A draft would be Imperial Suicide
On the Hourglass Empire
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The Army War College, neo-con publications, think tanks...
All of them have their knickers in a knot trying to talk the American regime up into reinstituting a draft.
Part of this is collapsing recruitment with most US armed services now 10-25% below their annual recruitment targets.
Which combined with the hard DC consensus that under no circumstance, in no scenario, not to save the republic... will an Infantry Private EVER make more than an entry-level DC paper pusher with a master's degree nor will VA benefits ever be more reliable than that DC paper-pusher's union benefits... Ya that problem isn’t going to be solved.
(No way they're going to try to tempt the oil rig workers, lumberjacks, or crab fishermen away with pay and benefits commiserate with hard, dangerous, outdoor work)
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Now this would not be a problem, America rules the waves, and the international financial system, and has two oceans and two allies providing security for nearly 10,000 miles around...
(Or well OK Mexico is a massive security hole... but DC doesn't care and considers that a benefit, so same difference)
EXCEPT: Washington wants a war with China (and probably Russia)
Now this wouldn't be a problem since America again controls the Waves, the Financial system, has bases in 150 out of 200ish countries, has allies all over the world with billions of potential troops, Oh and is almost entirely internally self-reliant with all the oil, natural gas, food production, and resources it'd need to weather decades of blockade (if it could somehow lose the sea) directly within North America...
Whereas China has almost no natural resources, a supply line for oil and fertilizer that stretches tens of thousands of miles through the straits of Malacca, Hormuz, and other key choke points America could shut down in an instant, is surrounded by enemies... and has an economy and population that are both in terminal decline (both are about to start shrinking in absolute terms like Japan in the 90s, if indeed they haven't already)
So this should be the easiest war ever... park an aircraft carrier by Singapore, let the sailors bankrupt themselves trying to hire a prostitute in the most expensive city on earth... and point and laugh as China desperately tries and fails to reroute all of its international energy and food base trade through the Trans-Siberian railway as the last of the Mainland Han Chinese go bankrupt from their failure to build a domestic market, and die-out of Blue-Balls from their failure to breed.
Hell Putin might even negotiate a lasting peace with NATO at the end of it, he'd so enjoy the highway robbery prices he'd charge.
It should be the easiest war ever... Any old-school royal navy captain would be salivating at the risk-free merchant prize money he'd rake in by the BILLION...
Except America doesn't want that war.
America doesn't want to play Britain to China's Napoleonic France. America doesn't want to get rich picking off China's trade whilst funding any one of China's dozen of enemies it's likely to lash out at as it flounders and drowns...
America wants a high-casualty war over Taiwan.
And when they saw Ukraine, and how deadly peer ground-war is against a technologically advanced enemy... They didn't ask if they should fight an even deadlier war over Taiwan, they salivated and asked HOW.
America WANTS thousands of Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers to die daily fighting in ruthless trench and urban warfare in the middle of a tropical island 7000 miles from home as its ships and carriers are sunk with thousands of hands onboard, under a rain of hypersonic ballistic missiles, 200 miles from the Chinese mainland and 7000 miles from Los Angeles, with its supply lines under constant danger of being severed and the threat of Nuclear escalation around every corner...
WHY!?
BECAUSE WASHINGTON DC WANTS IT.
Taiwan has zero strategic value, its chip manufacturing is easily destroyed by a US strike and nothing about the tech could not be replicated by the US whilst the US wins the easy geo-economic war...
Except America doesn't WANT to win an easy economic war, Washington DC want a million dead in a tropical Verdun + Stalingrad against a country with a population of 1.4 billion.
And if America's young won't volunteer to die like this then they'll draft their teenage boys and make them die with a gun pointed at their back.
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This is how much America hates its boys.
Never forget this. Never feel you owe these people a thing. Buy a gun. Practice tax [redacted].
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Except, of course, a draft wouldn't work.
Set aside the fact that 70+% are completely unfit to be conscripted... set aside the fact that we just had a "medical emergency" which taught everyone they should bribe and fake medical wavers as soon as possible... Set aside the fact that the border patrol is at its breaking and there are now millions of Americans who've spent an inordinate amount of time contemplating the tissue paper security of land and sea borders...
Set all that aside... Americans hate the government and have vastly more arms than the federal government could hope to command against them.
Black, white, latino, man, woman, gay, straight, Democrat, republican... Americans are unified in one sentiment:
That the American government is illegitimate and set up to screw them and their group specifically.
Ask a Democrat about the Electoral College or 2016… ask a Republican about voter ID or 2020.
Turns out that when you implement inconsistent and capricious rules the groups that benefit are not nearly as grateful as the groups that suffer come to loath you... repeat that enough times and everyone hates you.
