A new Wall Street Journal article about the difficulty the US military is running into trying to convince young people to enlist hits on many of the themes that I’ve written about in my newsletter. It’s an interesting encapsulation of American elite failure.
Why would someone want to join an army that has just lost a 20-year war against medieval enemies in Afghanistan, in the knowledge that the next wars are already being lined up against far-more deadly adversaries of Russia and China? By some accounts, US Special Forces are already operating in Ukraine, a country that most Americans couldn't have found on a map a year ago (and many still couldn't). It seems like the state of war is never-ending and the link to the interests of ordinary Americans is extremely tenuous.
I wonder how much that influences the average guy.
I was born after Vietnam, but my sense is that the failure of the War on Terror has about 1% as much mindshare in 2023 as the failure of the Vietnam War had in the decade or so following the fall of Saigon. I don't think it's really influencing things. And to some degree, having a big bogeyman probably helps with recruitment.
I just did a quick check, and interestingly, the US Army met its recruitment goals in 1976, which were 193,000 enlisted personnel:
In 2022, the Army recruited 45,000 (compared to a 60,000 target). So about 25% as many as in 1976. We have about 20% more people in their early 20s today, and of course, a lot more military roles open to women (for all of which, they have only grown from 10% of active-duty Army recruits to 16%). So the decline is really quite astonishing. If young people today were half as enthusiastic for joining the Army as they were in the late Ford Administration, the Army would have far more recruits than it knows what to do with.
I don't think the loss is the cause by itself, it's more that there is NO good patriotic reason to join PLUS you could get killed in a futile war. No realistic amount of financial or lifestyle benefits can make up for the risks of dying young, bleeding out in a ditch in a foreign land, so benefits cannot be the sale pitch. It has to be about glory or duty. I am Australian and we also cannot fill out recruitment targets now and are now trying to sell citizenship to foreigners for serving in the military (like the US). The legacy of Afghanistan for us is an embarrassing loss and criminal charges for our special forces for summary killing of unarmed Afghans. The British are now starting on the same Afghan war crimes process against their SAS. This is a deterrent for the young men they need - there's no glory any more. Meanwhile, our recruitment posters feature mainly women in uniform, doing things like holding injured koalas after bushfires (I'm not kidding). Obviously, there are better ways for women to satisfy their maternal urges towards animals than joining the army. I think the entire social model that underpinnned voluntary enlistment is busted.
"I think the entire social model that underpinned voluntary enlistment is busted."
This might well be so, at least for maintaining a military at anything like its current size, itself a fraction of its Cold War size.
I hadn't heard about the war crimes stuff going on elsewhere in the Anglosphere. Can't be a positive for recruiting, and yet I can't help but notice that in the later stages of Vietnam, there was also much talk of war crimes, including a famous hearing by a young John Kerry and common vets labeled "baby-killers" by those around them -- far worse than anything Afghanistan/Iraq veterans have been subject to. And yet recruiting in Vietnam's aftermath was still fine!
The prominent appearance of women in ads -- far out of proportion to their actual numbers in service -- also can't be good. And yet women, in absolute numbers, are volunteering LESS for the Army than in 1976! I actually wouldn't have thought this was the case until looking at those statistics.
My hunch as I think on this: the all-volunteer force was able to sustain itself when conscription was still in the very recent past and the mass-mobilization of WW2 was a living memory, and therefore a LOT of veterans were around. Fathers, uncles, grandfathers, when military service is something that runs in families. That, combined with the ongoing existence of the USSR, was the reason the military bounced back from Vietnam. Recruitment started losing steam in the 1990s, but anger over 9/11 and Islamic terror gave it a temporary boost that is now fully over, at the same time that conscription is now an even more distant memory.
All of the other crap going on doesn't help, but the Americans of 50 years ago would still be signing up in droves in these conditions.
Thanks I just read the article. It is hilarious that the only potential recruit they interview is a young woman who briefly nursed the incredibly-unlikely fantasy of becoming a fighter pilot, but instead went into the much more common female profession of graphic designer! Duh! If every girl who wanted to be a fighter pilot gave up on that dream and became a graphic designer it would be basically irrelevant to US military recruitment. They need to talk to young men who would once have considering joining an infantry unit or becoming a sailor and find out why they chose not to.
