My Turn: Army faces recruiting challenges
Last week, I wrote about the recruiting problems facing the regular Army, which missed its February recruiting goal by more than 27 percent.
Now it appears the active Army’s prospects for avoiding a full-scale recruiting crisis may be seriously jeopardized by a steady decline in enlistments of young blacks and women, two traditionally strong pools of recruitment for the Army.
According to statistics recently released by the Army Recruiting Command, blacks now comprise roughly 23 percent of our active-duty Army. However, the share of new black recruits has dropped, from 22.7 percent at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to 19.9 in 2002; 16.4 percent in 2003; and 15.9 percent in 2004. As of this February, the figure was still dropping, to 13.9 percent.
The figures for female recruits are troubling as well. Female soldiers make up about 15 percent of the active Army. However, their number as a share of total Army enlistments has dropped 13 percent over the past five years and continues to decline this year.
Obviously, black and female potential recruits share the same fear factor as other potential recruits regarding service in Iraq. Traditionally, both of these groups have seen military service as an attractive path to better opportunities than many civilian careers offer. Now, they, too, seem to be having serious second thoughts about enlisting.
Meanwhile, the Army is having greater success recruiting Hispanics. The nation’s fastest-growing minority group, Hispanics have increased from 10.4 percent to 12.8 percent of the active-duty Army in the past five years. Like blacks and females, many Hispanics view military service as an attractive alternative to upward mobility in a society with relatively limited opportunities for them. Incidentally, the Army has been aggressively recruiting Hispanics in the past five years, reaching out to the Hispanic community with special recruiting advertising and marketing campaigns.
Another silver lining in the Army’s recruiting cloud is its continuing ability to maintain its self-imposed quality standards for new recruits, even as the quantity declines. For example, over 90 percent of new recruits are high school graduates. Over 70 percent scored relatively high on mental aptitude tests. These are important benchmarks because they are reliable predictors of trainability and retainability.
My own experiences, as an Infantry Battalion Commander in the mid-1970s, and an Infantry Brigade Commander in the mid-1980s, confirmed the value of these quality benchmarks as reliable indicators of self-discipline as well.
Generally speaking, I found my higher-educated, smarter soldiers demonstrated greater self-discipline than their peers who were less endowed in either or both of these categories.
How well the Army ultimately fares in meeting its quantity and quality recruiting challenges depends on a variety of factors, many of which are way beyond the Army’s control. If the situation in Iraq improves to the point where an orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces is feasible, that would be good news for recruiters. On the other hand, if it deteriorates, recruiters for the regular Army, as well as the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, will face new and even greater challenges.
Even more importantly, the American public’s perceptions of success or failure in Iraq will weigh heavily on the extent to which public support for our military waxes or wanes. After all, as we learned the hard way in the Vietnam War, loss of public support for an unpopular war can lead quickly to loss of support for those forces who waged it. It took many years for the Army to recover from Vietnam. Neither the Army nor the nation needs a repeat of that sad episode in American history.
Thomas B. Vaughn is a professor at Motlow College and co-host of the WCPI radio show “Viewpoints.”