Despite a barrage of hefty bonuses, loosened and more progressive enlistment requirements, and even the creation of innovative pre-boot camp programs, the U.S. military mostly fell short in efforts to bring more Americans into the services over the past year – and it’s unclear how or when that will change.
Of the five Defense Department service branches, only two met their active-duty enlisted recruiting goals for fiscal 2023 – the Marine Corps and the Space Force, by far the smallest services and with the lightest recruiting burden.
The US military is reduced to asking those discharged for refusing Covid vaccination to return to service.
Only 43 of the more than 8,000 US service members who were discharged from the military for refusing to be vaccinated against Covid-19 have sought to rejoin eight months after the vaccine mandate was officially repealed, according to data provided by the military branches.
This very well may restrict US ability to meddling other countries. Perhaps time to appeal to Venezuelans within the US asking for sanctuary?
It’s probably because “everyone” is employed and making money. And people like money. I guess it’s another reason for the fed to act in a way that causes slightly increased unemployment. Unemployed people are more likely to enlist.
Throughout human history, once civilization creeps in nobody wants to do that stuff. In primitives…yes, they’d fight, kill, think it’s OK to die for “the gods”, their own sense of superiority, tribal ignorance and fear of anything different, etc. Excluding maybe the Spartans, people, as a whole, not individuals with proclivities, seem to not want to be bothered very much. They need to feel threatened by something: e.g. nozi’s, commies/Cold War, some other specter real or marketed. Or they need to feel useful for something they can make a claim to. e.g. Defeating the nozi’s/Japanese/commies/Indians/rebels/yankees etc etc. Otherwise, they’d rather do without the nonsense and, what we used to call “mickey mouse” military “career irritants.”
That’s why, in the absence of the above mentioned motivators they had to be drafted, threatened/frightened with legal penalties, or socially guilted into joining.