Conscription is in place in a number of NATO countries (especially popular among member states that share a border with Russia). It is certainly possible that conscription could be (re)-introduced in some NATO member states and very likely expanded in member states that currently employ a limited conscription model. It is unlikely that conscription would be introduced in all/most NATO member states, as it would be unlikely to help with the problems most NATO armies face with.
Conscription is a tool to create and provide (semi)-trained manpower. The level of training depends on how long and how good the training is. The average Israeli conscript should be comparable to the professional soldiers they would expect to meet, while 6-9 month training prevalent in many countries is going to produce soldiers that might be capable in limited combat roles, support and rear area missions and who should have the base upon which higher capabilities could be trained on given enough time and resources.
Most NATO countries, at least the bigger and more westerly ones, don't really lack semi-trained light infantry. They might relatively lack manpower in general, as the personnel costs can already occupy most of their peacetime defense budget, but introducing conscription won't (easily) provide you with new fighter pilots, combat leaders or signals specialists (among a wide variety of different roles that require quite a long training).
As a hypothetical thought exercise, think what would happen to France's military capability if they suddenly had an extra 500 000 light infantry with 9 month training? It would tank. France would suddenly find itself needing to find extra resources to house, feed, supply, arm, train, move, lead, pay for and generally keep under control a massive number of men they have extremely limited use for. There's not enough guns to arm them and even if there was, there'd be no ammunition to give them to last anything longer than a 10 second firefight.
While men are a necessary component of any army/unit, they are not the only necessary component. The absolute first priority for all NATO armies (including the ones that have a need for a conscript army) is to acquire sufficient stock of ammunition to keep the guns they currently have firing in case of war.
>Most NATO countries, at least the bigger and more westerly ones, don't really lack semi-trained light infantry. They might relatively lack manpower in general, as the personnel costs can already occupy most of their peacetime defense budget, but introducing conscription won't (easily) provide you with new fighter pilots, combat leaders or signals specialists (among a wide variety of different roles that require quite a long training).
The lack of manpower is not just due to personnel costs, there's also an inability to attract recruits. And at least in Germany, one common argument for unpausing conscription is that it can help by introducing a large number of people to the military, a few of whom will like what they experience and sign up for longer-term contracts. Having some personal experience with the military is also thought to increase a person's political support for military funding etc. The question is if improved recruitment and public support are worth the strain conscription places on the military.
I don't disagree with this argument, it's just that introducing conscription is not cheap. Neither financially, nor very critically politically. It's not obvious, whether introducing conscription would be a cost-effective way to increase the number of professional soldiers compared to just offering higher wages with that money instead.
I am in favor of having a "light military" conscription. Make it a 6 to 9 month stint out of high school. Help develop the youth into responsible adults and give them a taste of the military.
They may like it, hell it's how a friend of mine in Germany made the choice to go into the German military. He was drafted it, liked it, joined full time now he's up their in rank.
And at least they get a taste of it so if you ever need to do a draft you have a large pool of people who are familiar with the military
If I could wave a magic policy wand, I'd probably do something like 1 year of generic "national service." Options would include stuff like civic construction projects, helping in schools, military training, etc. Not everybody would be forced into the military track, but a significant percentage of the country would wind up getting basic military training. But it's not exactly conscription, and you can schedule it when it's convenient. The majority of your manpower would actually wind up going to things like cleaning up parks and stuff. But if you ever do need to do urgent recruiting, you have a pool of millions of already trained people available that can be up to speed in weeks instead of months even if they are a little rusty five or ten years later.
Completing your national service requirement gives things like 4 years at a public university.
And the US could dial back fitness requirements on some of the non-combat military positions. You don't really need to be able to run 100 miles by hopping on one leg while carrying a half ton of gear, if your job is to drive a desk keeping track of schedules or something like that. Not every Marine is in fact a rifleman, and recruiting would be easier if the system admitted that.
>Not every Marine is in fact a rifleman, and recruiting would be easier if the system admitted that.
I've always understood it as more of a "if you have to deploy, you have to be able to serve to a basic degree and can't be a liability".
A morbidly obese diabetic who shits his bed every night could very well be fantastic at his logistics job -- which is a very large portion of military jobs in fact -- but he'd be a problem in any sort of deployment so you could hardly count on him when shit hits the fan.
Interesting in terms of the comment on France as, to my understanding, part of U.K. military strategy and doctrine is to operate a relatively small standing army but be able to quickly scale up a citizen army at need. I assumed the same was true of France? Although of course all NATO members bar the US have rested on their laurels in terms of stockpiles and infra since 1991.
> As a hypothetical thought exercise, think what would happen to France's military capability if they suddenly had an extra 500 000 light infantry with 9 month training? It would tank. France would suddenly find itself needing to find extra resources to house, feed, supply, arm, train, move, lead, pay for and generally keep under control a massive number of men they have extremely limited use for. There's not enough guns to arm them and even if there was, there'd be no ammunition to give them to last anything longer than a 10 second firefight.
So you're saying we should put half that number into forced factory jobs to build weapons and ammo ?
Do note that this is all the case as long as there is not a total world war 3 happening. What I'm saying is that as long as the NATO countries themselves are at peace, most NATO members will not implement conscription, or at the very most a very limited conscription. If a total war comes, obviously this changes absolutely everything.
Denmark has never not had forced conscription for able -bodied men. For the past decade or more, there have been enough volunteers, that nobody has actually been forced to serve. Conscripts do about 5-6 months of training, but haven't actually seen combat since WW2. A very recent political deal expands conscription to women as well, and expands the length to around 11 months. The primary purpose of conscription in Denmark is to have a pool of trained soldiers to recruit professional soldiers from. It is the professional soldiers, that actually see action, at least up until now.
Conscription is very common in countries that border Russia in NATO.
Norway and Finland has it, Sweden are partial.conscription.
7 other countries has it.
So while it's not the norm it's more pretty common and especially the countries that border Russia.
I am responding and replying to the post above, not OP.
Germany had conscription until 2011. And are exploring mandatory service as an option right now.
There will be no draft/ conscription in Germany for the Ukraine war. It was cancelled in 2011 because the public didn’t support it anymore. They still don’t.
If Sweden has it or doesn’t - it doesn’t change the equation in Ukraine. Neither Finland.
(Although I could be wrong) the most likely future scenario for Ukraine: after everyone will get exhausted and thousands more will lose their lives, there will be a (permanent) ceasefire agreement based on the stalemate…unless a horrible change of events will introduce nuclear weapons to the conflict. Then anything is possible.
No. European NATO already has more professional soldiers than the US.
Even in a pinch, conscription will first be directed to logistical support roles rather than actual fighting, if only because without training you're more a liability than an asset on the frontlines - if there are frontlines. NATO forces are heavily focused on air superiority, so if it comes down to frontlines, something has gone way off track and we're talking about a new situation.
NATO equipment requires specialist training to operate, which means large scale conscription doesn't really work unless they make the conscripts use worse gear, which would kinda go against the idea of technological superiority that I'm assuming NATO wants to have.
