I did compulsory military service, including in a leadership role. "If you don't do what you're told, you don't get go home next weekend." Worked very well for conscripts, who usually get to go home for many weekends (unless on exercises). There are also many smaller privileges you can take a way for smaller infractions.
Although when you have a defensive military that does not go around the world fighting wars, and whose only objective is to retain the independence of your own country, most conscripts take it as their civic responsibility and don't cause problems.
Those who are fundamentally unsuited for military usually ended up getting discharged quickly. Most before ever stepping into service.
>Conscription seems counter-productive to me.
Britain has 150k active military personnel with 80k reserves. Now imagine you're a country with less than 10% of the population and need to produce a force of 200k soldiers in order to have a credible deterrent against an aggressive neighbor. How do you do that without conscription?
As a former conscript, this was definitely the ultimate motivator.
Conscript service was so incredibly dull that one would do almost anything just to get off-base over the weekend.
Of course, a 10m country will never have a really credible defense against nuclear super power Russia by itself.
Conscript military doesn't mean that you just teach everyone to dig a hole and sit in it with a rifle. You train conscripts into every role you need in a 200k strong modern military. Including operators and maintainers of the hi-tech death machines, sigint operatives, radar operators, tank crews, missile forces, officers of all kinds, and yes, the guys that dig holes and sit in them with rifles.
One of the strengths of a conscript military is that you get everyone, which includes all kinds of current and future skill sets. Modern conscript armies aim to put that expertise into the best possible use.
So you're looking at guys to dig holes and sit in them with rifles and maybe some supporting jobs (administrative, kitchen, IT, construction, etc.)
To make sure these skills are not just forgotten, some portion of each years conscripts are selected for regular returns to the army for drills. (Army pays your employer for the time it takes, you get your regular dayjob salary.)
A rumor I heard was that the now voluntary GMU will be replaced with conscription.
Also my impression is that a lot of military equipment isn't very high-tech precisely so that it doesn't require that much expertise to operate and service in the field. So you need only a limited amount of specialists, and conscripts can just become trained users.
The M1A1 Abrams tank is extremely simple to operate and man. Regardless, it's quite formidable.
There are always things you can use rather unqualified (but generally intelligent) people for.
I don't remember much, but I'm pretty sure I could fill that role again after a day of re-training.
That's probably where he got a taste for amphetamines, at least one biographer thinks. "Here, take this, son. It'll keep you awake."
The Singapore military puts their men in the reserves after they're done with mandatory service, and calls them back for 10 years of reservist training or until they hit 40 [1].
> Oh, and officers by their very definition cannot be conscripts.
Why do you say this?
And anecdotal, but my Singaporean friend showed me picture after picture on Facebook of his friends serving their terms...there were many, many well polished tanks.
Perhaps not, and I would prefer for it to remain that way. It's mainly to serve as a deterrence for would-be aggressors, and also as a form of indoctrination.
> my Singaporean friend showed me picture after picture on Facebook of his friends serving their terms...there were many, many well polished tanks.
I don't know if there was any hidden meaning intended, but most photos on social media are intended to portray the military in a positive light. Cellphones with cameras are still prohibited in some places, and we have the military justice system for everything else.
You probably won't find Gates, Zuckerberg or Jobs in the US Army, but he quite possibly would have been in the Swedish one.
In a conflict like WW2, you would find individuals like that in the Armed forces.
There are different definitions of "officer". In Finland conscripts are trained to rank and file, NCO (Corporal/Sergeant), and junior officer (2nd Lieutenant) roles. Both reserve NCOs and officers may be later promoted if they accumulate a certain amount of refresher training days and are otherwise seen fit for the promotion.
This system, where the majority of junior officers are conscripted, has been the basis for the Finnish Defense Forces for the whole Finnish independence, and it has been battle-tested during both hot and cold war.
That isn't even true in the US. There are avenues for folks that start at the bottom to become an officer, at least in the US Navy. I don't see why conscripts wouldn't follow the same path of promotion that an enlisted person would. Besides, you are assuming all of the people in the conscript start at the bottom, when it would be more intelligent to train those capable of being an officer to use their skills more effectively.
I abhor hyperbole. Slavery is the legal ownership of one person over another person and their progeny. Since they are property, slaves have absolutely no rights or any access to the legal system. You commanding officer cannot rape or kill you with impunity. He/She cannot force you to do fight with another conscript to the death. Conscripts also get paid, while slaves do not and are well fed and clothed. There is no such requirement for slaves. Your commanding officer also is not going to beat you if he/she finds you reading a book.
I'd advise you to actually do research on what slaves endured and stop disrespecting their ordeal by comparing it to military conscription. These thoughtless comparisons make light of how brutal and devastating chattal slavery was.
You are not the pet of the state. You are not regarded as less than human. This is hyperbole. You may not like being subject to taxes and laws, but you have remedies, such as renouncing your citizenship or leaving for an area not governed by a state.
Yes, and so are citizens of a state.
"Inherent to slavery is some form of dehumanization."
No. The definition of a slave (first hit on google) is "a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them." In ancient times, people who lost wars may have been subjugated as slaves, but there was no pretense that they were less human. I think you might be thinking of racial slavery, which was inspired by a belief that other races were subhumans.
"being somehow below the ruling class"
Even ordinary citizens, who may be able to vote and do all that fun civic stuff, may still be below the ruling class. As Lysander Spooner said, "A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years."
