Conscription is resurging across Europe. Is that a good thing?
Does conscription mean sending poorly trained, disgruntled young people into battle, or can it encourage civic duty and help defend Europe?
Does conscription mean sending poorly trained, disgruntled young people into battle, or can it encourage civic duty and help defend Europe?
State-sponsored slavery is still slavery. The mere prospect of compelled military or social service was motivation to keep a workable escape plan for many years. To this day, “patriot” is nauseating hate speech so far as I’m concerned.
You are by no means wrong. But outside of ancapistan types, I think everyone can say the governments job is to protect it's citizens from would be invaders. With world tensions rising along with various other crisis' it's just the best move, being prepared for the worst and taking precautions.Trained vs untrained soldiers could be the difference between 500 casualties and 2500 (the infamous German school battalions of WW1 for example)
It's one of the few actual necessary evils, unless your country is on the offensive of course.
But here is the difference between 1900, 1960 and 2023. The technological advancement and correspondingly the necessary know how is tremendous.
But in the typical 6-12 months the training you can give is pretty much the same over all these periods. That is basic fitness, basic operation of the equipment, basic tactics and some shooting.
In 1900 that covered most of the necessary abilities, as most soldiers were infantrists fighting with rifles and swords in trenches. In 1960 that covered half the necessary abilities, because the grunts were embedded in mechanized units and got support from things like artillery and helicopters that they would need to call in and guide.
In 2023 an experienced squad with a competent drone operator, using a simple commercial drone will just call in the modern artillery system that is standing 40km away on your grunts position and they never knew they were spotted, leave alone in danger until the split second before impact.
Having millions of reservists called in, that received some training 10 years ago and can shoot a rifle is worth much much less nowadays. What we need is a properly funded and trained professional army, that is attractive as an employer to get competent people to join.
Tbh, what annoys me the most is that conscription usually only applies to males. Stop taking gender into account and just make it apply to everyone...
A former Wagner mercenary in July told Euronews that while he served in Ukraine one of his main duties was to ensure Russian conscripts - “barely 21-years-old” - would not run away, as they were so reluctant to fight.
Doesn't this compare apples to oranges?
One is an aggressive war. People are shipped into Randomiskan without clear indication what's going on, why they should be there and they are supposed to die for the glory of the state. Sorry, but that's when everyone wants to run. That's also distinctively different from WW2, when concrete evidence of mass murder in occupied europe was available.
The other would be a defensive war. An outside aggressor wants to wipe out your culture and accepts killing or deporting anyone you consider important in your life. Putting it like that, WW2 was very much a defensive war from the allied side. That's a very different motivation.
To be fair ukrainian men weren't (aren't?) allowed to leave the country either
We need a EU Military and thats basicly all the insurance needed. Only the US and China have higher military spending then the EU right now. So that and nukes is easily enough.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Europe’s armed forces, particularly those on the border with Russia, now realise they don't have enough manpower,” said Vincenzo Bove, professor of political science at Warwick University, who specialises in conscription.
“Whether this is a good idea in terms of deterring a potential Russian invasion, we’re not really sure,” he continued, suggesting there was a lack of evidence about the effectiveness of conscript armies compared to regular forces.
A former Wagner mercenary in July told Euronews that while he served in Ukraine one of his main duties was to ensure Russian conscripts - “barely 21-years-old” - would not run away, as they were so reluctant to fight.
Tucked on Russia’s border via the small enclave of Kaliningrad, Lithuania recently began drafting reforms to its conscription system, which could see people living and studying abroad called up.
Along with Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Latvia, Austria, Greece and Estonia currently have some form of compulsory military service, alongside warring parties Ukraine and Russia.
Critical of “performative acts" where “every man and woman is herded into military service", Elisabeth Braw at the American Enterprise Institute told Euronews selective systems can “work really well".
The original article contains 1,165 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 84%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The EU was formed explicitly to prevent new wars from happening in the continent. At this point we should reconsider this and admit something has gone terribly wrong. We just elected a whole new set of greedy beurocrats and politicians...
The EU was formed explicitly to prevent new wars from happening in the continent. At this point we should reconsider this and admit something has gone terribly wrong.
Why? There are still no wars between EU countries. As such, the EU has been a huge success
Nonetheless we are directly experiencing an economy of war and "military law"-like measures like reintroduction of conscription, extremely patriotistic news, war industry on the surge. Plus a rising of neonazi and neofascist movements. Seems to me that all these "let's collaborate and respect each other" went completely neglected.
Since when is russia an EU member state?