[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Did you know that this year is the 50th anniversary of the all-volunteer military in the United States after the Vietnam era draft was ended? It's also the 75th anniversary of the military being officially integrated. Today, headline issues include recruitment challenges for the all-volunteer force and US roles in Ukraine and in the Pacific as there is so much talk about tensions with China, also fighting sexual assault and sex and gender discrimination in the military.

We are happy to have with us now the Secretary of the Army, Christine Wormuth. She's the first woman to be Secretary of the Army. Before being appointed by President Biden and confirmed easily across party lines in the Senate, she had previously been the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for strategy plans and force development under President Obama and a special assistant to President Obama and other Pentagon leadership roles going back to the '90s and the immediate post-September 11th era. Secretary Wormuth, thanks so much for coming on with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Christine Wormuth: Thank you so much for having me. Delighted to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Can we get to know you a little first? Where'd you grow up and what got you interested in military policy and leadership as a career?

Christine Wormuth: I grew up in College Station, Texas. My grandfather was a World War II veteran but my father was not in the military. I think I got interested in national security. I grew up at the end of the Cold War. I remember when the Berlin Wall fell. I grew up around a lot of international students, and so I think I started getting interested in foreign policy at an early age. I was lucky enough to get a job early in my career at the Pentagon, and after that, I was pretty much hooked.

Brian Lehrer: Did you ever serve in the armed forces yourself?

Christine Wormuth: No, I have not served in uniform. I've been a public servant for most of my career, but I have not served in uniform.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think there are advantages and disadvantages to becoming a Pentagon official like Secretary of the Army with or without that uniformed experience?

Christine Wormuth: I think the advantage is that as a civilian, I bring a different perspective. I come from outside the Army, which is a very large institution with a long and proud history and a very strong culture. As someone who hasn't served in uniform, I think I can ask some of the basic questions. I'm not subject to the "that's how we've always done it" kind of mindset, but certainly, I don't have the perspective of growing up in uniform, and so that's part of the reason why I emphasize trying to get outside the Pentagon as much as possible and go and visit our soldiers, talk to their families so that I can have some sense of that perspective without having served myself.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, it's a pillar of our democracy. I think it's fair to say that we have civilian control of the military. The military is not independent as we would see in some non-democracies. This is the 50th anniversary of the all-volunteer military. Is volunteer even the right word as opposed to professional military since it's a paid job and you have to compete with the private sector for recruits?

Christine Wormuth: You hear everyone talk about the all-volunteer force, and I like to remind people it's really the all-recruited force. You're absolutely right. We do have to compete with the private sector and with unemployment as low as it is, and with minimum wage rising and many more companies offering benefits, it's a more challenging recruiting environment for the Army and frankly for the other military as well.

Brian Lehrer: Recruitment shortages are in the news. How bad is it and why?

Christine Wormuth: I think it's a pretty significant crisis that we're facing. As I've said to Congress already, we are not going to make our recruiting goal again this year. We set a very, very ambitious target of recruiting 65,000 young Americans, and I think we will fall short of that, but I can say we're doing better this year than we were last year. I think the Army has done a lot of things and put a lot of initiatives in place to improve our recruiting, and that's paying off.

How did we get here? There are a lot of factors [inaudible 00:04:51]. Part of it is the low unemployment rate and the strong economy [inaudible 00:04:56] it to the pandemic and the fact that our recruiters have not been in high schools for two years, that kids have suffered some academic losses, some physical fitness losses. Some of it is about the fact that just we have high standards, particularly in terms of physical fitness, and unfortunately, there are a smaller and smaller percentage every year of young Americans who actually qualify physically and medically to join the Army.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls for Christine Wormuth, Secretary of the Army. 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can text question to that number. The New York Post had a story recently. This is relevant to recruiting, I think. Headlined, "Military families turn to food pantries to survive in New York City," and it was largely about families living on or around Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. Is the pay that low or is the rent just too damn high in New York?

Christine Wormuth: We evaluate our pay on a regular basis to try to make sure that we're competitive with civilian jobs. It is certainly true that in the last year with the [unintelligible 00:06:21] and rising rents and things like that, we have had to adjust our housing allowance to try to keep up with that. Some of that may be what your caller is experiencing, but we try to evaluate regularly our pay and benefits to make sure they live with the private sector.

