The title is not entirely correct. They don’t plant to “introduce” conscription. Germany had conscription from its formation of the Bundeswehr in 1955 until it was put on hiatus in 2011 because people back then thought that Ivan was no longer a problem. So what they think about is not “introducing” but just reactivate it.
The changes will be that while before 2011, conscription was only for men, it is planned to be for both sexes, and military service will no longer the one preferred service (back then, you had to go through quite some hoops if you did not want to serve in the Bundeswehr and do your time in e.g. social services). This time, the military option is just one of several that can be chosen.
That makes sense and good on them for conscription not caring about gender
Preparing for world war?
It isn’t just about the military. I’ve not read the article, but Germany suffers from not having enough people working in social services. This problem got worse after getting rid of conscription. You could either choose military service or social work.
By reintroducing it, they hope to fill in some gaps.
Yeah, instead of actually fixing the system and paying people normal wages, while also fixing the stupid education/certification system that social service workers need to go through, let’s just throw a bunch of teenagers at it, it will surely fix our problems!
You could either choose military service or social work.
Also some hospital work. Bedpan cleaning, etc.
But it kept you out of the army, and took the strain off of hospitals and social services.
U.S.A. should adopt this policy. It would humble out the nepo children of wealthy pieces of shit, and likely resolve the social issues that people complain about.
The nepo babies wouldn’t serve–same as always. And the political unpopularity of conscription has never changed. The last war draft is still in living memory, and US current military activity hasn’t been an improvement in terms of public appetite.
The US introduces conscription again, and there’ll be riots–and I don’t mean “some kids camped at college and the jackboots locked them up” protests; it’ll be government-building burning, widespread-looting riots.
If you want to do conscription, the kids have to trust the government not to kill them for oil.
They should never trust the government for that specifically - they’re always looking for someone to kill for oil!
Yeah rich people are known to never be able to avoid the draft
I think making the rich mingle with the normal people more would be beneficial. It’s harder to dehumanize the poor when you’ve met them. Can’t call them lazy or stupid and just not “wanting” it enough when you see them work as hard as you and not getting as far.
Although, I think the way things are it’ll never happen though. Nepo babies would dodge everything even if something like this were to occur.
There’s better ways, like reducing car dependency and increasing housing density. Have people from all walks of life, live near each other and travel with each other, without being isolated in metal boxes. The ultra rich might still avoid that too, but at least the 99% will be around each other.
And you don’t need to force people to go to war to achieve it.
You’re absolutely right. I was trying to get what I hoped was the salient point out of the person’s post.
I knew a few guys in Europe I think maybe Austrian or something where they came from lots of money but went to school with “others” and they seemed pretty well-adjusted. Although, they have a lot of the other advantages that you’ve listed as well.
Maybe we should turn this idea around? I know tons of healthy rich old people that have nothing better to do than bicker and complain, how about we force them to do a free full year of community service? Why is their time and energy considered more valuable than the youths’?
And maybe it would humble those wealthy nepo pieces of shit, and likely resolve the social issues that people complain about.
I’d applaud giving Elon Musk a chance to live out his flamethrower power fantasies in person.
Is a flamethrower a completely inappropriate weapon in modern warfare? Yes. Should we tell him that? Don’t you fucking dare.
I had a class mate who spent his holidays hiking in Nepal and places with his parents. When he was born a doctor close to his parents discovered a serious heart issue that made him ineligible for being drafted. I mean sure. You have a heart issue that you can’t run 30 minutes, but you are doing week long hikes in 5.000-6.000m altitude.
I’ve not met very many vets that support mandatory service. When I say not many, I could count them on one hand.
That’s because in the US you could be sent abroad to kill brown people for oil. I was a conscript in my country in the 80’s (Nato). In my country conscripts couldn’t be sent abroad, only professionals. I’d be ok with defending home soil. That doen’t mean that I wanted to do my tour, but I did it. I think I learnt a lot, not least about serving for the common good. Looking back it was good for me. Also, at hat time, after service you’d be in the reserves (simply listed) and the country could raise an army of millions, who’d only need some refresher training in a week, not like the green ass russian conscripts in Ukraine right now.