> "but you have remedies, such as renouncing your citizenship"
But for US expatriation, you will have to pay an exit tax as well as continue to pay income taxes, so no you aren't able to be free of bondage. Getting to pick from a new master on a different tax farm doesn't mean you are not a slave.
> "leaving for an area not governed by a state"
If there were such a place, then pretty soon, some state will likely come in and claim you for their tax revenue. Considering that states make this threat means that your relationship with them is not voluntary. Also, the "you are free to leave" argument doesn't take into account the fact that you never voluntarily entered into a relationship with them to begin with. It doesn't mean you were not a slave while under bondage. Effective slave masters realized that by giving their subjects some freedoms, that they were better off. But just because you have some freedoms again doesn't mean that you are not a slave. You are still the legal property of the state and forced to obey them in matters which the state desires you to obey.
No, I'm not thinking of racial slavery. I'm thinking of slavery defined by Aristotle, whose view is representative of the classical world: "
"anyone who, while being human, is by nature not his own but of someone else…he is of someone else when, while being human, he is a piece of property; and a piece of property is a tool for action separate from its owner."
If this doesn't sound dehumanizing, I don't know what qualifies.
As stated before, a citizen of a state can renounce said citizen and emigrate to Bir Tawil or some other unclaimed territory. Unlike Aristotle's definition, you, by nature, are not of someone else and has the free will to choose to leave. That states have laws limiting absolute freedom does not equal slavery
"Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against his or her will. Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour, to refer to such situations. However – and especially under slavery in broader senses of the word – slaves may have some rights and/or protections, according to laws and/or customs."
Being forced to work extra to keep the money from your labor you already worked and being partially owned by the state is de facto slavery, even if it doesn't meet Aristotle's definition.
> "That states have laws limiting absolute freedom does not equal slavery"
The argument I made was not that the lack of absolute freedom equals slavery. Even in the absence of a state, people will rationally form voluntary contracts that would limit their freedoms for mutual benefits. Provided that these contracts are entered into consensually is key to whether or not it is slavery or not.
I'd rather say that the word "slavery" has been used for certain forms of involuntary servitude with often many common characteristics. (Worker has no rights to leave, no other political and social rights of the free citizen such as right to vote if it exists, and for all intents and purposes is considered a property of their owner.) Usually it has been distinctive cultural and often also a legal institution, separate from other duties and forms of involuntary work.
This form of is generally agreed to be an evil thing (actually outright irredeemable horror in the US context that often dominates English-language boards such as this), so of course everybody likes to call any form of involuntary work they don't like slavery.
The topic of ancient Greece and Rome have already been raised, the revolutionary France likewise. (I think it's still notable to reiterate that conscription has been prominently around with these both ur-examples of modern Western concept of citizenship.)
However, let us have a more modern example: consider hypothetical case where prisoner serving a term is required to clean up their room once per week. Out of blue this sounds reasonable. Is this slavery? After all, the prison administration could hire a professional cleaner to do it.
As a slightly more realistic example, the Western concept of prison has often included working as a form of rehabilitation right from the beginning. Sometimes the "rehabilitation" part has been genuine, sometimes not; sometimes the work has been simply a meaningless punishment: sometimes goods are produced and sold; sometimes the prisoner receives a token pay, sometimes not.
It's easy to imagine a problematic version where calling that kind of working "slavery" does not seem misplaced, but it is also possible to imagine scenarios where it does. And in any case, one is drawing a comparison to a more ancient institution.
In some regards there are similarities, but on the other hand, it's also misses some critical points and is at best a very uncharitable choice of word.
Same goes for conscription, especially in a liberal modern democracy where the draft is fairly egalitarian (contrast against the quite arbitrary press gang method of the British Navy of the wooden ships and iron men age), is temporary, citizens generally are allowed to emigrate out of the country during peacetime, can vote in any elections that happen when they are serving, and the work they perform is fairly unusual and exceptional service (compared to regular peacetime job) for the society in an exceptional situation. Would a compulsory EMT training for everybody and then a requirement to use those skills if possible in a sudden situation that warrants their use also be slavery?
But, of course, he can force a conscript to fight an adversary to the death.
On the contrary, conscription, and armies consisting of the population of a country in general (as opposed to mercenary armies) are a democratic achievement of (among a few other factors) the French Revolution.
In the actual times of slavery, e.g. in Ancient Greece and Rome it was free men that first and foremost did the fighting (and who considered it their honor and what made them and kept them free), and in the dark medieval times of peasants, feudal lords used mercenary armies (including against their subjects).
Conscription appeared on the scene as a way to have the army be controlled more by the population -- as opposed to it being professional soldiers ready to be used against the people.
Things have changed a lot since then, especially with radio and television. Conscription is no longer a democratic achievement, you can brainwash people to go against anyone you want.
E.g. the described situation was a hypothetical one where the Norwegian government had decided to use the military in a way I found morally unconscionable. In practice I consider that very unlikely - offensive forces are all volunteers in Norway, so the conscripts are used for purely defensive roles. It was the principle of it first and foremost for me.
Afterthought. I just remembered that some of the more radical leftists call working for a salary a wage slavery, which is similarly silly.
To be a slave is to have your personal freedoms subordinated to another while people always enjoy a finite degree of autonomy which varies substantially from society to society and even between different socioeconomic groups if your owner can tell you where to go and whom to kill, and in fact to surrender ones life if asked then I cannot discern the difference between that state and slavery.
In much the same sense as jury duty is slavery.
Its also essential to our justice system and usually a very small burden.
And rightly so.
