Opinion:Want more young people to join the military? Spend less on it

By Lindsay Koshgarian

The military is concerned about a growing recruitment crisis. Survey after survey reveals young people just aren’t inspired by military service.

Ironically, decades of sky-high military spending — and the endless war it enabled — may have much to do with that. And reversing that trend is critical to making Americans safer.

An 18-year-old today will have lived their entire life watching one failed, disastrous war after another. Born in 2006, they would have been an infant when George W. Bush surged troops in Iraq in 2007, years after the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner. They would have been in about second grade when ISIS took over much of that country.

They could have been eligible to join the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) just as the United States withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years, having only made conditions worse.

That same young person would have spent formative years in isolation because of a global pandemic, during which billionaires made record wealth gains and used their wealth to buy elections. They would see a country where public schools are underfunded and where neglected infrastructure means lead in drinking water and dams that can’t stand up to newly destructive storms.

This reflects the conscious decisions of the government they’re being asked to fight for. In 2024, the U.S. military budget is approaching $1 trillion, more than half of which goes to for-profit military contractors. Year after year, that’s money that hasn’t gone into education, health care, housing, climate or other needs desperately facing young people — and all of us — today.

Young people don’t want to sign up for this.

Americans under 30 are the only age group where a majority think the military has a negative effect on the country. Younger Americans are also likelier to say the military doesn’t make the world safer. And fewer than one in five of us under 35 say they’re “extremely proud” to be American — compared to half of those 55 and over.

Notably, these Americans also think the United States is on the wrong side in the Middle East. Just one in five younger Americans tell pollsters they support how Israel is conducting its war in Gaza, even as the United States continues to sponsor Israel’s fight through a continuing stream of weapons.

And for all that we’ve spent on the military, we’ve consistently failed to protect those who volunteer. With half the budget going to for-profit contractors with multimillionaire CEOs, the troops are often forced to rely on food stamps to get by.

Meanwhile, more veterans have died of suicide since 2001 than have died in wars. And our lawmakers have failed to adequately support veterans harmed by burn pits, traumatic brain injury, homelessness and other tragedies of military service.

No wonder over half of all Americans now say they’d advise a loved one not to join the military.

If we want the best for our country and its young people, we can’t blindly ask them to join an institution they don’t believe in and fight in wars they don’t support for a country that doesn’t have their backs.

Instead, we need to invest in a country worth fighting for. For what we’ve spent on wars and the military since 9/11, we could have easily decarbonized the entire U.S. electric grid, completely erased student debt, continued the pandemic-era Child Tax Credit (which cut child poverty in half) for another decade, and much more.

It’s not too late to press for those investments, which — unlike the trillions we’ve plowed into the Pentagon and unjust wars — would actually make this country safer. Just ask the young people we’re asking to defend it.

Lindsay Koshgarian directs the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.