I’m favor of conscription for limited duration, and no possibility of deployment abroad. Also, women too. That wasn’t a thing then.
Sometimes open war comes upon you, whether you risk it or not.
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It might be that aggressive wannabe regional power that has already invaded several of its neighbors over the last decade or two, and makes continuous threats directed towards the rest of Europe?
No no, there’s other countries in the way of that, it’s obviously their problem
But they only want
Chechnya…Belarus…Ukraine… Poland?Kazakhstan,Moldova,Estonia,Latvia,Lithuania, Romania…Not Romania… I need my damn Visinata.
You’d be a fool not to at this point.
Prepare, sure. There’s a lot of alternate ways things could resolve, though, and MAD is about as sturdy as it’s ever been.
What if instead we just didn’t do world war 3?
I love that idea. Quick, tell Putin and Bibi!
And Xi.
Then we’ll all be speaking Russian in 15 years.
Historians might look back and see that we now have already been in WW3, Hybrid Warfare / New Generation Warfare has been running rampant for a while between the global superpowers
That is so sad, these kinds of times should already be over in humanity’s history. Why doesn’t anyone have a solution? Are the war mongering powers just waiting for the new nuclear deterrent? Future AI terminators pls just go straight to Russia/China/USA leadership and let the humans be
It’s because the leaders aren’t the ones fighting the battles or being targeted. They’re playing chess somewhere far from the violence.
Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
Maybe Civ 6 was too boring for them.
That’s where they practice haha
FWIW and AFAIK, the PRC doesn’t have conscription (while the ROC does).
There’s also conscription in places which don’t attack others, because of an attack threat from a neighbor. I just hope that whatever helps humanity forward, goes to the root cause. Imperialist state oligarchs are a good start. And other billionaires
This is an unserious proposal. Germany spends about 1.5 percent of its GDP(*) on defence, much of it wasted, and increasing it to even 2 percent has involved painful and extended political wrangling. If the country collectively cannot find the will to tweak its budget to fund a modest increase in defence spending, it is not going to countenance universal conscription.
(*) GDP, not budget; error pointed out by Enkrod
The draft has never been abolished in germany, it has only officially been ‘suspended’. Resuming it would be easy.
Except that you need to actually house, feed, clothe and train those draftees and most western militaries no longer have the capacity to do that at scale.
The fact that it is legally easy does not say anything about how difficult it will be organizationally
CoD 2 Tutorial Russian Campaign vibes. Throwing potatoes to train throwing grenades incoming.
Ah the Trump lies really got to you
Well, the main opposition party wants that… Sooo… Maybe in the future, maybe not…
I’m buying broomstick stonks right now
Hey, I’ve seen this one
Of course you have. The Draft has been active from 1954 to 2010.
Germany needs to draft soldiers to go to Ukraine as soon as possible and help the Ukrainians, because it is the right thing to do.
Draft soldiers of Germany are not allowed to operate outside of our own borders and are used to fill the gaps that stem from professional soldiers working abroad. The Bundeswehr and especially the draftees can only be used for peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and defense.
As much as I would like to see Russia get shitmixed by a proper first world army (not that Ukraine hasn’t been doing phenomenally), I think that might actually put putin in a corner.
Ideally we’ll just keep giving Ukraine equipment and propagandize how hard they’re kicking russian ass and sanction the hell out of Russia until the people and oligarchs lose their appetite for Ukraine.
Only if you’re among the first wave
How about our military stays between our own borders. Let those that want to go go. But don’t force a bunch of our youth to go fight someone else’s war.
I bet you could find a bunch of people saying this almost word-for-word as Hitler took Czechoslovakia.
If you don’t fight the Russians in Ukraine, you will be fighting them in Germany. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Then go sign up for it and fight. No one is stopping you.
I always thought conscription had benefits. Tidy up the youth, teach them teamwork, toughen them up and give them self-reliance, will really help with the obesity problem.
