The Military Aren’t Heroes or Villains. They’re Us.

Eighty percent of Germans say they respect their armed forces, the Bundeswehr, a recent survey shows. They just don’t want to serve in it themselves: The German military is currently some 20,000 soldiers short. The situation is the same across the West, from the United States to Britain and Italy. The public respects—worships, even—the military but knows precious little about what it does and wants even less to do with it personally.

“About 4 in 10 young Americans say they have never even considered military service,” reported the U.S. National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service in an interim study this past January. The bipartisan commission, appointed in 2017, is tasked with examining the growing civil-military divide and proposing solutions. The United States is far from the only country to suffer this problem: In the United Kingdom, for example, only 7 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds have a family member serving in the armed forces.