Deterrence Without Soldiers: The West’s Dangerous Fantasy

 

The West cannot scare Russia with speeches while its armies crumble from recruiting failures. Sensible, realistic enlistment rules—not nostalgia or bravado—are the only path to rebuilding military credibility before it’s too late.

I look at Western recruiting troubles from a distance, not as a soldier or a policymaker but as a college professor who studies global power struggles the way some people study weather patterns. You learn to watch the pressure points, the shifts, the storms forming on the edges. And right now, the storm is clear: the West keeps talking about deterring Russia, but the numbers show an uncomfortable truth. They simply do not have enough troops to match the swagger. And until they fix the way they recruit, their warnings will sound more like nervous whistling than credible threats.

When France’s President Emmanuel Macron announced in late November that “we need to mobilise,” it did not sound to me like a bold declaration of strength. It sounded like an admission that something has gone seriously wrong. France is pushing a new voluntary service program—with dreams of reaching 50,000 recruits a year by 2035—because it knows what many Western officials hesitate to say aloud: the security landscape has changed, and the West is not ready for it. For decades after the Cold War, Western armies shrank while their confidence grew. The United States’ swift victory over Iraq in 1991 convinced many leaders that small, professional, high-tech forces could handle any threat. But Ukraine has taken that fairy tale and fed it into a shredder.

Watching the trenches of Ukraine from afar, I see the same brutal dynamic everyone else sees: high-intensity warfare burns through human beings faster than modern armies can replace them. If most Western militaries faced losses on the scale seen in Ukraine, they would be depleted before they even had time to adjust their strategy. A war of attrition cannot be fought by armies built for short, sharp operations. The West designed a sleek car for smooth highways, then found itself stuck in a muddy battlefield where raw manpower still decides who advances and who collapses.

But the recruiting crisis does not even begin at the battlefield. It begins at the front door.

The United States missed its recruiting targets by 25% in both 2022 and 2023, falling short by around 15,000 soldiers each year. British forces have shrunk to their smallest size in more than 180 years. Countries considered stable and prosperous—Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand—cannot meet their recruiting goals either. When so many wealthy nations struggle to fill even modest ranks, that signals a deeper structural failure.

Many politicians blame young people, claiming this generation is too individualistic or too unpatriotic. As a professor who works with young adults every day, I know how lazy that explanation is. It’s much easier to lecture from a podium about declining values than to admit that the systems meant to welcome recruits are designed like bureaucratic obstacle courses. Studies show that plenty of young people are open to serving. The problem is eligibility. Only 23% of Americans aged 17–24 qualify under existing standards. That’s not because they lack courage. It’s because the military has built medical and behavioral requirements that often border on the absurd.

Acne can disqualify you. Eczema. A broken bone from childhood. Past treatment for ADHD—an extremely common diagnosis—requires a waiver that can take months. Even occasional marijuana use, reported by one-third of American 18-year-olds, creates barriers that push away potential recruits before they even pack a bag. And yet RAND researchers found that recruits with past marijuana use performed just as well as others. In some categories, they performed better. In other words, the rules are shutting out people who could succeed.

When I see Denmark, Sweden, and Britain rejecting around 60% of applicants, I cannot help but think that the problem is not the youth—it’s the system screening them.

This would be comical if it were not so dangerous. There is a proverb that says a gate that opens only for perfection guards an empty house. Western forces have built gates like that, and now they are surprised to find the house empty.

Some militaries are adjusting. The United States created the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, a kind of academic and fitness boot camp that helps borderline candidates meet required standards. More than 51,000 recruits have come through it. Britain and Canada have begun loosening restrictions on common conditions like ADHD, asthma, and allergies. Countries using conscription lotteries—Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark—are filling most slots voluntarily. These changes suggest that when the path opens, people do step forward.

But not all reforms inspire confidence. Lowering intellectual requirements, softening fitness standards, or trimming aptitude tests risks creating a new problem: weaker performance inside the force. British officers, according to reports, privately worry about slipping fitness and motivation among new recruits. If the entry door is too tight, you get no soldiers. If it’s too loose, you get soldiers who cannot meet the demands of combat. The balance is delicate, and so far, the West has not found it.

Even when the West succeeds in recruiting, it struggles to keep the recruits. Germany’s Bundeswehr loses one in four new soldiers within six months. Belgium loses almost half in a year. People join with visions of adventure, only to find themselves exhausted, cold, and disillusioned. The biggest losses are among highly skilled personnel—pilots, officers, specialists—who often cannot maintain stable family lives because they must relocate every two years. When a system pushes experienced people out faster than new ones come in, no amount of recruiting can fix the shortage.

I look at all of this as someone outside the Western military system, and I see a simple pattern: the West wants deterrence without the manpower to back it up. It wants to warn Russia with strong statements while fielding forces too small to absorb real losses. It wants modern security without adjusting the old rules that now block willing, capable candidates from serving.

More sensible recruiting policies are not just helpful—they are necessary. The West cannot deter a country like Russia with speeches, technology alone, or nostalgic faith in old victories. It needs people. And it needs policies that let people in without treating them as problems to be screened out.

From where I stand, far from the trenches and far from the recruiting offices, the conclusion is obvious. A military that insists on perfection will keep shrinking, and a shrinking military will never deter a nation willing to throw bodies at the battlefield. If the West wants its warnings to mean something, it must rebuild the doorway into its own armies.

Because no matter how powerful a country claims to be, it cannot project strength with empty ranks.