The Implications Of The Enlistment Deficit

It’s been a slow news day. There is big news—inflation appears to be accelerating—but I have nothing to add to the obvious negatives. Moreover, this “news” was expected. So I’ve decided to turn to a story that’s been percolating for quite a while: The dire recruiting shortfalls for our armed forces.

Back at the beginning of the month my wife sent me a Fox News article by Chuck DeVore (who retired from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel). The article isn’t an in depth analysis of the situation. Rather, it’s more of an impressionistic presentation of what’s behind it all. Like so much else in America these days, It’s the culture, stupid:

Biden's military recruiting crisis a demon of its own design

The message is very clear if you’re a patriotic young American: Stay clear of the military

Obviously, the use of the word “patriotic” suggests right up front that the problem is cultural. Liberals only use the word when they think they have an opportunity to impugn some conservative as “Un-American.” Patriotism is one of several markers of the great divide within America—especially among white Americans. So, given that patriotic sentiments land you in trouble with the people who now run the military and other service institutions, normal young Americans are steering clear of the woke military, as well as other woke service institutions.

Here’s the gist of DeVore’s article:

America’s armed forces are facing the worst recruiting crisis since the end of the draft in 1973. The Biden Pentagon is blaming the economy. The reality is far more troubling.

It’s human nature to avoid suffering and danger, if possible—unless it’s for a greater good. Even then, not everyone is cut out to be a cop, firefighter or service member.

We see police retirements soaring and recruiting not keeping up in defund-the-police-mandatory-COVID-19-vaccine places like Seattle, while most of Texas finds it easy to fill police academy classes. It’s not hard to understand why—police are generally honored in Texas, but they’re not in Seattle.

Similarly, from the start, the Biden administration has given voice to the left’s view that the American military is filled with right-wing extremists and White supremacists.

We saw this coming. “Deplorables” and “bitter clingers” and “extremists” were pretty obvious liberal code words for white Christians. The kind of people who actually do honor military and police service.

DeVore reminds us of how the Zhou regime started out:

Then Tennessee Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen fretted that the thousands of National Guard soldiers deployed to the Capitol as a show of force "might want to do something" to President-elect Biden because they were "predominantly more conservative" than Americans. A week after Cohen’s comments, retired Adm. John Kirby, at the time, the Pentagon spokesman, said, "There may be cultural issues we have to deal with here" (referring to service members) as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered a military-wide stand-down to address extremism.

Thus, the message is very clear if you’re a patriotic young American: Stay clear of the military. After all, why put yourself under the command of people who, at best, are suspicious of you and at worst will demand you attend pronoun reeducation camp—after they force you to take a vaccine for a virus that has little chance of harming you as a young, healthy adult.

How bad are things? The Army has only reached 40% of its recruiting goals so far and is now openly lowering standards—no HS diploma, etc. That’s supposed to help staff a high tech military.

Jeff Groom, a former Marine officer, notes the same problem in an article that appeared yesterday:

No one wants to join the military anymore

Our elites’ culture war has targeted the very Americans who traditionally enlist

Groom begins by noting:

Last week marked the 246th birthday of the United States. This year also marks, according to Lieutenant General Thomas Spoehr of the Heritage Foundation, when we “question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force.” As reported in late June by NBC, all branches of the military are falling short of their 2022 recruiting goals.

So are we about to reinstitute the draft? The military draft has traditionally been associated with a time of war—declared war. Remember the Constitution? I can see a renewal of the draft leading to social turmoil—largely from the Left.

Groom ties this directly into cultural considerations when he lists the reasons why normal young people are increasingly disinclined to enlist:

First, our citizens’ feeling of connection to the United States is beginning to wane. ... It doesn’t take a genius to understand that the youth won’t sacrifice for something they don’t feel connected to. But if the groups highest in patriotic sentiment aren’t interested in serving in the same numbers as in the past, what else is going on?

In 2013, 44 percent of all military recruits came from the South. Georgia and Florida take the top spots in terms of enlistment rates while the Northeast lags considerably with the exception of Maine. Racial representation of the enlisted force remains consistent with overall representation in the United States. This leads to the second reason the Pentagon’s premise of connection is in trouble: the woke culture war.

As the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher said in December 2021, when commenting on the balkanization of military recruiting districts, “conservative American families are wondering why their sons and daughters should fight these foreigners on behalf of the same elite class that is waging culture war on them at home?” ...

