> Generation Z is not joining the armed forces in the way my generation did
Why aren't the kids joining the military? Did something happen in the last few decades that made them rethink it as a career option, possibly?
Why aren't the kids joining the military? Did something happen in the last few decades that made them rethink it as a career option, possibly?
Also, while I was quite naive to the realities of the geopolitical order as a kid (and probably am now too as an adult), the clear hard sell pitch that George Bush gave the country about how we needed to invade Iraq made me instantly suspicious of his motivations. I think that instinct has proven quite correct in retrospect and is probably one of the happenings you're alluding to over the last few decades.
That's just me as an American Millennial, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhat of a general view.
Though it doesn't help that British kids have felt no visceral "we're at risk from $Powerful_Enemy!" fears since ~1990.
Also one rather needs ones army to be xenophobic, a xenophilic army would be somewhat poor at its job.
I've been musing that the majority of ~canon fodder~ lower class working men are so destructively disengaged from main stream western culture that a new branch of Islam with 19th century western sensibilities - nationalism, nativism, chauvinism, etc. - would have very little trouble in taking over.
Wouldn't the right question to answer be why anyone would want to join the military? At best you get an average/below-average salary, at worst you get sent to fight in wars. Seems like very little benefits for a lot of risks.
But in most of the rest of the OECD, like Britain? Yeah, not sure.
I had known many who made the US-EU jump, it didn't sounded particularly hard (the administrative part)
If you’re particularly unlucky you get blown up in the sandbox 6,000 miles from home and die for nothing.
Don’t sign on the line kids, it’s never worth it.