Legitimacy Is a National Security Issue

The United States does not compel its citizens to serve. It asks them.

For more than fifty years, the All-Volunteer Force has relied not on conscription, but on conviction: the belief among young Americans that their country is worth defending. Recruitment shortfalls, declining morale, and widening civil-military divides are not simply bureaucratic problems. They are cultural ones.

You cannot sustain a volunteer military in a society unsure of itself.

In recent years, recruiting numbers have missed targets across multiple branches. Analysts point to obesity rates, mental health disqualifications, and academic decline. Those explanations are convenient. They allow leaders to blame the youth rather than examine the country those young people are being asked to defend.The volunteer force runs on meaning.

When I report on military and veteran communities, I hear less about pay than about purpose. Service members speak of camaraderie, sacrifice, and mission. Veterans tell me they joined because they believed in something larger than themselves– even when they questioned policymakers.

A generation that is disillusioned, however, is unlikely to volunteer for sacrifice.

Look abroad. The United Kingdom offers a cautionary example. The British Army is now the smallest it has been in centuries, coinciding with declining public trust in institutions and widespread skepticism toward political leadership. A nation that appears unwilling to enforce its own laws, protect its own citizens, or defend its own cultural foundations should not be surprised when fewer citizens volunteer to defend it.

America is not immune. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan signaled to many service members that strategic failure carries little consequence for those who authorize it. Institutional scandals, selective accountability, and public moral confusion reinforce the same message: sacrifice is mandatory at the bottom and optional at the top.

That message corrodes legitimacy.

A young American considering military service is not merely evaluating pay or career prospects. He or she is asking a deeper question: Is this nation serious? Is it just? Is it worthy of defense?

Some argue that politics and morality can be separated, that war is merely a political instrument. But as Clausewitz reminds us, war is a continuation of politics by other means. If politics lacks virtue, the burden of its failures falls on the soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine.

The volunteer military does not require perfection. It requires legitimacy.

Legitimacy depends on cultural confidence, civic virtue, and leaders who model responsibility rather than deflect it. National purpose cannot be manufactured through recruitment campaigns. It must be demonstrated in conduct.

If we want young Americans to raise their right hand, we must preserve something enduring, coherent, and honorable for them to defend.

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