The best argument for conscription is that, like politics or the police, the psychology predisposed to choosing it is not necessarily the most beneficial to be involved with it.
If you could choose to serve only in natural disaster relief, humanitarian, or aid operations it would make it significantly less conflicting.
Ultimately the requirement to be involved with, and potentially murder, in anti-democratic or anti-humanitarian operations, and acts of aggression, that could have been decided entirely by self-serving corporate or political interests makes conscription a dealbreaker.
As someone said above:
Draft soldiers of Germany are not allowed to operate outside of our own borders and are used to fill the gaps that stem from professional soldiers working abroad. The Bundeswehr and especially the draftees can only be used for peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and defense.
Which seems fairly reasonable to me
Starship troopers style. Interesting.
Also with conscripts they don’t normally see fighting they are just normally ready. They tend to just be trained reserves.
Haven’t heard a stronger backwards boomer opinion in ages. Gheez…
Nothing gives people self-reliance like training them to do exactly as they are told, nothing more, nothing less and god forbid they develop a thought of their own on an issue and consider voicing it.
You don’t know how low the bar is.
Do the army even want a bunch of nerds, theatre kids, goths and bisexual disasters - speaking as someone who was all of those as a teen - in the army? I thought the army liked people who shut up and ran around a field.
“Oh if you don’t they put you in jail”
ok how is that good for society?
It’s not good at all for society. It’s slavery with the addition of a heightened risk of death, all to serve the whims of guys in suits far from the battlefield.
Previous commenter thinking it’s a good thing because it will whip the rabble into shape is delirious. These are peoples sons and daughters that we would be sending off to die in the mud. Shameful.
even if they never see war and just do a bunch of calisthenics in a muddy field - it’s still being yelled at rudely to do push-ups instead of… working a job? Being in education?
I have absolutely no issue with OP being in the army - a good friend of mine was in the Signals. I respect him, but also, it would’ve done most of the people I know no good at all.
I wasn’t saying it for the good of the army I was saying it for the good of the people.
The army will get the best out of them that they can. Sounds like they could do with it more than most.
why can’t I decide what’s best for me? ages 18-21 I worked for my local city in projects designed to get local young people at risk of offending into projects like (legal) graffiti, music, arts, sports and volunteering.
Surely that was a better benefit to society than learning how to walk in the same rhythm as a group of other people?
Same reason we don’t let kids decide if they want to go to school or not. Not everyone is going to make the right choice. People do things for their and societies good. You really don’t think most people are currently doing that can you?
but we let these “kids” choose their degrees, or jobs and - indeed potentially train them for the military - at that age.
And who is to say the military is the right choice? If someone yells at me to do push ups in the mud - in any other context I am well within my rights to tell them to fuck off. Which is entirely normal behavior.
In general, yes, the majority of people are doing some kind of good for themselves, families and communities. People volunteer, raise kids, donate to charity, recycle, care for sick relatives, help their neighbors and friends…
I think your right.
As much as the fat kids and the kids that have no will power and blame their lack of drive on others could benefit from structure, teamwork and exercise.
You’re right, ultimately it is too late and it just trying to fixing a failing of the state. We need to give these people more attention in school and turn them into better people than what we turn out of schools currently.
it’s interesting to me that you see childhood obesity as “an absence of military training” and not such things as
- lack of support for health education in schools
- lack of health meal choices for school cafeterias
- lack of free support materials for parents
- subsidies and support for low income families to get access to fresh and healthy foods
- tariffs on high fat and high sugar foods
- regulation on grocery store prices
- more free activities for young people
- subsidized sports programs and facilities
- etc etc
“oh that’s expensive”
the us military spends $64,000 per second every second.
I don’t think there’s a large scale obesity problem in Germany.
Currently, just barely under half of Germany’s population is overweight.
That’s only ten percent less than the USA, which sits at 57%.
And yes, it causes massive health problems, staining the healthcare system.
Alright, I stand corrected.
staining the healthcare system
Just need to use copious amounts of bleach then.
That’s where you would be wrong.