Brian Lehrer: It doesn't vary by what part of the country or I guess we could say what part of the world people are stationed in, but domestically, what part of the country?

Christine Wormuth: It does vary by part of the country. If you're in a place like LA, New York City, Washington, DC, you will get a higher housing allowance than if you are at Fort Polk or Fort Bliss, Texas, for example.

Brian Lehrer: What you said about people not meeting the physical fitness standard, are young Americans less physically fit than in previous generations?

Christine Wormuth: I think that's true. I don't want to put it all on the backs of young Americans. I think in general, we were a more sedentary society than we were 20 years ago. Certainly, I think people spend so much time in the digital world than in the physical world. We have seen a decline in overall physical fitness and health. Again, I would say that's society-wide. It's not just limited to young people.

Brian Lehrer: How would you describe the Army's role in Ukraine right now? Turning to the Ukraine issue. I know it's not troops, but how would you describe it?

Christine Wormuth: We're really doing two primary things when it comes to supporting Ukraine. First of all, the Army has been deeply involved in training the Ukrainian armed forces. We have trained over 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers on all sorts of equipment, armored vehicles, Patriot air defense batteries, for example. That has been incredibly valuable to the Ukrainians in terms of their ability to fight off the Russian invasion, and I think that training will be very important to the coming counter-offensive.

The other thing that the United States Army has done is provide billions of dollars with taxpayer support of equipment to the Ukrainian military. Again, the Army alone has provided over 700,000 rounds of 155 artillery shells. That has been incredibly important. We have provided Stryker and Bradley combat vehicles. We are training the Ukrainians on our Abrams tanks. We have provided Javelins and other kinds of anti-tank munitions. That lethal equipment has been very important that the Army has provided.

Brian Lehrer: I gather the US Army has a role to play in the Pacific that we don't hear about much. Usually, it's the Navy as we think of the Pacific as an ocean's deployment by definition. Here's President Biden recently being asked a question about a hypothetical invasion of Taiwan by China.

Speaker 3: You didn't want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?

President Biden: Yes.

Speaker 3: You are?

President Biden: That's the commitment we made.

Brian Lehrer: Secretary Wormuth, I know you don't make policy, but what's the Army's role in the Pacific?

Christine Wormuth: We play a very important role. First of all, I think your listeners should know that most of the countries in the Indo-Pacific, the strongest service in their militaries is typically the Army. We have very, very strong relationships with the armies of our allies and partners in the region. What we really try to focus on is strengthening our deterrence posture, really making it clear to President Xi each and every day that today is not the day to try to retake Taiwan by force. We complicate his decision-making when he sees us exercising and training with the militaries of the Philippines, of Australia, of Japan, South Korea, countries like that, Thailand.

We are very important, I think in terms of making it clear that the best way to avoid a fight is to show that you can win any fight you might get into. In a conflict, we would contribute along with the Air Force and the Navy by setting up bases for the Air Force and Navy to operate out of and protecting those bases. We would be instrumental in providing all of the logistics, making sure that all of our forces have fuel, have supplies, have repair parts. We would be able to provide long-range fires along with the Air Force and Navy.

We're developing a whole suite of new missiles that have very, very long ranges. Of course, if necessary, Army forces could be part of a counter-attack, again, if we were to get into a protracted conflict.

Brian Lehrer: Should I hear that would I be fair in characterizing that as placing your bets on peace with China through escalation rather than de-escalation?

Christine Wormuth: No. Again, as I said just the other day, I don't think a war with China is certainly not in the United States' interest, and I don't think it's in the Chinese interest as well. We really want to try to lower the temperature in the relationship. I think what we really want to show is peace through strength is to avoid a war by showing that we can win it and by deterring a war. I don't think escalating is what we want to do.

Brian Lehrer: Christine Wormuth, the Secretary of the Army is my guest here on WNYC. 212-433-WNYC is our phone number for calls and texts. Allan in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Secretary Wormuth. Hi, Allan.