1. I'm skeptical that military wokeness is affecting recruitment all that much. It's bad and should be weeded out, but the military's had diversity, sexual harassment, etc. trainings for decades and anecdotally from my service experience in the late 90s-mid 00s it rarely or never affected the day-to-day service of the young person on their first enlistment. I'm sure things are different at the career enlisted/officer level.
3. It was good to be reminded about the extent to which military service runs in families. I'm a veteran, as are my brother, two brothers-in-law, my father, two uncles, both grandfathers, and other relatives going back to the American Revolution - but I don't usually think of myself as part of a military family because all but three of the people on that list had service that consisted of a single term of enlistment or less.
Thanks, I shared your first link with Aaron a few posts ago, but I think it's good to keep sharing this data since I don't see many people referencing it or contending with it. Also, a good reminder that many of these issues are longstanding. I also remember people making arguments 20 years ago that all the branches except the USMC were brain-dead when it came to their recruitment pitches to 18-year-old men. Too much emphasis on college benefits and setting yourself on a good career path, not enough on camaraderie and operating cool heavy equipment.
I don't have military experience, but I continue to suspect the Wokeness complaints are more "online" and more concentrated among careerists, especially officers. It's worth noting that officer recruitment is going much better; the "crisis" everyone is discussing is primarily an active-duty enlisted one.
The ineligibility stats I hadn't seen and are interesting. One thing is it seems these stats are just based on a statistical survey of the broader population (not kids that recruiters are talking to or anything), and it's possible to get a waiver. So how many people are really kept out for these reasons? I have to think that if you're obese before age 24, the thing keeping you out of the military isn't really the obesity, it's the sloth, and the all-around demoralization that it suggests. If the military greatly relaxed the obesity requirements, or said, "Eh, it's fine if you fail your first drug test, we'll help you kick the habit in boot camp" you wouldn't suddenly see a surge of these kids enlisting. Which I don't mean to contradict Aaron's main point; I think it reinforces it.
When it comes to military families, I suspect the main thing going on is that joining the military is a big scary unknown if you don't have a dad who's been through it and is prepared to tell you what it's all about. If your only point of reference is a local recruiter who is obviously delivering a marketing pitch, it's a risky proposition to take his word for it and "sign your life away" for a few years. Even a single enlistment means you've taken that plunge and can describe the experience and how to navigate it to someone else contemplating doing so.
Definitely agree with you that 1) it says bad things about America that so many more young people are fat and using drugs and 2) the 77% are only *theoretically* disqualified (I wish I would have emphasized this more in my previous comment).
With regard to drug use and obesity in particular, it's significant that DoD is relying on national survey data from CDC and HHS and not, say, surveys of people who've actually had a conversation with a military recruiter. A non-trivial portion of that 77% can enlist without needing a waiver by, for example, quitting their pot smoking and losing 10 or 20 pounds (frequently with the help of their recruiter) well in advance of their trip to MEPS where they'll be examined.
The military is relaxing the obesity requirements. There is evidence both anecdotally and from their own published standards. What the military is most likely missing out on in this group is the joining as a last resort type kids who are on a bad path and get pushed into the military in order to "straighten them out." It is safe to say the current military is not able to do this as well as it did in past generations.
Do you think that it might be intentional? That this is not a failure when the goal is properly understood?
I think the purpose of mandating the vaxx was to ensure that servicemen of a certain ideological persuasion would be discharged. It certainly was not to keep them safe. If the elites have to use military force against deplorables, it will be easier if fewer deplorables are in the military.
People say this, but I just don't think that many people on the left think this way. I've never seen them even hint at this possibility in their own spaces. It would be one thing if this were a country in which the military were a highly politicized institution that had been known to overthrow governments, but it is not.
A more straightforward explanation, which aligns with much of observed politics, is that the left is trying to reward its supporters. In this case, it is doing so by making a major Federal employer a more hospitable space for them. Even if few of its supporters work for the military, I think seeing the military drabbed in rainbow flags, and seeing conservatives squirm over it, does something to make them happy.
