"If a war is worth fighting, Congress will vote to declare it and people will volunteer."
[Statement by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on introducing theSelective Service Repeal Act of 2021 (S. 1139 and H.R. 2509) along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR),Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), and Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), 14 April 2021]
"The choice is not between male-only draft registration and expanding registration to women.The real choice is whether to expand registration to women or to end it entirely. This is a choice about militarism, not a choice about gender equality.
"Expanding draft registration to women would bring about a semblance of equality in war(although women in the military would likely still be subject to disproportionate sexual harassment and abuse).Ending draft registration would bring about real equality in peace and freedom."
[Joint letter from opponents of draft registration to Congressional leaders, 11 March 2021]
Decades of quiet and spontaneous but widespread and sustainednoncomplianceby young men in the U.S. with the requirement toregister with theSelective Service System within 30 days of their 18th birthday, and toand to report within 10 days each time they change their address until their 26th birthday, have rendered the registration databaseless than useless for an actual draft.
The success of draft registration resistance in preventing a draft is one of the most significant ongoing victories of nonviolent direct action against war and foryouth liberation. But that victory remains incomplete.
The U.S. government has never acknowledged the failure of draft registration. Instead, it continues to pretendthat a draft based on the current registration database is afeasible policy option. The preceived availability of the draftas a "fallback" optionenables the planning of larger, longer, and less popular wars -- without the need to consider whether people will be willing to fight those wars. Draft registration resistance has, since 1980, prevented a draft,and continues to do so. But the real victory ofyoung draft resisters and their older allies will be when the U.S. government is forced toadmit that a draft is not an option because young people won't submitvoluntarily to being drafted, and can't be forced to submit, and begins to acknowledge popular support and willingness to fight as aconstraint on what would otherwise continue to beplanning for endless, unlimited, unpopular wars.
An active Selective Service System is not only unjust – it is monstrously dangerous. In 1964, with a peacetime registration and draft in place, we slid fully into the Vietnam war through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized our deeper involvement in that war. Congress did not have to debate the very difficult question of whether to reimpose the draft to conduct that war; the draft was already in place and ready to function. I want to make it impossible to commit ourselves to war again with our eyes closed.
[Gold Star mother Patricia Simon of the Women's Strike for Peace, in aspeech against draft registrationto the Democratic National Convention, 11 August 1980]
In the future, youngwomen might face the same choices -- and have the same power to prevent a draft and constrain war-making -- thatyoung men have had since 1980. In 2020, aNational Commission on Military, National, and Public Service hasrecommended that draft registration be extended to young women as well as young men. That recommendation wasendorsed by Joe Bidenas a condidate for President in 2020. Proposals to expand draft registration to womencame close to enactment by Congress in 2016, 2021, 2022, and 2024.In 2024, Congress also came close to enacting anill-considered and unworkable proposal from the Selective Service System to try to make draft registration "automatic".
BE IT RESOLVED, that the National Organization for Women calls for an end to mandatory Selective Service registration in the United States and that NOW will include these recommendations in lobbying of the U.S. Congress, encouraging support for theSelective Service Repeal Act of 2021.
[Resolution adopted by the National Organization for Women at its 2022 national convention]
We want to hear from young women and young men who plan not to register with the Selective Service System. We can publish your resistance statement, with your name or anonymously. You can reach us atresisters@hasbrouck.org. Your statements will help encourage and empower others.Here are more anti-draft organizations and actions you can take.
"Congress shouldend draft registration for all, not try toexpand it to young women as well as young men," a group of activists who oppose the draftsaid in a joint statement on Tuesday. It added, "Even more women than men would resist if the government tried to draft them."
["Women Should Have to Register for Military Draft, Too, Commission Tells Congress", by Sarah Mervosh and John Ismay,New York Times, 24 March 2020]
Groups of anti-war activists panned the blue ribbon commission's recommendation that everyone of draft age sign up with the Selective Service. "Making contingency plans for a draft that would includewomen would be an exercise in self-delusion by the Selective Service System and military planners," the groups write in astatement. "Even more women than men would resist if the government tried to draft them."
["Commission Issues Verdict: Women, Like Men, Should Have To Sign Up For Draft", by David Welna,NPR News, 25 March 2020]
[Front ranks of the West Coast mobilization against draft registration on Market St. in San Francisco, 22 March 1980. Photo by Chris Booth forResistance News.]
As of 2025, Congress is considering what would be the largest changes since 1980 to its plans and preparations for a military draft. As part of the annual National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2026, Congress isconsidering whether to try toautomatically register all young men in the USA for possible conscription into the military, or whether torepeal the Military Selective Service Act and abolish the Selective Service System. As in other recent years, the futureof contingency planning and preparation for a draft in the USA is likely to be decidedlate in the year behind closed doors by the House-Senate conference committee finalizing the NDAA.
