Suppose They Held a War and Nobody Came: Systemic Approaches to Shared Military Personnel Challenges
by SWJ Staff
Published by: Rand
By: Paul Cormarie, Stephen Dalzell, Naoko Aoki, Omar Danaf, Jan K. Gleiman (Editor-in-Chief of SWJ)
Summary
Allies and partners of the United States in Europe and East Asia are having widespread, significant, systemic, and strategically relevant problems in developing military personnel. None of these countries are immune from the personnel challenges caused by demographic decline, social factors, and economic conditions, at a time when some are seeking to expand their forces. Not all U.S. allies and partners have given enough attention to the similar problems that they face. Their shortages in personnel have direct, indirect, and strategic effects for collective defense in Europe and potential combined defense operations in East Asia, ultimately affecting U.S. interests abroad; these effects deserve further study.
In this report, we propose that critical gaps in partner troop levels may not be inevitable but could be mitigated by moving away from an outdated personnel paradigm detached from modern societies. Variations in personnel patterns are more frequent than popularly believed; they often change over periods shaped by different strategic environments. As we have entered an era of multipolar, great power competition combined with emerging and disruptive threats, the new strategic landscape calls for a fresh approach to military staffing that differs from that of the post–Cold War era.
In this report, we find the following challenges for foreign militaries:
There is growing demand for personnel in Europe because of national and multinational plans to expand forces.
There is a decreasing supply of personnel. This trend is systemic in East Asia and Europe and risks making existing force objectives in Europe unsustainable.
Government responses tend to be similar, systematic across regions, and unsuccessful in shifting personnel trends.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/10/11/suppose-they-held-a-war-and-nobody-came/
