It simply doesn't make any sense for most European countries.
First of all, there is no viable way to actually use conscripts. Sending them overseas to die over a patch of dirt is a really bad move, as the Vietnam war has shown. Europe doesn't really want to invade anyone, so you're left with defense. So who's going to invade? The only foe even worth considering is Russia - and NATO's combined professional armies are more than a match for them. Not to mention that there are thousands of kilometers between Russia and the country considering conscription.
Second, it'd actually be a massive burden. The army suddenly has to train a bunch of unmotivated teenager every single year, which in reality ends up being a LARP session in a local forest. This drains a huge amount of resources from the professional soldiers. And all those conscripts will not contribute anything meaningful to the economy while doing so.
Sure, it might make sense if you are bordering Russia, but anything further west just isn't going to happen.
This bunch of “unmotivated young men/people” are the least likely to get a war eagerly started but are REALLY only willing to fight if it’s necessary (e.g someone invading their home country and firing artillery at their home village).
In most countries the military doesn’t serve “the people” but the will of politics.
If a big portion of your military IS YOUR SOCIETY (e.g., young men very happily doing a lot of stuff except bombing the shit out of a random country) - it reduces the risk of some bogus operation.
Having conscripts as an important foundation of your military can bring a lot of peace and stability…
Maybe you want to read up a bit on the Vietnam war and how the public was deceived; it isn’t just much “sending conscripts over to a overseas to die for some piece of dirt” - if conscripts see no purpose in fighting over that patch of land, maybe politicians shouldn’t either !?
> Having conscripts as an important foundation of your military can bring a lot of peace and stability
I don't think there's any evidence for that one way or the other. I think you could also make a convincing argument that a professional military with a higher bar of recruits and a strong standing in law is less likely to do random shit for politicians. I'm not making that argument, just saying you need to back up such assertions.
Switzerland, Germany (post-WWII until somewhat recently) versus like UK, US, France?
If your military consists of your society instead of a “professionally hired military” that only answers to politicians instead of their girlfriends, mums n dads - I’d argue: less military “peace missions” abroad?
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya - rings a bell? You think you could have send conscripts there?
“Strong standing in law” - Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya; you think the PEOPLE of these countries would agree???
Unfortunately generations of hopelessly naive and deluded politicians enthusiastically commit their forces to “peacekeeping” operations on a regular basis. Generally designed to prevent group-A of uncivilised people from killing group-B of more or less similarly uncivilised people. Note that this gets written up in the media as “good guys vs bad guys” of course. Recently (e.g. Sudan) even the media have struggled to find cartoon-level-simple labels for the armed factions.
> anything further west just isn't going to happen.
Are you somehow not counting Austria, Greece, and Switzerland as European?
[pedantic edit: the parent, to my interpretation, does not just argue that "introducing conscription would be a poor idea" but that "conscription is a poor idea" (whether one already has it or not); maybe it would be better off refined to the former?]
Switzerland is in a somewhat unique position. They are not in NATO, and their position of staying neutral and keeping up trade with all sides depends on making it very unattractive to invade them. Conscription makes sense in that context.
"Switzerland has mandatory military service in the Swiss Army for all able-bodied male citizens, who are conscripted when they reach the age of majority, though women may volunteer for any position. Conscripts make up the majority of the manpower in the Swiss Armed Forces."
Every Swiss man is required to serve in the military or in the alternative civilian service. In most cases, the military service obligation applies from age 18 to 30.
So how could they possibly start doing it now? Military service is already a cultural expectation and their military is already structured around it because they've been doing it for over a century.
> The only foe even worth considering is Russia - and NATO's combined professional armies are more than a match for them.
That's been shown to be true over the last year, but prior to that it was very much an open question.
Also from the perspective of "Europe" in an insular sense, it depends heavily on the large standing force and transport capability of the USA. Remember that as recently as three years ago, the occupant of the white house was publicly musing about the possibility of leaving NATO and aligning with Russia! And influential members of the minority party still wander close to that idea rhetorically.
> Remember that as recently as three years ago, the occupant of the white house was publicly musing about the possibility of leaving NATO and aligning with Russia!
While the president publicly said that, his actions were different. For instance, President Donald Trump instructed the United States European Command (EUCOM) to be moved from Stuttgart to Mons, near Brussels. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-germany-militar...
> While the president publicly said that, his actions were different.
Sure. Certainly no one ever accused the Trump administration of well-coordinated messaging and communications strategies. Nonetheless the fact that the president was personally constrained by the needs and conventions in the rest of his administration isn't much solace to an ally trying to figure out how much reliance to place on US assistance in the future.