As we were commenting on Aaron's last post, even a lot of big supporters of the military consider its "jobs program" role to be one of its most important. But if conservatives think the jobs program is 30-40% of the military's useful purpose, liberals think it's 90-95%. They care very little if the US military wins another war. Which doesn't necessarily mean they want to lose the next war, they just have very little intellectual interest in the question of how wars are won and what the military should be doing to win them.
Moreover, no one really believes there's going to be another Omaha Beach, the tide soaked red with the blood of young women. If they did, practically no one, even on the left, would support having women in the infantry. Women aren't even allowed to get hurt in Marvel movies. It's only because military service is viewed as a jobs program, and not a personal sacrifice, that women are in the infantry.
“As we were commenting on Aaron's last post, even a lot of big supporters of the military consider its "jobs program" role to be one of its most important. But if conservatives think the jobs program is 30-40% of the military's useful purpose, liberals think it's 90-95%.” This is wildly and monumentally insightful. Beyond this, duty, country, and pride from place are almost really never mentioned in liberal places as why to serve. Many liberals have replaced country with their own disenfranchised minority. This means “sexual/gender/racial minority” tops “American”, as an identifier.
That is, indeed, a more straightforward explanation and, to be clear, it's not like the Left really *needs* the military as domestic foot soldiers (though I think it's useful for them not to have a military primarily consisting of deplorables). Why don't they need the military? They have control of the alphabet soup of federal agencies, and there are now more armed civilian federal agents than there are US Marines. And these feds have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to use their power to suppress dissent, from Jan. 6ers to pro-life activists, conservative Catholics, and upset parents at school board meetings.
Aaron isn't connecting the final dots of this trail. The ultimate reason the elite won't make meaningful investment in the working and middle classes is that they hate us and want to replace us with non white third worlders. A couple of key events to illustrate this:
1. The Major Hassan shooting in 2009 when Army Chief of Staff George Casey said, “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” This was an entirely avoidable event based on the information known about Hassan before the shooting. He still hasn't been executed and his lawyer thinks he never will be. Not only did the military not prevent it, they have done nothing to prevent a similar incident.
2. Then Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota saying in 2015, “Our economy cannot expand based on white, B+, Minnesota-born citizens. We don’t have enough.” The entire event in this piece is Dayton and his fellow government and NGO regime members ripping into ordinary citizens for the well founded concerns they have about the thousands of East Africans who were dumped in their communities with any input from them. According to Dayton being a native citizen of Minnesota in good standing requires you to sacrifice your way of life on the altar of economic growth.
Look at the conversation around what they call "The great replacement conspiracy theory." They celebrate the decline in the white population, but lambaste whites who point it out and object to it as racists. The vaccine requirements you mention were another example.
It's basically the same thing with North Dakota and Idaho politicians, who serve the interests of businesses that want cheaper labor. It's notable how they'll claim that immigrants will do jobs that Americans aren't willing to do but keep allowing more immigrants to drive down wages. The official unemployment rate might seem low, but it doesn't count discouraged workers who've dropped out. The labor force participation rate of young men should be considered more important.
Not saying they *aren't* doing that, but there's IMO a pretty straightforward functionalist explanation:
1. Appealing to "diverse" candidates is much harder work than ignoring cishet white males is.
2. Management in any organization is comprised of human beings who don't like doing more work than they have to.
3. To the extent that they're led to make *quantifiably* increasing "diversity" a priority, hostility or disregard toward white males is pretty much the inevitable outcome.
Why would someone want to join an army that has just lost a 20-year war against medieval enemies in Afghanistan, in the knowledge that the next wars are already being lined up against far-more deadly adversaries of Russia and China? By some accounts, US Special Forces are already operating in Ukraine, a country that most Americans couldn't have found on a map a year ago (and many still couldn't). It seems like the state of war is never-ending and the link to the interests of ordinary Americans is extremely tenuous.
I wonder how much that influences the average guy.
I was born after Vietnam, but my sense is that the failure of the War on Terror has about 1% as much mindshare in 2023 as the failure of the Vietnam War had in the decade or so following the fall of Saigon. I don't think it's really influencing things. And to some degree, having a big bogeyman probably helps with recruitment.