The only reason the country exists in the first place, is that people were willing to fight to establish it, and to serve and fight to defend it.
Else it would be not some magical global brothership of unicorns and love, but what was there before modern countries: empires and feudal overlords.
Most of those who kept up the fight for Norways freedom from German occupation under World War II, for example, were not military conscripts - the military surrendered quickly - but civilians who formed resistance groups.
The idea that you need to be willing to let yourself be coerced into slavery to prove your willingness to fight is deeply offensive to me.
Well, the idea that service to your country is considered slavery and not a duty is offensive to others.
Perhaps it doesn't want to pay sufficient money to acquire the individuals its needs. In effect it is saying that it ought to take a minority of the citizens freedom rather than take a little bit more of everyone's money. This is pretty despicable and it ought to just raise taxes to pay sufficiently.
Perhaps it lacks the moral authority to inspire service even at any price. In that case it ought to reexamine WHY its citizens have lost faith in it instead of using force.
Lastly perhaps its facing an existential threat that can neither be ignored, nor dealt with otherwise.
You blindly suppose that the state deserves such service and neither examine whether it really does nor if it could acquire such service without trampling the rights of its citizens.
It speak like a dangerous nationalist and your attitude concerns me.
Because some citizens are selfish or unique snowflakes for whom service is beneath them, but they still like the other advantages the state provides them.
I'm at a loss for words here, this might be the dumbest thing I've heard all week.
First, go get a dictionary and look up what slavery means.
Second, go get a history book and read about the last two world wars where conscription has been widely embraced by the belligerents. Not only did it have public support, but it was also the only thing that gave the Allies enough manpower to stay in and win the war.
A large armed and mobile force is very able to put up solid resistance to pretty much anything you can throw at it save for nukes which will likely never be used.
What they want is to disintegrate the European economy so they can have better access to it.
Leveling Sweden would be both expensive and unprofitable. Bullying Sweden is much more up Putin's alley.
Who is in control there? Hint: not the US.
save for nukes which will likely never be used, again.
save for nukes which will be used the very instant a nuclear armed nation faces the prospect of brutal conquest by a hated enemy, or a last desperate stand to defend dwindling resources.
But the cost to Afghanistan has been enormous. Four decades of constant war, millions dead, and near the lowest lifespan and living standard in the world.
Is that really the defense strategy a country should aim for ? Will a modern latte sipping atheist nation really execute it?
Also, there are many other reasons to invade countries than to hold them long term.
In a war, your losses don't usually concern your enemy. But they do care about how much it costs them to achieve their goals, so if you can make it prohibitively expensive, you have a sound defense.
The goal was to root out what they perceived as an enemy and hostile nation that harbored terrorists, and then recreate a society much more tolerant and sympathetic toward Western values. In that, there is no conquering needed. It's called nation building, and it's very different.
I put it in quotes not because I believe in moral relativism, but because in the conflict against the USSR, official US policy was that the mujahideen were "good guys, or at least not-as-bad-as-the-other-guys," while in our own invasion, they were bad guys, an assessment I share due to their harboring of terrorists who intentionally murdered thousands of civilians.
Nothing more entertaining in my mind than Finns chucking logs into tank treads to disable an entire armored division.
They quickly learned, and in the followup war(s), Finland was thoroughly beat, and lost 1/10 of it's territory.
I always wondered how quickly that was dismantled. I guess they still have a navy.
Modern weapons are of course necessary, but in the end wars are fought and won by soldiers on the ground with rifles in their hands. Modern combined arms operations require the effective coordination of all aspects; air, sea, and land.
I happen to agree: you can win battles with air power and armored forces, but you can't keep an area without feet on the ground, hands carrying rifles, and if you can't keep an area, you won't win the war.
Afghanistan would beg to differ...
> Of course, a 10m country will never have a really credible defense against nuclear super power Russia by itself.
Unless the goal of fighting a war is to wipe the opposing side off the face of the earth, no, it's a credible defense. You bleed the enemy until they lose the will to fight.
You're not looking at this from the Afghan perspective. From the American and Russian perspective, yes, occupying Afghanistan is a painful deathtrap. But for the Afghans their occupation is...also a painful deathtrap. Eventually winning (or even sort of winning) a war of low-tech attrition involves sacrificing a lot of lives, losing political control, and having foreign soldiers soldiers patrol your territory imposing their own laws. Afghanistan has to go through all this because they don't have a credible way to deter an invasion. That's why they keep getting invaded!
Obviously this didn't work for Afghanistan, but their example can help it work for others.
Edit: if you become part of a larger war then it can also be advantageous to make the occupation painful for the enemy when it happens. The more you hurt them, the easier and faster your allies will win. Consider Norway in the Second World War: they had no hope of overthrowing the German occupation themselves, but the resistance still contributed significantly to its eventual end.
> The goal is not to get invaded in the first place
with this one
> Afghanistan succeeded in getting the Soviets out in the end.
If you're worried about NATO or former Warsaw Pact aggressors, no, men with rifles are not a deterrent.
If you're worried about a neighboring region's warlords sending people to steal your food, kill the men, rape the women and conscript the children, yes, men with rifles can convince them that their activities will be more fruitful somewhere else.
For a threat like Russia or the USA, your only recourse is to ally with one or the other.
I don't know — that's certainly the reason why many nations have gotten rid of conscription, but I think it may be mistaken. Sure, in the initial stages of a force-on-force, peer conflict it's going to be all about complex, hi-tech machines, but what about sustained, low-level operations. fewer than 200,000 dudes with guns & bombs have given the U.S. a bit of a pause in Afghanistan & Iraq, after all.
