Summary Of David Barno's A New Moral Compact

In David Barno’s , “A New Moral Compact,” he stresses about our countries current military situation, which is all-volunteer. Barno has also served time in the military himself as a lieutenant general. He claims that the countries current dependence on the all-volunteer military, allows us to rush into war without thinking about the consequences first. Barno proposes the idea, “that every use of military force over 60 days would automatically trigger an annual draft lottery to call up 10,000 men and women” (p.20).This solution is useful but it is not useful enough because it targets sympathy from the people while he needs to target the president because the president can initiate a war without consent of the people or Congress. Throughout Barno’s essay he makes some very good points about the toll or war and how it impacts the soldiers, giving specific examples from his son’s tours. He uses his own son as an example because his son got called back for combat and admits he was angry about it. His personal connection to repeated service gives credibility to his position about reinstating the lottery draft. Although these are all good points when trying to appeal to the masses, this is the wrong approach to the problem. He needs to target the recent trend of starting a military action without first consenting the congress or the public on their opinion.

From past experiences we know that appealing to the people doesn’t get far because the publics’ opinion on, if we go to war or no, isn’t worth anything compared to the Presidents. The president has a trend of making decisions on their own without seeking advice from any other source. The threat of a draft would possibly hinder the rush to war because of the human cost but attempting to change how the president makes decisions is a better solution because it does not have as many negative effects as that of a