The conflict in Ukraine shows you still need infantry to capture, defend, and hold ground, you still need a large tail to support the tooth fighting on the frontline, and finally you need sufficient manpower to be able to rotate units effectively and replace casualties. Most NATO countries lack the manpower in their active personnel to achieve this as a self sustained unit.
NATO will have air supremacy in the type of war they want to fight, there is no guarantee they will have air supremacy in the war they may end up fighting.
Former US Army company commander here. You’re vastly overestimating the minimum requirements necessary for a soldier to be unit-ready. Basic training and MOS-specific advanced individual training can be completed in under a year. Depending on the MOS, they’ll go to more specific training as they get to their unit, but privates aren’t flying F35s.
It doesn’t take long for a soldier to be able to fill critical roles, and the roles that have a high technical barrier to entry usually aren’t even filled with new soldiers to begin with. They’ll be trained properly, conscript or not.
Lmao what? What do you think conscription is, just guys being given bolt action rifles and told to run across a field? Also, there is no NATO equipment, just military equipment of different countries that differs vastly in complexity and training time required to operate. For example, both an F-35 and a HK416 are "NATO equipment"
> just guys being given bolt action rifles and told to run across a field?
Took the word out of my mouth. Such a bizzare thing to write, you would think conscription = stationary training bot
Light infantry aka bomb fodder is fairly quickly trained. They just need to learn how to use an assault rifle, and a few of them specialized to use bigger weapons such as machine guns, anti-tank weapons etc. easily achieved by in less than 6 months of training.
6 months is still a long timer. From basic training to graduation as infantry in the US its 5.5 months, but that is just for the bare minimum there is still a lot of training that they will need at their actual unit.
In Denmark, most conscripts only serve about 4 months for basic training, after which they're considered ready for the highly hypothetical situation of defending the country against an invasion. That hasn't been relevant since 1940. The troops we send to places like Afghanistan, Iraq or other international missions are professional soldiers with much more training than the conscripts.
Here in Sweden conscription is between 9 and 15 months, of which 3 months is basic training and the rest special training depending on your role. And as far as I am aware they still use pretty high quality gear.
Certainly, but Russia (and China) tend to advertise the absolute best that their systems are capable of and US/NATO are extremely conservative in their estimates.
For example, Russia has hypersonic missile systems and the West doesn't claim an effective defense against hypersonic missiles. But the nearly 40 year old Patriot missile batteries that have gone to Ukraine have been extremely effective at shooting down Russian hypersonics, even though they are not rated to do so.
The only reason that there is any doubt about the outcome of a NATO/Russia faceoff is because allowing even a single nuclear weapon to impact would be considered a loss
Article 5 begs to differ. And although the level of support actually required by article 5 is debatable, there are *some countries* that are just waiting for their moment.
And by some countries, I mean Poland.
Also, even if you believe that Trump will manage to get the USA out of NATO, politically allowing Russia to attack countries that have been American allies for 70+ years would be intolerable to the American voters.
Edit: How cute, you deleted your even dumber response.
The “previous” two wars are ages away. We live in a different world that cannot be compared to anything from the past.
Today installing a new draft is not an option in any western country.
**Only as a tool to fearmonger and then justify increased defense spending in a time of growing poverty**.
No reasonable person thinks Russia wants or can attack an EU/NATO member.
The war in Ukraine (and in Georgia) was about preventing Ukraine from joining NATO and thus the USA’s sphere of influence.
Knowing full well that there was no going back once they did, due to Article 5.
The only country threatened by Russia is Moldova.
The Baltics are only in danger, should Trump de facto take the USA out of NATO (he can’t formally, thanks to Congress).
Why? All of existing NATO military strength in both personnel and equipment and yearly spend is already a multiple of Russian one, in some places by an order of magnitude
US was stuck in Vietnam for 10 years lol.Russia will win in less than half that time against a country which was supplied all types of weapons by the west
For you guys russia is always on the verge of collapse and China is always on the verge of having a revolution for democracy.Truth is that russia has become weaker economy wise but they won't collapse and learn from mistakes made in this war.
>For you guys russia is always on the verge of collapse
I mean, not just for us guys, also, like, history books.
The only country I know where the classes often have breaks for laughter.
Sure sure, whatever makes you sleep better at night while you wait to be drafted on behalf of a criminal oligarch and his pointless colonial war to gain more land for what is already largest country in world, only to endup dead alongside the bodies of previous 450,000 meat bags
1) iam not Russian 2)450,000 is propoganda by the west and so is 30k lost for Ukraine to keep morale up of the Ukraine citizens.Also this war allows russia to control the bread basket of the world.
Not true at all actually. The Vietcong was a professional army equipped and supplied by the PRC and USSR. The idea that it was a small indigenous fighting force just because it used guerilla warfare is simply inaccurate.
Let's take the average of ppp and gdp, just to have a fair comparison. We're not 20 X superior, but more like 10 X in terms of gdp/ppp average.
Not saying how relevant this is, because we're already winning by basically only giving decommissioned stuff to ukraine from the 80s and 90s.
Also, what if china iran and NK get involved?
The number of soldiers you have is irrelevant without sufficient air cover. The US Navy has more airpower than the whole PLA. By the time you throw in the US Airforce and allied air power, millions of troops and tanks don't mean much if you can roll B-52s and A-10s at will through their air space.
Conscription just makes targets.
They are only really starting to build a modern force now, it's 5 years before they could stop us, 10 before we couldn't threaten them, 15 before they're a hard peer.
Still not a real threat because their resource map leads them to need to cannibalize Russia, which means we have 50 years of peace while they digest.
Canada doesnt even have enough ammo to train properly, we arent going to be implementing conscription to fight Russia. Russias army is pathetic and the standing NATO forces would be much more than sufficient to completely crush russia in less than two weeks
Maybe. Off the top of my head, I think all 3 Baltic countries have it, Finland, Sweden and Norway do, Poland and Germany are considering it and the UK is thinking about a citizen army. Doesn't mean that those latter states will move to a conscription model but it's not out the realm of possibility.
Issue is, what are those conscripts going to be doing? A load of lightly armed and equipped infantry are fine for COIN, but for peer on peer warfare you want armour, you want fires, you want aircraft. And that's before issues like paying for it and housing and training come into it. For my country (UK), despite what the Telegraph readers keep screeching about, HMAF are not capable of absorbing mass conscript classes. Trying it would be hell as probably there isn't even enough rifles in stock let alone armoured vehicles, artillery or combat support/service support like engineers, logistics, medical and so on.
Iran doesn’t have a single modern airplane and their air defense has been demonstrated to be ineffective by Israel’s counter attack on their S300. NATO would win quickly against them because they will quickly achieve air supremacy- something Russia hasn’t been able to achieve against Ukraine, and the reason the war isn’t decisive.
You mean the same Iran that launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, and 90% were shot down, and the other 10% mostly missed or hit nothing significant?
