The Erosion of Civic Virtue: How Recruiting Technology Changed the All-Volunteer Force

Abstract

Persistent recruiting problems and other criticisms that emerged from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to calls for a systemic review of the U.S. military’s 50-year-old All-Volunteer Force design. Critics reference these problems as another indicator of a growing civil-military divide. This dissertation argues that the U.S. military’s use of recruiting technology narrows the accession pool as a matter of near-term efficiency, but, over the long term, it reduces the social and geographic diversity of the military and veterans. The cumulative result is a civil-military divide made worse by a veteran population that is increasingly smaller, less representative, more geographically concentrated, and thus less broadly connected to society. The research is framed by the philosophies of technology and Clausewitz to compare the Army’s accession data from 1990 to 2022. The analysis identifies that recruiting technology has resulted in accessions that are not geographically representative of the U.S.; increasingly, the Southeast is overrepresented among recruits. The pattern is similar for Blacks and women, but not so for the education level. A qualitative analysis of the military profession indicates that purposeful civilian oversight will likely be required to change the application of recruiting technology to achieve a more representative military. These findings have implications for the viability of republicanism as a unifying national virtue, civil-military relations, military accessions and recruiting, and the design of the armed forces