Race-based admissions policies are misguided for military academies, too.

Maybe more misguided than for other colleges.

Desperate times call for desperate arguments. Thus, with the Supreme Court quite possibly on the verge of striking down race-based college admissions policies, the Washington Post warns that the “affirmative action case could change [the] face of [the] U.S. military.” (This is the print edition title of the article discussed below.)

Elizabeth Prelogar, Solicitor General for the Biden/Garland Justice Department, peddled the same alarmist line during oral argument of the Harvard/UNC cases last Fall. She claimed that “it is a critical national security imperative to attain diversity within the officer corps, and at present it’s not possible to achieve that diversity without race-conscious admissions, including at the nation’s service academies.”

Justice Alito responded that “what you say about the military is something that we have to take very seriously.” Chief Justice Roberts raised the possibility of “not deciding the service academy issue in this case.”

But is it really true that our national security would be impaired if service academies based their admissions on merit, without regard to race? Isn’t the national security best served by picking those best qualified for future service as officers, rather than by picking some because of the color of their skin?

That’s the view of a group called Veterans for Fairness and Merit. In an amicus brief to the Court, it states that “the military’s use of racial preferences is unquestionably harmful to our national security” because “such preferences are antithetical to the ‘selfless servant,’ colorblind culture necessary for our military to prevail on the battlefield.”

By contrast, Prelogar told the Court that “when we do not have a diverse officer corps that is broadly reflective of a broad fighting force, our strength and cohesion and military readiness suffer.” But why?

Is it the U.S. government’s position that blacks and Hispanics won’t fight as hard or obey orders as fully if the officer corps isn’t black or Hispanic enough? This must be what Prelogar was telling the Court when she claimed that without a particular level of minority representation among officers, the military will be less effective in combat and combat preparation.

To make this claim is to say that the loyalty and effectiveness of black and Hispanic troops is contingent on the racial composition of the officer corps. This view slanders black and Hispanic troops.

Is there any empirical evidence to support the slander? I doubt it.

According to the Washington Post, at the beginning of this century, 20 percent of cadets at West Point identified as members of a racial or ethnic minority group. In 2021, the number was 36 percent. Similarly, at the Naval Academy, minority representation grew from 19 to 37 percent.

I’d like to see the evidence that the Army and Navy are protecting the nation more effectively today than in 2000 due to the spike in minority officers? I doubt it exists.

The other possible argument in favor of race-preferences at the military academies is to promote diversity at these institutions themselves. Here, the case for diversity is similar to, but a little different than, the case for diversity at Harvard, UNC, etc.

It might be argued that future white officers need exposure in college to blacks and Hispanics more than the average white college student does. After all, officers will be commanding forces with a high representation of blacks and Hispanics.

But this was also true back in 2000, when representation of racial and ethnic minorities at West Point and Annapolis was around 20 percent, rather than 36 percent. The biggest difference was that the blacks and Hispanics to whom white future officers were exposed were more likely to be their equals intellectually and academically.

I would think that the lessons white future officers learn (if they need to) from attending school with minority future officers of a high caliber will serve them better than the lessons learned from attending school with a cohort of minorities that includes many who wouldn’t have made the cut but for their race and who are struggling to keep up at school.

I’ve used 2000 as a baseline because the Post provided data on the racial composition of service academies for that year. It might well be that, absent preferences, the percentage of minorities at the academies would fall below that baseline.

But the academies would remain racially and ethnically diverse. They just wouldn’t be as diverse as they are now or were in 2000. Diversity used to mean variety, not fixed levels of representation — and certainly not levels that correspond to a group’s representation in the general population.

We should be confident that America will be able to defend itself quite ably with an officer corps that’s diverse in the original, rather than the quota, sense. If anything, we should worry about the ability of a racially discriminatory and race-obsessed military to defend America.