[mhitza]

> now they want to send us to die in Ukraine?

I think you're misinformed or showing anti-Ukraine bias. No one would send their military there, but could get sent in aid to another EU/EEA/NATO member.

Anyway, I agree that mandatory drafting should not be reintroduced.

[ftth_finland]

> Anyway, I agree that mandatory drafting should not be reintroduced.

Why not? Why should the burden only fall on the poor and the desperate?

For reference, Finland has universal conscription. The question over here is, why are women excluded?

[omginternets]

For one: modern professional armies do not want this, because conscripts don’t make great soldiers.

[barry-cotter]

Doesn’t matter. If a real war starts you want a lot of men and the only reliable way is conscription. No one could have fought WW2 with a volunteer military. Ukraine aren’t relying on volunteers. Israel don’t rely on volunteers. You do the best you can with what you’ve got available.

[omginternets]

Yes, conscription is a measure of last resort.

[paganel]

Conscript armies do win grand wars, but I agree that some current military leaders may not want to divide the military pie.

[omginternets]

They are a measure of last resort. They are not something that armies are asking for.

[paganel]

Peace-time armies will not ask for that, that’s for sure, but when a real war is on the table (like it looks to soon be the case here in Europe) then things change.

[ftth_finland]

This is definitely one of those citation needed comments.

Firstly, professional armies are recruited from the general population and are on average no better or worse than conscripts.

Secondly, the above comment completely sidesteps the moral aspects. Why should the burden of military service fall predominantly on the poor and the desperate? Why should decision makers be able to only send other people’s children to war?

[omginternets]

To your first point, it really ought not require a citation to understand that people who have been training full-time for years make better soldiers than people you pull out of civilian life and ship off to the front after a few months, and who want nothing more than to exit the service.

There is no modern, professionalized army that wants conscripts. None. Conscripts are a liability, and a measure of last resort.

To your second, it’s far from just the downtrodden that fill the ranks of professional armies. In many countries, e.g. France (where I served), the upper classes of society (grande bourgeoisie and nobility) are over-represented in the ranks.

[barry-cotter]

> Firstly, professional armies are recruited from the general population and are on average no better or worse than conscripts.

This isn’t true. The US and UK conscript armies of WW1 and WW2 were significantly healthier and better educated than the general population. Lots of people grew up in wretched poverty and had deficiency diseases or were malnourished or had parasites. Those people were rejected.

It is illegal for the US military to accept recruits with an ASBAB score of ten or below, roughly equivalent to IQ 83. The military is in some sense representative but it is not a random sample.

[mhitza]

Why do you imply that non mandatory conscription means that the poor or desperate will be the ones to enroll?

In Romania around 2008 mandatory drafting was removed from the constitution and yet we still have an army. The reason why we have such a small army is in a significant part due to pervasive corruption in all of the state's structures, low salaries and abusive higher ups. We have an interesting documentary about the subject (has english subtitles) about the ridiculous state of the army due to reasons mentioned. https://youtu.be/0_YnxJJcC7M?feature=shared

[ftth_finland]

> Why do you imply that non mandatory conscription means that the poor or desperate will be the ones to enroll?

Because the army is the employer of last resort. It is what you do when you have no other options.

[throwAGIway]

That's a very un-European view that would mark you as crazy here. Nobody goes to the army to get a job, not even those who can't find a job, and the unemployment office won't try to suggest it - it's not considered a job here, it's a service duty.

In my country we don't have mandatory military service. The "employer of the last resort" is the unemployment office and welfare, not army. I have never heard of anybody going to the army for any other than duty/ideological reasons, desperation for a job might even disqualify you - they want people who are motivated to join the army, not poor desperate people looking for money.

[TheNewsIsHere]

I am in the United States. It isn’t a categorical truth here, but many people here have and do join the US military because that is the “ticket out” that they have access to. I saw it a lot in my high school. I had some friends who were good people but they were not terribly academically gifted, their families were poor, and college wasn’t a realistic option for them. Several of them joined the military in part due to the recruiters that would visit the school. During my senior year of high school one of those guys ended up being the recruiter that visited my high school. It was interesting to see a bit of a cycle there.

It’s almost a trope here. I expect that’s why the original commenter said that the military is the employer of last resort. In the US that is often the case for many young people.

[throwAGIway]

Yeah I know it is in the US, but military recruiters visiting a school class would be a major nationwide scandal here, comparable only maybe to visits of some political or religious figures. The only approvable way is a moderated discussion where both positives and negatives are (must be) voiced in age-appropriate way.

The entire culture around the separation of state, its components and citizens is very different here. We really don't want another 40 years of dictatorship - best to stop it right at the beginning.

[mhitza]

Different culture and society. Here you get paid better as a supermarket clerk with overtimes than a soldier, or clearly better if you get promoted from a clerk to/pick another role (shift manager, or warehouse work). And our desperate also use the travel flexibility to work in Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, than here. We used to be the source of manual labour during summer in many of those countries.

[mensetmanusman]

This is a mindset that causes a country to disappear throughout history.

[jelliclesfarm]

I don’t know.. why can’t men bleed every month, possess a uterus and bear children ..and the burden of perpetuating the human race.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

This topic was talking about conscription though, a measure of last resort.

If we really reach a point where conscription is required, it also means that carrying an uterus is probably irrelevant: it's either kill or be killed.

Hopefully that's never going to be a thing again in as many countries as possible

[jelliclesfarm]

My reply as to the person who queried why women in Finland are not conscripted.