It’s not an issue hitting the United States, but it does hit close to home since it impacts Canada, our neighbor to the north. The 2022 midterm elections have dominated the fall season, so I can see why this crisis fell by the wayside, but Canada has a severe military recruitment emergency. Some 10,000 positions are vacant, leaving the nation degraded regarding its capability to protect the country. In October, the CBC described the current military situation in Canada as “unprecedented” (via CBC):
The commander of the Canadian Armed Forces is calling on the country to rally behind its military as it faces an unprecedented personnel crisis that he says is threatening its ability to protect and defend Canada.
"We're here to defend our way of life, now and into the future," Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff, said.
"So we need a whole-of-society effort to help us bring the Armed Forces back to where it needs to be for the dangerous world ahead."
The extraordinary appeal comes as Eyre and his subordinates are struggling to fill about 10,000 empty positions at a time when Canada's military is facing a growing number of threats and requests for help at home and abroad.
… the defence chief issued an order setting a new direction for the military after years of high-tempo deployments and operations, making recruitment and retention of personnel its top priority.
It's no easy fix, a situation where everyone seems resigned that things will get worse before they get better. There are also questions about how bad the crisis is—with insinuations that it could be worse.
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In the United States, manpower wasn’t helped by the COVID vaccine mandates and the slew of woke anti-racism seminars that reportedly had some veterans sprinting for the exits. We are a nation still capable of defending itself, but we, too, are approaching being stretched too thin. We’re already unprepared to fight a two-front war.
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