The issue of conscription suddenly shot up the US election campaign agenda after Christopher Miller, a former under secretary for defense and part of the Trump team, suggested that a form of national service should be a way for the United States to prepare for “great-power competition”. In other words, what it needed to have a leadership role in a world filled with conflict.
Miller, who Trump would be likely to place in his Pentagon team in the Department of Defense for a potential second term, said that national service, not just restricted to the military, should be seen as a “rite of passage”. He added it provides a “baseline understanding of the pool of potential military service members and their specific aptitudes”.
One option could be that all high school students could sit an aptitude test for military positions, as recommended by Project 25, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s vision for a second Trump term. In the chapter on the department of defense, Miller writes that the tests would “improve military recruiter’s access to secondary schools”. Such tests would only be sat by students that receive federal funding.
