re: "CHANGE: It's getting much more difficult to join, or stay in, the U.S. Army."

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit ("the intersection between advanced technologies and individual liberty") notes an unsurprising development.

The U.S. military is an "up or out" hierarchy. Has been for decades. The "Qualitative Retention Program" (i.e., how we decide who gets kicked out) has been on the books forever. It's how often that it actually gets exercised that varies.

re: "Defense Policy-Making Suffers from a Lack of Citizen-Soldiers"

Donald Stadler guest-posts at Atlantic Review ("A Press Digest for Transatlantic Affairs").

Money quote(s):

"The US has tended to become the career military within the alliance, while much of the alliance has trended toward the opposite. This will not do - not only for reasons of fairness, but far more importantly because you are unlikely to fully understand what you don't have experience doing. In this case, fighting. Attempting to make policy for what you don't fundamentally understand simply doesn't work, as we have seen."