The somewhat awkward truth is that a large portion of the republican political base at this point have turned inward and are deliberately hostile to organizations like NATO. That's not good, but it's not something to ignore just because the existing policy apparatus (the "deep state", if you will) is holding it in check for the moment.
> The somewhat awkward truth is that a large portion of the republican political base at this point have turned inward and are deliberately hostile to organizations like NATO.
a) Eighty-one percent of Americans say the United States should maintain (62%) or increase (19%) its commitment to NATO, the highest level of support recorded since Chicago Council Surveys began in 1974.
b) Support for maintaining or increasing the US commitment to NATO is bipartisan, with large majorities of Democrats (90%), Independents (78%), and Republicans (75%) in support.
c) Bipartisan majorities support the admission of Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, and Georgia as new NATO members.
> Remember that as recently as three years ago, the occupant of the white house was publicly musing about the possibility of leaving NATO and aligning with Russia!
Thanks for pointing this out… most people tend to forget this. Everything looks nice, until it doesn’t anymore.
It actually wouldn't be that bad. After high school many European countries have 2-3 months of a break before most of them start college. Plenty of time to do a bootcamp.
That way you have a group of people with the basics. Based on that you can make further selections.
And it it should absolutely be possible to combine it with the first year of college.
> The United Kingdom, the United States and Canada have had exclusively professional armies for 50 years or more.
One idea would be for the EU, instead of individual member states, to stand up a professional army. Then you don't have to force people and it also just might bind European countries more closely together.
European army might be happening in the future, but entity protesting the European army the most will be USA diplomacy. On one hand US armed forces would like for Europe to be self sufficient so they can concentrate on China. On the other hand US diplomacy would lost leverage on Europe + getting another geopolitical competitor (despite being ideologically aligned with USA) isn't something what USA is looking for.
There are already some extensive collaborations. For example, Dutch divisions now report to German command. And the French and German armies coordinate on a lot of things and we're all NATO members of course.
There are some calls for bringing back military service in some countries. I'm not sure that's needed or a good idea. The reason most European armies are not in great shape is not a lack of people but years of budget cuts and mismanagement. That would be because they don't actually do a whole lot of fighting normally. They defend without ever being attacked and there is the odd mission abroad where some countries send maybe thousands of troops at best. I don't see that change any time soon. And that's a good thing. I count myself lucky to not have been exposed to major wars close to where I live. And I live in the middle of Berlin. Buildings here still have scars from WW II. At least the few that survived that.
The most credible threat on our eastern border was the Russian army. And courtesy of their own ineptness, they seem to be hard at work reducing that threat by expending most of their officers and usable equipment in the Ukraine. It doesn't look like they are recovering soon.
Also, there is the point of this being a remarkably old school conflict. The Russians tactics have barely evolved since the 1940s. They seem unable to use their airforce effectively, their navy is not a factor either. Mostly they are just launching wave after wave of cannon fodder at their enemies. Brutal and it's not working great for them judging from the recent news.
Most modern conflicts are very different. Relatively poorly trained conscripts don't add a lot of value in such conflicts. Europe needs lots of rockets, drones, etc. Keep the fight far away from its borders.
A bigger risk would be an armed uprise within our borders. For that reason getting a lot of small countries excited about building out their armies is not a great idea. I'm old enough to remember the Bosnian war and I've visited Mostar a few years ago. Political populism and armies are not a great mix. A lot of blood got spilled in Europe that proves that.
Mostly agree, except I don't think the US would like us to be self sufficient. Quite the opposite, really. They have nothing to gain from a strong EU. Not at this point anyway.
I am all for a professional EU army but forcing - let's face it - young men to join, even for an year, doesn't sit well with me.
The US would like nothing more than Europe to be able to deal with Russia without help.
A joint European army does nothing to reduce US leverage; the US is still the only meaningful nuclear deterrent to Russia, and everyone in Europe knows it. But if the EU is able to credibly counter conventional threats, that's a huge bonus for the US.
While the UK and France have nuclear warheads, their numbers (225 and 290, respectively), pale in comparison with that of Russia (5889) and the US (5244).
Also, the UK's force is sea based and France's is land and air based, both Russia and the US have a nuclear triad:
three-pronged military force structure that consists of land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear-missile-armed submarines, and strategic aircraft with nuclear bombs and missiles.[1] Specifically, these components are land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and strategic bombers. The purpose of having this three-branched nuclear capability is to significantly reduce the possibility that an enemy could destroy all of a nation's nuclear forces in a first-strike attack. This, in turn, ensures a credible threat of a second strike, and thus increases a nation's nuclear deterrence.
> While the UK and France have nuclear warheads, their numbers (225 and 290, respectively), pale in comparison with that of Russia (5889) and the US (5244).
