A force for what, exactly?

The military recruiting slump has many causes but no mysteries

I look back at my youth and wonder why I never joined the military, given my government-service bent and aspirations. My OCD personality loves regimentation and structure and clear goals. But I never considered it seriously at the time.

The thing was, the military had a terrible reputation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That was the “Stripes” era in which even the notion of fighting the Sovs seemed kind of ludicrous. Instead, the enduring hangover from Vietnam called into question the morality and efficacy of using military force, like you were always one My Lai away from a war crimes charge.

The US military spent the 1980s rebuilding itself from the ground up, repackaging its image and regaining, particularly after the first Gulf War, the admiration of the country. By then, I had my PhD and was working for the Navy and Marines as a civilian contractor analyst.

By the time I hit DC in 1990, the military was on an upswing, and I became part of that larger sales effort.

Understand: The Pentagon’s New Map, my 2004 NYT-bestseller, began as a CNA report that saw me counting up all the times the US military services were sent — in combination or singularly — in crisis response mode around the world in the post-Vietnam era. That’s where I got all the data and started selling naval forces as the 9-1-1 responder. I was originally tasked by the Navy’s two-star Congressional liaison, RADM Bud Flanagan, to do this because both the Navy and Marines felt like the Air Force and Army were getting all the glory from that first Gulf War and they wanted to remind the public that they did all the scut work around the planet and that, believe it or not, business was hopping in the post-Soviet era, which it was.

The data on crisis response, extended through the early 2000s, got me my Core-Gap concept. It also showed how the aggregate number of crisis response days by the four services skyrocketed after the Gulf War — all these small crises that really stressed the force out until 9-1-1 became 9-11 and the worm turned. Now, doing the small stuff was the war.

Without a doubt, 9-11 triggers all this patriotic fervor. All of a sudden, the fact that I was working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense made me somebody. I’m living just off a military base and everybody I know is serving over there. Maybe the country wasn’t exactly in a war but the DoD most definitely felt like it was in a war, and that was my entire world — full of purpose, glad to pitch in, somebody on the team.

The Pentagon’s New Map was judged by a lot of people as being a bit too pro-American, pro-military, and the like. Almost all of my work has suffered the criticism, and it’s valid. Once on the team, always on the team. As I grew to feel more and more alienated from the Catholic Church, my belief in America became my core religion.

To me, it’s no surprise that my current book, America’s New Map, literally wraps itself in the flag.

All the stuff about America pulling back from the world since 2008 … I have not imbibed. I still very much believe in an activist America shaping the world. I know for certain that our identity as Americans is the most consequential identity— in terms of world history and the fate of humanity — that any one of us with ever claim.

But I get why the US military today isn’t meeting its recruitment quotas.

The sale right now to Millennials and Zs is godawful:

Our country is headed for civil war, so why not join up to kill your neighbor!

The world is going to hell in a hand-basket, so don’t bother thinking about tomorrow!

Check out Ukraine where drones hunt down your sorry ass before executing you like a dog!

How about killing migrants at the border? You up for that?

America is no longer a democracy worth defending; instead, it’s worth attacking.

Join the Guard and get to beat up protesters on city streets!

Join the Marines and die on some distant island fighting the Chinese!

Why would anybody young today sign up for any of that?

There is an underlying collision here: just as the Military Singularity accelerates the Defense Department toward a post-human battlespace, it is running our of recruits that … in the future … we’ll likely need in far smaller numbers.

So, there.

You can’t always get what you want. But, if you try sometimes, you get what you need.

If we want younger generations to serve, we have to offer them forms of service that they believe in — that match their worldview, their sense of belonging to this nation, and their sense of morality.

Right now there is a tremendous mismatch between how the use of military force is perceived and what young people are comfortable with.

If you want sufficient recruits, then change that perception by changing the underlying reality.

What is America about today in the world?

What do we consider worth fighting for?

Greg Jaffe, an old friend who once profiled me on the front page of the Wall Street Journal (in another life for both of us), now writes — brilliantly as always — for WAPO. He and a colleague have a great piece out today that triggered the above typing:

Selling America: The Army’s fight to find recruits in an angry, divided nation

It’s a very good read, the gist, as it should, being captured in the subtitle:

Recruiters are contending with a confounding array of political, social and economic crises that have made it harder than ever to find citizens willing to serve

The nature of the problem:

Across the country, recruiters were struggling to find soldiers among a shrinking pool of qualified young people. Only about 23 percent of all Americans between the ages of 17-24 meet the Army’s physical, moral and educational standards.

Beaston and his recruiters were also searching for prospects at a time when Americans’ confidence in their country was crumbling. He and his team weren’t just pitching a job. They were asking young people to put their trust in their country’s leaders, who could send them to war, and in their fellow citizens, who would fight alongside them. They were selling America.

I know about being in the business of selling America. It’s kind of been my career, in many ways.

Looking back, I think that’s why the book’s illustration feature Uncle Sam so much:

And yeah, selling right now is hard.