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Re:Sweden brings back military conscription by HeyLaughingBoy on Thursday March 02, 2017 @01:14PM (#13776596)
We have thousands of years of histories of armies. How often has this happened?
Re:Sweden brings back military conscription by derefr on Thursday March 02, 2017 @01:18PM (#13776631)
We don't have thousands of years of people thinking they're entitled to never do what anyone else tells them. That's something unique to "the Western world, post-conscription."

(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.)

Re:Sweden brings back military conscription by clock_tower on Thursday March 02, 2017 @02:52PM (#13777588)
Ever heard the phrase "rabble of conscripts"? Napoleon was the first to use conscripts successfully; before him, it was proverbial that a smaller force of professionals (volunteers, landowners, adventurers, or typically a mix of all three) could wipe the floor with a much larger conscript army. Conscripts could make adequate garrisons, where they'd seldom be called on to fight (and if the castle or fortress fell, everyone in it would be killed, so there was that too), but not much more than that.