Defense Experts Say Military’s Diversity Push Is Harming Warfighting Ability

Conservative News DailyJanuary 25, 2023

News Analysis

The U.S. military’s increased push for diversity and inclusion, as reflected in the far-reaching National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by President Joe Biden on Dec. 23, 2022, aims to remake the military’s culture and ethos along the same lines as left-wing policies put to use at elite private colleges and other areas of the private sphere, defense experts have told The Epoch Times.

Although efforts to diversify armed forces along racial/gendered lines, at the expense traditional standards, are not new. However, experts claim that the NDAA signals drastically increased civilian input to and oversight of a cultural once deemed the domain of professional soldier.

The NDAA’s provisions to increase diversity are similar to policies at private institutions like Harvard University. An organization opposed to the NDAA can find it difficult to oppose them. “woke” agenda in the armed forces, and supporting traditional standards and requirements, has gone so far as to lend its expertise in an ongoing lawsuit over Harvard’s admissions policies, in the form of an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) filing (pdf(Retrieved by the Epoch Time. This filing claims that diversity and inclusion policies have hurt the military and are not a good idea either in the private or public spheres.

Epoch Times Photo — A cadet holds an M249 firearm and points it in the direction of the opposing forces. Other cadets are moving forward in Training Area 9 during Army ROTC Cadet Summer Training, July 1, 2021 at Fort Knox, Kentucky. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

A New Vision of the Military

Some provisions in the NDAA are welcomed by those who doubt civilian oversight of the military, including the elimination of the requirement that servicemembers be vaccinated. This was a controversial issue that caused a lot of concern and was incurred. lawsuits From those who were opposed to vaccination for religious reasons or felt that they were not at sufficient risk to be required to have such measures.

Amongst the other provisions in the NDAA is a requirement that Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs collect and report data on the racial and gender composition of those who complete the programs or receive scholarships based on their participation. ROTC is a college program which trains students to be commissioned officers. This new measure follows a number of changes made in the past few years, which defense experts claim have led to significant improvements. wrecked the military’s traditional culture and undermined combat readiness and effectiveness, notably a new Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) with different requirements for men and women.

Setting reporting requirements and recruitment goals on the basis of race is not only irrelevant to combat training and preparedness and harmful to morale, but it is also blatantly illegal, according to Scott McQuarrie, president of Veterans for Fairness and Merit (VFM), a veterans’ organization whose membership currently stands at 627 former officers from various branches of the armed services.

“Warfighters don’t care what the skin color of their leaders is. They respond for a lot of reasons, and of course their training, without regard for skin color,” McQuarrie said so to The Epoch Times.

He argued that the legal perspective does not consider the race of applicants to ROTC or those who are participating in ROTC programs. To put pressure on ROTC programs for their composition to be altered according to some arbitrarily determined metric is against the spirit and letter Constitution.

“Certainly, our country can be defended without having to suspend the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” McQuarrie said.

McQuarrie explained that the nation has reached a point in which the military is no more considered to be part of its own distinct sphere. There are many idiosyncratic customs, standards, traditions and requirements. The principles to remake the military or higher education are very similar. McQuarrie felt it was appropriate to file an amicus cuiae briefing, applying the same arguments that he made in a military context. case Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows Harvard College. This case is currently being considered by the Supreme Court after hearing arguments in October.

Twisting the Law

Advocates for diversity have attempted to base their argument partly on Grutter V. Bollinger, a Supreme Court ruling in 2003. held The Equal Protection Clause of Amendment Fourteenth and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 do not prohibit the use of race in university admissions. It is permissible to consider other factors as well.

Students for Fair Admissions is a lawsuit that seeks to overturn Grutter, v. Bolinger, and restore racially neutral admissions policy.

McQuarrie stated that no one can ignore the Constitution’s explicit language or the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is because they are merely expressing a subjective belief that there might be good from it. McQuarrie stated that the new priorities of inclusion and diversity, while not universally considered necessary for military effectiveness do not meet the legal standards required to circumvent legal precedents.

“If you understand the basics of the law, it’s pretty obvious that the other side contrived this argument. Courts have to examine a practice by a university, say, to see whether it is violating the Constitution. The legal bar, for those who want to use extraconstitutional means, is very high. You have to prove a compelling state or national interest—that’s the buzz phrase—so grave as to warrant suspension of the Constitution. Quite clearly, [advocates of diversity] make this assertion that it’s a national security imperative that the military be allowed to use racial preferences in order to meet that high bar. Most people being candid with you would say that’s a very far-fetched argument,” McQuarrie said.

