The U.S. Military’s Personnel Crisis

A country’s military and its society have a symbiotic relationship. The society provides the human and economic capital to supply the military; the military protects the society. In 1973, in response to societal unrest caused by the Vietnam War–era draft, the United States transitioned its armed forces to an all-volunteer model, staffing it only with recruits who joined by choice. At the same time as it did away with conscription, however, the government began scaling back federal social welfare programs. The inadvertent result: a dearth of qualified people willing to join the military.

Although a voluntary force has considerable advantages over one filled partly through conscription, inadequate welfare policies have undermined U.S. manpower. Poverty, poor childhood nutrition, and withering ties between the military and society have led to a depleted recruiting pool. This decades-long neglect is becoming apparent at a time when competition with China and Russia increases the need for a strong military, which in turn must recruit more highly skilled service members.

But it’s not too late to reinvest in future recruits. The U.S. government will need to take the long view, starting with increasing funding for nutritional programs for children, a policy that will enhance educational outcomes and reduce obesity. And the military should expand its outreach to high school students, to give more young Americans an accurate understanding of life in the armed forces. By expanding the ranks of young people eligible for military service and encouraging them to serve their country, the United States can repair military-civilian ties and attract top-tier talent.

ROUGH DRAFT

The all-volunteer force solved a recruitment crisis created by civilian policymakers’ misuse of conscription. When the United States entered the Vietnam War, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, seeking to avoid political backlash, refused to activate reserve and National Guard units, relying instead on conscripts. He believed it was better to draft people from across the country instead of activating hundreds of men from communities that had National Guard units. But the conscription process had been broken for some time. In the decade of relative peace following the Korean War, the system had begun granting too many deferments, which were disproportionately used by white and wealthy Americans. As U.S. involvement in Vietnam escalated, increasing demand for troops exposed inequities in the system as conscripts were more likely to be poor, Black, or Hispanic, be relegated to combat roles, and suffer casualties. For instance, 64 percent of eligible Black Americans were drafted in comparison to 31 percent of eligible white Americans. Black troops made up 31 percent of combat battalions and 24 percent of the war’s casualties despite constituting only 12 percent of the U.S. population. Opposition to the war increased skepticism of the draft, and as legislative attempts at reform failed, conscription became politically toxic.

The switch to an all-volunteer force was also meant to raise the military’s esprit de corps. In 1968, William Westmoreland, freshly recalled as the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam and kicked upstairs to serve as army chief of staff, ordered a series of studies to determine the root cause of declining morale and discipline in the army. The studies concluded that conscripts were responsible for infecting the armed forces with the social ills roiling 1960s America, such as drug abuse and racial tensions. Army leadership resolved to use an all-volunteer model to weed out “undesirables.”

There are benefits to an all-volunteer force. Today’s recruits boast significantly higher high school graduation rates, standardized test scores, and retention rates than conscription-era troops. In the last 50 years, policymakers have employed this better-credentialed, professionalized force in a variety of situations, from quick campaigns in Grenada and Panama to decades-long commitments in the Middle East, without having to ask the wider public to endure sacrifices. But the switch to an all-volunteer force happened at the same time that the United States began to scale back welfare programs. The Carter and Reagan administrations cut funding for much of the assistance that was established under Johnson, including cash transfer programs to families with children, food stamps, housing aid, Medicaid, and community service grants to states. In particular, these cuts hurt Black families and single-mother households. Their cumulative effects can be felt today.

UNFIT TO SERVE

Fifty years of domestic divestment have shrunk the U.S. military’s pool of human capital. A 2020 study by the Pentagon found that 77 percent of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service without a waiver, up from 71 percent in 2017. The most common reasons for ineligibility were obesity, drug abuse, and mental and physical health conditions. Almost half of young Americans are ineligible for multiple reasons. The United States’ military manpower is declining because policymakers have failed to invest in the health and nutrition of its potential recruits during their formative years.

The U.S. armed forces have also come to overrely on recruits who are familiar with military service through family or geographic connections. More than 80 percent of new recruits have a family member who served, with almost half having a parent who did. The military is becoming a family business instead of a civic duty, expanding the disconnect between the armed forces and the rest of society. According to surveys conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the percentage of Americans who reported having a “great deal of confidence” in the armed forces dropped from 70 percent to 48 percent between 2018 and 2023. Reliance on family connections for recruitment may also prove unsustainable, as a declining number of service members and their families would recommend others to enlist: 63 percent did in 2021, down from 75 percent in 2019, according to the Military Family Advisory Network, an advocacy group.

