By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

Threats emanating from Russia, ongoing Chinese threats over Taiwan and Iran’s aggression throughout the Middle East, the U.S. faces no shortages of potential crises. But the one area that does more than anything to threaten U.S. national security is a dwindling number of American’s willing and who are able to serve in uniform, if America is to retain its military edge it will have to figure out how to recruit and retain its troops.

With this low number of recruits entering the armed forces the U.S. will have to figure out how to prepare for future wars with a dwindling and leaner active force structure.

Current trends are disturbing to say the least, in order to meet the Pentagon’s overall active duty troop strength of 1.3 million; the military will need to recruit 150,000 new inductees across the various service branches.  As of right now with just two months left in the fiscal year, the Pentagon will be 15% short of its recruitment goal, with the largest gap being with the Army.  By the end of June the Army had only signed up 22,000 troops, which equates to 60% below its annual baseline target.  If current trends continue on pace the Army will be down to a force structure of only 445.000 troops, making it 40,000 smaller then authorized then congressionally mandated.

Michael Bloomberg penned an article, “Military Recruitment Woes Endanger National Security,” A tight labor market is one reason for this state of affairs, but the bigger problem is the shrinking pool recruiters are drawing from. Because of rising rates of youth obesity and drug use, the share of Americans aged 17 to 24 who are eligible to serve without a waiver has fallen to 23%. Discounting those already enrolled in college, the number is only 12%. The military estimates that among those who are eligible, a mere 9% have a “propensity” to serve, the lowest since 2007, during the height of the Iraq War.

This might be one of the problems, but other issues need to be examined or explored.  Too many Americans who are eligible to serve are automatically disqualified because of past criminal history, drug history, educational deficiencies, and high rate of youth obesity, but another rational has to be explored as well.

Why would anyone want to serve in the nation’s armed forces today, when a major political party, to include a sitting U.S. president has consistently degrades the very country these recruits are supposed to defend as systemically racist and is irredeemable.

This hatred for America is indoctrinated early, as most public schools across America teach a deep seated hatred for the country, and consistently teach that country is systemically racist and needs to be fundamentally altered.

This begins by teaching that the founding fathers perpetrated the establishment of “white supremacy” and they should never be admired or emulated.

Recently we have witnessed attacks on the founders, the constitution, and such venerated leaders such as President Abraham Lincoln and President Ulysses Grant.

Why would anyone want to join the U.S. military when the nation suffered the most humiliating military humiliation since Pearl Harbor with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan?  The same political and military leaders who were responsible for this humiliation Americans behind coupled and to add insult to injury resulted in the deaths of thirteen U.S. military personnel.

Why would families of those who otherwise would serve in uniform want their son’s or daughter’s to be sacrificed in endless wars perpetrated by both the Democrat and Republican Party elites while there children stay safe.

Why would someone serve when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the current Secretary of Defense both vowed before Congress, without any supporting evidence they are rooting out “white supremacy” in the ranks when pressed could not even articulate what this even means.

Why would anyone enlist when the Department of Defense pursues progressive woke diversity-equity-inclusion training instead of focusing on warfighting or the core mission of the Department of Defense to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.

This being done today in the armed forces of the United States?

Military Historian Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institute commented that both Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Miley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin were asked to explain why the armed services were recommending soldiers read inter alia the often-discredited “antiracist” theories of Ibram X. Kendi. His polarizing doctrine asserts that the entire U.S. system of government, all social and political life, and our very culture are racist to core. As a result, Kendi’s solution requires radical and overt racial preferencing and discrimination supposedly to fight such an insidious system.

Hanson continued that the subtext of the entire testimony debacle was that the two titular heads of the military wished to reassure progressive majorities in the U.S. Congress that they were sympathetic to the woke movement and, along with other high-ranking officers, wanted publicly to virtue signal to that effect.

The nation’s political and military have instilled a priority of focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion—this is the bases they go by to use race and gender quotas to assure proportional or even reparatory representation—throughout the officer corps.  Austin and Milley seemed entirely oblivious that the U.S. Army depends on generations of family loyalty to the armed forces.  Such heritage and legacy considerations have ensured a steady stream of recruits for front-line combat units.

Our military leadership seems to place greater emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion—focusing on utilizing race and gender quotas to assure proportional or even reparatory representation—throughout the officer corps, without analyzing merit in there selection process.

What Austin and Milley forget is that the U.S. military depends on the generations of family loyalty to the armed forces; it’s rare for someone to join the military that didn’t have a family member who had previously served.  This unique heritage and legacy has always ensured a steady stream of recruits to the military that has been important in filling front-line combat units.

Our political and military leaders have forgotten that over the generations throughout history families, drawn from the preponderance of middle-class groups who served disproportionately in the various conflicts in the post-World War II era. The conflicts include Vietnam, and the Iraq and Afghan wars have borne this out.

With the entire fixation on race by our political and military leaders, the vast majority of the casualties have been borne by Caucasian Americans, maybe instead of focusing on a failed premise return the military to its primary focus on deterring war and protecting the homeland.

Maybe then you will reverse the decline in military recruitment.