A Life-Saving Lesson; D. Boudreaux

Only 378-or .075percent-of the 500,000 Americans serving in the Persian Gulf war lost their lives. This means that not even one in everyone thousand Americans fightingin Operation Desert Storm was killed. Opera tion Desert Storm stands in sharp contrast to the war in Vietnam. The U.S. military in that Southeast Asian war did not achieve its goal of keeping the Communist totalitarians of North Vietnam from conquering South Viet nam. And, sadly, this military loss claimed the lives of more than 58,000 of the nearly 8.75 million Americans who fought in the jungles of Vietnam and Laos. The casualty rate in the Vietnam War was just under .7 percenta rate nearly ten times greater than Dr. Boudreaux is Associate Professor ofLaw and Economics at Clemson University. the Gulf War. If U.S. servicemen had died in Vietnam at the rate at which they died in the Persian Gulf, we would have suffered only about 6,000 casualties. Can it be that 52,000 Americans lost their lives unneces sarily in Vietnam?l Alternatively, if Amer icans had perished in the Persian Gulf at the same rate at which they perished in Viet nam, more than 3,000 Americans would have been killed in Operation Desert Storm.

The homecoming parades of 1991 would surely have been lessjoyous, and America's sense of accomplishment more tempered. Conscription Is Hazardous to a Soldier's Health There are, no doubt, many potential ex planations for this great difference in U.S. military performance in the two wars. One crucial part of any valid explanation is that the U. S. military in Operation Desert Storm was an all-volunteer force. In Vietnam (and Korea), U.S. armed forces were composed largely of conscripts. This single fact plau sibly explains much, perhaps most, of the success enjoyed by American troops serv ing in Operation Desert Storm. To see why this is so, it is useful to recall the great policy debate of the 1960s which focused on the military draft. In addition to showing that an all-volunteer military would 391 392 THE FREEMAN • OCTOBER 1993 actually be less costly to society than a conscripted military, economists Milton Friedman, Walter Oi, and others argued that conscription reduces the efficiency of mili tary operations. Friedman nicely summa rized this part of the argument against con scription: A volunteer army would be manned by people who had chosen a military career rather than, at least· partly, by reluctant conscripts anxious only to serve out their term. Aside from the effect on fighting spirit, this would produce a lower turn over in the armed services, saving pre cious man":hoursthat are now wasted in training or being trained. Also it would permit intensive training and a higher av erage level of skill for the men in service; and it wouldencourage the use of more and better equipment. A smaller, but more highly skilled, technically competent, and better armed force could provide the same or greater military strength. 2 It is easy enough to see why a military manned by people freely choosing tojoin the armed forces enjoys lower turnover and, hence, greater average levels of experience and esprit de corps when compared with a conscripted force. But why does an all volunteer force" encourage the use of more and better equipment"? The reason is sim ple. Conscription gives military decision makers the power to acquire labor at wage rates below those that the military would have to pay in the absence of conscription.

That is, decision-makers for a conscripted military get labor on the cheap. Because labor and capital (for example, tanks, better guns and ammunition, more high-tech air planes) are substitutes for one another, when the price of labor is kept artificially low, military decision-makers use too much labor and too little capital to produce the desired amount of military power. Consider a simple example. Suppose the top brass of the military agree that there are two ways of ensuring victory in a particular battle. One way is to have 200,000 troops, each armed with rifles, storm an enemy's stronghold. Another way is to have five troops use five highly sophisticated fighter planes with smart bombs to attack the ene my's stronghold. It is not implausible to suggest that the method chosen is the one that will be least costly to military decision makers (who do, after all, face a finite budget from Congress). Let's say that each fully equipped fighter plane costs $1 billion, and that each pilot costs $100,000 to employ.

Thus, the total cost of achieving victory by use of fighter planes is $5,000,500,000. This method will be selected only if it costs military decision-makers less than the cost of achieving victory with the massive manpower method. The cost to military decision-makers of the massive-manpower method depends on whether or not conscription is used. Sup pose that with conscription the military pays each soldier $5,000 annually, and that rifles and uniforms cost a total of $200 per soldier. At this wage rate, it will cost the military $1,040,000,000 in wages and equipment to achieve victory with the massive-manpower method. 3 Military decision-makers are likely to use the massive-manpower method in battle because it is significantly less ex pensive to them than using the fighter planes. But suppose, in the alternative, that con scription is prohibited. Without conscription the military must pay market wages to its soldiers,and market wageswillbe higherthan the wages of conscripts. Suppose that market wages are $30,000 per soldier. The total bill of achieving victory using the massive manpower method in the absence of con scription would then be $6,040,000,000 approximately $1 billion more than the cost of achieving victory by use of the five fighter planes. Clearly, when military leaders are forced to pay market wages they have a strong incentive to economize on the use of labor by using greater amounts of capital equipment in producing military outcomes.

We can now see why "the use of more and better equipment" is encouraged by an all-volunteer force. Conscription artificially suppresses the price of labor relative to capital and, therefore, military decision makers will use too little equipment and too,,THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM BEGINS WITH ME 393 many men. The all-volunteer force reverses this unfortunate effect by giving military decision-makers the incentive to "use more and better equipment" along with fewer men and women. Because conscription causes a greater number of military personnel to be used on the battlefield, and because too many of these people are not sufficientlydedicated to their tasks, conscription results in unneces sary battlefield casualties. It is important to emphasize that these unnecessary deaths and injuries result both from the military's use of excessive amounts of labor and from the fact that a conscripted military is less experienced and less dedicated than is an all-volunteer force.