[Dalaran1991]

All good point and I agree the army still is a good career option especially in the USA. As long as there are no war or serious jobs to do, you can even game these new development to your advantage.

But from a sociological standpoint, the lack of war and active engagement duty does change the raison d'être of the army.

There has always been a small but non-negligible portion of the population who are, for a lack of better term, predisposed to killing and violence. People who enjoy killing just because.
In the past these people, if left in society, would cause undue havoc. So one way to shift their aggression in a more productive way was to conscript them to war. Everybody is happy. The idea of penal regiments made up of convicted felons is pretty popular in every country's military history.

Now that you can no longer get paid to kill the enemy of the state, I wonder where these dangerous elements go? Elliot Rodger, if thrown into conscription and go through rigorous training, will either blow up like private Pyle (unlikely) or become better adjusted and draw some better sense of self-worth from the camaraderie.