When your threat model isn't annihilation but simply being overrun and submitting to a new ruler and set of foreign laws and customs, having a population with guns and gun training works pretty well to make it difficult for an outside party to achieve that even with massively better war tech.
Not to mention that European defensive doctrine is to hold on until allies can be rallied.
Do they have Russian military bases of strategic importance? No.
Do they have population that is ethnically Russian? No.
Do they have a leader who is disconnected from regular life, poses in absurd settings and gets his information from intelligence agencies? Check.
Do they have a political system that has an internally dysfunctional economy and that needs external enemies to keep people from looking at what happens domestically? Check.
Do they repress internal opposition? Check.
Do they despise democracy? Check.
Do they have a media that is spreading propaganda about neighbours and is controlled by the government? Check.
Do they think in terms of "spheres of influence"? Check.
There are enough parallels to Stalin's USSR to make neighbours worried.
People are not happy and it is 2017, exactly a century since the Great October Revolution of 1917. This severely limits them in search of external enemies.
Ukrainian regime actually does not want the war to end. The oligarchs there are very much OK with plundering the country while playing the external enemy card. If war stopped the population would turn their attention inward and they have nothing to show for their time in power.
This makes the country a path of least resistance. If you are NATO trying to plan for defending the baltic states from Russia, you must plan for stopping them from taking Gotland.
So the first goal of improving Sweden's defense is to make that better.
Well... you PAY THEM (enough)? You make the workplace worthwhile and attractive, like you have to for every job ever? How do you get enough nurses? Policemen? Engineers? You conscript them all? This is a deeply authoritarian mindset and it concerns me. Conscription hurts troop morale. Let people serve in the military when they want to serve.
You'd have to pay a ton of money to get middle class citizens into the army and at that point you'd probably spend half of your budget on the military.
I don't see this as something really authoritarian if your country does have a very aggressive neighbor.
For the record, I am against military conscription.
In a low wage + draft scenario you're basically sending the young (usually poor) of a country off to die so the seniors (wealthier than the young) can still enjoy holding property. Then the surviving young come back and are getting fleeced just the same as they were pre-war by the people whose status they just defended. If not fighting in a war is not a viable option then it should at least result in massive wealth transfer. Hell, I'd rather see straight up seizure of wealth to pay for the military over a draft.
Just go without, and tell the population that you don't have enough forces to serve as a deterrent, so if the neighbor decides to invade you're just going to voluntarily cede any territory they ask for.
It would need to be paired with expert diplomacy at a minimum. I can think a few countries with no military Costa Rica and Lichtenstein. Costa Rica defers to allies in time of conflict and Lichtenstein just pays another country for their military.
According to wikipedia most are island nations and get to rely on the ocean and vast distance for safety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_arme...
It doesn't seem like anyone simply cedes territory and gets to stay a country.
The people allow the government a monopoly on violence in expectation that it will use it for their benefit. Putting the ultimate responsibility for national defense back on them is a betrayal of that trust.
What about a person who would fight and not desert if conscripted, but would not volunteer?
Are they "willing to be part of that defense," or not?
I submit that most people fall in that category, and that conscription is aimed at them.
Sure, OK.
Slavery is not the worst possible state of existence, you know. My dog is not only a slave, but a captive slave: she can't leave my property, and I punish her when she tries to leave. But, looking at her dozing off in the sun right now, she seems pretty happy.
Most people prefer the soft slavery of possible conscription, to the expected outcomes of foreign invasion. It helps that when you get conscripted, a bunch of other people are getting conscripted---or in other words, part of the compensation for getting conscripted is a whole army to defend your homeland.
That's actually a very typical war propaganda. In reality you are defending the order your state imposes on you and everyone. In slave terms you are defending your master's desire to control you from other masters. And that's it.
The one thing no one tells you about the army is that pretty much 90% of the work done is in management/logistics. A very small percentage is about war per se. There are tons of red tape in the army and there are procedures for everything. So you spend most of your time doing boring stuff that require little to no creative thinking and depending on where you come from, from a point on this becomes miserable. Fortunately by then you're discharged.
Most of the guys who served with me, once they got their bearings they spent the time doing the stuff they enjoyed. For me that was reading books. I read a shitload of books while serving, like one every couple of days. A guy I knew went for wind-surfing every afternoon since we served on an island and the sea was like half a mile from the base. From a point on it becomes like a routine job. You do the army stuff in the morning and in the afternoon spend time on your leisure.
edit: and when I was conscripted in 2003, there was still a culture of "conscription is where boys become become a man". among my social group there was pretty widespread support for it (ranging from support to apathy to "it's just a waste of money". you could also be a conscientious objector and get civil service instead.)
edit2: random local news "asking youths on the street" article about the decision. ranging from positive to "i wouldn't agree to it" responses. https://www.sydsvenskan.se/2017-03-02/malmoungdomar-positiva...
When I did the tests for it, about 20 years ago, only about one in five or so were picked from the tests, and it was trivial to avoid being picked if you didn't want to do it.
You motivate people the same way you motivate anyone I guess - you're here, you can make the best of it and learn some useful skills, or you can be spending the next year miserable.
We're doing useful important things here, and you can play a role in that, while learning (medical care/mechanical work/computer skills/languages/leadership skills... whatever).
If you really dont want to be there, you have ways out (both civil service, and flunking tests badly, or in an extreme case, go to jail).
