How Demoralization Undercuts Recruitment
30th August 2023
The United States military position is of increasing vulnerability as the Army, Navy, and Air Force all fail to meet their annual recruitment goals. It is no accident, for the situation dates back to the botched withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in August 2021. It is hard for young men and women to want to join a service that was humiliated by an operation that left thousands of Afghans in the lurch—only to be executed after receiving the Taliban’s worthless promise of amnesty. Acts of this sort have long-term consequences, including precipitating what is now widely acknowledged to be an ongoing recruitment crisis for the military that could jeopardize the status of the all-volunteer force that has been a staple of American policy for fifty years. The shortage is fed by a general loss of confidence in the military by the American public—the number stands at 60 percent, the lowest in over two decades.
There are, as ever, multiple innocent explanations for the shifts in supply and demand, so the now-chronic shortages can be attributed in part to other socioeconomic factors beyond the ability of the military to recruit. The low unemployment rate offers potential recruits an enlarged set of nonmilitary options. A second factor is the apparent increase in parental pressure to attend college before settling on a career, which reduces the supply for military positions. There are additional difficulties on the supply side. High on this list are the declining fitness of potential recruits, who grapple in increasing numbers with obesity, drugs, and criminal records. This effect is then compounded by a reduced willingness to serve. It is possible of course to increase the number of recruits by lowering the standards for enlistment, as is being done, but only at the cost of a likely reduction in the performance levels of the military services. And it is also possible to sweeten the pot for potential recruits by offering them signing bonuses of up to $50,000, which, however necessary, counts as an open admission that all is not well within the system.