At the beginning of March, Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) defence policy spokesman Florian Hahn called for the reintroduction of compulsory military service before the end of the year.
“We can’t just sit back and watch as the world around us becomes more insecure,” he told German tabloid Bild.
I honestly am starting to think that compulsory service is a good thing, I wish I’d had to do it. I’ve known lots of people who are from countries that have to do it and I expected them to hate it but they seemed fine with it. And they all had much better self-discipline than the normal person.
I am against bringing back the old-style conscription here in Germany. First, it is limited to male youths only - a no-no in the 21st century. Second, it is designed as “military first, anything else second, and only with a good reason”, another idea that belongs to the past.
And, seriously. the German army could not deal with it. Since we halted conscription, the army has done a big and painful transformation into a professional military force, They could not house nor train those masses of unwashed kids anymore, and would basically have to regrow that part from the start.
What Germany could do is install a mandatory service time for all - men and women - with one option being the army, but with a strongly limited number of recruits.
A proper all-encompassing conscription would be kinda insane. Drafting a percentage of people like they do in sweden might be reasonable. AFAIK they don’t actually have to force anybody to go to the army in sweden though, they have enough volunteers, but the system is set up so that in theory they can.
From what I heard the European armies match Russias army in power overall - however I’m not sure if they could be as fast as Putin in getting this power coordinated to the Baltics (if there was a conflict, then it would take place there). So I think that should be the most important part to work on.
Furthermore I think that spending the money on more advanced equipment is better than a mandatory conscription, which would make the current shortage of highly skilled workers only worse (and there’s also the question about how it would affect 18-year-olds personally).
In these troubled times the nation will need a strong leader. Is it time to bring back the divine right of kings? Experts remain divided.
