Selling America: The Army’s fight to find recruits in a mistrustful, divided nation
TOMS RIVER, N.J. — Sgt. 1st Class Dane Beaston had endured the stress, frustration and disappointment of one of the worst recruiting slumps in the half-century history of the U.S. military’s all-volunteer force.
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The unrelenting pressure Beaston and his six-person team were feeling reflected the high stakes for the military and the country. Each of the services — except for the Marine Corps — missed its 2023 recruiting goal.
The Army, which had come up short two years in a row, was aiming to bring in 55,000 recruits in 2024 — about 10,000 fewer than last year’s missed goal.
The new target wasn’t determined by the threats facing the country, the amount of money that Congress was willing to spend or the number of tanks and helicopters the Pentagon could field.
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.
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Whenever they left the office, people would thank them for their service. But it was getting harder and harder in an increasingly polarized and pessimistic country to find young people who wanted to swear an oath to the Constitution and serve.
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Only about 9 percent of young people say they are likely to consider military service, down from 16 percent in the early years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, according to Defense Department surveys. Pentagon officials blamed some of the recent drop on the hot job market. But they also knew that the low unemployment rate couldn’t explain the totality of the problem.
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Trust in all American institutions — the Supreme Court, Congress, police, public schools — has in recent years plummeted, according to Gallup. The armed forces, though still relatively popular, have not been immune: In 2023, about 60 percent of Americans said they had a “great deal” of confidence in the military, the lowest percentage since 1997, Gallup found.
“There’s a relationship between that propensity number and a lot of what you see in surveys about trust in institutions, pride in country and levels of patriotism,” said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth in an interview.
Today, U.S. soldiers are spread across the globe, training Ukrainian troops to fight the Russians and working alongside allies to deter China, North Korea and Iran.
“If we get too small, our ability to do those things is at risk,” she said. The success or failure of those missions and America’s future as a superpower began with soldiers like Beaston.
The full article here :https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/30/army-recruitment-numbers-low/
