Commentary
The U.S. Army is struggling on many fronts, but one of the most obvious is that, for the second year in a row, the Army has failed to meet its recruiting goals. The result is that in 2023, total full-time Army personnel stood at 452,000, a 7 percent decrease from 2021 and the smallest Army since 1940, before the United States entered World War II.
In an attempt to reverse its decline in size, the Army is implementing sweeping recruiting reforms, but a quick review of these reforms suggests that they miss the mark as they don’t really address what I believe is the Army’s biggest hurdle in recruiting and retention—a lack of trust by the people group that has formed the backbone of the Army since it was established in 1775.
Historically, this people group has been patriotic males who are generally conservative and believe in traditional Judeo-Christian values. Many came from families with a long heritage of military service. And even today, the overwhelming majority of new Army recruits, nearly 80 percent, come from a family with members who have served in the military. This is not to say that less conservative men did not join the Army, but if they did, they were joining a largely conservative organization built around duty, honor, courage, and love of country—an organization that prided itself on toughness and the promotion of a very male-centric warrior culture.
Since the 1980s, we have seen the gradual supplantation of the warrior culture and meritocracy with quotas, sex-based double standards, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. This change, including the repealing of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and a push to support transgenderism in the military, has created a military that is increasingly unattractive to the kind of men you need to fight and win wars.
Although the displacement of the traditional Army warfighting culture, which some see as being all about toxic masculinity, has slowed, it has not been stopped, much less reversed. And over the past few years, it has accelerated with the implementation of pervasive DEI initiatives. Further, as it now stands, active members of the military can take time off from their duties to obtain sex-change surgeries and all related hormones and drugs at taxpayer expense.
The COVID-19 vaccine mandate for military personnel could have further deterred some recruits. Add the debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and you can see why trust in the military has plummeted over the past three to four years.
According to Gallup, the past few years have seen Americans “having a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in the military plunge from 79 percent to 60 percent in 2023. And while Republicans continue to trust the military more than Democrats, the past three years have seen Republican trust plunge from 91 percent to 68 percent.
All of this has resulted in military heritage families advising their children to not enter the military. More specifically, military families are advising their sons to not enter the military. Indeed, internal service data reviewed by Military.com shows that “since 2013, male enlistments have dropped 35%, going from 58,000 men enlisting in 2013 to 37,700 in 2023, according to the service data.” Meanwhile, female recruitment has remained stable, hovering around 10,000 recruits each year.
But the drop in recruitment for white males has been even more dramatic. In 2018, a total of 44,042 new Army recruits were categorized by the service as white, but every year, fewer and fewer white males sign up. And in 2023, only 25,070 white males joined, a 43 percent drop in just five years. No other demographic group has seen such a dip—a dip far out of step with demographic trends in the general population. There is little doubt that this huge decline is the primary reason for the U.S. Army missing its recruiting goals by 15,000 in 2022 and 10,000 in 2023.
Serving in the Army seems to have become far less attractive to white males and less attractive to males in general. Possible reasons? Maybe sharp, capable males don’t like to see the military pandering to extreme ideologies such as critical race theory. Or perhaps it’s because of the big push to put women into combat roles, despite the fact that every study shows that doing so will severely impact combat effectiveness and make it less likely males will survive has made joining less attractive. Perhaps the Navy’s use of a drag queen to try to boost recruiting cast a pall over all U.S. Armed Forces recruitment efforts.
The point is, with both enlisted and officer ranks already earning more than their civilian counterparts, Army leadership needs to acknowledge that it’s not about the money. Instead, Army leadership needs to acknowledge that the ideology with which the military is now thoroughly infected has made it less attractive to honorable men. And until the Army rejects equality and social justice ideologies and returns to traditional American military values and meritocracy, it is going to find it increasingly difficult to meet its recruiting goals, much less recruit the kind of men our country needs to fight and win wars.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
