NATO needs to rethink the entire way it receives troops from allied countries. Falling unemployment rates in the United States and across the Atlantic have made recruiting numbers more difficult to meet.
The U.S. military missed its recruiting goal by more than 41,000 people last year. The British Army has missed its targets every year since 2010. Even Ukraine, which is not part of NATO, had to lower its conscription age from 30 to 25. Russia also has to work with forced conscription ‘We are victims of our own success,’ says Kate Kuzminski, director of the military, veterans and community program at the Center for a New American Security (C New Security) The biggest reason for the decline in recruiting, experts say, is the lack of an existential threat to U.N. national security. The alliance plans to train NATO's new 300,000-strong Allied Response Force this summer, but to keep up with the increase in Russian forces, the alliance will need reserves - lots of them.