I just did a quick check, and interestingly, the US Army met its recruitment goals in 1976, which were 193,000 enlisted personnel:
https://history.army.mil/books/DAHSUM/1976/ch05.htm#:~:text=During%20fiscal%20year%201976%20the%20Army,recruited%20193%2C000%20men%20and%20women%2C%20achieving
In 2022, the Army recruited 45,000 (compared to a 60,000 target). So about 25% as many as in 1976. We have about 20% more people in their early 20s today, and of course, a lot more military roles open to women (for all of which, they have only grown from 10% of active-duty Army recruits to 16%). So the decline is really quite astonishing. If young people today were half as enthusiastic for joining the Army as they were in the late Ford Administration, the Army would have far more recruits than it knows what to do with.
I don't think the loss is the cause by itself, it's more that there is NO good patriotic reason to join PLUS you could get killed in a futile war. No realistic amount of financial or lifestyle benefits can make up for the risks of dying young, bleeding out in a ditch in a foreign land, so benefits cannot be the sale pitch. It has to be about glory or duty. I am Australian and we also cannot fill out recruitment targets now and are now trying to sell citizenship to foreigners for serving in the military (like the US). The legacy of Afghanistan for us is an embarrassing loss and criminal charges for our special forces for summary killing of unarmed Afghans. The British are now starting on the same Afghan war crimes process against their SAS. This is a deterrent for the young men they need - there's no glory any more. Meanwhile, our recruitment posters feature mainly women in uniform, doing things like holding injured koalas after bushfires (I'm not kidding). Obviously, there are better ways for women to satisfy their maternal urges towards animals than joining the army. I think the entire social model that underpinnned voluntary enlistment is busted.
"I think the entire social model that underpinned voluntary enlistment is busted."
This might well be so, at least for maintaining a military at anything like its current size, itself a fraction of its Cold War size.
I hadn't heard about the war crimes stuff going on elsewhere in the Anglosphere. Can't be a positive for recruiting, and yet I can't help but notice that in the later stages of Vietnam, there was also much talk of war crimes, including a famous hearing by a young John Kerry and common vets labeled "baby-killers" by those around them -- far worse than anything Afghanistan/Iraq veterans have been subject to. And yet recruiting in Vietnam's aftermath was still fine!
The prominent appearance of women in ads -- far out of proportion to their actual numbers in service -- also can't be good. And yet women, in absolute numbers, are volunteering LESS for the Army than in 1976! I actually wouldn't have thought this was the case until looking at those statistics.
My hunch as I think on this: the all-volunteer force was able to sustain itself when conscription was still in the very recent past and the mass-mobilization of WW2 was a living memory, and therefore a LOT of veterans were around. Fathers, uncles, grandfathers, when military service is something that runs in families. That, combined with the ongoing existence of the USSR, was the reason the military bounced back from Vietnam. Recruitment started losing steam in the 1990s, but anger over 9/11 and Islamic terror gave it a temporary boost that is now fully over, at the same time that conscription is now an even more distant memory.
All of the other crap going on doesn't help, but the Americans of 50 years ago would still be signing up in droves in these conditions.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-recruiting-crisis-veterans-dont-want-their-children-to-join-510e1a25?st=pnglt5nqnndk46l&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
^ here is a free link to the WSJ article for those interested
Thanks I just read the article. It is hilarious that the only potential recruit they interview is a young woman who briefly nursed the incredibly-unlikely fantasy of becoming a fighter pilot, but instead went into the much more common female profession of graphic designer! Duh! If every girl who wanted to be a fighter pilot gave up on that dream and became a graphic designer it would be basically irrelevant to US military recruitment. They need to talk to young men who would once have considering joining an infantry unit or becoming a sailor and find out why they chose not to.
Wanted to add a couple of things:
1. I'm skeptical that military wokeness is affecting recruitment all that much. It's bad and should be weeded out, but the military's had diversity, sexual harassment, etc. trainings for decades and anecdotally from my service experience in the late 90s-mid 00s it rarely or never affected the day-to-day service of the young person on their first enlistment. I'm sure things are different at the career enlisted/officer level.