The world and the military has moved on.
Yes, I'm being facetious, but if we're going to have reeducation camps paid by public money, I'd rather have them learn more useful things than how to handle military equipment.
What they learn is working in a team, taking responsibility and being accountable.
Armed forces are the legitimized monopoly of violence which are for better or worse absolutely necessary for the nation states of today and any time in the foreseeable future. The military's rigid command hierarchy and strict rules and ideas of duty really don't have any place in free society outside that monopoly. While it is absolutely necessary in a military to have the actions of many people dictated by the will of a single person, outside of that environment the necessity would be artificial and arguably the situation would be tantamount to slavery.
In other words it just isn't possible to recreate the structured existence of a soldier outside of a military force without extending the military well beyond the external force it must exclude itself to or legitimizing pseudo-slavery conditions. The costs of military upkeep are likewise very justifiable. Not that everything the military does is good or necessary, but the baseline of _having_ a military is fairly universally accepted as needed. Making up something else would look like a handout or a cost center and wouldn't stand up to the test of time and support.
[anecdote] I used to know someone who was an addict. Judge gave her the choice of going on probation for a year, or 45 days in jail. The catch was if she took the probation offer but was picked up for drug offenses in that time, it was an immediate sentence of a year in jail.
She took the 45 days. Better the devil you know than the one you can't control! [/anecdote]
[0] - https://www.stripes.com/news/judge-said-army-or-jail-but-mil...
I suspect Sweden has brought back conscription to try and integrate it's new massive foreigner population as a way to make them more Swedish not because of any shenanigans in Kosovo. ...edit oops variable scope error, threat:= Russian shenanigans
On deployment (US Army) I couldn't help but notice how counter-productive all the "amenities" actually were. I believe one of the driving factors behind individual military success in theater (aka war), in addition to protecting your peers and pride, is that urge to finish the fight so you can get home. Having Burger King and Subway stifles that sense of urgency, IMO.
During war, you're motivated to do tasks 7,8, and 9 because they directly contribute to the success of task 1 - ending the war, and once the war is over, the war you've been conscripted into, you probably get to go home.
So, yes, I believe conscription without an active conflict makes it difficult to motivate individual soldiers.
Really? Personally, having nothing to eat but Burger King and Subway trash would be a huge motivator to get home where I can get some decent food.
However, it wasn't so much actually indulging in the imported goods, fast food in this case, it's the sense of familiarity that normalized being there.
Same you motivate anyone anywhere, except that in the end you have institutionally-legitimated physical threats to back up your orders. Field-proven method since about 6000 years !
At least here in Finland the motivation comes from clear and well defined threat. Enemy comes always from the east, if we don't fight we suffer other ways.
>What do you do with a conscript who never wanted to be there and possibly fundamentally isn't suited to military life anyway gives up?
Conscription does not mean that everyone serves. Everyone is called to be evaluated, some are not called to serve, some are sent home because they can't make it.
I think most of us thought we had been unlucky to draw a low number in the tombola meaning that we had to serve. But we also felt some kind of pride in what we did and you got to meet kids your own age from all walks of life. Most of us had fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers who had been in the military as well.
We were literally craving physical activity, weapons training, exercises, difficult tasks etc. since a lot of the time we were just a bunch of teenagers waiting around.
The Danish military mainly recruited professionals among the conscripts. I think such system works very well.
If that isn't working, then you probably need to re-think why you've gone with a conscript army. I think in this case, a solid case could be made that recent aggression means we need to be able to defend the homeland and other powers we might normally depend on won't do it for us so "Let's go!"
Once folks are in, I'd imagine that some powerful team dynamics take over. All this said, I'm speaking out of turn because I've not served, just worked alongside for a number of years.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80000347
It very much pokes fun at a system where everyone needs to serve in the military.
When I was a conscript, it was relatively simple. Do as you are told or you don't go home for the weekend. Repeat your offense and you're not going home in a few months. Outright disobey your superiors and you're going to jail right now.
The alternatives for conscription was doing community service for about 2x the duration of the military service or face criminal charges with certain imprisonment.
It's pretty easy to get a medical discharge, though. It's much more common now than when I did my service.
On the other hand, the professional army in Sweden is largely recruited out of the conscripted soldiers, and unless it's propaganda they are considered to be professional and reliable, for instance in recent missions in Afghanistan etc.
It was a long time ago 99% of the men where forced to do their military service. The idea is that you are forced to at least go through a recruitment process and/or a short introductory education, you can swoop up those that are talented but uninterested initially, but might reconsider.
I think you are right in that if you can't attract motivated and talented people, you should fix that rather than force people.
In my own case, the idea of mandatory training did more harm than good as it just pissed me off on principle... I got drafted to a probably quite interesting service actually - that I likely would not have appreciated. But as the Soviet union just had collapsed, someone decided that they could spend the money on something else before I actually started, so I did never find out.
Fun fact I got the same model of heavy iron sight carbine that my dad used in 1970 (not all units were equipped with the newer ones in 97 - ironic considering we now probably have 5 guns per soldier...). The basic training was good and I don't regret doing it even though I hated it.
I'm thinking this is a necessary move if we need a large fraction of the population trained. If the pay is half decent and the selection is small enough that volunteers are enough - then it's only a pseudo conscript system imho.
> you should fix that.
I think there are people who would be very interested in solutions
I think very high minimum wages, low unemployment and free higher educations doesn't help - the military is having a hard time competing for people coming out of school.