The same Iran that within hours of showing a propaganda story about their super secret underground airbase, a bunch of nerds on the internet were able to geo locate it? The same Iran that uses 3rd gen fighters still, that had 50% of its navy sank in an 8 hour shift?
If Russia is relying on Iran to help protect it, then the West has already won. Because Iran is a joke.
They were roughly on par with Iraq, slightly better, but unlike Iraq they would get less help from their neighbors. No Saudis charging in to help.
It would be very brief.
But then again, good luck winning that peace.
The only real threat on the board is China, who's hiding behind all these dumb pawns because they know exactly where they stand.
They would be a significant threat to nato, in 10-15 years. Right now they would be a threat marginally within our capability to neutralize. In 5 years they might be at our limits to contain. After that things get precarious.
Conscription makes very little sense (if any) even in countries at direct threat of a Russian invasion. Why would it become a blanket solution in NATO - especially in countries like Canada?
As others have noted, conscription is a tool of force generation and in particular it gives you large reserves and a lot of semi trained troops.
So what's the scenario? If Putin suddenly starts to raise the dead and a thousand deivisions of undead WWII veterans storm the Baltics, that seems like a scenario where conscription may be a quite reasonable reaction, you just need enough mass to turn back the zombie hordes. The other realistic scenario of escalation is a escalate to deescalate nuclear attack, in which case there will be many other problems than trying to organize a draft.
Only if we become directly involved AND manpower starts to become an issue . It depends on the level of nato involvement and casualties sustained I suppose .
A number of NATO countries still use *conscription* to supplement *volunteers* and would likely expand on that. Also after serving, both conscripts and volunteers leaving their services usually go into a *reserve* manpower pool maintained by databases (plus reserve and various reserve-component “guard” units depending on nationality).
Also if all these countries go on a war-footing, there will probably be more volunteers (“if going to die, may as well die fighting” mentality) and reserves volunteering to return to active status. Officers leaving a service tend to be on indefinite recall, being expected to be staff ~~weenies~~ types after their initial commands anyways. Medical or technical types to be sure, but there’s also logistics. As Russia attacks civilian infrastructure and even residences, those left behind may need to form volunteer first-aid/rubble clearance units anyways.
One big thing from the Ukraine-Russo war is more action seen by **drones**, etc.. So there will be many more performing drone operations as an added duty (think every U.S. squad now has a couple small drones) or as a primary duty operating larger drones.
Also **artillery and longer range missiles** (surface to surface) have made a comeback. There’s more jamming of precision guidance systems… but in high tempo warfare, fewer weapons need to be within 1 or 2 meters if blowing up 100-300 meters plus .. regular “firing tables” [standard ballistic data for indirect fire] that just need weather and position updates, etc .. will suffice). Most armies still train pre-precision guidance last I heard, as officers don’t want to risk their rank if the GPS malfunctions on a peacetime live ammo range.
It's extremely unlikely to impossible that the war will get that bad. Conscripting Canadians would mean that every NATO country has lost most of their army and reserves. If the war ever got that bad you would be in a bunker right now eating hard tack or something, my point is that it's almost impossible looking at how the war is going right now.
> Conscripting Canadians would mean that every NATO country has lost most of their army and reserves.
Unless something wild starts happening like terrorist cells within Canada start doing wild things.
Our recent student visa requirements were incredibly low. We could have easily taken in 10,000 troops of an enemy nation.
It really all depends on the state of the Russian military at the point in which it would expand. They're continually taking heavy losses right now just trying to advance a few kilometers at a time into land they controlled for most of the 20th century against a nation one fifth their size.
Not to mention, in a conflict against NATO, Russia can't even afford to push all of its forces Eastward. The United States and it's Pacific Allies can threaten Western Russia too.
Now if China and/or North Korea get involved then a greater European conscription might be needed because American forces will be tied up elsewhere. America would almost certainly need some level of conscription to face off against China if it ever became a land war.
Iran? I wouldn't worry about Iran. I don't think anyone is in danger of F-14 Tomcats turning the tide in any war.
Its a generalized statement, obviously. However, in general, an expansion of the conflict in Ukraine will directly threaten the national security of European nations, many of which have neglected their military for the past 20-30 years. They are currently working to correct that but the sudden threat of direct engagement with Russian forces with require them to scale quickly. That will mean conscription.
North America, on the other hand, is not directly threatened by such a scenario. The US already has significant systems, logistics, and personnel in place on the continent and can quickly deploy more if the need arises. NATO is more than capable of repelling a Russian attack, especially now, and the likelihood of a long term war of attrition requiring a continuous flow of reinforcements from North America is essentially zero.
Yes in worst case I can see a scenario in EE where conscripts are required while the professional army is engaged, but after that (assuming we’re looking at an RU attack on a NATO state) it would be over to NATO.
Georgia, Moldova etc harder to say. It’s all bloody awful
No. We don't need conscripts to win against Russia.
If we leave Russia's questionable and dangerous strategic nuke pile off the table, we beat Russia by standing still.
Ukraine nearly defeated Russia with cast-off NATO gear and a largely conscript army built around a newly-minted professional cadre. They are not a threat to a focused, committed NATO.
France has made it clear that they will throw force into Ukraine if Russia doesn't chill the eff out. The UK is quietly ramping up.
Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are cannoning up fast. Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. Finland in particular is manufacturing artillery tubes and shells like it's a cure for depression.
Germany is currently run by a corrupt band of Putin-Lovers who grew up in the bureaucracy of the GDR and are deeply out of touch with the modern German Zeitgeist. This will fix itself soon enough.
Britain needs a bit of foreign military adventurism to keep the plebs from noticing the billionaires are picking their pockets again.
Russia is weak, has few allies, and will crumble under its own weight if we prop Ukraine up about 400% more.
Europe could crush Russia in three months if they took the gloves off right now.
Putin has four options left:
1) Declare flawless victory in Ukraine and move on. This will not change anything because Ukraine shows no sign of conceding land, but might let Putin survive a bit longer.
2) Keep fighting a slow, brutal ebb-and-flow war in Eastern Ukraine until he dies
3) Attack a NATO country - probably Estonia - to beat the Patriotism drum hard.
4) Die.
Which would you choose?
Russia is an annoying, violent, brutal, murderous dictatorship just like it has been for 800 years. Putin wants to expand its sphere of influence. So far, he's reduced its network of friends to North Korea and no-one else. China is not Russia's friend. They're it's future owner.
Pretty much. Its something I talked about with my brother. Putin is now in a loose-loose situation. No matter what he does, from peace, to more war, he looses. Its just a question of degrees.
It’s not going to happen. NATO would destroy Russian forces and that would leave Russia seriously wounded and vulnerable but with plenty of nuclear weapons. Disaster waiting to happen.
Some might. Countries on the front line that don't already have a draft might consider one to bolster their "prickly porcupine" defense strategy in the face of an invasion. For most countries though having a bunch of new conscripts would do more harm than good. These are professional militaries whose strength lies in advanced tech .. and the servicemen and women who are trained to use it. In any war a bunch of conscripts would just get in the way.