Less anecdotally, this author makes a good case that declining interest among white *Democrats*, rather than white Republicans, has led to the current situation. (https://themissingdatadepot.substack.com/p/the-militarys-white-democrat-problem#%C2%A7if-not-white-republicans-southerners-and-rural-residents-then-who)
2. Regarding the specific reasons that 77% of young people are (theoretically) ineligible for the military, here's a slide that shows the category breakdown ( https://prod-media.asvabprogram.com/CEP_PDF_Contents/Qualified_Military_Available.pdf ) and there are probably a bunch of further insights to be found in the DOD Office of People Analytics reports (https://www.opa.mil/research-analysis/recruiting-awareness/population-representation/2020-population-representation-in-the-military-services/)
3. It was good to be reminded about the extent to which military service runs in families. I'm a veteran, as are my brother, two brothers-in-law, my father, two uncles, both grandfathers, and other relatives going back to the American Revolution - but I don't usually think of myself as part of a military family because all but three of the people on that list had service that consisted of a single term of enlistment or less.
Thanks, I shared your first link with Aaron a few posts ago, but I think it's good to keep sharing this data since I don't see many people referencing it or contending with it. Also, a good reminder that many of these issues are longstanding. I also remember people making arguments 20 years ago that all the branches except the USMC were brain-dead when it came to their recruitment pitches to 18-year-old men. Too much emphasis on college benefits and setting yourself on a good career path, not enough on camaraderie and operating cool heavy equipment.
I don't have military experience, but I continue to suspect the Wokeness complaints are more "online" and more concentrated among careerists, especially officers. It's worth noting that officer recruitment is going much better; the "crisis" everyone is discussing is primarily an active-duty enlisted one.
The ineligibility stats I hadn't seen and are interesting. One thing is it seems these stats are just based on a statistical survey of the broader population (not kids that recruiters are talking to or anything), and it's possible to get a waiver. So how many people are really kept out for these reasons? I have to think that if you're obese before age 24, the thing keeping you out of the military isn't really the obesity, it's the sloth, and the all-around demoralization that it suggests. If the military greatly relaxed the obesity requirements, or said, "Eh, it's fine if you fail your first drug test, we'll help you kick the habit in boot camp" you wouldn't suddenly see a surge of these kids enlisting. Which I don't mean to contradict Aaron's main point; I think it reinforces it.
When it comes to military families, I suspect the main thing going on is that joining the military is a big scary unknown if you don't have a dad who's been through it and is prepared to tell you what it's all about. If your only point of reference is a local recruiter who is obviously delivering a marketing pitch, it's a risky proposition to take his word for it and "sign your life away" for a few years. Even a single enlistment means you've taken that plunge and can describe the experience and how to navigate it to someone else contemplating doing so.
Definitely agree with you that 1) it says bad things about America that so many more young people are fat and using drugs and 2) the 77% are only *theoretically* disqualified (I wish I would have emphasized this more in my previous comment).
With regard to drug use and obesity in particular, it's significant that DoD is relying on national survey data from CDC and HHS and not, say, surveys of people who've actually had a conversation with a military recruiter. A non-trivial portion of that 77% can enlist without needing a waiver by, for example, quitting their pot smoking and losing 10 or 20 pounds (frequently with the help of their recruiter) well in advance of their trip to MEPS where they'll be examined.
The military is relaxing the obesity requirements. There is evidence both anecdotally and from their own published standards. What the military is most likely missing out on in this group is the joining as a last resort type kids who are on a bad path and get pushed into the military in order to "straighten them out." It is safe to say the current military is not able to do this as well as it did in past generations.
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2023/04/03/fatter-recruits-now-welcome-as-air-force-revises-its-rules/
Do you think that it might be intentional? That this is not a failure when the goal is properly understood?
I think the purpose of mandating the vaxx was to ensure that servicemen of a certain ideological persuasion would be discharged. It certainly was not to keep them safe. If the elites have to use military force against deplorables, it will be easier if fewer deplorables are in the military.
