Europe Takes a Second Look at Conscription The Continent needs better preparation for disaster of all kinds, as well as more soldiers. By Elisabeth Braw
https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-takes-a-second-look-at-conscription-1535311309
Conscription is back. After the Cold War, most European countries suspended mandatory military service, but now they’re rediscovering the institution that added muscle to the armed forces and some measure of social cohesion. The practice is often more a burden than an aid to the military. But with natural disasters and other emergencies increasing, what we really need is citizen resilience training.
“I can promise you one thing: We’ll have to discuss the issue of military service and national service very intensively again,” Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, secretary-general of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said in a video message released earlier this month. That sentence unleashed this summer’s biggest debate in Germany.
The government suspended conscription seven years ago. In its final years, only about one-third of young Germans performed military service, about one-third chose civilian national service, and the remaining third were not called up or signed up as professional soldiers—Germany’s post-Cold War armed forces simply didn’t need that many soldiers. But with the armed forces—the Bundeswehr—now struggling to recruit professional soldiers, Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer’s suggestion is not surprising. Sweden has reinstated selective conscription to beef up its active-duty forces, as has Lithuania. Norway has expanded the selective draft to women, while French President Emmanuel Macron is planning a new form of mandatory national service that includes a civilian and a military segment.
These initiatives are laudable, but only the best-executed conscription models generate substantial military value. “People fill the conscription concept with all kinds of problems they want to solve: integration, unruly youths, teaching young people rules,” noted Annika Nordgren Christensen, a Swedish former member of Parliament who wrote the report that led to the selective draft, told me. “But what really matters is its military value.” Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer’s proposal is essentially an updated, co-ed return to Germany’s previous model; young men and women would be required to serve in the Bundeswehr or in a civil-society organization such as a fire brigade or an assisted-living facility. CONTINUE AT SITE
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