In recent years, Congress also repeatedly came close to expanding the current requirement for young men to register and report their addresses to the Selective Service System to includeyoung women.
But there have no Congressionalhearings or floor debate on theseproposals,and much of the public discussion and press reporting about the draft has been by peopleunfamiliar with thehistory of the draft, draftregistration, and draft resistance sincethe end of the Vietnam-era draft in 1975. This Web sitewill give you some of the facts that the Selective ServiceSystem won't tell you, that most reporters don't realize,and that most politicians don't want to admit.
Supporters of planning and preparation for a draft try to downplay the significance of those activities in their messaging to potential drafteees,even while, in their mesaging to military policy-makers, they stress the importance of a "credible" capacity to activate a draft on demqnd.
"No, the US military isn’t ‘laying the groundwork’ for a draft", according to the headline on anews story distributed by the Associated Press in 2023. But the only error in that headline is in the claim that this is being done by the military. In fact, this is being done by theSelective Service System (SSS), which is nominally a civilian agency even though much of its work is being done by military reserve officers. Thesole job of the SSSis to plan, prepare, train, and maintain ongoing readiness to start sending out induction notices whenever Congress and the President tell it to so do. That's the reason that young men are required to register with the SSS and thatten thousand members of draft boards have been appointed and trained.
None of this is new or different, and this doesn't necessarily mean a draft is imminent or likely. But claims that "The U.S. governmentisn't preparing for a draft" or "has no plans for a draft" or that registration with the SSS is for any purpose other than maintaininga list of potential draftees to be used to send out induction notices in the evnt of a draft are simply wrong.
While Congressional action would be needed to activate a draft, the requirement for young men to registerwith the Selective Service System was ended in 1975 by executive order, not by Congress, and resumed by executive order (still in force) in 1980. The Congressional debate in 1980 was overfunding for the resumptionof draft registration, not over whether to continue Presidential authority toorder young men to register or to be inducted into the military.
Back in the 1980s, the US government putme and eight other then-young men in prison forrefusing to agree to fight on the side of the people who would later become the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
In 2020, anational commission appointed by Congress and the President recommended that Congress should try toextend draft registration to women.President Bidenand some Congressional leaders endorsed this naive and unrealistic proposalfor political rather than military reasons:
"When asked about the political feasibility of a large-scale mobilization, one SASC [Senate Armed Services Committee] staff member responded that SSS [Selective Service System] is kept around largely for political reasons, but no one realistically thinks it will be used.... He remarked that the draft is currently designed to replace large numbers of infantry overseas; however, such numbers are not likely to be needed in the future and the current lead time for training and skills development for various occupations needed to fight modern wars makes the SSS model less practical....
"Given the 2016 decision to open all military occupations and, from their perspective, the most realistic use of mobilization was more along the lines of askills draft, minority [Democratic Party] staff expressed strongly that any update to SSS which did not includefemale registration would have little chance of passage."
[Internal NCMNPS staff notes from meeting with Senate Armed Service Commiteee (SASC) staff, 1 October 2018,released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) after the expiration of theNCMNPS]
Internal records released in response to my Freedom Of Information Act requestsshow thatCongressional staff told the National Commissionthat (1) draft registration is being maintained for political, not military, reasons, and as alead generator for military recruiters, and (2) Democratic Party members of the Senate Armed Services Committee would not support any package of legislation recommended by the Commission unless it includedexpanding draft registration to young women as well as young men. The Commission took those marching orders to heart, and never seriously consideredending draft registration entirely.
But Congress has a choice: It has had before itbills either toexpand draft registration to women, or toend draft registration entirely.
As I told the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service when I was invited to testifyat one of their hearings in April 2019, "Any proposal that includes a compulsoryelement is a naïve fantasy unless it includes a credibleenforcement plan and budget."
Anyone who thinks they can wave their cheerleader's baton and magically make every 18-25 year old woman in the USA sign up to kill or be killedon command ignores both the lessons of thehistory of draft registration since 1980 and the likelihood of massive resistance by young women.
Massive, spontaneous, unorganized, andcontinuing grassrootsnoncompliance has rendered draft registration of men unenforceable since theresumption of draft registration (after afive-year post-Vietnam hiatus) in 1980, despite a brief and unsuccessful (for the government)round of show trials in the 1980s.
Noncompliance will render any attempt to get women to register equally unenforceable.Women can (and some do) fight. But women also can (and many will) resist. There is certainly no reasonto think that young women will be more willing to agree to be drafted than young men have been.