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Of course, a suitably tyrannical and totalitarian state could overcome this... And if you think the US is anywhere near being able to even potentially enforce this with authoritarian methods then you are completely delusional and out of touch with the numbers.
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I've read almost a dozen paper now suggesting the US reinstitute a draft or that it would need a draft in a war with China...
I've not seen a single paper suggest how that could be achieved. My ctrl-F on "Press Gangs" is strangely somehow always 0/0 in these pieces.
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America's compliance rate for most things is shockingly low compared to most countries... And its crime rate is consistently high. Whether it is the homicide rate or vaccination rate, America's compliance with rules of any kind, legitimate and illegitimate, ten commandments or tax code, drops off massively around 3 groups of people: African Americans, Latinos, and Whites of Scots-Irish ie. borderer (Hill billy) descent (a double-digit percentage of all whites).
These people will not comply, in massive numbers, and unless you're willing to start a hot civil war enacting violence against them for their non-compliance (and immediately start wars in America's cities, forests, and a war when the cartels see an opening)... If you're not willing to do that then their non-compliance will immediately cripple every effort to force compliance on the rest of the population the same way Vax-Mandates had little coercive power in the US compared to elsewhere.
Also, remember any institutional penalties meant to extort compliance with bureaucracy will be completely zapped of their sting, both because Jimmy Carter was the president and therefore We KNOW draft dodging will be pardoned within a decade of the end of the crisis (sooner if the draft dodging and protests are effective and America loses quickly)... AND because right now dozens of American cities and states are setting up infrastructure to create entirely new identities and to live off the grid as an illegal.... sorry, "undocumented" immigrant.
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So I ask: Why when I hit ctrl-F do none of these supposedly serious commentators mention PRESS GANGS!?
Masked men with guns Grabbing Americans and immigrants off the street, kicking the crap out of them, and throwing them in the back of unmarked white vans to become "soldiers" such as we've seen in Ukraine is basically the only way a draft could be effectively enforced in this country.
And of course, because of federalism, the US does not even have men, vans, or ski masks to do that.
Local counties and states control their police forces and the disproportionately obese and elderly men who'd be called upon to kidnap teenage boys off the streets or out of their parents’ homes...
And as has been clearly established with sanctuary state laws, California's Drug Legalization, and all the "Second Amendment Sanctuary" laws now working their way through red states:
These non-federal police forces are under ZERO (0) obligation to cooperate or assist with federal law enforcement like immigration enforcement, or drug enforcement, or draft enforcement.
That leaves the police forces the federal government controls itself... Yes. The Feds.
Nazi Germany had 32,000 employees of the Gestapo and 100,000 SS members before they expanded to become another army on the eastern front...
This for 70 million people, or about 1 secret policeman for every 530 people.
the Postwar East German Stasi had 91,000 regular secret police and 174,000 informal secret police for a population of 18 million...
About 1 for every 68 people.
And this was to control the famously high trust, high morale, rules-following Germans.
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By contrast, the FBI has 35,000 employees. The DEA 5000 agents. The Border Patrol 21,000 (and they'd be pretty busy keeping people in). The ATF 5000. 7000 Secret Service...
Hell throw in the US Coast Guard (who'd be damned busy in a naval war) for 47000 (active and reserve).
And you get maybe 121,000 federal "enforcement" personnel... and probably half to a third of that accessible and not tied up with other activity.
But taking the full 121k, that's 1 potential secret policeman for 2727 Americans. And realistically closer to a third of that.
This is why I laugh at Online right-wingers who think there's a fed listening to everything they say and do and trying to infiltrate their circles at every opportunity... man per man they're some of the least surveilled people to exist in history. The NSA records everything and listens to nothing.
And I'll remind you, Americans have guns, lots of them. Many Americans practice “everyday-carry” of a hidden gun or two on their person.
Sure you might think ordinary Americans would just comply with being dragged off to die in some miserable pointless war and no parent would seek out revenge on the federal agent who nabbed them...
but one need only look at American policing today to know that the very fact the guns are out there makes American cops A) A little jumpy, B) Aggressive in how they move C) Rather likely to just back off and take an L or fail to enforce and D) Unlikely to do much of anything without a sizeable number of fellow officers backing them up.
You can watch videos where routine evictions are enforced by a half dozen cops! American police do very little without numbers... And that cripples the number of enforcement actions you can take.
If you need a partner with you to do anything then your force can do half the things. If you need a 4 man team… 25%.
Considering there were numerous shootouts in America over mask mandate enforcement, and Teenage American boys in certain neighborhoods regularly shoot each other over rap lyrics and Nike shoes... and Teenage girls in Appalachia seemingly murder each other all the time over boys...
Ya America's hypothetical fed-powered press-gangs would be eternally behind schedule to conscript any of the numbers they'd need.
Meanwhile, the attempt to do so would almost certainly start a civil war.
