millennial views on military

Even mid-to-senior-level officers (O-4 to O-7) have the opportunity to do Pentagon rotations and engage with civilian defense officials. A recent poll released by the Harvard Institute of Politics finds that 53 percent of millennials trust the military to “do the right thing” at least some of the time; the second most trusted institution is the Supreme Court, at just 42 percent, and just 17 percent of millennials have any faith that Congress will do the right thing. Whether it is in commanding an infantry platoon or a small flight, these young officers have very little exposure to civilians working on issues of defense and international security. But unlike in past conflicts, this new enemy dwells around the world and within the civilian population. Despite the furor over these topics and resistance to changes from within the military, though, only 41 percent of millennials believe the military’s treatment of women and homosexuals is unfair, lower than any other generation (CM1T 43). Military intervention has been immensely effective at crippling global terrorist networks. In April 2011, just over forty years after the Stanford University faculty voted to kick the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program off campus, the Faculty Senate voted in favor of inviting ROTC programs back. The fact that we are still fighting today, however, speaks much more to the complexity of the terrorist threat than the efficacy of our foreign policy. Our group spent the first portion of the trip at the U.S. That is not okay.” She went on to argue that “military perspectives have been invisible on this campus” and that allowing ROTC back could “humanize the people who fight our wars.”. As a case study, Crawford looks at our spending habits and asks how we became a society with excessive debts when just a few generations prior we were a society characterized by frugality and thrift. © 2020 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. Given the particular nature of the military profession, there will always be a gap between service members and civilians of every demographic, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Is all social conservation just defensive reaction? Yet the slogan hails from victories of older wars. This finding could be interpreted in many ways, especially when juxtaposed with the responses of other generations, all of which were even higher than those of millennials. As the average American takes far more than four years to complete his or her undergraduate degree and most private universities cost far more than the public ones, it is reasonable to expect that veterans might require additional financial assistance beyond what the post-9/11 GI bill provides. Snowflakes. Guys like me, born in the late 80s to e Join 7000+ readers who receive fresh, thought-provoking articles once a week right in their inbox. On the surface, joining the military might seem like a. The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. During the Vietnam era, when scores of young people were coerced (or faced the risk of coercion) via the draft into joining the military against their will, their opinions of the institution may have been poisoned from the very beginning. With respect to overall military pay, 33 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds favor increasing military pay, while only 6 percent favor decreasing it (57 percent believe it should be kept the same). They are least likely to work with a veteran (CM2T 4). Flag officers, on the other hand, interact much more frequently with their civilian counterparts. As the United States military begins its final drawdown from Afghanistan and reassesses its strategy and legacy in Iraq, millennials will begin to witness the end of a period that for most has comprised the majority of their lifetimes. We're rightly exhausted by the thought of bombs falling for fifteen years, yet the prospects for peace are not good if they stop altogether. Designed to cover the basics—what someone new to the topic might want to learn about how the military works—the class consisted of lectures from officers, professors, and former policymakers with wide-ranging experience. Using software that generated a virtual landscape of Wanat, complete with virtual trees and army positions, we were able to move through the battlefield as the presenter explained the situation on the ground and what decisions were being made. The political turbulence of the past two decades has had an immense influence on this generation. Millennials’ views also clash with military policies on “social” issues, with 75 percent of young people supportive of allowing homosexuals to serve in the military and a majority disagreeing either “somewhat” or “strongly” with excluding women from the infantry. They communicate and mobilize online. emerging adult life stage. The survey data collected for this book provide an excellent opportunity to explore empirically what millennials think of the military and what experience and knowledge they have of it. Likewise, 45 percent of millennials have confidence in the meritocratic nature of the military hierarchy. There is likely more to this story than simple self-interest, however. Second, millennials are not knowledgeable about the military’s basic characteristics. Just as they can learn a great deal from a lieutenant colonel, students could learn a great deal from a sergeant major with twenty years of experience literally making the planes run on time. They are the least likely demographic to have served in the military themselves, and they are most likely to have no family members who have served (CM1T 52, 53). And whether it's toward institutions, community clubs, or even relationships, they are markedly noncommittal. The Aspen Institute’s Franklin Project, whose mission is to enable and encourage all young adults to spend a year doing public service, could be a potential partner in this endeavor. The second explanation is that millennials, even those who are curious about the military, do not have enough opportunities to learn about it. While these are important topics worthy of scholarly attention in their own right, if they are to be more than interesting intellectual exercises, curricula must be redesigned (or new classes added) that emphasize interactivity in the classroom and interaction with service members through, for example, class trips to nearby bases or meetings on campus with visiting officers and enlisted personnel. According to the 2014 Military Demographics Review, 4 out of 5 active-duty service members were 35 years old or younger and more than half the active-duty officer corps fell in the millennial bracket. We observed anecdotally during the ROTC debate at Stanford that even students who were passionate about the issue displayed an ignorance of the basic organization, demographics, and principles of the military. The course was conceived the prior year by two ROTC students, and we assumed leadership after they graduated. There has been no shortage of discussion of their merits and demerits in the workplaces they've inherited from baby boomers and Gen-Xers. Considering the vehemence of the antiwar protesters, who torched both the Naval ROTC building and the university president’s office in 1969, it would have been shocking if the university had maintained its support for the program. Entitled. They are as accustomed to news stories of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the war on terror as they are to stories of perhaps all other foreign-policy issues combined. See our, The Shipwrecked Book: Mark Lilla's Nostalgic Prison. Sept. 11 is critical not only to understanding policy, but also to understanding an entire generation: the millennials, or those born in 1982 through 2004. The rise of Nazi Germany and the attack on Pearl Harbor led to a straightforward application of military power. In that case, shorter exchanges, such as the week-long program we developed, can still be immensely valuable. The law’s repeal lent momentum to the nascent push for a reconsideration of ROTC and Stanford’s relationship with the military and also precipitated similar discussions at Harvard, which was to welcome back ROTC at around the same time. Furthermore, it was reported that in 2014 "almost 50 percent of Millennials responded that the United States should 'stay out' of world affairs, the highest rate since the Chicago Council on Global Affairs began asking the question in 1974.". As of now, the faculties of the US military academies are made up mostly of active duty or retired officers. The generation prior to millennials stayed in their roles for roughly the same amount of time as millennials are now. Watching the ROTC campus debate unfold, we were simultaneously inspired by the passion and underwhelmed by the knowledge displayed by the participants. The shift in opinions towards the military in the Stanford case highlights the need to update our understanding of how millennials view the military. Our involvement in Vietnam, on the other hand, was controversial because it was unclear to the public what exactly was so threatening in that region and how our military action constituted self-defence. Are they fulfilling the role of protecting the nation? When it comes to the military specifically, millennials are the least likely demographic to advise a close friend to join the military, perhaps suggesting that it is not seen as an attractive career option (CM2T 11). In our review of the literature, there is a mixed finding. 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