Around 90% of the non-rural Russian population is in their most populous 100 cities. Taking those out would pretty effectively destroy Russia as a country.
Yes, but consider the delivery systems. The UK has 4 SSBMs, and at best 3 of them are seaworthy at a time.
Even if the UK managed to launch successfully without those systems being taken down (and there will be a missile failure rate), Russia has sophisticated air defenses, and there will be a substantial loss rate. Only a small fraction of those warheads will hit.
And those are not megaton warheads. These are small nuclear weapons meant for battlefield use. What's more, the UK is simply not going to go for a genocide; they're going to hit military assets, which are far more spread out.
So while the UK can deter from conventional attacks on itself, it's by no means a MAD scenario. They do not really have a shield to extend across eastern europe the way the US does.
I honestly (and I do not think I am alone in this) think the costs of EU dependency FAR exceed the benefits and we only got started doing it to prevent Western Europe from getting steamrolled by Russia post-WW2.
On the one hand, that does make a lot of sense. Some European politicians want a more unified foreign policy, and a unified military force would give more weight to this desire.
On the other hand, it could get very awkward if we had another situation like we had in 2002/2003 when the US were asking other countries for support in their war on Iraq. Europe was deeply divided - at least at the leadership level - in this matter. With a unified EU military, countries would have to give up a large amount of sovereignty. And there is already a fair amount of hostility towards the EU for taking sovereignty away from member states, remember Brexit.
Personally, I think it would be a good idea if all countries could agree to give up their own national military. But I don't think it will happen. At most, I could see countries agreeing to move more authority to the NATO.
Last but not least, there are more than 25 languages being spoken in the EU. We'd have to agree on one language being the lingua franca in a unified military if we want it to work.
> On the other hand, it could get very awkward if we had another situation like we had in 2002/2003 when the US were asking other countries for support in their war on Iraq. Europe was deeply divided - at least at the leadership level - in this matter. With a unified EU military, countries would have to give up a large amount of sovereignty.
If you can't disagree and commit, how unified are you really?
That's the catch, isn't it? Every country wants the EU to be a unified actor on the world stage, but none are willing to give up sovereignty over their foreign policy. That is why it's not going to happen. A loose alliance such as NATO is as as close as we get, at least for the foreseeable future.
There is no reason why it couldn't have. There are currently already combined German-Dutch military units, for example, and NATO often acts like a single military too.
Theoretically this can change at any time with the agreement of the members.
That said: even now the UK has left, there are many in the EU who don't want total integration — as you can see from other aspects like the Euro, Schengen, and the Blue Card not applying to all member states — combined with with the language barriers between almost every pair of states[0], I think this would be a long time coming even if everyone was on board.
Although, NATO is a thing and arguably does all that without any of those problems, so perhaps it's easier than I'm assuming…
[0] Austria and Germany being an obvious exception, except they're banned by treaty from ever being combined again
a) no-one wants that, so b) no-one would vote for that, and so c) it won't happen.
In some remarkable circumstance that the EC proposed such a thing, and all the MEPs did think that was a good idea, there'd still have to be an EU treaty that allowed for it, because it's certainly beyond the scope of the CFSP. Said treaty would have to be ratified by the member states.
the UK, with one of the more powerful militaries, is not part of the EU. many EU members and the UK are part of NATO which performs much the same job that an EU force would.
NATO armed forces would be under the command of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who by pure coincidence happens to always be an American. Right below him is the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who has been British in 22/30 cases.
If the EU wants to have an army that serves their interests, I would consider it prudent to have the command of that army be in EU hands, instead of just handing their soldiers to the US. They can still join defensive treaties with the UK, or simply stay in NATO, but that's a different question from how the army is organized when Article 5 of NATO hasn't been triggered.
A future equivalent to the Kosovo war (that time NATO intervened, but they didn't have to). Or what about wars on the EU's South-Eastern border? Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran. The US has complicated feelings about the region that don't always align with the EU. Also protecting European interests in a future war between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the water in the Nile River (Egypt is right next door to Greece and Cyprus after all). Not to mention future actions in Lybia, Algeria or Morocco to deal with illegal immigration.
If we are to convince France to merge their army with the common EU force the EU might be forced to also protect French interests in West Africa (they are quite involved in that region still)
well, i'm not convinced that an EU force is viable. NATO has a pretty clear raison d'etre - attack one of us and all of us will respond. but somehow I can't see germany supporting france in west africa, or poland supporting italy in actions against libya.
Notwithstanding a myriad of other practical problems, I don't see how that would be compatible with the NATO countries Article 5 responsibilities - bearing in mind that there are several countries in the EU that are not in NATO like Austria, Ireland and (for the moment) Sweden.