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Beyond that: When the first shootout happens between federal press-gangers what do you expect regime media and their clapping seal congressmen to do?
Call for a gun ban.
What do you think the Supreme Court would do in the midst of a war when they've repeatedly shown they'll stay mum on absolutely everything labeled "national security"?
Nothing.
How do you think the federal government will enforce its new gun ban when everyone is already stretched thin fighting a war or fighting Americans to force them to fight the war?
Very very poorly.
The US military and foreign policy establishment seem hellbent on taking a geostrategic trade and proxy war that a third-rate British Admiral would be able to win without firing a shot... And turning it into a hot Amphibious war in southeast Asia they have no way to win, whilst pre-committing that they'll double down and start a civil war over it which they're guaranteed to lose.
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Functionally America is an hourglass-shaped empire.
It's really two empires barely connected.
It is a 19th-century land empire conquered by the American settler populace, and it is a 20th-century Maritime and global empire conquered by the US Navy and the barely closeted communist bureaucrats of the federal government, along with the foreigners they funded.
These two empires barely interact, indeed America is amongst the most autarkic economies in the world with 90% of its trade flows isolated to North America.
The place they meet, the narrow center of this hourglass, is Washington DC.
And here's the thing, whereas Washington is consistently able to push about its overseas maritime empire sending troops and its agents into Afghanistan or Korea or Vietnam or Ukraine whilst all of its bureaucrats and tax collectors remain safe behind the twin moats of its oceans, and the mountain that is the north pole on its third side... and its completely open border with Mexico on its fourth, (but no one cares about that)
Whilst Washington remains completely safe from any threat to its 20th-century Maritime empire...
Washington's 19th-century land empire has it by the throat.
Bin Laden is the only one of Washington's Maritime enemies to actually strike the Imperial city. And all his followers involved paid with their lives to do so.
The Jan 6th protestors showed up to change the result of an election, forced their way into the Capitol... and then left, the vast majority of them never facing any consequence... and they didn't even have to bring guns.
The only shot that day killed Ashley Babbit, an unarmed protestor.
Something the Kaiser, Hitler, and Moa Tse Tung never dreamed with all their armies, was achieved in one afternoon by ticked-off TrumpenProletariot driving in a few hours from the surrounding states.
If the 19th-century American land empire feels at all threatened by the 20th-century American Maritime empire... Most likely they'll descend on DC and sever their only connection with it.
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So ya, implementing a draft to fight a war with China is about the dumbest military idea imaginable. One of those things that could actually cause the country to just implode.
So expect the Military and think tank establishment to keep promoting it.
You don't signal your usefulness and loyalty by proposing restrained smart ideas, you get that promotion by showing your willingness to say the dumbest thing possible if you think it fits your boss's agenda.
Just pray to god our leaders aren't so senile as to believe the yes men around them...
...
sweet Jesus.
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The hourglass is an interesting frame. Indeed, America is a tellurocracy with a thalassocracy attached - Rome, married to Carthage. The latter relies upon the former for its base of operations, and is very much in the ascendant; as always the maritime trade empire is much wealthier (on paper) than the land empire. Yet for all that wealth its influence over the land empire is extremely limited.
Another factor: sabotage. A modern, high tech military has an incredibly long logistics tail, with a ridiculous number of points of failure, each of which is capable of crippling the great, lumbering machine. A military comprised of resentful conscripts would be fertile ground for saboteurs, who would be spoiled for choice.
Another factor, related to enforcement: how are draft dodgers and deserters to be handled? Imprisonment? Now we need guards, and potentially quite a few of them. Execution? Likely to inflame things further. Fines? Well sure but that doesn't work so well when the populace is already immiserated.
One note on Taiwan: my impression is that onshoring the island's chipfabs is difficult to accomplish on a short time frame. Decades of deindustrialization means that America has lost much of the know-how. Spooling back up will take a long time. Similar manufacturing problems afflict the rest of the American economy. This is mostly a problem for the maritime empire: replacing ships and aircraft lost in battle is not so easily done anymore, meaning that a naval war with a manufacturing power like China would probably see the balance of naval power shift quite rapidly.
On natural resources, indeed China has extended supply lines in this respect, but Russia has almost everything China needs and the US can't do much about those trade routes. China also has a lock on rare earths. No question the US could shut down the maritime trade routes overnight, but the US is largely dependent on Chinese manufacturing so that's a double edged sword.
I'll take issue with some of your arguments:
1. the Pentagon can probably build a large enough army by drafting illegal immigrants in exchange for citizenship after x amount of years. This has its own problems, but I think it would work.
2. AI will probably do most of the heavy lifting of surveillance in the future and probably way better than thousands of agents, so yes, I think they hear and know everything we say online or on phone etc... at least from the point of view of being able to separate the relevant from the irrelevant.