Americans are quickly losing faith in the military as a nonpartisan institution. More specifically, they have lost faith in the Biden administration’s senior political and military leadership. Whether it’s the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan, weak leadership in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine, or the Chinese aggression in the Pacific, an illegal mandate of experimental COVID-19 pandemic vaccines on U.S. troops, prioritizing transgenderism outreach over training commitments, lowering fitness standards, or perpetuating an “extremism” hoax among the ranks, the Biden administration’s military policy has destroyed public faith and uniformed morale. Unfortunately, Team Biden’s Pentagon policy is no different from any other aspect of this administration — a complete catastrophe.

A Reagan Institute National Defense Survey published recently recorded a massive drop in Americans’ trust and confidence in the U.S. military since 2018. The survey showed that the number of Americans with high trust and confidence in the military is down to 45% in 2021 from 70% in 2018. The survey also showed that the area of the highest concern was military leadership. This comes as no surprise to anyone paying attention. Both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley’s multiple testimonies before Congress have demonstrated their preference for political pandering with Democrats over military effectiveness.

The American people’s drop in confidence is also not without cost.

Recruiting has cratered, especially for the Army, which is short 60% of the goal with only three months remaining. The recruiting crisis is so bad that the Army dropped a requirement for a high school diploma or equivalent. The backlash was so severe that the requirement was reinstated in less than a week. Unfortunately, recruiting under Joe Biden is very unlikely to improve. According to the Reagan Institute study, only a third of young Americans under age 30 have high confidence in the military, down from well over half in 2018. Even worse, the study found that “confidence is lower among young Americans than any other demographic subgroup, including ideological, religious, ethnic, economic, or geographic region.” While recruiting commands blame a competitive job market or a lack of bonuses and benefits, the real reason the military can’t find recruits is a dramatic loss of confidence in the military’s primary target demographic.

The Army’s marketing isn’t helping either. The two most recent campaigns, “Know Your Army” and “The Calling,” were not only tone-deaf but poorly designed and targeted. “Know Your Army” focused on paid vacation, parental leave, pensions plans, and VA home loan benefits. Forget service to your country, defending the American way of life, or a sense of purpose, duty, or honor — the Army is trying to attract recruits more interested in their benefits package than personal sacrifice. As for “The Calling,” it was so bad the Army was forced to disable comments on the video after posting it to YouTube. It turns out that the Biden administration’s priorities and values are antithetical to those of military service, and the American public agrees.

The most impactful and destructive issue for the military, however, remains mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. It is also the one most denied and ignored by both the Pentagon and the mainstream media. Only about one quarter of young Americans are eligible to serve, eliminations coming mostly due to being overweight or having a criminal record. The healthy remainder is also the most likely to balk at the military’s tyrannical insistence they be vaccinated against COVID-19. Thirty percent of those 12 to 17 remained unvaccinated, and they are likely the healthiest of that demographic due to the fact that they face the least risk from illness, the most risk from vaccination, and are the most likely to already have the strong natural immunity blatantly denied by Lloyd Austin’s vaccination order. This is especially true for young men, as they are most likely to experience heart issues from vaccination, but not from natural infection.

There are also rising concerns of sterilization, with a recent study in Israel showing durable drops in motile sperm count for at least one in five men that received the Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccine. As the CDC, FDA, and DOD’s lies about these risks become more evident, uniformed resistance to vaccination becomes stronger. More than 60,000 Army National Guardsmen and Reservists refused vaccination despite a 30 June deadline. Such large scale willful disobedience is unprecedented in the modern all-volunteer force and is a direct reflection of how the Biden administration’s leadership has destroyed these soldiers’ faith in their chain of command. If the Pentagon were to separate these Guardsmen and Reservists in addition to the thousands of active duty service members already under separation proceedings, it would be an incredibly needless skill, experience, and strength drain on our total force.

The Biden administration’s weak leadership, woke policies, and illegal mandates are now manifesting as a willful destruction of our military at a time when our enemies are emboldened by our weak leadership and lack of political will to defend liberty abroad. As Biden fumbles reading from his teleprompter and trying to keep his balance on his bike, Beijing and Moscow take note. Xi Jinping and the Communist Chinese want to reclaim Taiwan more than ever and while Vladimir Putin’s foray into Ukraine wasn’t the blitzkrieg he’d hoped, his strangle hold over Europe’s energy supply remains a very real geopolitical lever of power. Let’s just hope that our brave men and women in uniform don’t have to suffer much longer before they’re called to fight the next war.

(Lee Miller is a West Point graduate and combat veteran.)