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.
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?