Wokeness Is Responsible for the Military Recruitment Crisis

If our nation’s top military and civilian leaders want to understand why military recruiting in the all-volunteer force is at an all-time low, they need only look in the mirror. Few young people want to be like them. The sight of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley waddling out into the political arena this election season is unlikely to convince many teenagers to join up.

In an insightful piece in the Wall Street Journal, Owen West and Kevin Wallsten explain how incompetent top-level leadership and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts are chasing away potential recruits, as well as the military’s historically best recruiters — veterans who have encouraged their kids and grandkids to follow in their footsteps. The decline of this kind of encouragement from senior veterans almost exactly parallels the decline in recruitment rates. Historically, 80 percent of recruits had a relative who had served. Today, 80 percent of veterans say they would not recommend military service under the present circumstances. This is not a coincidence.

The Biden administration and its senior civilian and military leaders are in denial. They blame poor education, increasing juvenile drug abuse, and the sedentary lifestyle of the smartphone generation for reducing the pool of eligible recruits. The reality is that there are still plenty of high school athletes, young hunters, and farm kids out there who would otherwise join. Their parents and grandparents — I’m one of them — are either actively discouraging or just not encouraging them to enlist. Worse, the young people themselves see two decades of military failure culminating in the disgraceful rout in Kabul. They wonder if they want to be led by senior officers who spent 20 years fighting a war and not adapting their strategy to bring it to a successful conclusion. 

Joe Biden holds that diversity is essential to success on the battlefield. That is not supported by military history. The army of the Persian Empire under Darius and Xerxes was the most incredibly diverse in history, but was trounced on the battlefield by homogenous Greek armies in two decisive battles. The Persian army was made up of drafted contingents from every nation in the empire — many of whom hated each other more than they hated the Greeks. Over a century later, Alexander the Great conquered the empire with an equally homogenous professional army. Likewise, the very diverse Austro-Hungarian army was a drag on its allies throughout World War I.

In addition, DEI initiatives have made military promotions a joke. Who wants to join a military where you are likely to be passed over because a man wearing a dress, or someone less qualified but of a different ethnicity, will get promoted over you because they come from an underserved minority? In 2022, the Air Force mandated quotas based on race for officer promotions.

But the administration’s policies have also eroded military service culture. Even the Marine Corps, once considered one of the world’s elite assault forces, has adopted a passive defensive mentality that is technology dependent. The Marines are making their recruiting quotas, barely, because their recruitment goals have gotten a lot smaller under the leadership of the Biden administration and two incompetent commandants. Both have actively encouraged the downsizing. (READ MORE: The Marine Corps Has Gone Off the Rails)

The Biden administration has been laser focused on DEI at the expense of military readiness. If Kamala Harris becomes president, we can expect her administration to double down on DEI; she is, after all, the ultimate poster child for the movement. Unlike Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, she has never earned her national security chops. Potential recruits will likely not be unaware of the fact that the Biden administration has overseen an unbroken series of military and foreign policy disasters.

I desperately want to support the armed services, but I cannot, in good conscience, encourage any young man or woman to serve under the likes of Kamala Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. 

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Colonel who served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and as a civilian advisor in Iran and Afghanistan

READ MORE from Gary Anderson:

The Marine Corps Has Gone Off the Rails

It’s Time to Fix Incompetence in the Pentagon

What Will Replace the Marine Corps?

Biden Has Allowed the Marine Corps to Become Irrelevant

The post Wokeness Is Responsible for the Military Recruitment Crisis appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.