Why won’t young people join the military? The armed forces have been trying to solve the problem for years. They have tried using YouTube influencers. They have ventured on to Fortnite (and made a tactical withdrawal). They have attempted to sell themselves as a sort of self-improvement boot camp, with campaigns promising “A Better You” and “Confidence That Lasts A Lifetime”. They have tried reassuring young people that it will accept them, even with all their terrible problems. “Phone Zombies”, ran one advert. “Your army needs YOU. And your focus.” “Snowflakes. Your army needs YOU. And your compassion.” But still the armed forces have continued to shrink. Not only are young people declining to join up, they are finding few reasons to stay once they get there. The army is now just 74,000 strong compared with 100,000 in 2010.
The issue came to a head last week when General Sir Patrick Sanders, the chief of the general staff, warned that reserves were so thin that we may need to train up a “citizen army” to bolster them should war break out. Downing Street has since clarified that conscription is not on the cards. But the idea that young people might be rounded up and forced into combat and buzzcuts briefly created a great deal of excitement among retired members of the army and GB News commentators. “I’m a UK Army veteran – WW3 conscription is exactly what entitled Gen Z need,” ran one headline in the Daily Express. A Daily Mail column suggested compulsory national service might even be the solution to knife crime. Young people are “easily offended” and they “lack motivation”, Maj Gen Chip Chapman told GB News. That is why they do not want to join the army.
I’m not sure how far an approach focused on the character flaws of generation Z will help in getting them to join up. Will young people really respond to the idea that a spell in the army will cure them of their awful unpatriotic personalities? If we want to boost numbers, it might be worth considering why else young people do not want to join the armed forces at present.
Let’s start with the obvious. The pay is low. Just three in 10 members of the armed forces think their salaries are fair. Pay rises in recent years have been well below the increase in the cost of living.
There is a sense, too, that the whole institution is crumbling. Service housing is particularly decrepit. Just over a year ago, the military had to apologise when around a third of homes were found to be needing repair; army families had uploaded videos online of babies sleeping next to mouldy walls and water streaming through roofs. One Royal Navy base was forced to shut down when silverfish and maggots were found in freezers.
Widespread reports of sexual harassment may not be helping either. A report last year into sexism and bullying in the Red Arrows revealed there was a culture of “women being viewed as property”. That followed allegations of abuse in the submarine service, including that some submariners compiled a “crush depth rape list”, in which women were ranked in the order they should be raped in a catastrophic event. Morale, according to the most recent annual survey by the Ministry of Defence, has fallen to a five-year low.
Then there is our uninspiring track record. “Iraq was exposed as the big lie, and Afghanistan as a complete failure,” Richard Mitchell, a former member of the Parachute regiment, who joined after the 9/11 attacks, told the Guardian. “Young people look back on recent history and worry the same will happen again.” It may also be harder to trust the government in general. The housing crisis has broken an implicit promise – work hard and you will be fairly rewarded. If the social contract is fraying, further sacrifice is unlikely to appeal.
But I think a broader trend lies behind this, too. Those who berate younger generations for being uniquely ill-suited to the army forget that this analysis also applies to the culture at large. Britain, like many other democratic western nations, is deeply individualist. Army life was always going to be a hard sell. What do I mean by this? In individualist cultures, citizens tend to see themselves as unique beings, rather than components in a social network. They define themselves by the jobs they do and the personalities they feel they have, instead of through their relationships. They are less willing to conform to views they don’t agree with, and less likely to submit to authority.
Societies like these have huge advantages – they tend to be fairer and more prosperous. But they also tend to struggle to recruit people into the armed forces, because their values are simply not aligned. In the army you win respect by keeping your head down and promoting group interests; in individualist cultures you win respect by standing out as particularly talented or accomplished. The military may claim it is keen on “building your career”, but it is ultimately about building a machine, in which you are an anonymous and expendable part. Lecturing young people about the virtues of serving their country, then, will do little to boost recruitment. Young people in the west are not going to suddenly adopt values alien to the rest of their culture. They are not going to become conformist and patriotic, at odds with everyone else. When Emmanuel Macron tried to introduce voluntary civic service for French teenagers in the hopes it would foster dwindling patriotic spirit, hardly anyone joined.
Instead, the armed forces are going to have to offer young people something they can respond to: better pay and a better life. Nothing else will work.
• Martha Gill is an Observer columnist
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