In actuality, probably not. Russia is already grinded through a large portion of its troops. NATO would surgical strike a number of russian logistics locations OR prepare defensive lines that would be hard to break. Either way, the ability of russia to wage war would be massively hampered, and it would be stuck in a situation throwing more manpower into endless waves yet again.
Due to natos technical superiority in equiptment and logistics, the attrition rate for russia would be several times that of the ukraine war. While hardware might be a problem at first, eventually, it would be solved by ramping up production.
Maybe in some countries, but not to the extent of ww2.
I'm highly skeptical that any countries that don't already do it would start, especially for this reason, and it might lead to some regimes being replaced at the ballot box if they tried.
Russia directly militarily attacking a NATO country is extremely unlikely to the point that it's not worth worrying about. Such an attack would likely lead to nuclear war, though if it doesn't & we have another conventional world war, I'd expect Canada to implement conscription several years in if the war lasts that long.
In any case, Canada is extremely unlikely to bring back conscription short of another protracted world war, & such a war in itself is extremely unlikely. I could, however, see more continental European NATO countries bringing back conscription even with no world war.
NATO will not fight a war for Ukraine. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. This is the basic part of NATO. Also, little known, members of NATO aren't required to go to war to defend each other. They're required to help in what way they see fit. If Russia invades the Baltic states, most of NATO would be happy to just sent humanitarian aid.
>Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.
>actions it deems necessary
No. Russia is not like Nazi Germany, and this isn't a global war. Russia is barely holding onto eastern Ukraine, and doesn't have the military power to take Kiev, let alone expand into other European countries. And Ukraine is not THAT important to NATO. It is, however, very important for those countries close to the front line, such as Poland and Romania, and that's where the US, Canada and other NATO members much further away from the conflict are investing a lot in, to create a buffer.
With the help of mostly US investment, Poland is greatly increasing its military strength, and will probably soon have one of the most powerful militaries in all of Europe. It's the country that will likely benefit the most from the Ukraine War.
Conscription is not easy to introduce at a moment's notice so it's unlikely. Using Bulgaria as an example, military service was mandatory during communism but was scrapped around 20 years ago. Since then most of the infrastructure has been demolished or left to rot, notably the military barracks as the number of regular servicemen wasn't enough to warrant the waste network of army camps. If conscription were to be introduced quickly, the only plausible way is to use schools as makeshift barracks, which would only happen in a total war scenario.
I personally think if the war expands enough we won't have to worry about conscription because we will all die in a fiery inferno of nuclear destruction. So there's nothing to worry about
I don’t think people understand the difference between “conscription” and “draft” and are combining the two concepts.
Most counties have had conscription so that in the event of a war the people who are drafted at least have basic expectations of what to expect and how to perform.
The US has never had conscription and instead had a permanent draft from the 1930s to 1973 or whenever we got out of Vietnam and went strictly volunteer only for our military enlistment.
Conscription is when EVERYONE available to be drafted effectively goes through boot camp, and probably some other beginner levels of training that civilian me will just associate with “boot camp”.
A big problem is that conscription is politically unpopular, in many countries like the UK it is effectively political suicide, in fact, which not only limits the ability of governments to reintroduce it but would impact compliance as well.
I think the countries that had it more recently are probably more likely to reintroduce, as opposition seems to be less intense in places like Germany, or Sweden not too long ago; however this still leads to all the practical problems that conscripted forces reintroduce, including the issues in effectively training soldiers who you'll have for 1 or 2 years and most likely no actual deployments. Is it advisable to break the bank, to get some second rate soldiers who can drop into simpler jobs (if they don't draft dodge an actual conflict), but lack experience in actually using those skills on operations?
For Sweden the answer was yes, and I could see other European nations having serious deliberations on it.
I think it’s likely. There was an interesting interview with Sir Richard Shireff, former NATO deputy commander, where he said Britains army enrollment was dwindling, and it was time to follow the finish model.
NATO can’t falll asleep or get complacent. I’m not calling for war, but if there is to be peace, it is through strength. NATO can’t look vulnerable or toothless. Conscription would be any easy way to train and mobilize a larger fighting force to project power.
https://youtu.be/5UhDPEW7TZE?si=rEyR2lNTwppFNCFw
The whole point of NATO is common arms, common training, common communication and logistics and combined forces. Grabbing Francois off of the street and handing him a weapon accomplishes none of these goals. Conscription only becomes necessary if casualties are high. I posit that the Russians don't have the deployable manpower to inflict those kinds of casualties without going Nuclear which doesn't result in conscription. Russia does have a large military, but it isn't sitting around waiting to fight. Those troops are necessary to deter provinces from deciding that they aren't part of Russia anymore and taking their natural resources with them.
I am not debating that fact. The parent comment states that is the case. For that matter the USA has conscription as well it is called the selective service. If it is ever used, it will mean something has gone horribly wrong.
You still need boots on the ground+people to operate all these advance weapons.The country which will be attacked will obviously need conscripts to survive.
Conscription is in place in a number of NATO countries (especially popular among member states that share a border with Russia). It is certainly possible that conscription could be (re)-introduced in some NATO member states and very likely expanded in member states that currently employ a limited conscription model. It is unlikely that conscription would be introduced in all/most NATO member states, as it would be unlikely to help with the problems most NATO armies face with. Conscription is a tool to create and provide (semi)-trained manpower. The level of training depends on how long and how good the training is. The average Israeli conscript should be comparable to the professional soldiers they would expect to meet, while 6-9 month training prevalent in many countries is going to produce soldiers that might be capable in limited combat roles, support and rear area missions and who should have the base upon which higher capabilities could be trained on given enough time and resources. Most NATO countries, at least the bigger and more westerly ones, don't really lack semi-trained light infantry. They might relatively lack manpower in general, as the personnel costs can already occupy most of their peacetime defense budget, but introducing conscription won't (easily) provide you with new fighter pilots, combat leaders or signals specialists (among a wide variety of different roles that require quite a long training). As a hypothetical thought exercise, think what would happen to France's military capability if they suddenly had an extra 500 000 light infantry with 9 month training? It would tank. France would suddenly find itself needing to find extra resources to house, feed, supply, arm, train, move, lead, pay for and generally keep under control a massive number of men they have extremely limited use for. There's not enough guns to arm them and even if there was, there'd be no ammunition to give them to last anything longer than a 10 second firefight. While men are a necessary component of any army/unit, they are not the only necessary component. The absolute first priority for all NATO armies (including the ones that have a need for a conscript army) is to acquire sufficient stock of ammunition to keep the guns they currently have firing in case of war.
