Welcome to the President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

I'm Jim Lindsay, Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is the U.S. military recruiting crisis.

With me to discuss the challenges that the U.S. Armed Services are having in attracting new recruits, and what can be done about it is Nora Ben Sahel.

Nora is a visiting professor of strategic studies and senior fellow of the Merrill Center at the Johns Hopkins School

of Advanced International Studies. She is also a contributing editor and columnist for War on the Rocks.

She has co-written the book Adaptation Under Fire, How Militaries Change in War Time. Earlier this year,

she co-wrote an article in War in the Rocks, titled

Addressing the U.S. military recruiting crisis. Nora, thanks for joining me.

Thanks very much for the invitation to be here. So Nora, 2023 marks the 50th anniversary

of the all-volunteer force. But over the last several months,

I've seen a number of articles talking about the recruiting crisis that the U.S. military and

the U.S. Army in particular are facing. Can you give me a sense of the extent in nature of the recruiting crisis?

Yeah, it's pretty extensive and it is now spreading beyond the army to affect most of the other

services as well. During government fiscal year 2022, which ran from October 1st of 2021, all the way through September 30th,

2022, the numbers of people who were joining the military fell to some of their lowest numbers

in recent memory. The army itself fell short about 10,000 soldiers that it needed to make up its

ranks. The other services were able to make

their numbers, but just barely. This current fiscal year, which will end on September 30th of this

year, the Army is on track to lose up to 20,000 additional people to shrink by that much. And the

other services, all except the Marines Marines are projecting that they will come in

under their military recruitment targets. So this is a very significant challenge for the military.

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