THE GHOST OF GWOT HAUNTING THE MILITARY RECRUITING CRISIS
Ethan Brown | 12.28.23
The Ghost of GWOT Haunting the Military Recruiting Crisis
Societal fatigue is difficult to quantify, but lurking beneath the US military’s struggle to persuade enough young Americans to join its ranks is the exhaustion felt by the American people who just witnessed a generation of servicemembers deploy again and again to a war without bounds. A nation going to war possesses a limited budget in social capital—support for the war by the population. The Global War on Terrorism—with its major troop contributions to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the associated, far-flung set of counterterrorism operations elsewhere—spent this capital early, borrowed on credit, and abused the resource to extremes after two decades. The American people (to include future viable service candidates) are exhausted at the cost of these years of war.
It is significant that multiple theaters of war, drone strikes in a range of countries, and smaller deployments, especially of special operations forces, around the world were lumped together under the label of the Global War on Terrorism, or GWOT. The term’s nebulousness did little to convey achievable strategic objectives. Even after President Barack Obama retired the term from official use in 2013, it has endured as the catchall of military operations, ranging by type and location, all justified by the attacks on September 11, 2001. It also is poignant that there was no overt declaration of the end of America’s longest war; rather, servicemember eligibility for the National Defense Service Medal—the ubiquitous award received by all servicemembers since September 11, 2001—ended on December 31, 2022 with nary a whisper. Unceremoniously, the next generation of recruits entered the queue for the American military’s next era haunted by the ghost of GWOT.
Much has been written about the Defense Department’s flagging efforts to address the growing challenge of military recruitment in recent years. Since 2021—GWOT’s apparent end, bannered by the ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan—DoD has consistently missed its recruiting goals across its service branches, resulting in the lowest recruiting numbers seen since 1999. It should be noted that, in every era of America’s emergence from conflict, recruiting numbers always shrink amid demobilization. The post-GWOT era, however, carries greater risk than before because of the ghost that hangs over the enterprise.
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-ghost-of-gwot-haunting-the-military-recruiting-crisis/