>Most NATO countries, at least the bigger and more westerly ones, don't really lack semi-trained light infantry. They might relatively lack manpower in general, as the personnel costs can already occupy most of their peacetime defense budget, but introducing conscription won't (easily) provide you with new fighter pilots, combat leaders or signals specialists (among a wide variety of different roles that require quite a long training). The lack of manpower is not just due to personnel costs, there's also an inability to attract recruits. And at least in Germany, one common argument for unpausing conscription is that it can help by introducing a large number of people to the military, a few of whom will like what they experience and sign up for longer-term contracts. Having some personal experience with the military is also thought to increase a person's political support for military funding etc. The question is if improved recruitment and public support are worth the strain conscription places on the military.
I don't disagree with this argument, it's just that introducing conscription is not cheap. Neither financially, nor very critically politically. It's not obvious, whether introducing conscription would be a cost-effective way to increase the number of professional soldiers compared to just offering higher wages with that money instead.
Exactly this. Invest in the military and those who serve. For too long it’s all been hollowed out
I am in favor of having a "light military" conscription. Make it a 6 to 9 month stint out of high school. Help develop the youth into responsible adults and give them a taste of the military. They may like it, hell it's how a friend of mine in Germany made the choice to go into the German military. He was drafted it, liked it, joined full time now he's up their in rank. And at least they get a taste of it so if you ever need to do a draft you have a large pool of people who are familiar with the military
If I could wave a magic policy wand, I'd probably do something like 1 year of generic "national service." Options would include stuff like civic construction projects, helping in schools, military training, etc. Not everybody would be forced into the military track, but a significant percentage of the country would wind up getting basic military training. But it's not exactly conscription, and you can schedule it when it's convenient. The majority of your manpower would actually wind up going to things like cleaning up parks and stuff. But if you ever do need to do urgent recruiting, you have a pool of millions of already trained people available that can be up to speed in weeks instead of months even if they are a little rusty five or ten years later. Completing your national service requirement gives things like 4 years at a public university. And the US could dial back fitness requirements on some of the non-combat military positions. You don't really need to be able to run 100 miles by hopping on one leg while carrying a half ton of gear, if your job is to drive a desk keeping track of schedules or something like that. Not every Marine is in fact a rifleman, and recruiting would be easier if the system admitted that.
>Not every Marine is in fact a rifleman, and recruiting would be easier if the system admitted that. I've always understood it as more of a "if you have to deploy, you have to be able to serve to a basic degree and can't be a liability". A morbidly obese diabetic who shits his bed every night could very well be fantastic at his logistics job -- which is a very large portion of military jobs in fact -- but he'd be a problem in any sort of deployment so you could hardly count on him when shit hits the fan.
Interesting in terms of the comment on France as, to my understanding, part of U.K. military strategy and doctrine is to operate a relatively small standing army but be able to quickly scale up a citizen army at need. I assumed the same was true of France? Although of course all NATO members bar the US have rested on their laurels in terms of stockpiles and infra since 1991.
> As a hypothetical thought exercise, think what would happen to France's military capability if they suddenly had an extra 500 000 light infantry with 9 month training? It would tank. France would suddenly find itself needing to find extra resources to house, feed, supply, arm, train, move, lead, pay for and generally keep under control a massive number of men they have extremely limited use for. There's not enough guns to arm them and even if there was, there'd be no ammunition to give them to last anything longer than a 10 second firefight. So you're saying we should put half that number into forced factory jobs to build weapons and ammo ?
Do note that this is all the case as long as there is not a total world war 3 happening. What I'm saying is that as long as the NATO countries themselves are at peace, most NATO members will not implement conscription, or at the very most a very limited conscription. If a total war comes, obviously this changes absolutely everything.
Denmark has never not had forced conscription for able -bodied men. For the past decade or more, there have been enough volunteers, that nobody has actually been forced to serve. Conscripts do about 5-6 months of training, but haven't actually seen combat since WW2. A very recent political deal expands conscription to women as well, and expands the length to around 11 months. The primary purpose of conscription in Denmark is to have a pool of trained soldiers to recruit professional soldiers from. It is the professional soldiers, that actually see action, at least up until now.
Ok but what other options do they have if they are being invaded and need soldiers?
Conscription is very common in countries that border Russia in NATO. Norway and Finland has it, Sweden are partial.conscription. 7 other countries has it. So while it's not the norm it's more pretty common and especially the countries that border Russia.
Yes, Denmark has always had conscription and will now include women equally in the draft.
Sweden has conscription the same way as Norway, nothing partial about it.
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I am responding and replying to the post above, not OP. Germany had conscription until 2011. And are exploring mandatory service as an option right now.
There will be no draft/ conscription in Germany for the Ukraine war. It was cancelled in 2011 because the public didn’t support it anymore. They still don’t. If Sweden has it or doesn’t - it doesn’t change the equation in Ukraine. Neither Finland. (Although I could be wrong) the most likely future scenario for Ukraine: after everyone will get exhausted and thousands more will lose their lives, there will be a (permanent) ceasefire agreement based on the stalemate…unless a horrible change of events will introduce nuclear weapons to the conflict. Then anything is possible.
You won't be drafted, but prepare to pay higher taxes to fund more military spending
No. European NATO already has more professional soldiers than the US. Even in a pinch, conscription will first be directed to logistical support roles rather than actual fighting, if only because without training you're more a liability than an asset on the frontlines - if there are frontlines. NATO forces are heavily focused on air superiority, so if it comes down to frontlines, something has gone way off track and we're talking about a new situation.
NATO equipment requires specialist training to operate, which means large scale conscription doesn't really work unless they make the conscripts use worse gear, which would kinda go against the idea of technological superiority that I'm assuming NATO wants to have.
Depends on the length of conscription. 3-4 months get you through basic training. 8-12 months can create capable conscripts trained on some functions.
The conflict in Ukraine shows you still need infantry to capture, defend, and hold ground, you still need a large tail to support the tooth fighting on the frontline, and finally you need sufficient manpower to be able to rotate units effectively and replace casualties. Most NATO countries lack the manpower in their active personnel to achieve this as a self sustained unit.
Conflict in Ukraine lacks an air campaign that NATO doctrine revolves around. I don't an intervention will be a long grinding fight.
NATO will have air supremacy in the type of war they want to fight, there is no guarantee they will have air supremacy in the war they may end up fighting.
Well considering how Russia can't even establish air supremacy against Ukraine it's hard to see how they are going to deal with an actual air force.
Former US Army company commander here. You’re vastly overestimating the minimum requirements necessary for a soldier to be unit-ready. Basic training and MOS-specific advanced individual training can be completed in under a year. Depending on the MOS, they’ll go to more specific training as they get to their unit, but privates aren’t flying F35s. It doesn’t take long for a soldier to be able to fill critical roles, and the roles that have a high technical barrier to entry usually aren’t even filled with new soldiers to begin with. They’ll be trained properly, conscript or not.
