Germany mulls reintroduction of compulsory military service – DW – 12/29/2023
www.dw.com
The Bundeswehr is facing a dramatic shortage in personnel. Now Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has rekindled the debate over reintroducing conscription.

At the end of October, the Bundeswehr said it counted 181,383 soldiers in its ranks — that’s still some distance from the target of 203,000 that the German military hopes to reach by 2025. This has given rise to concern in times of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has once again reminded Germans how quickly conflicts can erupt in Europe.

Since taking office at the beginning of 2023, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has been thinking about ways to make the Bundeswehr more attractive as a career. He said he has received 65 concrete proposals from his ministry on recruitment and reforming training methods.

  • rockSlayer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    11 months ago

    compulsory military service isn’t a good thing though. That’s like saying the romans went to war less because the Praetors were cavalry.

    cautionary edit: I’m not going to get into historical debates about Romans. The Praetors were primarily from the Equestrian class, and in the early republic were cavalry because they had the money to maintain war horses.

    • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      11 months ago

      It’s a pretty cost effective alternative to maintaining an excessively large standing force.

      If everyone gets 12-18 months of training, it allows the nation the capacity to mobilize quickly “on-demand”, instead of that capacity being “always on”.

      I imagine there are other periphery societal benefits. Having a shared experience, even if it is military service, can be good for cultural unity.

      Not saying they should or shouldn’t, btw. Just saying it might be more pragmatic than the alternatives.

      • rockSlayer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        I have a strong family history of military service, with a verifiable family history going back to the US revolution. I get where the idea comes from. There was a point where I supported compulsory military service too. However, it ultimately serves the capitalist class, who are perfectly content to throw their own children to the war machine to ensure that the next quarter is profitable. Conscription certainly serves the purpose of filling out the ranks, but ultimately it’s a reason to kill people for the imperialist purposes of ensuring an unequal standard of living between the imperial core (in this case the EU) and the imperial periphery.

        • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          11 months ago

          I’d challenge you to consider that your perception may be biased, coming from the context of a country that has been at war for 93% of its existence.

          My frame of reference on the subject of compulsory service is Finnish, which I imagine is a better analogue to a potential German experience.

          • rockSlayer@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            11 months ago

            I know that I have a bias tinted by the US war machine. However I’d like you to consider that neo-imperialism is something practiced by most of the imperial core.

        • systemglitch@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          It builds character, strengthens the mind and body, while also strengthening the entire nation against the possibility of future invasion.

          I like what I see out of countries like Finland and South Korea and I think this is a big part of what makes that so.