By Capt. Brent D. Sadler, USN ret, USNA ’94
Fewer Ships, Recruiting Shortfalls: DEI Has Left Our Navy Less Prepared: In the past several weeks, the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy have announced that a shortage of manpower will force them to sideline ships.
Given the growing threats globally, from China to the Mideast, the timing couldn’t be worse.
But what makes this truly unacceptable is that thanks to misguided diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, it’s largely self-inflicted.
The U.S. Navy’s DEI Challenge
Direct evidence linking DEI to declining recruitment is hard to come by, though whistleblower complaints and polling make a connection hard to dismiss.
DEI was quietly introduced government-wide by executive order in 2011, but only after the military explicitly embraced DEI in the wake of the BLM riots and presidential elections of 2020 did recruitment collapse—at least for the services that most visibly embraced it.
The Marine Corps, which did not aggressively push DEI, has not suffered the same steep drop in recruitment as the other services.
The results? After persistent recruiting challenges since 2020, the Coast Guard—which is facing a 10% shortage in crews—last year took the remarkable step of sidelining 10 cutters and shuttering 29 boat stations. T
he Navy, meanwhile, missed its recruiting goals last year by 7,000 and has shrunk by 21,000 sailors since 2021. Then there’s the Army, which reduced its goals rather than acknowledge even larger recruitment gaps.
At least the Navy has (so far) avoided mothballing warships. However, the Navy’s Military Sealift Command recently announced plans to sideline 17 logistic ships critical to the naval mission due to a lack of qualified merchant mariners.
As bad news mounts, it’s possible DEI apparatchiks may imitate the corporate world, which is also running from DEI. One recent tactic: changing their name, such as reversing the order of the words to IED ostensibly to emphasize the ‘inclusion’ part.
But it remains Marxist ideology. The intent has always been to sow dissension previously on class conflict but today on racial animus.
This is the core of critical race theory. Recall what Ibram X. Kendi, the author once celebrated and included on military professional reading lists as a visionary of the DEI movement, had to say:
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
So it’s no wonder that after all the aggressive oppressor-oppressed categorizations, privilege walks, and emphasis on how immutable characteristics equate to past evils, that groups previously a staple of military recruitment have voted with their feet.
Under-appreciated, vilified, and hounded, white males are not enlisting as before. And they are not the only ones alienated by the military’s four-year infatuation with all things DEI.
To make matters worse, military parents have even encouraged their children to avoid a military career—a huge vote of no-confidence never heard of before.
This is a historic breakdown in the military that coincides with the 2020 summer of rioting and the vocal and aggressive pursuit of DEI. This ushered in a not too distant time when drag-queen shows on bases were being defended.
What Should the U.S. Navy Do Now?
Rather than vilify one group as “oppressor” and demean another as “oppressed,” it would make more sense—and, frankly, be more inclusive—to focus on building up a team of common vision: the navy mission.
The best course forward is to expunge the vestiges of DEI from the Coast Guard and Navy and focus on instilling unit cohesion, improving competency, and valuaing sailors on merit.
True, not everyone starts at the same point, but those giving their all are needed in these dangerous times. For this reason, programs like BOOST that were ended in 2008 need to be brought back and given an update. BOOST was intended to give promising enlisted sailors from disadvantaged education systems preparation for college and commission as an officer. Today this is needed for able-bodied and driven to achieve recruits to prepare not for commissions only, but for highly technical specialties in short supply, like nuclear mechanics.
It’s time to ask why the Marine Corps hasn’t suffered the fate of the others. One thought is that it could be attributed to consistency in their institutional culture of “Semper Fi,” something the others have lost in the pursuit of political fads.
People join the military to serve their country, not to rejoice in their identity.
The nation needs citizen-patriots a lot more than it needs DEI—and that’s an inclusive call to duty.
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Brent Sadler is a Senior Research Fellow for Naval Warfare and Advanced Technology in the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation.
I want my heart surgeon and airline pilot hired through DEI. Does that make me a good person and not a racist?