I think this particular system will work because attracting just a few thousand should be possible if the pay isn't silly and the training gets a reputation for being good even for people who don't pursue a career in the military.
One key is making it an attractive career. That idea has been utterly ruined by the turmoil of recent years, now no one trusts that they can have a long term career in the military. Who knows what size the military is in 10 years ? Can be 10x smaller. Or bigger. We were too quick to scale it back. A stable organization is key.
Another idea is to let people 18-25 choose when they want to do it. Having an opportunity to do a conscript year when you happen to be between jobs etc would be perfect. I wasn't really ready when I was 18.
Frighten them with the prospect of being put into the penal battalion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NyI6krdZ08
You transfer them to some variant of a penal battalion. Simon Murray has a good description of this (from the French Foreign Legion) in [0]. During his stint in the Legion, the generic punishment was having to run around carrying heavy rocks in a backpack that has wire straps, coupled with sleep deprivation. It sounds unpleasant.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Legionnaire-Years-French-Foreign-Legi...
In fact in later decades its usefulness, other than the aggressiveness and expendibility of its soldiers, was based on the fact that French conscripts in the home-based Armée Métropolitan legally could not be deployed overseas.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35456535 :
> "I always had a dream to come back as an officer and to do it here on Gotland and establish a new unit, it's perfect," he tells me.
That's exactly the kind of people who have no business even being in charge of what they themselves eat for breakfast. This mess makes me ashamed of my country.
That's where we are in the US with an All Volunteer Force (AVF).
Some thought an AVF would lead to a smaller professional force and would give the President less flexibility to do dumb things (political & military leaders wanted fewer Vietnams).
That hasn't really worked out, and it's easier for a President to commit forces knowing protests will never reach the scale of the 1960s. Few who don't have skin in the game care about our FP and those who do don't have a say in it once they put the uniform on.
"The Chiefs of Staff do not want a conscripted mob of punks, freaks, and junkies and riff-radd, a quarter of a million hooligans on its hands with nothing to do except peel potatoes at Aldershot. The generals are afraid that this would turn it into an ordinary army. [Like the one that won World Wars I and II - Ed.]"
- The Complete Yes Prime Minister: The Diaries of the Right Hon. James Hacker
Military jail.
> What do you do if they sort of do what they're told, but not really putting any effort into it?
Crap assignments (ex: peel these 1000 potatoes then go clean that latrine) or military jail.
Both are surprisingly motivating.
With our current volunteer system nothing stops a nut job from signing up. That's why they have psych exams and ongoing mental health monitoring.
It's no different if you have a draft with everybody having to join. Heck, I'd bet you'd get less overall craziness (as a percentage) from the population of people that otherwise wouldn't join the armed forces.
You know, like you'd feel if you were an Iraqi citizen under ISIS.
You'll find little to no sympathy from most people, including your humble commenter, for domestic terrorism and treason.
Nice to know that you support terrorism.
And before you try the "ISIS isn't a government" BS line, the same logic applies to German citizens in the 1930s-40s. Apparently you think Germans who refuse to fight for Hitler are traitors.
Interesting what kind of values you support. I think people like you should be locked up and the key thrown away. Supporting mass murder is disgusting.
> Nice to know that you support terrorism.
> And before you try the "ISIS isn't a government" BS line, the same logic applies to German citizens in the 1930s-40s.
I'm not the one in this thread defending domestic terrorism. And yes ISIS isn't a government so that doesn't apply. Quite the contrary, as ISIS the terrorists in your example so fighting back against them would be encouraged.
> Apparently you think Germans who refuse to fight for Hitler are traitors.
Well yes that's the definition of treason / being a traitor. You could say the same thing for Churchill/England, Roosevelt/USA,or Stalin/USSR.
> Interesting what kind of values you support. I think people like you should be locked up and the key thrown away.
Sounds like you don't particularly like freedom of speech either. To quote our great new president, "Sad!"
> Supporting mass murder is disgusting.
Damn straight. Though I fail to see how that's relevant or where anyone claimed it's not.
(Or, we do have some examples: look at what happens when a country's nobles are conscripted [directly commissioned, rather] into service during wartime. Frequently they lock themselves in their mansions garrisoned with the very private standing armies they were supposed to bring to draft.)
If not enough people are volunteering for the military, how else are you supposed to defend your country? It's not as good a situation as if you had an all-volunteer army, but that doesn't seem to be an option for Sweden.
Swedish society is already primed to accept conscription, and it's not totally ineffective. It may be the most cost-effective solution to the problem.
Is that such a bad thing? I'd rather have an army of mercenaries any day over an army of slaves. The mercenaries are serving voluntarily at least, and they're likely to be far more effective in their duties as soldiers. Sure, there's some ethical concerns with it, but far less than with slavery IMO.
In some countries, you will get punished - get assigned bathroom cleaning for a week, get assigned lots of manual labor, or your whole squad gets punished which means they will have reason to 'motivate' you themselves. You can also go to military jail and get dishonorable discharged.
Basically, there is the carrot motivation method, and then there is the stick method.
Also note that in modern militaries, the ratio of behind-the-lines support troops to front-line trigger pullers is absurdly high. Depending on the country, you can end up with conscripts e.g. running the vehicle pool and doing logistics while the core infantry is essential volunteer.
