The Australian Defence Force’s recruitment efforts are targeted primarily at teenagers and young adults.

Ads on TikTok and in video games — clearly aimed at these demographics — have driven a 15-year high surge in defence force enrolment. The ADF is not alone in this regard. A RAND corporation report on military recruitment in the US noted that “the over-21 market is not actively recruited” there, despite the fact that the changing character of war, along with advances in military technology and pharmacology, are making it increasingly possible for older adults to effectively serve in military roles once reserved for youth. But if this is indeed the new reality, then there are powerful moral arguments for increasing the representation of older adults in the armed forces.

Operation emerging adult

In the midst of a manpower shortage in the late 1960s, US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara launched _Operation 100,000__._ The plan was to increase the size of the American military by admitting individuals previously considered too intellectually deficient to serve. This cohort of recruits came to be known as “McNamara’s Morons”. They were three times more likely than other draftees to die in combat, and twice as likely to be wounded.

The experiment was militarily disastrous, but it was also morally abhorrent. In a column marking McNamara’s death, journalist Joseph Galloway wrote: “The Good Book says we must forgive those who trespass against us. But what about those who trespass against the most helpless among us; those willing to conscript the mentally handicapped, the most innocent, and turn them into cannon fodder?”

The young men drafted under Operation 100,000 were conscripts, but from a moral point of view it would have made little difference had they been “volunteers”. What made the policy so odious is that it involved assigning one of society’s most serious responsibilities — killing and dying for the state — to one of society’s most vulnerable groups: those especially susceptible to manipulation, exploitation and physical and psychological harm.

The currently prevailing norm of almost exclusively recruiting teenagers and “emerging adults” (18-25-year-olds) is certainly less egregious that Operation 100,000, but I would suggest that it is a difference of degree rather than kind.

Research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology has revealed that the limbic system, which governs emotions and desires, develops much earlier than the prefrontal cortex. The latter is responsible for reasoning, planning, and impulse control, and is usually not fully formed before 25. The result is a mismatch in the brains of those normally targeted by military recruiters: lots of feelings, but not yet the ability to regulate them.

We also now have evidence to suggest that the average young adults’ capacity for moral reasoning is unfinished. It turns out that certain brain regions implicated in moral judgment are less active in younger adults (19-25), compared to older adults, making the former more prone to overlook important ethical considerations when faced with difficult choices.

In light of this, it looks as though we are still allocating the task of killing and dying for the state to a vulnerable group. Compared to older adults, youths have a generally impaired capacity to understand, morally evaluate and exercise autonomous control over what they do on the battlefield. If this were necessary to raise an effective military — if older adults were incapable of competent military service — then perhaps the status quo could be defended on pragmatic grounds. But, according to the research cited earlier, it isn’t necessary. Not anymore.

This is one reason to think that armed forces should not only admit older adults but actively recruit them ahead of members of younger generations. But this is not the only argument for older soldiers, or even the most compelling one.

Stopping the spread of Chickenhawk Syndrome

American Civil War general Robert E. Lee is said to have mused: “It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.” One need not be especially cynical to accept the basic psychological insight here: the less a population expects to suffer from war, the more likely its members are to endorse (or at least tolerate) it.

This is why modern war financing is so disconcerting. Once upon a time, the prospect of war presented ordinary citizens with painful choices. A trade-off between guns and butter had to be made. Wars could bankrupt societies and leave their populations destitute. Today, states put war on the credit card, largely disassociating even the most obscenely expensive military operation from the experience of economic hardship. Debt-financing means that ordinary citizens can continue living during wartime more or less as they do in times of peace.

As for the non-pecuniary costs of war — death, physical mutilation, PTSD, moral injury — these have not been eliminated, but they remain highly concentrated among young people. Older adults are not socially expected to participate in wars, and most of them are still formally excluded by maximum enlistment ages. Hence, the vast majority of soldiers killed in every major war of the last century have been men in their 20s.

This makes for a morally hazardous incentive structure.

When our governments raise the prospect of going to war, most citizens in advanced industrial countries have no reason to worry about the personal financial consequences. Further, while a subsection of the community will be expected to die and suffer physical and mental wounds prosecting the war, it is not the most political powerful subsection of the community. For various reasons, democratic governments tend to be more responsive to the wishes and interests of older adults, but members of this group are largely insulated from the most serious costs of war under current arrangements.

The result is an environment highly conducive to the spread of “ Chickenhawk Syndrome” among older adults (a term used by Cheyney Ryan to describe zealous support for war among citizens that will never be called upon to participate in it).

It is easy to see why this is cause for concern. By the logic just sketched, having no skin in the game is liable to make older citizens more tolerant of wars waged in their name. But these are the very citizens best placed to prevent democratic governments from using force unnecessarily, disproportionately or otherwise unjustly. Excluding older adults from military service thus has the consequence of making the misuse of military force more politically viable than it would be if older age cohorts were not only admitted into dangerous military roles, but actively encouraged to take them on.

Some readers may respond by pointing out that, whatever the philosophical merits of this line of argument, practical barriers are bound to prevent older adults from joining the ranks in sufficient numbers. Others might reply that it would be enormously disruptive, socially and economically, for militaries to recruit older people who are already ensconced in civilian institutions. These points are well taken. But our moral duties are not erased wherever fulfilling them is costly or disruptive. If increasing the representation of older citizens in the armed forces is an ethical imperative, then morality might require the deeper social transformations necessary to facilitate it.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.