“In fact, our military has operated over the last few generations effectively without having to suspend the Constitution. In Bosnia, Panama, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the military did quite well, and we don’t need to violate the Constitution for the military to execute its mission,” He concluded.

The data on the military’s performance was useful in crafting the amicus curiae filing in the Harvard lawsuit, McQuarrie noted.

“We felt that the court needed to be educated on that basic argument. We took published data from the service academies. They are using racial preferences. The data showed that the consequences of using such preferences are not good. The bottom line is that the service academies are admitting applicants who are not as well qualified on the basis of race, and in some cases gender, and in doing so are rejecting applicants who have higher qualifications,” He stated.

“I’m not just referring to academic scores. The service academies have a very elaborate means of evaluating applications, and there are hundreds of variables that can contribute to the score on an application,” He concluded.

The service academies have developed a system over the years for determining a candidate’s overall score, but the data in VFM’s filing suggest that they have foregone applying such time-tested criteria and made decisions on the basis of race.

“It’s an express violation of Section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” He stated.

Bodies of Data

McQuarrie believes that discriminating one race over another in admissions can be as damaging to morale as it is to cohesion in civilian settings as it is in military contexts. One of the studies cited in VFM’s brief is the work of the Center for Equal Opportunity which first came out in 1996, McQuarrie noted. It looked at admission policies and the effects of racial preferences at U.S. service institutions. Naval Academy and West Point.

“The results of the study showed that it was more difficult for whites to get admitted to those academies than it was for certain minority groups. Asians are discriminated against at West Point in comparison to whites and everyone else,” McQuarrie said.

The push for diversity and the emphasis on race as one of its primary indices directly undermines a military culture where servicemen are supposed to think less, not more, about differentiating features, VFM’s brief contends.

“This selfless-servant, ‘colorblind’ culture is a national security imperative that is seriously weakened by racial preferences … Our warfighters [are] expected to ignore racial and other differences to be maximally effective on the battlefield. When bullets are flying and mortar shells landing, warfighters cannot and do not care about the race of their buddy or of their leaders. They must be (and are) willing to risk their lives for another warfighter, regardless of skin color,” These are the short states.

As harmful as the push for diversity under the current administration may be, it is useful to remember that the phenomenon has been going on for many years now, and undoing the damage will require sustained and vigorous litigation, McQuarrie argued.

“The Department of Defense’s use of racial preferences actually did not start in the Biden administration, or under President Obama. In the case of service academy admissions, the use of racial preferences began back in the 1980s, and I believe it’s pretty clear that the civilian leadership of the Pentagon was behind it,” He stated.

Arbitrary Metrics

Some defense experts also question the usefulness of the reporting requirement imposed under the NDAA.

Susan Katz Keating is the editor of Soldier of Fortune magazine, and the author of an influential 2015 book. exposé People magazine published an article on gender diversity in military personnel. It suggested that this was symbolic of a move to increase diversity.

“This is just a way for someone to say, ‘Absolutely, we’ve met our diverse recruitment goals.’ But I’m not sure what that will do in real life,” The Epoch Times was informed by Keating.

Keating wonders if the people who pushed for the reporting obligation find that the numbers about gender diversity in ROTC program programs falls short of what they expected.

“If the numbers come back and someone is not happy with the numbers, how do you get people to join ROTC if they weren’t already inclined to do so? So I’m curious, in terms of gender diversity, how they would try to sweeten the pot or find women who might otherwise be looking at a different career path or field. How do you reach your target audience to convince them to join? Keating asked.

She suggested that advocates for diversity might be trying to reform a peacetime army in ways that are not practical in the face of large-scale conflicts. This scenario could force some to face the truth behind the gender-normed illusion.

“It seems to me that a lot of this is geared toward a peacetime military, so what will happen if there is a major hot war, how will that shake down? I recognize that now, there are some women who want to have a military career path and might pursue some of the more traditional, heavy-testosterone military occupational specialties, such as infantry, and I’m just curious to see, if there’s a hot war, would that change? Are you going to find women volunteering to go into the front lines? I hope we don’t have to find out,” Keating stated.

“The military’s ultimate purpose is defense, and in many cases, it’s a very physical process,” She added.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Defense in order to get their comments.