I was one of the last few to go through conscription and service in Germany before it was a abolished I hope it does come back. (including of course the alternative civil service)
For one it instills in young people a sense of duty and direction and also simply physical fitness which many struggle with these days, in Germany an important aspect was always to have civilian supervision in the military ('citizen in uniform') not a sort of separated, private army. A lot of people in the army I talked to have noted that nowadays a lot of people who sign up are just people with limited job prospects. An army of the unemployed is ethically awful. National service should not be pushed on people who do it desperate for a paycheck. Everyone in the country benefits from its defense, so nobody should be able to skip out. I admire the culture of say Israel, Finland, Norway or Switzerland, small countries where this has always been on the mind of people.
I think the biggest benefit of more people serving is that the general public realizes that war is a terrible thing and should be done as a last resort. I think it also gives a better understanding of the ways governments use power projection and it's an unnecessary evil, particularly becoming relevant again with Russia. As we see fewer and fewer people serving I believe many of our political leaders will become less empathetic to that understanding. As a reservist in the US, in the many conversations I've had with fellow tech coworkers, there's usually a general lack of knowledge and understanding on the military as few have any direct relatives in the armed services.
As a side note in terms of fitness, in the US, the number eligible people is rather low due to the number of constrains the US military places on fitness, weight, tattoos, mental health etc. The number of people that could actually fight it everyone were called up that's within the age bracket is somewhere in the teens in terms of percentage. Unsure where that stands in Europe, but it would be a large roadbump if the draft were to be reimplemented.
Currently, 14% of pupils (of any gender) in Germany are not eligible for military service because they are not citizens. Conscription (which was never formally abolished) does not extend to females. Based on what others have told me about their basic training, it used to teach a view of masculinity that bordered on the reactionary even back then, and would be unacceptable to broader society today. (I don't know much about replacement service, mine was an underpaid office job.) Therefore, I think we'd need changes that make conscription unrecognizable before we can say that it somehow promotes societal cohesion and inclusiveness.
Regarding self-selection and career prospects: We went to a military fair on a school trip in the 90s. There was an enlistment pitch, too, and even then (conscription had not yet been paused), they seemed to target those who didn't know what they wanted to do with their lives. (Everyone in my class was technically headed for tertiary education eligibility, so unemployment was a far-away concern.)
Everyone's experience is valid, I guess, but way to lose the thread within 2 sentences. You start by saying how COMPULSORY military service would help and end by saying that a military comprised of people who are there because they have no other choice is not ideal. You really don't see the disconnect? Your solution to having less people there with no other choice is by giving EVERYBODY no other choice? Way to solve a problem.
Also, how gracious of you to solve other people's problems. "Youths are having trouble with fitness. Compulsory military service would help them". Cool story. People are too fat? Let them be. Who are you to start solving other people's problems against their will? Did the youths ask for your help? You might think you're being helpful, but what you're ACTUALLY saying is "Yeah, if all you young people would be more fit, it would help ME out in case of a conflict." Mighty altruistic. Thanks for the tip.
They do, desperately so. There is a reason we have an entire internet economy of influencers and hucksters targeting in particular disoriented young men. They're pretty much begging for someone to provide meaning, discipline, comradery the kind of which traditionally you experience in for example military service and instead we leave them to Andrew Tate.
We have huge issues with young people delaying adulthood, not having structure, feeling useless and so on. Demanding someone serve their country is to take them seriously, give them responsibility and to provide them with a good reason to cultivate character.
Heinlein got a lot of flak for Starship Troopers, in the wake of the Korean War and even prior to escalation in Vietnam.
But he was not wrong that there's a fundamental difference in democratic outlook between someone who risks their life (even hypothetically) for their country and someone who does not.
If you can vote to spend a life, even indirectly, you should have some skin in that game too.
> But if you want to serve and I can’t talk you out of it, then we have to take you, because that’s your constitutional right. It says that everybody, male or female, shall have his born right to pay his service and assume full citizenship—but the facts are that we are getting hard pushed to find things for all the volunteers to do that aren’t just glorified K.P. You can’t all be real military men; we don’t need that many and most of the volunteers aren’t number-one soldier material anyhow. Got any idea what it takes to make a soldier?” ... we’ve had to think up a whole list of dirty, nasty, dangerous jobs that will either run ’em home with their — tails between their legs and their terms uncompleted . . . or at least make them remember for the rest of their lives that their citizenship is valuable to them because they’ve paid a high price for it.
> if you came in here in a wheel chair and blind in both eyes and were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find some- thing silly enough to match. Counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch, maybe. The only way you can fail is by having the: psychiatrists decide that you are not able to understand the oath.”
