented and as of 2016, only 20% of Americans would support bringing back the draft. If a draft were to be imposed in the western world today, I believe it would not only be incredibly unpopular but also largely disobeyed, due to society’s ever-increasing resentment of mandatory military service.
Sources:
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/between_acceptance_and_refusal_-_soldiers_attitudes_towards_war_usa.
Chambers, J. (1987). To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America. New York: Free Press.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/11/27/50-years-after-vietnam-war-draft
https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/blog/suppose-they-gave-war-and-nobody-came-changing-opinions-draft
This is a really interesting discussion. The sort of fervour among young people for conscription that I have seen in world war movies has always seemed so foreign to me – I can’t imagine many of my peers being keen on this sort of thing. I wonder what it is that has produced this “ever-increasing resentment of mandatory military service”? Perhaps the fact that the majority of Western populations today haven’t experienced a war in their lifetime means that it is not really a reality for us or factor into our identity. Conscription propaganda around the world wars definitely seemed to feed off an association of sacrifice and patriotism with self-identity and dignity. It would be interesting to examine the trajectory of this change in social attitudes.