When you're a small country you can't afford many and top level people. I was in the army research and out of 130 people I had two with people two CS PHDs and most of them had at least one. Designing a database with these people was nightmare :)
Few people refuse today, but largely because they "weed out" those who simply do not want military service by offering 16 months civil service as an alternative to 12 months military service, and because it's very easy to get out of it entirely these days (less than half actually end up serving, which to me just makes it more offensive that they still hold up the pretense)
I had military police calling for me the day I moved to the UK because I'd been evading the conscription notice, and they then eventually (after a couple of years) give up just sending a letter and instead try to get MPs to hand deliver it so they have evidence that it has been received, as a prelude to legal action.
My main reason for refusing was simply that it was mandatory and I don't believe the state should have the right to force anyone into military service. It's easy enough to get discared as medically unfit if you just want to get out the easy way, or get assigned some trivially easy 6 month stint somewhere, but I found it sufficiently offensive that they tried to force it to find it amusing to use every opportunity to frustrate the process, fully expecting it to end with prison until I happened to get involved in a startup that moved to the UK instead.
It involved amusing demonstrations of the idiocy of bureaucracy: When I was called in the first time, I wrote a letter demanding to be released from conscription. I made very sure my demand (which had no legal basis) did not meet the requirements for them to sneakily try to transfer me to civil service, by e.g. making it clear I was fine with picking up arms, just not on their terms. It's kinda tradition in my family - my dad and one of my uncles both served prison terms over it.
So I got a rejection letter, rejecting my application to transfer to civil service - because they had no boxes to tick for "is being generally obnoxious and refusing everything". I was then called in to a police interview. This is a pre-requisite so they can try to "trap you" in saying something that proves that you do no meet the requirements for civil service. Usually that means trying to prove you're not a pacifist or similar. Since I didn't want civil service that was a rather weird affair, where the police officer asked me silly hypothetical questions to try to get me to admit I'd be willing to use violence, and me readily admitting I'd happily use violence in said situations (along the lines of "if someone is about to kill [some relative] ...").
Then they sued. They wanted the court to confirm that I had no right to be transferred to civil service. So I wrote to the court, copying my court appointed lawyer (a very nice guy - the late Ole Jakob Bae - who used to take on a lot of these cases because he genuinely wanted to help; in Norway the public defender role is taken on my private lawyers who can charge the state fixed rates; my lawyer was one of the top private lawyers in Norway at the time, all paid for by the government so they could sue me better) and pointed out that their case was baseless as I had never applied for transfer to civil service, and so agreed with the Norwegian Department of Justice that I should not be transferred, and in fact I'd get very miffed if someone tried to transfer me. I then went for a meeting with my lawyer just to have a chat so he could be sure I knew what I was in for, before he wrote a short letter concurring with my statement.
A few weeks went by, and I received a nice letter from the court confirming that the judge agreed with my assessment. The Department of Justice didn't even get a hearing - they were basically told the case was off the calendar and to go away and stop being stupid.
It didn't end there, of course, but I still take great pleasure in those events in particular.
I view conscription as slavery and so I had to pay these fines for years, waiting for my age to go over the limit. Just as I was about to hit the limit, they changed the law to add 3 years. The fines were increasing in frequency & size. Near the end I had to pay around 300 euros per month with constant threats of 2 year prison. Eventually I got myself diagnosed with enough defects to be unfit for service.
--
[1] There's a law that if the demand is less than 6400 euros then you can get a court order for this payment without an actual trial. Guilty until proven innocent. You have to sue yourself if you think it's unjustified.
They're aiming for a low number, so it should be easy to achieve
Of course, there might be some punishment as well if a person fails to perform to the expected level of duty
It's interesting that they are choosing to draft both men and women. Not a lot of places draft women.
I regret not making an effort to do it. I chose to underperform in my test because I believed all is better than war. But as an adult I've changed, and realised I wouldn't quite mind dying for things like my language to be dominant in my home and spoken by my leaders, as well as dying to not lose honor. Things I would at the time had considered naive. I now consider by old stance naive, as it implied my own life as the most important thing in the world.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that I'll likely be of another stance at 40, just like I'm thinking along the same ideals as at 18. If anyone older than me remember thinking these things at 25 I'd be love to hear.
I am no pacifist. I definitely subscribe to the non-aggression principle, but a defensive war is always justified. I'd die for certain things I believe in, too. I just wanna decide that for myself and serve when I want. How dare the state make this decision for me.
And it's one more reason not to comply with conscription and sabotaging this authoritarian practice.
So, yeah, opposing a state is always a good idea. States are not your friends.
Really? If a foreign power intervened in, say, ethnic cleansing, defense would be justified?
While recognising the differences in our attitudes towards life, this evoked from me a very big WTF.
Not just because your life is all you have while honor is basically someone's opinion, but also because it's not even as much as one whole step away from being prepared to kill people for your own honor.
"I wouldn't quite mind dying for things like my language to be dominant in my home and spoken by my leaders"
I wonder if the parent poster's language is currently the dominant language or a minority language. There are people who already kill and die for their culture to become dominant.
Once someone is in the system, they can of course be flake out, but the routine and schedule both limit just how unmotivated individuals can be. In Norway, if you're a contrarian and refuse to do push-ups along with everyone else, eventually they'll send you home. That happens all the time, and I don't think it's a problem for the military: After all, they can just grab more people from the pool of candidates. But most people, once they're in the system, just don't dare to rebel.
There are countries, like Israel, which do make compulsory service work. My own experience in Norway was that the service was not executed seriously or even competently. Kids entered in with zero belief that war was ever likely to occur, and the attitude was that if it did occur, they were not going to play a meaningful part. This attitude was entirely validated by the ridiculously half-assedness of the training itself.
