Good. This is actually very useful for why forcing a state to only operate with militias and volutneers is the best policy.

A population does have a choice on whether or not they fight wars, and the refusal to have volunteers join causes dramatic effects on the ability for the government to exert war-fighting ability.

I'll give you three examples. Iraq, Vietnam, and The War of 1812.

First is in Iraq.

Rumsfeld honestly thought he could get away with invading Iraq with only a hundred thousand troops, and every general told him he was crazy to have anything less than 400,000. One of the reasons for the level of rioting early on is because the rioting was so widespread that there was no possible way for even 100,000 troops to suppress (and you've got to understand that that means maybe 30,000 - 50,000 combat units, which is closer to maybe 20,000 actual riflemen to do policing actions, a job they weren't even trained to do). That's that shitty part where the manpower shortage is so fucking bad they handed off rifles to cooks, brought in every reservist they could find, hired absolute fuckloads of PMC's, and infamously started the US Army's "Stop Loss" program which pulled people from the IRR, which means they might not have even been in an Army base in 3-4 years.

The Stop Loss program was plenty bad, and really hurt morale. It didn't improve anything, and so more and more PMC's had to basically fill in for the US military, because if you're gonna pay someone to do patrols for you, you're not paying them the salary of an E-3: $30,000 a year. You'll pay out your asshole for $90,000 a year for someone who was an E-3, and you'll fucking like it.

Worse, it meant the US government rushed unfit Iraqi troops and "National Guard" units that were immediately subverted by terrorists. They caused more problems than they solved, and were dissolved for basically being a terrorist faction within the Iraqi government. The US government did everything in it's power to pull people into the military, but even then, it meant entire careers (like my own) were spent entirely on deployments, cycling back and forth to war-zones. Even for reserves. Had there been more budget cuts, the war in Iraq would have ended simply because the military couldn't continue to pay for the war, especially when they kept having to pay PMC's out the ass. Best they could have done is what they have in Syria, but that would have required the Iraqis to fight on their side. Heh. Good luck.

Next is Vietnam.

People have no idea how bad the situation in Vietnam actually got after 1969. In 1971 a USMC Lt. General investigated the state of American troops in Vietnam and stated they were almost universally "Combat Ineffective". This meant that they literally could not be used in combat. By 1971, the war had become so unpopular, and there were so few volunteers, that the draftees were running the show, and it was a catastrophe. Except for pilots, all of the infantry officers that had joined the war early on had either cycled out or had resigned. The draftees were awash with criminality and drugs. Plenty of the draftees were even ideologically pozzed from Black Nationalists to White Communists, none of whom were interested in fighting the NVA, and more interested in fighting each other. If it were not for the fact that the NVA and VC had taken such extreme casualties in 1968 & 1969 and changed their strategy to a more subversive route, US ground forces would likely have been fucking massacred in an NVA offensive. The Vietnamization of the war wasn't just a political policy, it was a desperate measure. There were so few volunteers that the war couldn't be prosecuted any further except by air, but the draftees were such a threat to themselves that if the NVA had understood the weakness of the American positions, you could have had the bloodiest years of the war in 1971. It was investigations like this that basically lead to the DOD accepting that a draft would probably never be done again, and why even though the US was desperate for troops in Iraq, no serious attempt was made to reinstate it. The unpopularity of the war at home, basically ended the war. General Giap was right, it just cost him the entirety of the Viet Cong, and most of his ground forces.

Then there is the War of 1812.

People don't realize it, but this is the single most unpopular war in US history. The US Army... er "Legion Of The United States" was a very small, mostly professional army with some of the most incompetent commanders in the world. It was far too small to invade Canada, so they attempted to sustain themselves with state militias. Unfortunately, several of the states simply refused to send militias, and several state governments almost refused to even ratify the war. Secession was openly being debated. One state legislature was actually occupied by federal troops until it "chose" to ratify the declaration of war from Washington. There were multiple major anti-war riots across the US, including in Baltimore (which as you remember isn't that far from DC). The war, effectively, was politically one sided. Only people who wanted to try and seize Canada could actually fight it, and so the results were 3 disastrous invasions of Canada, only showing marginal competence in the final invasion when the Canadians and British were long ready. When US forces were attacked by British forces, they tended to do better: Baltimore's militia actually helped to repel the British invasion that burned DC, as the invasion force was headed to Baltimore next, despite their anti-war stance. Andrew Jackson's famous defense of New Orleans was also a major positive. But the US Infantry were incapable of really successfully launching offensive maneuvers, mostly because of the lack of co-operation from states and people.

What I'm saying is, this is great news. This is how Republics can control war. The refusal to allow the government the capacity to wage war is the best way to prevent it from starting ones. The only thing that they are left with is stealing our money to pay PMC's to do it for them. That's only going to work so long as the economy is strong, and the value of the dollar is good.

pbbbbt.