Choosing a Military Life

The military is relying on a "tiny sliver of America" rather than on the full spectrum of the population, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a standing-room-only audience at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina the evening of Wednesday September 29, 2010.

Military recruitment is increasingly concentrated in the South and the Rocky Mountain West, in rural areas, and among military families, he said, adding that that "for most Americans, the wars remain an abstraction."

Gates cited the all-volunteer army as contributing to this.  Returning to the era of compulsory service (which ended after the Vietnam War) would be both practically and politically impossible, he pointed out, but the "void of relationships and understanding" between the military and the rest of the country that this change in policy left in its wake, poses a risk.

I’ve written before about the disconnect between the 98 percent of the country who are not serving, and the 2 percent who are, and how this makes us as a nation unaware of the serious stresses on this 2 percent.  Gates touched on this in his speech. "We've had so few fighting our wars for so long," Gates said. "How long can these brave and broad young shoulders bear the burden that we as a military, a government and a society continue to place on them?"

The focus of Gate’s speech was getting young college graduates to sign up, to "go outside your comfort zone and take a risk, in every sense of the word." Military service provides “extraordinary responsibility at a young age," Gates said, commending Duke for maintaining ROTC programs and other connections with the military, unlike many top universities. 

Now that we are at war and will probably remain so for some time, it’s true that we need a broader swatch of the population embracing what Gates called the "ethos of service." Ironically, however, will it turn out that the more people are sensitized to the stresses on the 2 percent, the less likely they will be to choose to join them?   The real solution must be to create a lifestyle of military service that does not ask more than individuals and families can bear.  

For a full text of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates remarks, click here.