Embassy staff and Peace Corp members both risk their lives (even hypothetically) for their country. Anglican missionaries risk their lives (even hypothetically) for the state, under the authority of the state's established religion. The nurses in US federal-run hospitals, nurses risk their lives doing dirty, nasty, dangerous jobs that definitely risk their lives.
All of them would be citizens, right?
That said, Heinlein magically waived corruption away. Who gets to decide if a candidate should serve as, say, a combat pilot in the National Guard rather than be deployed overseas as an infantryman? And is it possible to pull strings so a powerful politician's son gets preferable treatment?
Bear also in mind that many people enter the military not to risk their life but to get, for example, college money or training for a career. They risk their life in the same way that a lumberjack does - death is a calculated risk, and not, as Heinlein argues, evidence that the soldier has the "emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part . . . and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live."
Remember, that book also says the only way to train children is to beat them - a brutal practice I wish were prohibited in the US as it is in 65 other countries. https://endcorporalpunishment.org/countdown/
> If you can vote to spend a life, even indirectly, you should have some skin in that game too.
The US has been at war for nearly its history, and glorified war to boot. Heinlein trained to be a military officer. What would happen if the US fought no wars? What happens if there is not enough skin to lose? If there are no enemies to fight?
More specifically, how would that work in Iceland? No standing army, a Coast Guard with three ships and four aircraft, the ICRU with "200 people, of whom about 30 are active at any given time" says Wikipedia.
Do the ~10,000 members of the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue have enough skin in the game that they should be allowed to vote?
I've always thought of those compulsory military training schemes as a little silly.
You have a bunch of unmotivated people that don't want to be there. You have to house them, feed them, train them for what, 3, 6, 12 months? Seems like a lot of money. How long will that training last for? How soon will you need retraining to be even considered marginally useful? Isn't it better to spend that money on professional soldiers?
You're right that it is not necessarily efficient from a military effectiveness perspective. I see it as also an educational tool/investment. As other comments have pointed out, this helps the populace internalize their responsibities in war (affecting voting), might help instill social cohesion, and yes also provides a baseline military competency in the populace in the worst case scenario (total war).
How is it an "educational tool/investment" when you are removing 18-year-olds from their education or job for several months? And "instill social cohesion" sounds a lot like "brainwashing" to me.
Those arguments don't have anything to do with conscription. You could just as well achieve the same with mandatory education, or mandatory pick-trash-up-in-the-forests.
>removing 18-year-olds from their education or job for several months?
They're getting education in a different set of skills, and additional life experiences; some of which may actually be transferrable outside the military context.
I don't see the same objection to students deciding to take a gap-year to backpack around Southeast Asia.
I don't claim it's the only way to promote social cohesion. A year of mandatory trash pickup would probably do that too. I don't understand the comment about brainwashing. Any form of public education, including mandatory trash pickup, can have that word thrown around.
I don’t like compulsory military service. That said, with the rise of obesity and other health problems, this might make a small difference in getting people (men?) take their health a bit more seriously, once they leave the service.
For small countries it makes more sense than having a purely professional army, because in case of need, you very likely have to mobilize the whole male population.
> You have a bunch of unmotivated people that don't want to be there. You have to house them, feed them, train them for what, 3, 6, 12 months? Seems like a lot of money. How long will that training last for? How soon will you need retraining to be even considered marginally useful? Isn't it better to spend that money on professional soldiers?
It is a lot of money. National defense of some sort is also, mostly necessary for independent countries.
As for why conscription vs professional soldiers, it depends on the threat model. If you're Finland and want to be able to hold off Russia, a professional army isn't going to cut it. Mass mobilization is the only thing that has a chance of working.
Of course, you could always argue that that's what allies are for. But the problem with allies is that they don't always come through when and how you want them to.
> it depends on the threat model. If you're Finland
Yes, I agree, in cases like this, sure. In general however I think that compulsory training is more wasteful than usual.
> Of course, you could always argue that that's what allies are for. But the problem with allies is that they don't always come through when and how you want them to.
Being Polish that rings true. Also, if every ally in an alliance thinks that…
To my mind mandatory service doesn't help at all - the German military for example needs more soldiers, but more importantly needs to be run competently by the government since it's had well-known problems for years at this point (any analysis on what would happen if they were actually suddenly needed would find they'd be pretty likely to look an awful lot like the Russians in terms of equipment availability, but for entirely stupid reasons - "just in time" equipment procurement).
It makes sense when there is a credible threat to the country. And if one exists, conscripts tend to be at least somewhat motivated. If you live right next to Russia, learning how to use a gun might be really useful one day.
But most of Europe doesn't have a credible threat.