The lack of eager and qualified potential soldiers leaves the United States and its armed forces in a precarious position as it navigates the most challenging geopolitical environment since the end of the Cold War. With fewer Americans willing or able to serve, the U.S. military will have to rely more on U.S. allies and partners, whose interests are not always aligned with those of the United States.

The military is becoming a family business instead of a civic duty.

The first step to rebuilding the United States’ manpower is for the U.S. government to invest in its future recruits. Childhood poverty increases the incidence of obesity, health problems, and risky behaviors. These outcomes not only render American youth ineligible to serve but also undermine their prospects to thrive in civilian life. Army leaders have recognized that declining eligibility is related to these societal trends and have introduced preparatory courses to help potential recruits overcome obesity and academic issues. But this program helps only those recruits who are on the cusp of eligibility. It is not enough to stop decades of worsening socioeconomic conditions that created the eligibility crisis in the first place. To repair that damage, civilian policymakers must invest in nutrition and education, expand the military’s outreach, and reform the Selective Service.

About 22 percent of Americans aged two to 19 are obese, according to the nonprofit group Mission: Readiness. Much of this has to do with poor nutrition. Federal policymakers should offer each American child attending public school three meals at no cost. This would guarantee that every student has a chance to receive the nutrition necessary for learning and healthy development, regardless of their family’s socioeconomic standing. Over the long run, it would reduce obesity rates in the United States’ pool of potential recruits.

Today’s armed forces rely heavily on technical expertise and critical thinking, making it all the more important that recruits are educated. Furthermore, to take advantage of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, the U.S. military requires highly credentialed candidates that private sector firms are also eager to hire. But the U.S. military is at a disadvantage for recruiting well-educated people for several reasons. Those who have already completed higher education tend to be less interested in one of the main attractions of military service: the educational benefits. Even when the military finds and trains promising recruits, they often leave for the higher-paying private sector, a struggle that has plagued U.S. Cyber Command in particular. According to a 2016 study by Air University, civilian information security analysts earned, on average, 130 percent of what their enlisted counterparts did.

Instead of engaging in a bidding war with private firms over a small pool of skilled workers, policymakers need to help equip more young Americans with skills in software development, data science, data engineering, cyber physical systems, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The Department of Defense should collaborate with the Department of Education to establish middle and high school programs that teach young Americans these critical skills, which both private and public sectors require to remain competitive in today’s rapidly evolving technology environment. At a minimum, the Pentagon must establish these programs within its own schools. Through its Education Activity agency, the Defense Department manages 160 schools with over 66,000 students that are all children from military families, the group most likely to serve later in life.

ALL FOR ONE

Eligibility is not the military’s only recruitment problem. Just nine percent of Americans aged 16 to 21 express any interest in joining the U.S. military. Although the armed forces need to recruit only a fraction of this population to fill its ranks, the widespread apathy to national service suggests a disconnect between society and the military. To rebuild ties between the two, the U.S. government should expand the Selective Service system to include women. Today, the Selective Service—the federal agency that keeps a record of potential draftees—requires only men aged 18 to 25 to register their contact information. Excluding women is antiquated, given that women have been allowed to serve in combat roles since 2015. Men who refuse to register with the Selective Service may be imprisoned or fined. And they are rendered ineligible for educational grants, government employment opportunities, and federal job training benefits.

To give young people a better understanding of life in the armed forces, the U.S. government should make those same federal educational and employment benefits contingent on participation in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, a program that aims to instill civic values in high schoolers mainly through courses on military history and physical fitness. Currently, only 3,500 out of 23,500 U.S. public high schools offer a JROTC program. JROTC should be expanded into all high schools so that young Americans from all walks of life would be afforded the opportunity to interact with veterans who could provide a grounded portrayal of military service. JROTC should also add to its curriculum the quality-of-life programs that are available to current service members, such as financial counseling and substance abuse recovery courses. This reimagined JROTC curriculum could complement schools’ academic and life skills courses while also rebuilding the ties between the U.S. military and American society—ties that have been neglected for over 50 years.

Militaries fight battles, but societies wage wars. It is for their defense that armed forces are created, and it is a society’s vitality that sustains the armed forces, in the form of material support and manpower. If a society declines, its armed forces will inevitably decline as well. For 50 years, the U.S. government has asked nothing of most Americans when it has entered conflicts. At the same time, policymakers have reduced investment in the American people. The long-term effects of this disengagement between state and society are becoming painfully apparent. More than ever, the U.S. military is struggling to recruit from a society whose young people are increasingly unable and unwilling to fulfill the most fundamental civic duty: defending their country.