Any self-respecting nation's top priority is protecting its borders, carrying a big enough stick to deter aggressors, and keeping its citizens safe.
A government that fails to fulfill these basic duties has surrendered its purpose; the moment a nation’s military capability goes south, history stops writing its biography and starts writing its eulogy. Defending against predators requires the latest technological advances, the best available intelligence, and an understanding of tactics and strategy. Most importantly, it requires bodies and minds fit not only to take orders but also to execute them successfully.
An army is only as good as the people who serve in it. Its battlefield surveillance may be flawless; its tanks may be reinforced and equipped with the latest weaponry. But if the soldiers manning them lack the stamina and presence of mind needed to complete their objective, all that hardware means little. This is why the recent findings on testosterone levels in the armed forces are concerning. Nearly a quarter of active-duty men, more than 100,000, are running low on essential fuel.
We're not talking about a veteran's golf club in Florida, but men who make life-and-death decisions for a living. Soldiers who climb mountains under heavy fire and carry sixty-pound loads of equipment through dense enemy territory. If one in every four men on the front lines has the hormonal profile of a frail septuagenarian, a real problem exists.
This goes far beyond gym-bro vanity and Lycra-clad grifters selling overpriced supplements. Testosterone drives muscle growth, and muscle serves as operational armor. This hormone provides the energy boost a man needs to stay physically and mentally strong under intense physical stress. In addition to reducing muscle growth, low testosterone increases the risk of brain fog (and possibly dementia) and impairs risk assessment.
These psychological effects may seem less important than the physical ones. But in combat, the ability to think clearly often determines the difference between coming home to your family and becoming a cautionary tale in a tactical debrief. The DoD is taking notice and updating physical standards and screening requirements. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deserves praise for recognizing the issue's severity and taking appropriate action.
Improving the military's combat readiness requires addressing its metabolic problems, which means first having a conversation about hormonal deficiencies. Proactively resolving these imbalances before service members deploy is the kind of pragmatic strategy the Pentagon should embrace.
The soldiers-with-low-testosterone story is less an isolated incident than a symptom of a broader crisis affecting American men. Across the country, vitality is vanishing, leaving a generation mentally and physically weaker, slower and less resilient than the one before it.
The decline’s been building for years. In 2023, a YouGov poll asked American citizens to gauge where they fell on a femininity-versus-masculinity scale. Respondents rated themselves and how they believed others perceived them relative to general societal norms of masculinity and femininity. The results were enough to make a grown man cry, which seems remarkably easy to do in modern-day America.
Essentially, the older you are, the more likely you are to identify with the masculine end of the scale. When asked to place themselves on a scale where zero is the most masculine and six the most feminine, almost 40 percent of men placed themselves at zero. When asked the same question, 40 percent of women placed themselves at six.
This supports a growing body of research showing that today's youth are less inclined to do anything involving physical exertion, the outdoors, or getting a driver’s license. A few decades ago, the idea of a young man, especially an American one, not getting a driver’s license was unfathomable. But times change, and not always for the better.
The modern landscape is crawling with James Talarico and Timothée Chalamet-like figures. These pale specimens carry themselves with all the authority of a Victorian orphan recovering from a bad bout of rickets. Instead of men built to endure hard times and heavy labor, America and the West in general are producing more and more delicate flowers incapable of lifting a dumbbell, let alone protecting themselves or their loved ones from an attacker.
It becomes harder for a society to prosper when its youth are weaker and more effeminate. Social order and civilization require masculine energy to build and organize, defend the country and its citizens, and enforce order when necessary. A culture built entirely on feelings, foam rollers, and frothy lattes is hard to rally and easy to overrun.