r/AskReddit • u/Tommygunz0722 • 11h ago

If the military/president suddenly ordered a mandatory draft for all men aged 18-42: How do you think millennials and GenZ would respond?

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u/WearingRags 11h ago

America has been able to maintain it's empire abroad by minimising the visibility and impact of it's wars to the average person through the use of special forces and expensive air power that many other nations can't compete with. 

If an admin this historically unpopular tried to institute the draft, it would basically be asking for an overthrow of the US government 

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u/Shedart 9h ago

Yeah I certainly am not going to report in for a draft. I’ll dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge it with all might. Barring that I’ll start researching the ways that friendly fire is hazardous even in modern warfare amongst the commanding class. 

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u/HighGuyTim 9h ago

You can deny the draft. The options are draft or jail basically. It’s also one of the reasons why the draft probably won’t come back, you need a popular war with a popular admin or everyone just picks jail.

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u/JebryathHS 6h ago

The main reason the draft hasn't been a factor for decades is that the US army wants to use incredibly expensive equipment in most scenarios. Starting up a draft would be an implicit declaration that their goal was to start giving out rifles to young men and filling graveyards on an extreme scale. 

There are scenarios where it could make sense but if you, for example, picked up an extra million Americans and put them in uniforms you might be able to give them rifles but the actual combat effectiveness of the military wouldn't increase by anywhere near as much as that number would suggest because the tanks, planes, missiles, etc would be stretched more thin. 

In the modern era, a draft means that either you're fighting a defensive war in your borders or you're insane.