Skin in the Game: Moral Exploitation and the Case for Mandatory Military Service

ABSTRACT

Since the end of the Vietnam war, America has opted for a professional model of military service. This model has come with several major benefits as well as drawbacks. In recent years, calls for a return to some form of mandatory national service have found increased attention within public discourse. While many arguments in favor of such a model find their justification by way of prudence, in this article, I make this argument by way of a different set of justifications. Rather than arguing for mandatory military service based on typical prudential considerations concerning misuse, adventurism, or civilian incompetence, I argue instead from reasons of fairness and legitimacy. In particular, my claim is that at least since 9/11, the lion’s share of warfighting responsibilities, and importantly, the accruing of moral residue or so-called “dirty hands” endemic to warfighting have disproportionately and unfairly been shouldered by an increasingly thin sliver of American society. This phenomenon, since the end of Vietnam and particularly over the past two decades, is becoming increasingly unfair towards soldiers and is weakening the legitimacy of continued US warfighting efforts. Accordingly, these considerations give us motivation for a return to a mandatory national service model in some form.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral exploitation
• National service
• Dirty hands
• Moral residue

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Kipling, Rudyard. “Tommy.” From Barrack-Room Ballads (Kipling 1892).

2 I would like to thank Ed Barrett, Nick Utzig, BJ Strawser, Jonathan Parry, Andrew Bacevich, and Don Howard for their help in developing the ideas in this article.

3 Sebastian Junger, for instance, argues for the option of a national service with a non-military option (see Seck 2016).

4 At the end of his book, Breach of Trust: How America Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (Bacevich 2013), Andrew Bacevich calls for a return to a citizen-soldier model of military service.

5 At a June 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival, General (ret.) Stanley McChrystal also called for a return to a draft-based model, see Rogin 2012.

6 The bulk of this language is borrowed from Robillard and Strawser 2016.

7 In recent years, philosophers have turned their attention to jus ex bello (the ethics of exiting a war) and just post bellum (justice after a war). However, for the sake of brevity, this article will only focus on the categories of jus ad bellum and jus in bello.

8 43% of recruitment comes from an economic bracket falling within $41-$66k per year (see Council on Foreign Relations 2020).

9 Language borrowed from Robillard and Strawser 2016. The figures referred to are from Department of Defense reports found at https://prhome.defense.gov/M-RA/Inside-M-RA/TFM/Reports/.

10 Language borrowed from Robillard and Strawser 2016.

11 Arguably UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) pilots also are increasingly fitting into this demographic.

12 This is not to say the legitimate authority and the will of the demos is the only moral factor worth considering with respect to a war being just. However, it is worth noting that it is at least one major factor many ethicists regard as necessary for a just war.

13 I should note here that, for reasons of pragmatics mainly having to do with sheer size and scale, I believe option 1 to be the most feasible compromise.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Robillard

Michael Robillard is an American philosopher, ethicist, and U.S. Army veteran. His writings focus primarily on veterans’ issues, civil–military relations, higher education, and restoring Western Civilization. He has held prior academic appointments at the University of Oxford, University of Notre Dame, and the U.S. Naval Academy and has been published by Oxford University Press. He is currently a professor of philosophy at Stone Hill College.