In a prior newsletter, I noted the dismissal of several senior military leaders by Secretary Hegseth. Over the past week, additional removals have occurred. Regardless of one’s political perspective, the pace and clustering of these actions has prompted questions across the national security community about the long-term health of the all-volunteer force.

Civilian control of the military is fundamental to our constitutional structure. Every administration has the authority to select leaders aligned with its priorities.

The strategic question is different:

How do signals about promotion, advancement, and institutional culture affect the long-term strength of a professional force that depends entirely on voluntary participation?

The Quiet Power of a Merit-Based System

Most of who have served in uniform would acknowledge that no meritocracy is perfect. Human institutions never are.

But the U.S. military promotion system contains structural features designed to mitigate bias and reinforce confidence in fairness over time.

Officers are evaluated repeatedly across decades of service. Promotion boards change composition each year. An officer who is not selected in one cycle is reviewed by a completely different group of senior leaders in the next.

Multiple “looks” are not accidental, they are part of the design.

We all enter the military shaped by our backgrounds:

• the Deep South
• a farm in the Midwest
• an immigrant household
• an inner-city neighborhood
• a Rust Belt manufacturing town
• a multi-generation military family

Initial perspectives differ significantly.

What becomes clear, very quickly, inside the profession is that background matters far less than performance.

• Can you do the job?
• Are you trainable?
• Can you lead teams under pressure?
• Can you overcome whatever biases you brought with you?Over time, those questions tend to sort themselves out.

What Research Suggests About Fairness & Opportunity

Research across several decades has examined how military personnel systems attempt to balance merit and broad access to opportunity.

Adjustments such as removing photographs from promotion boards and standardizing evaluation criteria have been implemented to reduce the influence of demographic cues while maintaining performance standards.

No system eliminates bias entirely.

But repeated evaluation by different boards over time reduces the impact of any single decision point. Most professionals who have served understand that fairness in large institutions is not achieved through perfection in any single moment, but through consistency across many decision cycles.

Demography is Not Ideology

The all-volunteer force operates within demographic reality.

Only a fraction of Americans aged 17–25 currently meet eligibility standards for military service without a waiver. At the same time, the recruiting-age population is becoming more diverse.

Future force composition will reflect the available population whether policymakers prefer that outcome or not.

Put simply:

Recruiting math is not political theory.

If even the perception takes hold that advancement opportunities are narrowing to a smaller demographic profile, the recruiting pool shrinks further.

Faith, Service, and Institutional Neutrality

Across decades in uniform, I observed that religious belief was deeply respected but rarely emphasized as part of the military’s official posture. That balance reflects both constitutional design and military regulation.

The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion while prohibiting government establishment of any particular faith. Department of Defense policy reinforces this framework by requiring accommodation of individual belief so long as mission effectiveness, unit cohesion, and good order are preserved.

Commanders and chaplains play complementary roles in ensuring service members can practice their faith — or choose not to practice any faith — without institutional preference for one tradition over another.

In practice, this has produced a professional culture that welcomes individuals from widely differing religious and non-religious backgrounds while maintaining a shared identity grounded not in denomination, but in competence, character, and commitment to mission.

Senior Leaders Live in a Fishbowl for All to See

Military organizations are highly attuned to signals from senior leadership.

Not only formal directives — but tone, emphasis, and rhetorical framing.

Experienced officers learn early that institutions listen carefully to what is said from the podium, what is repeated, and what appears to be rewarded.

Recent rhetoric emphasizing religious framing of conflict or criticism of rules of engagement has generated quiet discussion across the force.

In hierarchical organizations, most professionals do not publicly debate the Secretary of Defense.

• They observe.
• They interpret signals.
• They adjust behavior accordingly.

The Reality of Professional Incentives

Military officers accept limits on public speech as part of their commission. That constraint is essential to maintaining civilian control and good order. But it also means shifts in perceived expectations often manifest quietly.

Many in uniform may feel discomfort with emerging signals yet remain professionally constrained from expressing those concerns publicly.

Career decisions are shaped by assessments of institutional trajectory.

• Some will lean in.
• Some will wait and observe.
• Some may quietly conclude their long-term plans lie elsewhere.

Others may assess that institutions outlast individuals, and that professional norms developed over decades will ultimately reassert themselves.

The United States does not maintain the largest military in the world.

It maintains one of the most capable.

Modern military effectiveness increasingly depends on highly trained professionals operating complex systems requiring continuity of experience.

Confidence in the system influences retention decisions more than any single policy change.

A Strategic Observation

The U.S. military’s comparative advantage has never been sheer size.

It has been professionalism.

Maintaining that advantage requires sustained confidence that promotion systems reward competence across multiple evaluation points over time.

Preserving that confidence remains a national security imperative.

And a final question:

If you were 19 again, or advising someone who is 19, would you bet your next decade on this institution today?

I remain hopeful we’ll see our way through this period.