The return of conscription would be the exact wrong conclusion from analyzing the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
Germany needs a competent army and non-sabotaging government supervision. Conscripts are not a replacement for competency. Such talk is little more than the a scapegoat measure to shift blame from those responsible.
Why would that be the wrong lesson? One of the main components in how Ukraine survived the first few weeks will likely turn out to be territorial defence and other similar low quality soldiers. Not the highly trained professional soldiers. Something needed to occupy the Russians while the country got ready for war.
The UK militaries were apparently very happy to switch to all-professional volunteer recruitment way back when. They couldn't think what to do with conscript cannon-fodder in an increasingly complex technical world.
- "Second, it'd actually be a massive burden. The army suddenly has to train a bunch of unmotivated teenager every single year, which in reality ends up being a LARP session in a local forest. This drains a huge amount of resources from the professional soldiers. And all those conscripts will not contribute anything meaningful to the economy while doing so." posted by crote at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36281486
- "I've always thought of those compulsory military training schemes as a little silly. You have a bunch of unmotivated people that don't want to be there. You have to house them, feed them, train them for what, 3, 6, 12 months? Seems like a lot of money. How long will that training last for? How soon will you need retraining to be even considered marginally useful? Isn't it better to spend that money on professional soldiers?" posted by mszcz at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36281419
Such European countries should rather attempt to train a voluntary partisan army for defense. I do believe that there are many people who would like to learn how to use a firearms (exacerbated by the fact that many European countries have rather strict firearm laws) and get military skills in courses that span over multiple weekends.
The people who would voluntarily attend such courses tend to be highly motivated.
> I do believe that there are many people who would like to learn how to use a firearms [...] and get military skills in courses that span over multiple weekends.
The people that this makes me think of the most are also the ones that I least want to be given military training.
"Fight for your own country" is such a vague concept that will mean vastly different things to different people.
It's not a surprise that in Eastern Europe the percentage is significantly higher, because there it means "fight against an authoritarian invader who will strip us of our freedoms and will destroy much of what our country stands for".
In Western Europe it means ... what exactly? There are no immediate obvious threats and it's nothing more than a vague expression of patriotism lacking any sort of concrete meaning.
I bet you'd get very different answers with "if Russia would invade your country, then would you be willing to serve in the army to defend it?" And even that would be biased, because such a hypothetical question comes off as very different if it's not all that hypothetical.
> I bet you'd get very different answers with "if Russia would invade your country, then would you be willing to serve in the army to defend it?" And even that would be biased, because such a hypothetical question comes off as very different if it's not all that hypothetical.
Sorry, I don't quite understand – what do you mean, “biased”? Are you saying it should be "if Russia would invade your country...”, or what? If so, then that's silly. Asking the question in the shape of what might happen in stead of what with overwhelming likelyhood won't isn't “bias”, it's just common sense. Or realism, if you will.
It's likely that the countries with the lowest percentage are just coddled by the prolonged time of peace in Europe. The Finnish populace's willingness to fight for their country ("maanpuolustustahto") has increased from 68% to 83% between 2021 and 2022.
Meaningless when most people didn't expect war to ever happen in Europe again. A German defense minister once famously said the Bundeswehr was defending Germany at the Hindu Kush - of course no one wants to sign up for that.
If this is due to Ukraine war, let's be mindful Putin wanted to join earlier during Bush Jr reign. Again, Putin accepted implementation of Minsk 1 and 2 but Nato insist of creating war path. So European going to die enmass in coming WW3 is fully on them. Most of my richer european friends and colleagues already sending their kids and love one to Asia side. They have American passports but quite a few cancelled that as the future is in Asia. Sometime voting is not the answer. Violent is. Today the freedom in the west are nearly all attain through violence. Europeans that allow thenselves on the war path is the same as tjose Germans that allow a small minority of Nazi turning their coubtry into graveyards. Vigilantee assassination maybe illegal but morally it is right. Sometime doing the right thing is hard but have to for tge good of many.
> If this is due to Ukraine war, let's be mindful Putin wanted to join earlier during Bush Jr reign.
Let’s be mindful that Russia wanted to ascend to NATO differently to everyone else.
This is against NATOs policy that everyone joins in the same way.
Russia then abandoned its application when they where told to apply like everyone else.
Russia, not NATO rejected that relationship.
> Again, Putin accepted implementation of Minsk 1 and 2 but Nato insist of creating war path.
Russia also signed the Budapest Memorandum that didn’t stop them from invading.
Russia only follows international agreements when it favours them and flagrantly breaks them when it wants to.
> Vigilantee assassination maybe illegal but morally it is right. Sometime doing the right thing is hard but have to for tge good of many.
I agree someone must kill Putin before he escalates this to world war 3, the new fascist beast with its Z swastika must be stopped in time before it makes things worse.