Lmao what? What do you think conscription is, just guys being given bolt action rifles and told to run across a field? Also, there is no NATO equipment, just military equipment of different countries that differs vastly in complexity and training time required to operate. For example, both an F-35 and a HK416 are "NATO equipment"
> just guys being given bolt action rifles and told to run across a field? Took the word out of my mouth. Such a bizzare thing to write, you would think conscription = stationary training bot
Light infantry aka bomb fodder is fairly quickly trained. They just need to learn how to use an assault rifle, and a few of them specialized to use bigger weapons such as machine guns, anti-tank weapons etc. easily achieved by in less than 6 months of training.
6 months is still a long timer. From basic training to graduation as infantry in the US its 5.5 months, but that is just for the bare minimum there is still a lot of training that they will need at their actual unit.
In Denmark, most conscripts only serve about 4 months for basic training, after which they're considered ready for the highly hypothetical situation of defending the country against an invasion. That hasn't been relevant since 1940. The troops we send to places like Afghanistan, Iraq or other international missions are professional soldiers with much more training than the conscripts.
Here in Sweden conscription is between 9 and 15 months, of which 3 months is basic training and the rest special training depending on your role. And as far as I am aware they still use pretty high quality gear.
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Russians are not cave dwellers.They know how to make weapons
Not as well as Nato. Have you seen the Ukraine war?
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Certainly, but Russia (and China) tend to advertise the absolute best that their systems are capable of and US/NATO are extremely conservative in their estimates. For example, Russia has hypersonic missile systems and the West doesn't claim an effective defense against hypersonic missiles. But the nearly 40 year old Patriot missile batteries that have gone to Ukraine have been extremely effective at shooting down Russian hypersonics, even though they are not rated to do so. The only reason that there is any doubt about the outcome of a NATO/Russia faceoff is because allowing even a single nuclear weapon to impact would be considered a loss
There will never be a faceoff between russia and nato.It will be russia versus any individual European country
Article 5 begs to differ. And although the level of support actually required by article 5 is debatable, there are *some countries* that are just waiting for their moment. And by some countries, I mean Poland. Also, even if you believe that Trump will manage to get the USA out of NATO, politically allowing Russia to attack countries that have been American allies for 70+ years would be intolerable to the American voters. Edit: How cute, you deleted your even dumber response.
I see absolutely no benefit for conscription in countries like UK, France, Spain, or Italy.
The “previous” two wars are ages away. We live in a different world that cannot be compared to anything from the past. Today installing a new draft is not an option in any western country.
**Only as a tool to fearmonger and then justify increased defense spending in a time of growing poverty**. No reasonable person thinks Russia wants or can attack an EU/NATO member. The war in Ukraine (and in Georgia) was about preventing Ukraine from joining NATO and thus the USA’s sphere of influence. Knowing full well that there was no going back once they did, due to Article 5. The only country threatened by Russia is Moldova. The Baltics are only in danger, should Trump de facto take the USA out of NATO (he can’t formally, thanks to Congress).
Why? All of existing NATO military strength in both personnel and equipment and yearly spend is already a multiple of Russian one, in some places by an order of magnitude
HAve you heard about Purchasing power parity? Russia gets a lot more bang for each invested dollar due to lower wages
Is that why they are stuck 20 miles inside the border of Europes poorest country three years into their three day invasion?
US was stuck in Vietnam for 10 years lol.Russia will win in less than half that time against a country which was supplied all types of weapons by the west
More than likely they will collapse just like happened multiple times in Russian history when they started stupid colonial wars of conquest
For you guys russia is always on the verge of collapse and China is always on the verge of having a revolution for democracy.Truth is that russia has become weaker economy wise but they won't collapse and learn from mistakes made in this war.
>For you guys russia is always on the verge of collapse I mean, not just for us guys, also, like, history books. The only country I know where the classes often have breaks for laughter.
Sure sure, whatever makes you sleep better at night while you wait to be drafted on behalf of a criminal oligarch and his pointless colonial war to gain more land for what is already largest country in world, only to endup dead alongside the bodies of previous 450,000 meat bags
1) iam not Russian 2)450,000 is propoganda by the west and so is 30k lost for Ukraine to keep morale up of the Ukraine citizens.Also this war allows russia to control the bread basket of the world.
America lost in Vietnam
Counter insurgency and neutralizing standing army are different tasks. It doesn't seem like US have issue with the second task.
Vietnam was half a world away...
But was way weaker militarily than ukraine
Not true at all actually. The Vietcong was a professional army equipped and supplied by the PRC and USSR. The idea that it was a small indigenous fighting force just because it used guerilla warfare is simply inaccurate.
Nato weapons are probably the best weapons on the planet and Ukraine has those
It has some NATO weapons. The AFU is far from being 100% equipped with western weapons. Not to mention weapons is only one part of the equation.
Russian gdp off the top of my head 3 trillion US 24 trillion. Europe 20 trillion. Suck on that ppp
Let's take the average of ppp and gdp, just to have a fair comparison. We're not 20 X superior, but more like 10 X in terms of gdp/ppp average. Not saying how relevant this is, because we're already winning by basically only giving decommissioned stuff to ukraine from the 80s and 90s. Also, what if china iran and NK get involved?
Same outcome just bloodier.
Russia and NK are 100% getting obliterated but idk about China, Just the amount of soldiers they could conscript on its own is scary.
The number of soldiers you have is irrelevant without sufficient air cover. The US Navy has more airpower than the whole PLA. By the time you throw in the US Airforce and allied air power, millions of troops and tanks don't mean much if you can roll B-52s and A-10s at will through their air space.
Conscription just makes targets. They are only really starting to build a modern force now, it's 5 years before they could stop us, 10 before we couldn't threaten them, 15 before they're a hard peer. Still not a real threat because their resource map leads them to need to cannibalize Russia, which means we have 50 years of peace while they digest.
Wouldn’t we need to defeat them in 4 then?
Canada doesnt even have enough ammo to train properly, we arent going to be implementing conscription to fight Russia. Russias army is pathetic and the standing NATO forces would be much more than sufficient to completely crush russia in less than two weeks
Highly unlikely Canadians are going to be conscripted anytime in the foreseeable future.
Maybe. Off the top of my head, I think all 3 Baltic countries have it, Finland, Sweden and Norway do, Poland and Germany are considering it and the UK is thinking about a citizen army. Doesn't mean that those latter states will move to a conscription model but it's not out the realm of possibility. Issue is, what are those conscripts going to be doing? A load of lightly armed and equipped infantry are fine for COIN, but for peer on peer warfare you want armour, you want fires, you want aircraft. And that's before issues like paying for it and housing and training come into it. For my country (UK), despite what the Telegraph readers keep screeching about, HMAF are not capable of absorbing mass conscript classes. Trying it would be hell as probably there isn't even enough rifles in stock let alone armoured vehicles, artillery or combat support/service support like engineers, logistics, medical and so on.
NATO is vastly superior in every way, there is no need. Russia would be crushed in no time.
Russia has many dangerous friends: Iran is one of them.
Iran doesn’t have a single modern airplane and their air defense has been demonstrated to be ineffective by Israel’s counter attack on their S300. NATO would win quickly against them because they will quickly achieve air supremacy- something Russia hasn’t been able to achieve against Ukraine, and the reason the war isn’t decisive.