Given that American embassies around the world fly the rainbow flag, it doesn’t take a genius to come a realization of what our armed forces are actually fighting for these days—to spread gender ideology around the world. That’s “who we are as Americans” now, as Obama would say.

Imagine you are an eighteen-year-old, white, Christian male in Georgia with a family history of military service. As you progressed through your teen years, you watched Confederate statues being torn down and military bases being renamed, endless media and elitist demonization of your culture as racist and deplorable and backwards, and military and civilian leadership that thinks diversity and inclusion (i.e. fewer white men) is best thing since sliced bread. Would you volunteer? Identity politics works both ways. Trash my tribe and I won’t associate with you, let alone risk my life. It shouldn’t be a shock, then, that those expressing a “great deal of trust and confidence in the military” dropped from 70 percent in 2018 to 45 percent today.

Rod Dreher comments on Groom’s article today:

A Military At War With Americans

Dreher, after some preliminaries, goes right for the Culture War jugular:

On the other hand, if you join the military, you might have the chance to shower with a tranny, per Defense Department order. So there’s that.

... What kind of loyalty should people routinely demonized by the ruling class in this country … be expected to show towards this social and economic order? Does that loyalty extend to volunteering to be available to fight in the wars of choice launched by an Establishment that makes culture war on them? This is the thing that the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion people never, ever understand: that, in Groom’s words, “identity politics works both ways.”

The white people who run these programs are liberals, and that means they hate themselves and people like them. No kidding, white liberal hatred of whites is measurable:

These white liberals think that all white people must be like them: full of self-hatred, and hatred for whites. And honestly, I wonder how many conservatives in elite circles ever stand up to them? Nobody wants to be branded a racist, a sexist, or a bigot of any kind. I’ve been part of these “diversity” discussions in newsrooms, and like every other conservative present, I’ve known how phony they are, and how they’re all about redistributing power, and guilt-ridden white power holders trying to offload their neuroses onto the backs of whites who don’t have as much privilege as they do. But all of us kept our mouths shut, because we knew which way the wind was blowing, and we figured that maybe we could hold on long enough to find a way out.

People have to work, but they don’t have to work in the military. Why join up when your senior commanders think you are a bad seed for being white, male, Christian, and/or conservative, and they might send you overseas to fight in the forever wars to extend the American empire, and to make the Donbass safe for Raytheon and RuPaul’s Drag Race, chicks with dicks and CRT? At some point, you’ve got to realize that it’s a scam, that you are being asked to risk your life to fight for an imperial order that thinks your law-abiding, church-going, palefaced right-wing self is the problem with America.

OK, I don’t think any of this is news to readers here. So, what’s the point?

The first and very obvious point is that there is simply no way to run a volunteer military—the kind that we’ve grown accustomed to—if normal and well qualified people don’t enlist in large numbers. There simply aren’t enough freaks out there who are willing to submit to military discipline to staff the military that the American Empire requires.

The next point is that running an empire takes serious military force. Americans have gotten used to the notion that war can be conducted remotely, with little or no inconvenience to our daily lives. That’s not real, and people are coming to that realization. The reality is that we’ve been conducting remote wars and not winning them for a long time now. Ultimately, bombs and missiles don’t win the wars—you need really competent troops on the ground. The rest of the world came to that realization before Americans did, but we’re learning. We’re not ready to win wars like that, and we surely won’t be if all we have is a woke military.

The Russians, Chinese, and others understand these things. They are probing, and we will be faced with hard choices sooner or later—it’s actually happening already, while most Americans are focused on inflation. We are also losing the overwhelming technological edge that we have come to rely upon. We are being challenged, and we are learning that America has real military force projection limits.

A final point is our empire is endangered by the degradation of the military into woke social warfare against normal Americans. The American Empire, like all empires in the past, ultimately rests upon military power—it’s as raw as that. Did you think our empire rests upon our industrial base? That was shipped overseas long ago, as part of the scheme to enrich our ruling elites, whose children don’t enlist. Americans are starting to question the entire imperial project. They’re seeing behind the curtain, and don’t like what they’re seeing. They’re seeing that the ruling class, like all ruling classes, is in it for themselves. This could be a part of a Great Awakening. If so that would be a good thing, but it will lead to major changes and even social upheaval right here at home. Our way of life, from at least the 80s on, has depended upon the maintenance of America’s imperial order by dint of military superiority. The two go hand in hand. America can go back to a simpler, republican and federal order, but it will take character, principle, and determination.