According to most reports in the media, the military’s biggest personnel problem is a shortage of recruits. The Army fell significantly short of its recruiting targets every month from February through May. It only met its goal for June after it lowered the target.
For the fiscal year ending September 30, the Army needs to recruit 80,000 soldiers, but it has actually enlisted only 47,121 through June 27. Despite adding hundreds of recruiters, it appears likely the Army will miss its yearly recruiting goal for the first time since 1999. While this news has made headlines, this is not the real personnel crisis the military faces. The military doesn’t have a shortage of people; it has a shortage of skills.
While recruiters are looking for new soldiers in high school cafeterias and shopping malls, the personnel it urgently needs are not teenagers. Rather, the military desperately needs experienced, technically literate people in their 30s and 40s to fight the new type of war the U.S. is waging. Simply put, the American military force does not match its strategy for confronting the changing nature of world conflicts.
To understand this situation, we need to take a closer look at this new geopolitical environment. On the positive side, the U.S. is virtually invincible. It controls the skies with its Air Force and the seas with its Navy. In a conventional war, pitting large ground forces against each other, the U.S. holds a powerful advantage because of its superior weaponry.
But the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 proved that the threat doesn’t always come from a foreign army. Small teams of terrorists can inflict devastating damage to our country. The U.S. response has been to deal crippling blows to the countries that support such terrorists, first through bombing campaigns during the Clinton administration and more recently through the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by President Bush.
As George Friedman points out in an insightful Stratfor analysis, the U.S. strategy is reflexive. That is, it relies on punishing nation-states that harbor terrorists, and on responding to threats to the balance of power in Eurasia.
The strategy also hinges on a crucial principle: America fights its wars on its enemies’ soil — or in more recent cases, on its enemies’ sand. This is an...