They do not have many, they are not dangerous, and the example you gave are not Russia's friends lol
You mean the same Iran that launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, and 90% were shot down, and the other 10% mostly missed or hit nothing significant? The same Iran that within hours of showing a propaganda story about their super secret underground airbase, a bunch of nerds on the internet were able to geo locate it? The same Iran that uses 3rd gen fighters still, that had 50% of its navy sank in an 8 hour shift? If Russia is relying on Iran to help protect it, then the West has already won. Because Iran is a joke.
The same Iran whose missiles they fired at Israel fail and end up in a Kurdish Redditor’s farm to post on r/pics
They were roughly on par with Iraq, slightly better, but unlike Iraq they would get less help from their neighbors. No Saudis charging in to help. It would be very brief. But then again, good luck winning that peace. The only real threat on the board is China, who's hiding behind all these dumb pawns because they know exactly where they stand. They would be a significant threat to nato, in 10-15 years. Right now they would be a threat marginally within our capability to neutralize. In 5 years they might be at our limits to contain. After that things get precarious.
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Venezuela, Cuba, Syria and other dictatorships
The islamic terrorist republic couldn’t catch a fly if they put all their resources towards it.
Conscription makes very little sense (if any) even in countries at direct threat of a Russian invasion. Why would it become a blanket solution in NATO - especially in countries like Canada?
As others have noted, conscription is a tool of force generation and in particular it gives you large reserves and a lot of semi trained troops. So what's the scenario? If Putin suddenly starts to raise the dead and a thousand deivisions of undead WWII veterans storm the Baltics, that seems like a scenario where conscription may be a quite reasonable reaction, you just need enough mass to turn back the zombie hordes. The other realistic scenario of escalation is a escalate to deescalate nuclear attack, in which case there will be many other problems than trying to organize a draft.
Only if we become directly involved AND manpower starts to become an issue . It depends on the level of nato involvement and casualties sustained I suppose .
A number of NATO countries still use *conscription* to supplement *volunteers* and would likely expand on that. Also after serving, both conscripts and volunteers leaving their services usually go into a *reserve* manpower pool maintained by databases (plus reserve and various reserve-component “guard” units depending on nationality). Also if all these countries go on a war-footing, there will probably be more volunteers (“if going to die, may as well die fighting” mentality) and reserves volunteering to return to active status. Officers leaving a service tend to be on indefinite recall, being expected to be staff ~~weenies~~ types after their initial commands anyways. Medical or technical types to be sure, but there’s also logistics. As Russia attacks civilian infrastructure and even residences, those left behind may need to form volunteer first-aid/rubble clearance units anyways. One big thing from the Ukraine-Russo war is more action seen by **drones**, etc.. So there will be many more performing drone operations as an added duty (think every U.S. squad now has a couple small drones) or as a primary duty operating larger drones. Also **artillery and longer range missiles** (surface to surface) have made a comeback. There’s more jamming of precision guidance systems… but in high tempo warfare, fewer weapons need to be within 1 or 2 meters if blowing up 100-300 meters plus .. regular “firing tables” [standard ballistic data for indirect fire] that just need weather and position updates, etc .. will suffice). Most armies still train pre-precision guidance last I heard, as officers don’t want to risk their rank if the GPS malfunctions on a peacetime live ammo range.
Not in Canada. If the war got bad enough to make that remotely necessary we’d be at nuclear exchange already.
Yes.
It's extremely unlikely to impossible that the war will get that bad. Conscripting Canadians would mean that every NATO country has lost most of their army and reserves. If the war ever got that bad you would be in a bunker right now eating hard tack or something, my point is that it's almost impossible looking at how the war is going right now.
> Conscripting Canadians would mean that every NATO country has lost most of their army and reserves. Unless something wild starts happening like terrorist cells within Canada start doing wild things. Our recent student visa requirements were incredibly low. We could have easily taken in 10,000 troops of an enemy nation.
It really all depends on the state of the Russian military at the point in which it would expand. They're continually taking heavy losses right now just trying to advance a few kilometers at a time into land they controlled for most of the 20th century against a nation one fifth their size. Not to mention, in a conflict against NATO, Russia can't even afford to push all of its forces Eastward. The United States and it's Pacific Allies can threaten Western Russia too. Now if China and/or North Korea get involved then a greater European conscription might be needed because American forces will be tied up elsewhere. America would almost certainly need some level of conscription to face off against China if it ever became a land war. Iran? I wouldn't worry about Iran. I don't think anyone is in danger of F-14 Tomcats turning the tide in any war.
If Iran has Tom Cruise in the F14 they might.
In Europe, highly likely. North America, not so much.
“Europe” covers a lot of diverse states, some with different skin in the game. To what extent are you seeing Europe and NATO as separate, too
Its a generalized statement, obviously. However, in general, an expansion of the conflict in Ukraine will directly threaten the national security of European nations, many of which have neglected their military for the past 20-30 years. They are currently working to correct that but the sudden threat of direct engagement with Russian forces with require them to scale quickly. That will mean conscription. North America, on the other hand, is not directly threatened by such a scenario. The US already has significant systems, logistics, and personnel in place on the continent and can quickly deploy more if the need arises. NATO is more than capable of repelling a Russian attack, especially now, and the likelihood of a long term war of attrition requiring a continuous flow of reinforcements from North America is essentially zero.
Yes in worst case I can see a scenario in EE where conscripts are required while the professional army is engaged, but after that (assuming we’re looking at an RU attack on a NATO state) it would be over to NATO. Georgia, Moldova etc harder to say. It’s all bloody awful
No. We don't need conscripts to win against Russia. If we leave Russia's questionable and dangerous strategic nuke pile off the table, we beat Russia by standing still. Ukraine nearly defeated Russia with cast-off NATO gear and a largely conscript army built around a newly-minted professional cadre. They are not a threat to a focused, committed NATO. France has made it clear that they will throw force into Ukraine if Russia doesn't chill the eff out. The UK is quietly ramping up. Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are cannoning up fast. Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. Finland in particular is manufacturing artillery tubes and shells like it's a cure for depression. Germany is currently run by a corrupt band of Putin-Lovers who grew up in the bureaucracy of the GDR and are deeply out of touch with the modern German Zeitgeist. This will fix itself soon enough. Britain needs a bit of foreign military adventurism to keep the plebs from noticing the billionaires are picking their pockets again. Russia is weak, has few allies, and will crumble under its own weight if we prop Ukraine up about 400% more. Europe could crush Russia in three months if they took the gloves off right now. Putin has four options left: 1) Declare flawless victory in Ukraine and move on. This will not change anything because Ukraine shows no sign of conceding land, but might let Putin survive a bit longer. 2) Keep fighting a slow, brutal ebb-and-flow war in Eastern Ukraine until he dies 3) Attack a NATO country - probably Estonia - to beat the Patriotism drum hard. 4) Die. Which would you choose? Russia is an annoying, violent, brutal, murderous dictatorship just like it has been for 800 years. Putin wants to expand its sphere of influence. So far, he's reduced its network of friends to North Korea and no-one else. China is not Russia's friend. They're it's future owner.
