Sustained personnel is necessary to deter adversaries in an era of greater power conflict
Sierra and Boot ‘4/26 [Gabrielle Sierra and Max Boot; Sierra is a Podcaster, Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for The Washington Post; 4-26-2023; " Army of Some: Recruiting Trouble for the All-Volunteer Force"; Council on Foreign Relations; https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/army-some-recruiting-trouble-all-volunteer-force; Accessed 6-25-2023; DQ]
And as the AVF approaches its 50th anniversary, this shortage may have serious implications for the United State's ability to defend itself, and meet global challenges. SIERRA: The decline in recruitment seems significant. But trying to put this into perspective, why should we be concerned? Because a lot of Americans feel our military is already way too large. How would this affect an average citizen of the U.S.? BOOT: Yeah. Well, the world is becoming a more dangerous place. I mean, you saw that with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The possibility of a Chinese attack on Taiwan is growing. And so we're entering this era of great power competition. This is not the immediate post 9/11 era when we are really focused on these low intensity conflicts in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Right now, we're at much higher risk than we have been in decades of a great power conflict, another World War. That's a scary prospect. But if we're going to deter that conflict, or if the worst happens, if we're going to fight it, you're going to need a substantial force.