Generally, the basic training was more like a taster than real training. I was taught to fire a gun, but I probably fired 30 shots in total, and didn't feel I got good at it or comfortable wielding a gun. I was taught to throw a live hand grenade — one throw. Presumably they wanted to save on materiel. At one point, we were to do a rather exciting two-day war simulation in the woods, but around midnight, just as we were getting to the "dig a trench and watch for enemy patrols" stage, some colonel stepped in and shouted that we should all pack up because a lot of people were leaving for the Christmas holiday the next morning.
Also, the way compulsory service worked in Norway, you had one month of basic training, followed by 11 months of being stationed at some base. If you're, say, an army engineer, you might have some useful experiences, but for most people, it's just sitting around doing very little, and learning nothing. The real jobs are done by career professionals.
Long story short: If you want a good army you have to train them well, not treat them with kid gloves. Norway's system lead to a situation where a lot of young kids were given a small, not very serious look at military life, after which they'd go home and promptly forget everything. (Not that I'd have appreciated harder training at the time; I really didn't want to be there.) Part of fixing that would be to invest in recruits, just like you do with a regular army: Better materiel, more simulations, more specialization, and so on.
That still leaves the problem of what you do when people go back to real life. Norway's solution was to recall part of the population for a one-week "repetition" exercise every decade or so, which of course was just as silly and half-assed as the original endeavour.
Training is scheduled into three parts. 8 weeks, after which you are assigned into leadership track or your rank and file specialization. Then 5 weeks of personal specialization training and 7 weeks of squad training. Adding to 6 months. There are some more difficult rank and file assignments, lasting 12 months. Rank and file medics stay for 9 months.
NCO training after that initial 8 weeks is in two parts, 7 and 9 weeks. Those sent to reserve officer training swap the latter 9 for 14 at the reserve officer school. NCOs lead after that for 28 weeks and reserve officers 23.
Finnish conscription is very limited in its selectiveness. 25k conscripts serve yearly, which is roughly 70-77 % of male cohort. The numbers add up quickly: there's a massive trained reserve of 900k which eclipses most of European armies combined. Their usefulness is obviously somewhat debatable. Still all of them had 6-12 months of military training at some point. 230k have actual war time allocation and up to date kit. There's a similar 12 months of civil service or serve jail time "options" like in Norway. In 2009 2,5k picked civil service, 25 went to jail and 20 took a very niche option, which is to serve unarmed.
Answer to question "in your opinion, if Finland is attacked, should Finns take up arms in any situation, even if the end result seems uncertain?" has been very high for the whole of 2000s: 71–81% say yes. So the willingness is high, owning to mostly to geographical realities. The same thing which has ensured that there's never been serious intent on getting rid of conscription.
Instead of practical motivators like weekend holidays and such, in more philosophical sense some of the better arguments in my opinion:
1. "So you don't feel like doing this and you want to go home. Consider this. If one day the shit gets real, are you sure there will be still home for you to return to afterwards?"
Many countries have Ministries of Defense and call their armed forces "defense forces". That sometimes makes me uncomfortable because the (not unintended) likeness to the Orwellian ministry naming scheme of 1984. However, compared to some countries, with some other countries a better case can be made that their military really exist for a defense of a political system against a potential immediate existential threat.
For example, South Korea still has conscription. European countries started moving to volunteer forces en masse only after the Cold War was over. Consider the political climate Sweden is in and why they suddenly think they need an army.
Of course, this is going to be as effective as credible the threat is and (more importantly) how willing the populace is to trust the their countries' political institutions. For example, looking at the map, Switzerland does not face any immediate military threats from its neighbors, but I understand that their conscript force is reasonably popular and motivated. According to Wikipedia numbers quite many people simply do not serve for some reason or another.
2. "If this isn't for you, then you are free to fill in the forms for declaring yourself conscientious objector and you will shipped to the non-armed civilian service to serve rest of you term ASAP."
This one hasn't been relevant in all conscript-based systems in all time and places, but in modern times it is. If the strategy does not call for absolutely every person capable of holding a rifle to do so, this is an option.
Additionally, if failing the service is considered shameful enough, the military may very well be willing to simply kick the unmotivated out.
In general, I believe it's more or less established that people are less likely to volunteer to do boring things, but if participation is mandatory and you need to do make a decision to get out, most people are going to do the compulsory thing. Of course, many people are quite averse to war because it's quite possible that you may really die, so usually the armies of the world make the "getting out" option penalized somehow. In the ideal world I'd actually like to see the "opt-out" version without any further penalties tried sometimes somewhere.
3. Additional forms of persuasion known to exist in various countries at various points of time are different forms of legal consequences, ranging from extra tax to jail to prison to death penalty.
When I was in the British Army, which is volunteer only, commanding a basic training troop if someone was wanted to give up we could say to them 'if this isn't for you then you can go home' (of course we did coach and mentor people to help them, I mean in cases where people just give up and stop soldiering when an exercise gets tough). They usually worked extremely hard to get into the Army in the first place because it's competitive so we know they're motivated.
What do you do with a conscript who never wanted to be there and possibly fundamentally isn't suited to military life anyway gives up? Threaten them with legal action?
What do you do if they sort of do what they're told, but not really putting any effort into it?
Conscription seems counter-productive to me. If you can't attract enough motivated and talented people to join your military then maybe your military is not representative of your society anymore and you should fix that.