We mustn’t let the new Hitler take his Sudetenland.
Useless as if a direct conflict happens between the NATO and russia or china, it will be a nuclear holocaust.
Since NATO is mostly defence only, foreign indirect conflicts can be handled by professional military, aka not drafted.
If indirect conflicts create massive migrations (a type of war), the professional military may not be enough, and drafted military may be required to deal with the local "troubles" created by those massive migrations.
Some psychos say to eat the bullet: uk or/and france go nuke russia, without the involvement of the usa: nuclear annihilation of russia, france and/or uk. Then the huge us army goes cleanup russia (remove all remaining nukes), and the remains of uk/france would be taken over by the EU. Ofc, no more uk or/and france, but a future without the nukes from russia for the humanity.
It's the year 2023, and the human race cannot simply just talk to fix issues. Incredible.
To kill (or hurt) other human beings to protect "your" land or "your" loved ones baffles me. Yes, I love my loved ones (wow) but that doesn't mean I'm willing to kill people who are 99.99999% similar to my loved ones just because the politicians that manage the countries we happen to live in decide so.
We think that because we can send probes the the outer space or because we can do calculus we are so intelligent. We are still just monkeys who get mad when other monkeys say/do something to us that we don't like.
So then what? Everyone should just shrug if a neighbouring country say "this is mine now, lol"? There are a lot of people on the world for whom that didn't really work out so well.
In principle few people would of course disagree with this, but this is a naïve idealistic teenager take. The reality is that without an army that's willing to actually fight you will be taken advantage of sooner or later. Maybe at some point in the future when more of the world shared humanistic ideals that will be different, but that's not the situation today.
The obvious question to me is are they arming to defend themselves from Russia or from other European nations rearming? Russia struggled against Ukraine so it seems unlikely that they'd fare well against a country with a similar GDP.
Sardonic congratulations to the fine minds at NATO for manoeuvring us towards this outcome. Anyone who feels optimistic as all these armies limber up is beyond an idiot. As a culture we've missed several decades of opportunities to de-fuse this situation.
Then get some nukes and threaten to use them if attacked. Strategy seems to work fairly well and way cheaper. If Russia did not have any their conventional forces most likely would've been wiped out by now. Very strong conventional force I think is mostly needed as a threat to others which is not what progressive society should be looking for.
And what comes after the nuclear exchange?
A military conflict is 90% logistics. To rebuild, a nation that is well prepared for catastrophe will manage.
The whole idea is that potential damage is so high that it makes no sense to start conflict. MAD so far worked good enough to prevent major powers from going to war.
1) eventually, there will be a madman in charge of the nukes. Only a matter of time.
As long as there are nukes, I believe they will eventually be used.
2) another option to consider. MAD assumes the 1st strike party will also be annihilated. Perhaps someone will figure out a way to use their nukes first while somehow preventing a counter strike. “Unknown unknowns“.
The madman will most likely be some isolated small entity. Yes it can do some damage but will be wiped out of the face of the Earth by the rest of the world.
As for massive, world ending attack - hopefully over the time all those treaties, agreements and monitoring that were in place before this attack on Ukraine will be restored over the time and improved.
* Investment in Russia post-USSR collapse to replicate what happened in Germany after WWII.
* Not expanding NATO towards Moscow in the 1990s-2010s (including the discovery that Ukraine is de-facto partially under the NATO security umbrella).
* Working to bring Russia into a security alliance targeted at China.
* The US not adopting a policy of prolonging the war in Ukraine to bleed out the Russian military. It should have been treated like Iraq 2.0.
But it is people like Victoria Nuland who have been influencing policy in the region so I expect there are a lot of other opportunities that have been missed. She's part of the cadre that should have been working somewhere outside foreign policy (ideally, McDonalds or Walmart) following the Iraq war.
> Investment in Russia post-USSR collapse to replicate what happened in Germany after WWII.
Allied powers occupied Germany which made sure that Germany won't simply use that money to re-arm for the next war. No control like that existed for Russia.
> Not expanding NATO towards Moscow in the 1990s-2010s
That amounts to letting Russia recollect its empire piece by piece. The idea that Russia would just like that lose its imperialism, if only we were nicer to them, is naive.
Even then, why should we assume that letting Russia recollect its empire would Russia make a West's friend? That's basically cold war 2.0.
> The US not adopting a policy of prolonging the war in Ukraine to bleed out the Russian military.
I guess we all wish Ukraine/US/West could expulse Russia out of Ukraine outright, but that does not seem possible. I don't think US is prolonging the war intentionally, but simply because of real constraints.
> Allied powers occupied Germany which made sure that Germany won't simply use that money to re-arm for the next war. No control like that existed for Russia.