Iasked the members of the National Commission,"How much are you prepared to spend, and how much of a police state are you preparedto set up, to round up the millions of current draft registration law violators or enforce a draft?"I got no answer, but Congress and the public need to demand one.
Anti-war and anti-draft activists are not alone intelling the National Commission andCongressthat draft registration has failed. Even the former director of the Selective Service System who manages the start-up of the current registrationsystem in 1980 hastestified that the current registration database is "less than useless" and the Congress should end draft registration andrepeal the Military Selective Service Act, rather than trying to expand it to young women as well as young men.
Proponents of draft registration need to face the facts, and recognize that,whether they like it or not,draft registration has failed.It's long past time toend draft registration entirely and abolish the Selective Service System.
Whereas, the Selective Service Act requires male U.S. citizens between 18 and 25 years to register with the U.S. government for potential military service, aids the government in its instrumentation of war;Therefore Be It Resolved that Veterans For Peace calls on the government of the United States to immediately revoke the Selective Service Act.
[Resolution approved by vote of the membership of Veterans for Peace, 2012]
Weoppose both the draft and draft registration, for women or for men.We support legislation toend draft registration and abolish the Selective Service System;we support continued resistance to draft registration as long as it remains the law;and we support resistance to any attempt to reinstate the draft orcompulsory national service.
Theremany reasons to oppose the draft, draft registration, and otherplanning and preparations for a draft such as contingency planning for theHealth Care Personnel Delivery System (conscription of health care workers). Young men aren't the only people who might be drafted:
The requirements of peer or near-peer conflict, especially given the likelihood of simultaneous conflicts and protracted fighting..., raise serious questions about whether the size of the force is sufficient and could be sustained.... DoD should, in conjunction with other elements of the executive branch, consider what mandatory mobilization means and would entail.... Consistent with the need for an all elements approach to national security, we recommend that requirements for mandatory service include not only military service but defense industrial work, skilled trade programs, health care, protection and resilience of critical infrastructure, and other relevant work.
[Final report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, July 2024]
Some older people conceptualize opposition to the draft as an effort to protect young people against being drafted. But I think that this framing of the issue is rooted in unconsciousageism, and should be reversed: it is young people who, by their noncompliance with draft registration, have prevented a draft and thereby limited the U.S. government's ability to wage war and protected all of us, including older people, from even wider wars. There have been wars without a draft, but it is the perceived availability of the draft as the ultimate fallback that enables politicans and military officers to plan for endless, unlimited wars.Without a draft, war planning and warmaking is limited to wars that people can be induced to "volunteer" to fight.
The success of resistance to draft registration -- not lobbying, not protest, butnoncompliance on a massive scale, spontaneous, almost entirely unorganized, andcontinued by cohort after cohort of young people for four decades -- has been one of the greatest (although almost entirely unrecognized) victories of nonviolent mass direct actionin the Reagan years and after. But the fullpotential benefit of that victory by young people in protecting us all from war will not be realized until draft registration is ended,the Selective Service System and its cointingency planning for conscription is abolished, and -- most important of all -- there is public acknowledgement and recognition by politicians that a draft is not an option because it would be so widely resisted as to be unenforceable. Only then will military planning begin to be limited by the unavailability of the draft, even as a last resort.
This Web site is maintained byEdward Hasbrouck. I welcome opportunities to speak (in person or remotely) to youth and community organizations andhigh school, college, law school, or other classes in civics, political science, military studies, peace studies, gender studies, social movements, civil rights, or history. I also welcome corrections, contributions (articles, graphics, photos, videos, links, etc.), and feedback on this site.
This site incorporates material by others first published by theNational Resistance Committee and inResistance News. I have credited all contributors who wanted to be named; others have chosen to remain anonymous. I take responsibility for all content on this site, with gratitude for my comrades in resistance including the members of the Mass Open Resistance andResistance News collectives. I am grateful for the support of mymentors, allies, and inspirations from older generations including (but certainly not limited to)Fred Moore,Eric Weinberger,John Bach,Dave Dellinger,David Harris,Chuck Matthei,Karl Meyer,JoffreStewart,Benjie Hiller,John Rossen,Josh Standig,Joe Maizlish,Ann Hoffman,Kathleen Gilberd,Ursula K. Le Guin,Mary Reuland, andMarguerite Helen.
[Above left: Edward Hasbrouck in front of the Federal courthouse in Boston before beingsentenced for refusing to register for the draft, 14 January 1983.Photo ©Ellen Shub. All rights reserved. Above right:Brussels, Belgium, 25 January 2017.Photo byWendy M. Grossman. Below:Testifying before the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, Washington, DC, 25 April 2019. Photo fromC-SPAN video.]
