0 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
By early 1968 the strain placed on active forces in meeting the continuing
Vietnam buildup, keeping up other worldwide deployments, and maintaining an
active strateoic Reserve had become so great that those tasks could no
longer be met through reliance upon increased draft calls. The urgency of
the situation was underscored by communist provocations in Korea and the
Tet offensive in RVN. To the US mil;tary, Tet proviaed the hope that the
President finally would have to loosen their leash and do what they had
been pushing for:
* call up reserve units
* replenish the empty stateside strategic Reserve
0 ticket more troops to Southeast Asia
0 escalate the war to include attacks on sanctuaries in Laos and
Cambodia. 69/
General Wheeler encouraged General Westmoreland to make his
request for 206,000 troops ard then presented it in Washington as urgent
without emphasizing the JCS's primary motive, to rebuild the active strategic
reserve in the states.. The gambit backfired, causing a major reassessment
and eventual deescalation of the war, and withdrawals of US combat
forces from RVN.
By 1969 draft quotas had been drastically reduced. In April
1970, President Nixon proposed that the nation start to move in the direction
of an all-volunteer armed force and end the Selective Service, To
carry out Mr1•. Nixon's proposal, the Army, the service which had relied most
heavily upon the draft, instituted a Modern Volunteer Army Program. The
law that created Selective Service, the powerful polarizer of public opinion,
was not extended in 1973. From a zero-draft the US had moved to a no
draft situation depending entirely on the All Volunteer Armed Forces.,
In another historic move, the Congress took on a greater role in
American foreign policy making when it passed the War Powers Resolution of
1973 over President Nixon's veto. The law' precludes the President from
continuing
any military action beyond sixty days unless Congress vctes to
sustain his action. The Presiaent's flexibility to deploy troops and
commit Reserves was severely curbed by that; legislation.
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