I mean; look at China? The US didn't need to occupy them. They're much worse than the Russians when you look at the organisation of their political class - trigger that sort of prosperity in Russia and we'd probably be seeing them just bunkered down waiting for Siberia to thaw through global warming. It'd certainly have allayed their fears about an eventual US attack if the US had been investing in their success instead of spending the last few decades preparing a military response.
> The idea that Russia would just like that lose its imperialism, if only we were nicer to them, is naive.
Russia literally dismantled their own empire in 1990. They aren't a top-10 power. They aren't going to reclaim the USSR; they can barely even reclaim the Donbass. Even without US interference they couldn't plausibly fight Poland or the Nordics without being ruined. Norway, population the size of a large city, has an economy within spitting distance of the economy of all of Russia!
People can pretend that Russia is an imperialist power, or driven by imperialist ambition, or whatever but that just casts doubt on all the other propaganda being thrown about. They can't plausibly enact any sort of imperialist vision.
> I don't think US is prolonging the war intentionally, but simply because of real constraints.
Well, think what you will but the US has done nothing to end the war. They could negotiate and end to all this without too much effort.
> trigger that sort of prosperity in Russia and we'd probably be seeing them just bunkered down waiting for Siberia to thaw through global warming.
Russia during late 2000s and early 2010s has been more prosperous than ever, yet Crimea invasion and annexation, Donbas invasion happened. No, you can't undo imperialism through money. You can make it more powerful with money, though.
> Russia literally dismantled their own empire in 1990.
No, it certainly wasn't "Russia", only some of its ruling class making that decision under pressure. A historical aberration.
Even then there was kicking and screaming, with violent suppression in Baltics. Yeltsin never let go of imperialism either with keeping Moldova and Georgia unstable and talking about unification with Ukraine and Belarus (Russia was too weak to do anything about that, though, so all in friendly manners for now).
> They aren't a top-10 power. They aren't going to reclaim the USSR; they can barely even reclaim the Donbass.
Militarily they of course are. They aren't going to reclaim the USSR, mainly because some of the countries in questions are already off limits as members of NATO. I'm pretty sure that if Baltic States were not members of NATO, they wouldn't be sovereign nations at this point of time.
> They can't plausibly enact any sort of imperialist vision.
Have you watched Russian media recently?
> They could negotiate and end to all this without too much effort.
> As usual, where "negotiations" means "surrender".
A quarter of Ukraine's population has decamped, now lives in Russia or died, 15% of what was their their land in 2010 is now in Russian hands, their infrastructure is slowly being pulverised and their allies plan on having them die gloriously to achieve geopolitical objectives. If a generation of young men haven't been killed off yet they'll get there at this rate. The last 6 months has achieved the grisly fall of Bakhmut and not much more that I recall. Lots of bodies. There are nukes being set up in Belarus pointed at Kyiv and/or the rest of Europe. And pouring weapons into one of the most corrupt countries in Europe is also going to have repercussions, somehow.
They can keep fighting or they can stop fighting. Fighting isn't working out very well. Life is unfair.
To effectively "de-fuse" the situation in Ukraine, significant historical events would have to have not happened.
To start, the EU loan deal in late 2012 and the CIA-backed coup d'etat known as "Euromaidan" in 2013, could/should have played out differently. Instead it's evident that key players like Victoria Nuland, the CIA / Imperialistic Neo-con agenda played a significant role in exacerbating tensions during that time, ultimately leading to the destabilization of the country.
Secondary, Ukraine should have ceded the eastern territories as "independent states" in 2015 post the Minsk agreements.
Those events have lead to the "special military operation" in 2022, as they disregard the clearly defined "red line" of NATO being in Ukraine which was set by Putin a long time ago.
To defuse things now though? (It's too late now, the Military industrial complex has their pound of flesh.)
Have Ukraine exist freely, similar to Finland before it joined NATO. This would respect Ukraine's sovereignty and ensure its independence without it being a vassal to geopolitical alliances.
First of all, there is no viable way to actually use conscripts. Sending them overseas to die over a patch of dirt is a really bad move, as the Vietnam war has shown. Europe doesn't really want to invade anyone, so you're left with defense. So who's going to invade? The only foe even worth considering is Russia - and NATO's combined professional armies are more than a match for them. Not to mention that there are thousands of kilometers between Russia and the country considering conscription.
Second, it'd actually be a massive burden. The army suddenly has to train a bunch of unmotivated teenager every single year, which in reality ends up being a LARP session in a local forest. This drains a huge amount of resources from the professional soldiers. And all those conscripts will not contribute anything meaningful to the economy while doing so.
Sure, it might make sense if you are bordering Russia, but anything further west just isn't going to happen.