People say this, but I just don't think that many people on the left think this way. I've never seen them even hint at this possibility in their own spaces. It would be one thing if this were a country in which the military were a highly politicized institution that had been known to overthrow governments, but it is not.
A more straightforward explanation, which aligns with much of observed politics, is that the left is trying to reward its supporters. In this case, it is doing so by making a major Federal employer a more hospitable space for them. Even if few of its supporters work for the military, I think seeing the military drabbed in rainbow flags, and seeing conservatives squirm over it, does something to make them happy.
As we were commenting on Aaron's last post, even a lot of big supporters of the military consider its "jobs program" role to be one of its most important. But if conservatives think the jobs program is 30-40% of the military's useful purpose, liberals think it's 90-95%. They care very little if the US military wins another war. Which doesn't necessarily mean they want to lose the next war, they just have very little intellectual interest in the question of how wars are won and what the military should be doing to win them.
Moreover, no one really believes there's going to be another Omaha Beach, the tide soaked red with the blood of young women. If they did, practically no one, even on the left, would support having women in the infantry. Women aren't even allowed to get hurt in Marvel movies. It's only because military service is viewed as a jobs program, and not a personal sacrifice, that women are in the infantry.
“As we were commenting on Aaron's last post, even a lot of big supporters of the military consider its "jobs program" role to be one of its most important. But if conservatives think the jobs program is 30-40% of the military's useful purpose, liberals think it's 90-95%.” This is wildly and monumentally insightful. Beyond this, duty, country, and pride from place are almost really never mentioned in liberal places as why to serve. Many liberals have replaced country with their own disenfranchised minority. This means “sexual/gender/racial minority” tops “American”, as an identifier.
That is, indeed, a more straightforward explanation and, to be clear, it's not like the Left really *needs* the military as domestic foot soldiers (though I think it's useful for them not to have a military primarily consisting of deplorables). Why don't they need the military? They have control of the alphabet soup of federal agencies, and there are now more armed civilian federal agents than there are US Marines. And these feds have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to use their power to suppress dissent, from Jan. 6ers to pro-life activists, conservative Catholics, and upset parents at school board meetings.
Aaron isn't connecting the final dots of this trail. The ultimate reason the elite won't make meaningful investment in the working and middle classes is that they hate us and want to replace us with non white third worlders. A couple of key events to illustrate this:
1. The Major Hassan shooting in 2009 when Army Chief of Staff George Casey said, “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” This was an entirely avoidable event based on the information known about Hassan before the shooting. He still hasn't been executed and his lawyer thinks he never will be. Not only did the military not prevent it, they have done nothing to prevent a similar incident.
2. Then Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota saying in 2015, “Our economy cannot expand based on white, B+, Minnesota-born citizens. We don’t have enough.” The entire event in this piece is Dayton and his fellow government and NGO regime members ripping into ordinary citizens for the well founded concerns they have about the thousands of East Africans who were dumped in their communities with any input from them. According to Dayton being a native citizen of Minnesota in good standing requires you to sacrifice your way of life on the altar of economic growth.
Look at the conversation around what they call "The great replacement conspiracy theory." They celebrate the decline in the white population, but lambaste whites who point it out and object to it as racists. The vaccine requirements you mention were another example.
https://www.dglobe.com/news/dayton-blunt-in-mn-forum-anyone-who-cant-accept-immigrants-should-find-another-state
It's basically the same thing with North Dakota and Idaho politicians, who serve the interests of businesses that want cheaper labor. It's notable how they'll claim that immigrants will do jobs that Americans aren't willing to do but keep allowing more immigrants to drive down wages. The official unemployment rate might seem low, but it doesn't count discouraged workers who've dropped out. The labor force participation rate of young men should be considered more important.
https://vdare.com/articles/no-thanks-nd-gov-burgum-gop-potus-candidate-wants-more-immigrants
Not saying they *aren't* doing that, but there's IMO a pretty straightforward functionalist explanation:
1. Appealing to "diverse" candidates is much harder work than ignoring cishet white males is.
2. Management in any organization is comprised of human beings who don't like doing more work than they have to.
3. To the extent that they're led to make *quantifiably* increasing "diversity" a priority, hostility or disregard toward white males is pretty much the inevitable outcome.