How Covid May Have Crushed Military Recruitment

W ord on the street is that military recruits are more and more difficult to come by. National Review’s Isaac Schorr and the New York Times have both valuably reported the recruiting shortfalls of late. They are an unfortunate but predictable outcome of a panoply of factors.

Perhaps not surprisingly, commentators have their pet reasons for why the Army might have secured only 40 percent of the 57,000 they hope to enlist by the end of the fiscal year and why even the Air Force — long considered the most desirable branch to join — is 4,000 short. The Left prefers to cite extremism in the enlisted ranks along with economic factors; the Right posits that woke-ism detrimental to the cause has proliferated under Biden’s administration while obesity has rendered many Americans physically unfit to serve. Naturally, there’s a tad more to the story; please allow me to apply Occam’s razor, even if it puts me in partisan-pundit territory.

The simplest and best explanation for the recruitment shortage is that potential recruits are disinclined to join because of vaccination requirements, limited exposure to recruiters stemming from lockdowns, and the dire warnings of family members and others who have served and abhor the direction some parts of the military have gone.

Three years ago, the Army met its goal of 68,000 recruits. Today, it struggles to hit a mark 11,000 below that. The economy was hot in 2019, with a solid 3.6 unemployment rate, so I’m not buying the economic argument as a primary reason. Further, the military was composed of a wide array of political nonsense of all stripes in the same year and long before. During my time in, we received absurd lectures along progressive lines on the regular; Obama or Trump, it didn’t matter. We grumblingly signed the muster sheet, departed our consciousnesses for the presentation, and looked for an opportunity to disappear from the lecture hall during the head breaks. The average shop aboard a carrier has pseudo-Marxists next to Trumpists next to social democrats next to neocons: They all talk s*** and don’t vote. What changed was Covid.

Our reaction to Covid did a few things simultaneously, all stymieing recruitment. Recruiters went from readily accessing schools, social institutions, and public events to having prolonged removal from all of the above. Recruiters are salesmen, and if MM2 (SW) Abel can’t shake hands with a young man or woman and fervently extol the many virtues of living in a press of sweat-stained coveralls eating reheated chicken for months at a time, then the sale becomes much more difficult. As a former recruit, I can attest that you build a relationship with your recruiters. I remember mine fondly. One was round; the other had a creepy mustache and worked part-time as a barista at Starbucks. But man, were they hilarious. A comedy duo, with the former playing the straight man and the other the gonzo funnyman. It was these exhibitions of camaraderie that made the Navy attractive.

But with Covid, the military became a good deal less fun and increasingly antagonistic. While rarely a click-your-heels-with-joy adventure, deployments have provided young sailors the opportunity to experience countries they would never otherwise have known. Ask any servicemember about his or her enlistment, and foreign travel tops the list nigh-always. But bases locked down, deployed ships pulled into port, and masking was mandated. Imagine day after day in hot, humid climates with your breath recycling into your face. That whole thing about required vaccination didn’t help either.

The military’s recruitment comes as much or more from personal recommendation as it does from recruiters’ efforts. If you’re a rising high-school senior and considering enlistment, you reach out to a graduate who has since enlisted to hear how it is. If one receives a response detailing the misery that military service was during the lockdown period, who of sound mind would want to volunteer?

This recommendation issue goes further yet. Veteran family members are profoundly influential in decision-making for young people. Military service is far more likely for those who grew up in the military or heard accounts from a grandparent or uncle who served; legacy choices apply to the armed forces just as they do universities. If these family members are hesitant to recommend service, whether out of concern for the physical or ideological safety of their young relative, these young men and women will look elsewhere.

To those of you who are warning your progeny away from service out of fear that the branches have gone woke, I suggest restraint. While it’s understandable to be outraged that your branch of choice has incorporated some lefty program or other, the military looks much more similar to how you remember it than it might appear. Unlike college or corporate life, the services are fundamentally conservative and resistant to meddling. Nowhere can a young person get more return for his time than serving, with full educational benefits earned after 36 months — meaning a three-year contract, of which the Army offers several — and this will net a young person who keeps her nose clean an equal length of 100 percent-covered tuition and housing allowance. (Please don’t sign a six-year contract like my dumba** foolish self. After all, one can always sign up for longer, later, but rarely can one reduce a contract — I tried; it didn’t work.)

Maybe the last thing to say is, our military is still the strongest on Earth. There are phenomenal servicemembers and officers doing heroic things, and while it is commendable to push for excising the pernicious aspects of leftism from the service, we should want capable young men and women to join and make the military more capable. It’s our last great federal institution, and it deserves husbandry, not an abandon-ship drill.