My own crystal ball isn't shiny enough for such bold predictions.
There are people who benefit from a dose of discipline to develop into full adulthood. There are people who want the college money, security clearances, or training the military offers. There are people who feel a duty to serve quite removed from partisan agitprop or bumpersticker philosophies. There are people who want to continue a family tradition.
Because people are different and want different things I do not encourage them to enlist, and I do not try to scare them off.
I can't speak for how productive everyone else was in the late 80s, but: the work my unit did in [the former West] Germany led directly to the Reagan-Gorbachev INF treaty and the destruction/decommissioning of
Soviet-era SS-20 nukes (among others) and indirectly to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the CCCP. The college money got me through a couple degrees, a VA loan helped finance my house when I had one, and now the VA provides my medical and psychiatric care.
So, no. I
don't wish I did something more productive.
I live in a van now and have few possessions. One of them is an old army field jacket with my last name and tabbed unit insignia on it. It's beat up, ugly, and still functional -- kinda like me. No regrets.