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?
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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.
I generally agree with you that conscription is worth less than it was in the 60s because of technological advances. But my takeaway from the war and subsequent mobilization in Ukraine is that "grunts" still play an important role in wars.
Let's take your example. Without a sufficient number of grunts between your artillery piece and the enemy, it will constantly be pushed back, because the enemy places 10 grunts on a BRT to close the 40km distance. Anti-tank weapons and drones can help, but they might dismount and proceed.
Drones made the battlefield even more terrifying for individual soldiers, but I think in the next year's we will see more anti-drone weapons and maybe even counter-(intercepting) drones.
[Sorry, I accidentally sent it too early]
The war in Ukraine shows that the professionals of any army are usually out of action within the first 3-6 months, and after that you either have a mobilized army of people who have held a gun before and moved as a squad, or you have to teach them even that.
I'm someone who studies history a lot.
Everything you said could be replaced with 1910-14 as the current year and you'd be pretty close to prevailing opinions of the day.
Wars need men. Well trained men ideally, but he who has the numbers usually wins.
In WW1 It took 3-6 months to churn through the professionals, in WW2 I don't recall off hand but we're looking at months. In Vietnam it did take 5 years yes, but that's not the kind of war that Europe is or should be preparing for. In Ukraine it seems likely to be around 9 months, for Russia at least (unless you're paratroopers then 3 days).
Outside of huge technological and leadership gaps you need the bigger army to win and that's why conscription is the necessary evil.
I do not deny the necessity of boots on the ground. But having a concscript sent against a technologically developed professional army is just sending the conscripts to slaughter without serious gain.
Also we see many examples in history, were a large standing army was worthless in face of superior technology and the professionals able to use it. For example the gulf war and iraq war against the army of Saddam Hussein were won decisively despite the US having much less boots on the ground.
During the six day war Israel "blitzkriegd" the larger arab armies by gaining air superiority and employing combined arms properly.
Again, nobody denies boots on the ground, but a professional army with proper equipment is superior to anyone just tossing numbers around.
Focusing on conscription instead of increasing the professional abilities is dangerous. Maybe they can drag the war out until it is really just a numbers game. But until then they'll have killed the generations necessary to rebuild the country.
But having a concscript sent against a technologically developed professional army is just sending the conscripts to slaughter without serious gain.
In the current conflict, at least, I think that without (conscripted) infantry to defend the artillery, the artillery would be in pretty deep trouble.
For example the gulf war and iraq war against the army of Saddam Hussein were won decisively despite the US having much less boots on the ground.
Iraq was, at the time, considered to have very strong air defenses. In practice, they got destroyed very quickly in the opening phase. But the US had prepared the American population for much higher losses in advance of the war, and was conservative in their expectations. We have the benefit of hindsight, so we know that the conflict was very much a one-sided affair, but in the runup to the conflict, the militaries involved were not so sure. Iraq definitely had a different view, else they would not have fought the war.
A video that talks about the opening air war in Iraq that I've enjoyed watching:
But if Iraq actually had the strong air defenses, the war would have looked much different as you said. You cannot operate modern AA systems with conscripts. Those are professional capeabilities. And again i dont say to leave systems unguarded without infantry. but 10 professional soldiers make short work of 30 conscripted ones. Again there is plenty of videos from the current war in Ukraine, where russian conscripts lose against much smaller numbers of professional ukrainian soldiers.
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