Allan: Good morning, Brian. Allan from Brooklyn in Manhattan today. I'm not trying to deceive anybody about who I am. I'm wondering if she thinks that there is any noticeable correlation between the lesser loyalty apparent among some members of Congress to the country over their party since the draft has been ended, mandatory draft, and whether she thinks that would be a reason to go back to some form of mandatory national service, whether it's mandatory as to military or something like a domestic Peace Corps again to make people know that party is never going to have the status of nation in people's universe of loyalty.

Brian Lehrer: Allan, thank you. Interesting question. Secretary Wormuth?

Christine Wormuth: Sure. Thanks, Allan. It is certainly true that the percentage of members of Congress that have served in the military is much lower today than it was 50 years ago. I do think that we start to have some distance when only 1% of the American public has served in the military. I would not be in favor of bringing back the draft, for example, although the selective service remains in place.

I do think I would tend to agree with you that some form of national service I think would be very valuable for our society. I think Americans really need to understand civics and understand the value of public service. There are many ways to serve and you don't have to serve in uniform. I think programs like AmeriCorps, whether you want to serve as a teacher, or in law enforcement, or working for a nonprofit, I think actually that kind of a national service would be very healthy for our country. I know there was a major national commission, I think a year or two ago who tried to advocate for just that kind of approach.

Brian Lehrer: Is there in effect an economic draft that people with fewer professional prospects tend to wind up in listing and potentially putting their lives at risk because they see that as their best option? You were describing at the beginning of the segment, it's less so today with the tight job market in America, a labor-hungry market, but we've had guests on this show in the past who've talked about an economic draft that also winds up being a racially disproportionate draft given who has money in this country. How would you respond to that?

Christine Wormuth: Brian, I think we've come a long way from the days of go to jail or join the United States Army. Part of the reason that we brought back the Be All You Can Be campaign is because we want to tell the American public just how many opportunities and possibilities the Army offers. I think certainly the Army continues to be a springboard for people to upward mobility.

We certainly have folks who join and do so because it's a way to pay for college and things like that. I've met people since being the secretary of the Army who've been accepted to Harvard University but chose instead to go to the military. Nowadays in the Army, you can become a data scientist, you can become a cyber warrior, you can be a doctor, a lawyer. The possibilities are really quite broad and I don't think that it is simply an option of last resort. I think those days are really behind us.

Brian Lehrer: John in Maplewood, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi. I have a question. I've seen quite a bit of integrations on TV with NBC recently, on The Voice, for example, and I'm just wondering, is it effective, that type of recruitment using integrations on large media networks? If so, how do you measure that?

Christine Wormuth: Certainly, we are trying to reach a wide range of audiences. I think part of what we need to do is reintroduce the Army to the American public. I think a lot of people think about the experiences of the last 20 years, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and tend to think exclusively that that is what the United States Army is, whereas, we are really now transitioning from being a force focused on counter-terrorism to one focused on near-peer conflict with a country like Russia or China, for example.

Part of our strategy is to reach different audiences through different kinds of media platforms. We have a marketing office in Chicago that tries to use data to measure the return on our marketing campaigns, and on our earned media, and on our media appearances. It's always a little challenging to see your return on investment, but certainly, since we launched our new Be All You Can Be campaign, we have seen a significantly higher number of what we call engagements, meaning people going to the goarmy.com website, for example, than we saw a year or two ago.

Brian Lehrer: It's funny because my last question to you had been basically whether people of color are overrepresented in the military for economic reasons, and he's asking is it integrated enough with the outreach that you're doing on television? What is the rough racial breakdown of the armed forces today?

Christine Wormuth: Let's see if I'll get this off the top of my head. I would say, I think somewhere between 17% to 19% of the United States Army is African American. We have single-digit, I would say, Hispanic American. I want to say between 8% and 9% of our Army is Hispanic American. I would say, generally, particularly in our enlisted ranks, the proportions of African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Pacific Islanders track with roughly the breakdown in the country as a whole.

I would say we have very good representation in our officer ranks from the Black community. I think we need to do more to reach out to Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans that we don't see as high a representation in our officer core, particularly in the more senior ranks. I think it's really remarkable that right now, we have a number of African American four-star generals. Our four-star general in charge of training and doctrine command is African American.

