A former Trump official has claimed that Gen Z is not to blame for the army recruitment crisis.
Robert Wilkie, who served as Secretary of Veterans Affairs from 2018 to 2021, as well as Under Secretary of Defense, said that how the army and soldiers are perceived has has a negative impact on recruitment.
It comes as the US army missed its recruiting goal by about 25 per cent in 2022, causing generals telling soldiers kicked out over Covid-19 vaccinations that they can come back.
Meanwhile in the UK, Generation Z were the most likely to say they would do anything possible to avoid fighting in the potential conflict.
Robert Wilkie served in the Trump administration
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Robert Wilkie told GB News: "The Left has embraced identity politics and succeeded in exerting influence on college campuses, public schools, mainstream media, and, frighteningly, the leadership of our armed forces.
"On college campuses, the Democratic Party, and popular media, soldiers are presented as victims, who remain broken for the rest of their lives.
"Nowhere is it more pernicious than in the military, where the uniformed whole is now divided along racial, sexual, and ethnic lines, emphasizing heightened individualism and obliterating unit cohesion and the military’s foundational ethic as a colorblind meritocracy.
"Suppose you tell our young people repeatedly that their country’s history is shameful and that its global legacy is repugnant. Is it any wonder that they no longer flock to the recruiters?
"As Senator Tom Cotton, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, noted: 'Every minute of training spent on charlatans like Ibram X. Kendi at best is wasted time better devoted to tactical and operation excellence, but at worst and more likely is a corrosive blow to the intangibles qualities needed to fight and win a war.'
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The US armed forces has come under a recruitment crisis
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He added: "Moreover, such indoctrination pits soldier against soldier as one is identified as an oppressor and the other as the oppressed. The imposition of progressive policies began in the Obama/Biden when it declared climate change a more dire national security threat than Chinese Communism or militant Islam.
"Their progressive narrative of America’s supposed fundamental flaws threatens to undermine the meritocratic, apolitical nature of the Armed Services from the inside out.
"Diversity, Equity, Inclusion [DEI] produces a system that expresses itself in proliferating legions of DEI bureaucrats at all levels of the uniformed services, breaking apart the common military identity and trust required to accomplish the mission.
"The fault is not Generation Z in the US or UK it is their elders."
Last year, the US Army announced it would be bringing back its slogan: "Be all you can be."
The slogan, first coined in the '80s, is hoped to inspire new recruits and perhaps touch on that nostalgia nerve too.
It comes as the Pentagon is seeking to widen the net for recruits; focusing less on traditional pools and seeking to expand to new groups.
In 2022, for example, the US Army missed its recruiting goal by about 15,000 soldiers, or around 25 per cent.