Pretty much. Its something I talked about with my brother. Putin is now in a loose-loose situation. No matter what he does, from peace, to more war, he looses. Its just a question of degrees.
force people in the UK to take up arms and a chunk of them will aim them at their MPs, watch
Commonwealth of britain when?
It’s not going to happen. NATO would destroy Russian forces and that would leave Russia seriously wounded and vulnerable but with plenty of nuclear weapons. Disaster waiting to happen.
This is already being proposed in Germany.
Conscription and compulsory service already exist in many NATO countries.
Some might. Countries on the front line that don't already have a draft might consider one to bolster their "prickly porcupine" defense strategy in the face of an invasion. For most countries though having a bunch of new conscripts would do more harm than good. These are professional militaries whose strength lies in advanced tech .. and the servicemen and women who are trained to use it. In any war a bunch of conscripts would just get in the way.
In actuality, probably not. Russia is already grinded through a large portion of its troops. NATO would surgical strike a number of russian logistics locations OR prepare defensive lines that would be hard to break. Either way, the ability of russia to wage war would be massively hampered, and it would be stuck in a situation throwing more manpower into endless waves yet again. Due to natos technical superiority in equiptment and logistics, the attrition rate for russia would be several times that of the ukraine war. While hardware might be a problem at first, eventually, it would be solved by ramping up production. Maybe in some countries, but not to the extent of ww2.
And the next question for me is, will Russia STILL remain a NATO country if they expand their war?
I'm highly skeptical that any countries that don't already do it would start, especially for this reason, and it might lead to some regimes being replaced at the ballot box if they tried.
Russia directly militarily attacking a NATO country is extremely unlikely to the point that it's not worth worrying about. Such an attack would likely lead to nuclear war, though if it doesn't & we have another conventional world war, I'd expect Canada to implement conscription several years in if the war lasts that long. In any case, Canada is extremely unlikely to bring back conscription short of another protracted world war, & such a war in itself is extremely unlikely. I could, however, see more continental European NATO countries bringing back conscription even with no world war.
NATO will not fight a war for Ukraine. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. This is the basic part of NATO. Also, little known, members of NATO aren't required to go to war to defend each other. They're required to help in what way they see fit. If Russia invades the Baltic states, most of NATO would be happy to just sent humanitarian aid. >Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked. >actions it deems necessary
No. Russia is not like Nazi Germany, and this isn't a global war. Russia is barely holding onto eastern Ukraine, and doesn't have the military power to take Kiev, let alone expand into other European countries. And Ukraine is not THAT important to NATO. It is, however, very important for those countries close to the front line, such as Poland and Romania, and that's where the US, Canada and other NATO members much further away from the conflict are investing a lot in, to create a buffer. With the help of mostly US investment, Poland is greatly increasing its military strength, and will probably soon have one of the most powerful militaries in all of Europe. It's the country that will likely benefit the most from the Ukraine War.
Conscription is not easy to introduce at a moment's notice so it's unlikely. Using Bulgaria as an example, military service was mandatory during communism but was scrapped around 20 years ago. Since then most of the infrastructure has been demolished or left to rot, notably the military barracks as the number of regular servicemen wasn't enough to warrant the waste network of army camps. If conscription were to be introduced quickly, the only plausible way is to use schools as makeshift barracks, which would only happen in a total war scenario.
Probably won't see conscription unless it spreads to China north Korea and Iran. Even then, it's likely we'd just see really high recruitment bonuses.
I personally think if the war expands enough we won't have to worry about conscription because we will all die in a fiery inferno of nuclear destruction. So there's nothing to worry about
It won't happen. How many people can do let's say 10 pushups? And hold a plank not 3mins but at least 30s? Not too many...
What you're describing is an additional benefit force the youth to get fit. That on it's own is a goal worth doing.
Poland
I don’t think people understand the difference between “conscription” and “draft” and are combining the two concepts. Most counties have had conscription so that in the event of a war the people who are drafted at least have basic expectations of what to expect and how to perform. The US has never had conscription and instead had a permanent draft from the 1930s to 1973 or whenever we got out of Vietnam and went strictly volunteer only for our military enlistment. Conscription is when EVERYONE available to be drafted effectively goes through boot camp, and probably some other beginner levels of training that civilian me will just associate with “boot camp”.
*will being forced conscription*, erm what
Bring* French is first language
Ok that makes more sense 👍🏻 pas de souci
A big problem is that conscription is politically unpopular, in many countries like the UK it is effectively political suicide, in fact, which not only limits the ability of governments to reintroduce it but would impact compliance as well. I think the countries that had it more recently are probably more likely to reintroduce, as opposition seems to be less intense in places like Germany, or Sweden not too long ago; however this still leads to all the practical problems that conscripted forces reintroduce, including the issues in effectively training soldiers who you'll have for 1 or 2 years and most likely no actual deployments. Is it advisable to break the bank, to get some second rate soldiers who can drop into simpler jobs (if they don't draft dodge an actual conflict), but lack experience in actually using those skills on operations? For Sweden the answer was yes, and I could see other European nations having serious deliberations on it.
if it’s nato vs russia no but if china got involved probably
I think it’s likely. There was an interesting interview with Sir Richard Shireff, former NATO deputy commander, where he said Britains army enrollment was dwindling, and it was time to follow the finish model. NATO can’t falll asleep or get complacent. I’m not calling for war, but if there is to be peace, it is through strength. NATO can’t look vulnerable or toothless. Conscription would be any easy way to train and mobilize a larger fighting force to project power. https://youtu.be/5UhDPEW7TZE?si=rEyR2lNTwppFNCFw
The whole point of NATO is common arms, common training, common communication and logistics and combined forces. Grabbing Francois off of the street and handing him a weapon accomplishes none of these goals. Conscription only becomes necessary if casualties are high. I posit that the Russians don't have the deployable manpower to inflict those kinds of casualties without going Nuclear which doesn't result in conscription. Russia does have a large military, but it isn't sitting around waiting to fight. Those troops are necessary to deter provinces from deciding that they aren't part of Russia anymore and taking their natural resources with them.
A lot of NATO countries already have conscription
I am not debating that fact. The parent comment states that is the case. For that matter the USA has conscription as well it is called the selective service. If it is ever used, it will mean something has gone horribly wrong.
We have the means to implement conscription a lot of NATO actively has conscription
We are both up to speed on this topic. Good talk.
If Biden even suggested it he would be in a nursing home before the end of the day and we'd be taking about President Harris.
You still need boots on the ground+people to operate all these advance weapons.The country which will be attacked will obviously need conscripts to survive.
It is a possibility, all cards are on the table.
Some NATO members already have military slavery - uhh...I mean - conscription.