How Will Trump Staff a War?

The Answer is in Project 2025

When Trump escalated conflict in the Middle East by attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, many on the internet began speculating that Trump would bring back the draft if there were a war.

Would Trump, a draft dodger who fabricated an injury to avoid Vietnam, reinstate the draft in order to staff a war in the Middle East? It’s not only possible — it is exactly the type of depressing irony we’ve come to expect.

Trump promised to be a protector of women. Actually he’s a predator. He promised to be the only person who could fix the economy. Actually his companies go bankrupt. He’s propped up by the party of family values. Actually he’s the most licentious and unfaithful president we’ve ever had.

But I don’t think Trump needs the draft in order to brim barracks and fill fox holes. I’ve read Project 2025 and know the plan, which is already in motion, is sneakier and more sinister.

Remember that Project 2025 is conservatives’ playbook for Trump’s second term. It was published in 2023 by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and organized Russell Vought, who Trump named Director of the Office of Management and Budget (basically the HR wing of the federal government).

Project 2025 named the problem: Declining enrollment in the military puts our national defense at risk. The nation is facing a well known military recruiting crisis in every branch. In 2022, entry numbers were the lowest in two generations. In the National Defense section of Project 2025, authors disclose their strategy for getting numbers up:

• Require all students who attend schools that receive federal funding (public schools) to take the Armed Service Vocational Aptitude Battery Test.

• Grant recruiters better access to public school students.

• Adding twice as many Junior ROTC programs to middle and high schools.

• Encouraging members of Congress to have military recruiters at public events like town halls (This particular strategy seems far less effective, given that the authors of Project 2025 couldn’t have foreseen Republicans’ cowardly cancelling town halls after Trump took office).

What is ASVAB?

The Armed Service Vocational Aptitude Battery is a military entrance exam that measures someone’s armed services proficiencies and predicts future success in the military. It measures verbal, math, science/tech, and spatial skills. For example, a question under the math section might be:

Just so you know, I would absolutely bomb the ASVAB.

My husband did not bomb it. As a teenager who grew up in an Air Force family and was an officer in Junior ROTC, he flirted with the idea of enlisting. He scored a 98 percent when he took the ASVAB and was told by recruiters that he could have his pick of jobs in whatever branch he decided to enlist. Instead, he enrolled in The Citadel, a Military College of South Carolina. Fate intervened and he came down with mono two weeks before school was supposed to begin. My husband was aware that he would never be able to keep up with the school’s rigorous fitness training with mono, so he had to relinquish his spot. He went to a private Christian college instead, which is where he met me.

I’m telling you this so you can see that my what makes my husband’s decision to take the ASVAB different from what Project 2025 proposes was that it was a decision. No one forced him to take it. When he scored high and recruiters came courting, he chose to tell them “no” because he was privileged enough to be able to. Both of his parents were college educated with stable jobs. They lived in a large house in the suburbs and their income allowed them to save for college. He had a vehicle, a support system, a future.

This Is About Choice

Most young people don’t want to participate in the military anymore. Who can blame them, with our country’s reputation for pointless wars and service that takes more than it gives. Who can blame them when we don’t fulfill the commitments we’ve made to our veterans? When young people have options like my husband did, many of them choose something else.

But under Project 2025, all public high school students will be required to take the ASVAB. It will be one of the only standardized tests that apply to all public school kids regardless of interest or aptitude across every state. Recruiters will use these tests to make phone calls to young, impressionable teenagers. They will pump them with confidence about the skills that will make them an asset in the U.S. Armed Forces.

This makes poor and kids and those from marginalized communities vulnerable to make a life-changing — or life-ending decision. They will not have the options that allowed my husband to say “no.” For many of them, public school is the only place where they feel comfortable in their skin, the only place where they are exposed to art and language and culture and history. For some of them, it is the only place where they can access a reliable meal, a warm building, a caring adult, a counselor.

But those resources are dwindling, thanks to Trump’s attacks on public education. Within weeks of his presidency, he signed executive orders to close the Department of Education, eroding its ability to carry out our civil obligations to students. He has eliminated funding for public schools that he considers “woke” or DEI. Trump has torpedoed federal humanities programs used to bolster arts education. His administration has cut $1 billion that allowed schools to purchase food from local growers, which served hungry students in 40 states.

These actions have stripped students of the vital resources they need to thrive — resources our government is constitutionally mandated to provide. What is the point of eliminating these resources if not to dwindle their choices?

What happens when the government stops investing in history, art, culture, mental health, and food security for marginalized students and instead uses billions of dollars on tests and recruiters to funnel them toward the Armed Forces?

Those students will see a future in the military as their only option.

Who This Strategy Leaves Out

Perhaps the most revealing part of Project 2025’s strategy is who it excludes. In 2021-2022, about 10 percent of the country’s roughly 54.6 million pre-K through 12th grade students were enrolled in private schools, and 7% went to public charter schools.

Private school students, whose parents are usually wealthy and well connected, won’t be forced to take the ASVAB. They will not be hounded by phone calls from military recruiters. They will not be pressured to enlist.

It will not be the children of the 1 percenters who enter war zones. They will not be issued fatigues. They will not go to boot camp. They will not possibly lose their lives in pointless wars started by arrogant, narcissistic rich men who are sad no one came to Banana Republic-style tank birthday party.

This is just another example of the gap between the haves and everyone else that Project 2025 and the Trump administration are widening.

I know military service can be noble. My father-in-law retired a lt colonel in the Air Force. My grandfather-in-law was a WWII pilot. Their choice to join the military allowed them to serve their country, provide for their families, and gain skills they would use of their rest of their lives.

But military enrollment is only noble when when it’s chosen — not when it is coerced, manipulated, or groomed by greedy, egotistical rulers. Military service is only honorable when it honors everyone — not just the wealthy or the powerful.

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