At The Atlantic, Jason Dempsey and Gil Barndollar write that America’s all-volunteer military force is in trouble:
The stark fact is that most young Americans can’t currently serve and even fewer want to. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, just 23 percent of Americans ages 17–24 are eligible to enlist without a waiver. Obesity, medical and mental-health issues, or a history of substance abuse prevent most of their peers from being able to serve. The switch to a new military health-records system, MHS Genesis, is also making recruiting tougher by revealing the actual mental and physical health of recruits, after decades of half-truths and fudged standards. The overall propensity to serve is even worse than the eligibility. Most of those who are eligible to enlist are currently enrolled in college. Just 9 percent of young Americans would seriously consider military service, near the all-time low since the AVF began. COVID restrictions made it tougher for military recruiters to find and meet this extremely small tranche of young Americans; online efforts have been a poor substitute for in-person recruiting.
It’s not just physical health, but economic and cultural: If you’re 18 and have a choice between going to college and hanging out with your friends — having the freedom to do what you want — or going off the boot camp, which are you likely to choose?
We’re talking here about the supply of troops. What the article doesn’t really get into is the demand.
Consider this, from Al Jazeera in 2021:
According to David Vine, professor of political anthropology at the American University in Washington, DC, the US had around 750 bases in at least 80 countries as of July 2021.
The actual number may be even higher as not all data is published by the Pentagon.
With 120 active bases, Japan has the highest number of US bases in the world followed by Germany with 119 and South Korea with 73.
Now: I can make the case that America’s worldwide military footprint is ultimately a negative thing on its own terms. Indeed, here’s Foreign Policy from May:
This model is not without its costs—not only moral but economic, political, and strategic, as well. Despite being one of the most well-entrenched orthodoxies of U.S. national security strategy, it may well be time for change. A growing movement argues that rather than keeping the barbarians at the gate, the gates themselves have drawn the United States into reckless and unpopular conflicts, tempting policymakers into knee-jerk military responses rather than diplomatic ones, and provoke enemies rather than deter them. After decades of consensus, activists, scholars, and veterans are now pushing back against what they see as a geopolitical misstep, arguing that it’s time to abandon these long-held outposts and bring the troops home.
Shrinking that footprint — fewer bases, fewer troops needed to staff them — could theoretically reduce recruiting pressures on the U.S. military. For the most part, though, the national security establishment never really considers that possibility.