The head of the US Army in Europe is a four-star general African American. The head of our logistics command is an African American. We've really worked hard on diversifying and making sure that the Army represents and looks like the country that it serves.

Brian Lehrer: I want to ask you a question about sexual assault in the military. Here are some lines from an article in the fall from a US Naval Institute publication that refers to the military overall. It says, "Overall 8.4% of female service members and 1.5% of male service members experienced unwanted sexual contact." According to the report it says, "The numbers across the military branches point to the problem getting worse. Sexual assault rates are up, the percentage of people reporting sexual assault is down and trust in the military when it comes to protecting victims is at an all-time low." Again that's from a US Naval Institute publication in the fall. What's your take on this and what are you doing about it?

Christine Wormuth: I think, first of all, it's important to remember that like suicide, unfortunately, sexual harassment and sexual assault are national society-wide problems. They are not unique to the United States Army but we absolutely are challenged by sexual harassment and sexual assault. I do think we have made some very significant changes in the last couple of years driven significantly by the tragic murder of Vanessa Guillen at then Fort Hood now Fort Cavazos.

For example, in part driven by Congress, we have removed prosecution of those kinds of crimes from the chain of command and we have established a whole new office of special trial counsel, which is led by a one-star general that reports directly to me to handle those kinds of cases. Part of why we did that is exactly your point about trust is there was a lot of evidence that soldiers no longer trusted the chain of command to handle these kinds of situations. By removing it and taking it outside the chain of command and having it report to me, we are trying to rebuild trust with our soldiers, men and women.

I think even more importantly, what we really need to focus on is preventing these kinds of incidents in the first place. I would like to not worry as much. I would like my people focused on responding to sexual assault to be out of business and the way to do that is to really focus on preventing those kinds of incidents. It is about training our young men and women who are coming into the Army from the very first day that they get there at basic training about what sexual harassment looks like, as we say in the Army, what right looks like, and also what wrong looks like.

We are really focused on training our smallest unit of soldiers to focus on making sure that people establish boundaries, making sure they feel like they can report any kind of abuses in that area and really having people stand up for each other. I think that eventually is going to be the way we get after this problem even as we work to respond to it as effectively as possible.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go I also want to play a clip of former UN Ambassador and Republican Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley from her CNN Town Hall last week accusing the military of being what Republicans call woke. This is just one line.

Nikki Haley: We have gender pronoun classes in the military now.

Brian Lehrer: I know it's not your place to have political arguments, but people would be interested to hear what your policies and practices are with respect to pronouns and people's gender identities in the armed forces.

Christine Wormuth: First of all, I would say we are a ready army, not a woke army. What we focus on is we do bring young Americans from all over the country, from all sorts of backgrounds, from all sorts of demographics and ethnicities. We do bring them together and focus on building cohesive teams. We focus on making sure that our soldiers respect each other and respect themselves. We want to welcome any person, any able-bodied person who is qualified to serve in the United States Army, whether they are straight or LGBTQ. If you're able and fit to serve, we want to welcome you. We do have training that focuses on making sure that people respect each other and I think that makes us stronger as an army.

Brian Lehrer: That includes respecting people's chosen pronouns?

Christine Wormuth: Yes. I would say we spend probably an hour on that training and we spend 200 hours on rifle marksmanship and basic combat training, but we are really focused on building cohesive teams and showing people respect.

Brian Lehrer: I'll let you make a recruitment pitch since I know that's one of the reasons you were interested in coming on. As you go out the door and we were talking about the shortage of people in the military at the beginning, the shortage of new recruits so go ahead and make your best pitch and then we're out of time.

Christine Wormuth: Sure. I would say a lot of young people are looking for a sense of purpose, doing something larger than themselves, having a community, you can find all of that in the United States Army. We have over 178 different career fields. We offer the GI bill which will pay for your college. If you want to see the world and have an adventure, you can find all of that in the Army. You really can be all you can be so just go to goarmy.com and check out the details.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for talking about so many issues with us today. Not just recruitment, but Ukraine and China, and sexual assault, and gender identity, and other things that our listeners brought up and I brought up. Thank you very much. Secretary of the US Army, Christine Wormuth. Thank you.

Christine Wormuth: Thanks for having me.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.