It's Getting a Little Drafty: Our armed forces need expansion. How to go about it?

We need more troops. Ever since the Clinton administration drew down our military, while simultaneously undertaking humanitarian interventions in places like Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, our armed forces have been overstretched. During the Clinton years, despite our stated doctrine, America lost the capacity to fight major wars in two theaters at once. Surely that lost capacity encouraged North Korean provocations during the run-up to our invasion of Iraq. Since 9/11, continued deployments in Afghanistan, counterterrorism operations throughout the world, and increased demands for "force protection" (guarding military installations, power plants, etc., from terrorist attack) have strained our armed forces still further.

The military has resorted to a variety of strategies to address the problem. The Pentagon has issued "stop loss" orders, forbidding troops in some job categories to resign. In January, the Marines put a stop- loss order on the entire service. As Nicholas Confessore pointed out in The Washington Monthly, "large swathes of the U.S. military . . . no longer meet the definition of a volunteer force."

Additionally, training and education requirements have been lowered to help meet recruitment quotas. And the Reserves -- many of whom are firemen, policemen, nurses, and other first-responders who will be needed at home in the event of terrorism on our soil -- have been called up repeatedly for overseas service. With Reserve duty now turning into de facto full-time enlistment, the Reserves found themselves unable to meet their recruiting goals in January and February.

These problems are serious, but an occupation of Iraq, in conjunction with possible war in North Korea, will create a full-fledged military manpower crisis. With even conservative estimates of the number of American troops needed to police a postwar Iraq running to 60-75,000, we will simply not have enough personnel left to handle the ongoing war on terror. In short, we need more troops.

How can we get them? With Rep. Charles Rangel using the specter of a draft to rally the public against the war, and recruiters barely making their quotas, the president appears to be in a trap. Yet a politically unpopular draft may not be the only solution to our manpower problem. Congress recently approved a bipartisan proposal by Sens. Evan Bayh (D., Ind.) and John McCain (R., Ariz.) establishing an 18-month enlistment option, targeted at college students. This 18-month enlistment would be followed by a period of service in the Reserves.

Although the idea of "citizen soldiers" has garnered bipartisan support in Congress, its key advocates are Marc Magee and Steven Nider of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank affiliated with the politically moderate Democratic Leadership Council. PPI's interest in citizen soldiers is part of a broader enthusiasm among moderate Democrats for civilian volunteer programs, such as President Clinton's AmeriCorps and the current president's proposed Freedom Corps.

Many conservatives are ambivalent about such ventures -- they want to encourage an ethic of service, but would prefer private volunteerism to government-run programs. Yet conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats can at least agree on the need to encourage service in our nation's armed forces. Magee and Nider deserve credit for rising to the challenge of how to staff our overstretched military, when conservatives have generally avoided the issue.

How can a citizen-soldier track solve the military's recruitment problems? The answer is college. The military has done a good job of turning itself into a major career choice for high-school graduates. But ever higher numbers of Americans are now going to college, and the typical college student is planning on a civilian career. Research conducted by the respected military sociologist Charles Moskos shows that even increased financial incentives can't get college students to sign up; but shortening the four-year enlistment period can. With an 18-month enlistment, college students can serve while also staying on track for a good non-military career.

An 18-month track directed at college students could solve a number of problems at once. It would raise the overall education level of our recruits (and at least some of the citizen soldiers would probably change their minds and decide to make the military a career). A citizen-soldier track would also quiet complaints about the lack of shared sacrifice. Rep. Rangel has claimed that minorities are overrepresented in our armed forces, but he is mistaken. There is, however, a real dearth of relatively affluent, college-educated recruits. It would be good for the army -- and for the country -- to have people from all walks of life in the armed services.

Sounds promising, but the Pentagon is not impressed, and Sen. McCain is worried that the services will refuse to fund the new enlistment track at a level that will enable it to prove its worth. The military's objections are understandable. As it stands, funding for the program will have to come out of the Pentagon's current recruitment budget. Sensibly enough, the Pentagon is reluctant to tamper with an already fragile recruitment system for the sake of an unproven experiment.

Today's high-tech army requires soldiers to go through lengthy and expensive training. Advocates of the citizen-soldier track counter that there are many entry-level military jobs that require only a few months of training. That's true, but every entry-level post taken up by a short-term enlistee blocks a career soldier from accumulating real experience for the long term. No wonder the military is less than enthusiastic about citizen soldiers.

Officials are assuming, however, that the military recruiting budget will remain a zero-sum game. Until now, Progressive Policy Institute scholars Marc Magee and Steven Nider have advertised citizen soldiers as a way to make the military more representative of the country. But what we really need is to make the military bigger. Once the Pentagon sees a citizen-soldier track that could add to the current force structure, without undercutting the training of career soldiers, it will probably warm to the idea.

Following the war in Iraq, we're going to need military police, and here's where the citizen soldiers could be of real help. MPs can be trained quickly, and short-term recruits can serve under the direction of experienced peacekeepers. The question is, will college kids sign up for short-term stints as military police in an occupied Iraq? True, our American soldiers in Iraq may get shot at. All things considered, however, the job will be less dangerous and demanding than front-line soldiering. And there will be the chance, not only to serve America, but to do good works for the people of Iraq. If we can recruit a substantial number of military police from the ranks of college kids, our regular troops can get out of the business of nation-building and turn their attention to serious fighting.

Of course, any enlistment program geared to college students will run into prohibitions on military recruiting at our best colleges. Many elite colleges now ban the military from campus, supposedly because of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy (though most of these schools have banned ROTC since the Vietnam War). The "Solomon Amendment" gives the Pentagon the power to revoke federal aid from schools that ban the military, but so far the Department of Defense has been reluctant to bring the hammer down on our elite universities.

The time for a showdown with our elite colleges has come. (And unless their support for our troops is hypocritical, won't Rep. Rangel and his supporters have to join conservatives in this battle?) In a world of looming military challenges, the citizen-soldier program may be our last chance to expand the armed forces without a draft. The military battle in Iraq will force a cultural battle at home. The days when the academy could lock out the men and women who keep us safe and free are over.