Service Before Self Might Just Resonate

Two stories made news a few weeks ago, but neither mentioned the other. They should have.

The first story is tragic and concerning; the second damning.

For several years now all the services – save for the Marine Corps – have failed to meet their recruiting targets. Last year, the Army missed its recruiting goal by 25 percent—some 15,000 soldiers; the Navy missed its target by 19 percent; the Air Force by 10 percent, and the Coast Guard by 8 percent. Until the Navy’s recent announcement, 15 percent of the target population was ineligible because they didn’t graduate high school or earn a GED. And then there is the weight issue: a staggering 31 percent can’t enlist because they are obese.

Another oft cited reason for the military’s inability to attract people is its focus on “woke” policies. While a popular rationale among some politicians, a more insightful explanation has been offered by the Army’s chief of marketing, Maj. General Alex Fink: young people “just don’t see the Army as something that’s relevant. They see us as revered, but not relevant, in their lives.”

As a result, the military’s advertising efforts are trying harder and harder to appeal to young people’s sense of self – rather than any sense of service. The Army’s long-time slogan “Be all you can be” is aspirational but ineffective. The Navy’s odd tagline “Forged by the sea” is now adorning commercials that appeal to the insecurities of Gen Z. And while the Army’s cartoon commercial featuring a recruit’s two moms has been replaced by young warriors parachuting, this shift may be too little and too late to fix the damage.

As Rita Mae Brown (not Einstein) apparently said, “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.” And thus, it is time for the services to acknowledge the obvious:  individual-focused appeals to enlisting simply are not working. Rather, it is time to appeal to something bigger: the needs of and service to the nation.

My belief that a different message could resonate is based not only on the failure of the current ad campaigns but on a recurring data point that is both surprising and encouraging. For five years I have been surveying attitudes about mandatory national service. In the most recent survey, more than 75 percent of 18-22 year-olds support the idea of 18 months of required service sometime between the ages of 18 and 22. The question I asked made clear that military service would still be voluntary, and that the work might involve healthcare assistance, infrastructure/environmental repair, early childhood education programs, and eldercare assistance. Such jobs are very different from putting oneself in harm’s way, but a "your-nation-needs-you" message might resonate among our youthful cohorts.

Similarly, the armed services need to try messages that are closer in spirit to the old Uncle Sam “I want you" campaigns of the past. Military recruiting campaigns must make clear that the world is a dangerous place, and that there are people who simply want us dead and gone.

To challenge the young is our challenge. Encouraging them to put the nation’s needs of the nation ahead of their own – much less even contemplating making the ultimate sacrifice as five of their contemporaries recently did – won’t be easy. Whether Gen Z is more coddled than previous generations is just part of the challenge. They are certainly less aware of the realities of the real world.

Fully 31 percent of young people think that Osama Bin Laden’s views were good, that 8 percent support his actions. Ten percent had a positive view of Hamas’s attacks on Israelis, and more than 60 per cent had no idea that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust underscore the challenge.

 But continuing the ineffective recruitment marketing does them no favors and puts us all further in harm’s way.

Steve Cohen is an attorney at Pollock Cohen, and a former member of the Board of Directors of the United States Naval Institute.