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Sweden brings back military conscription

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#131

Post by Nokinside »

entropyneur wrote: post #57

I am quite surprised by the number of people here (and even larger numbers elsewhere this is being discussed) who don't seem to have any ethical problem with conscription. Thought the idea of killer slaves was completely off limits in the West. Now all of a sudden we are debating cost effectiveness. Guess I thought wrong.

> ethical problem with conscription

None whatsoever.

Individual rights has real meaning only when others protect them.

Individual rights are never free.

You can have freedom of speech, movement, assembly and property rights only when the group you live in agrees that you have those things and protects them when you can't. When the existence of that groups existence or freedom to organize is threatened, it's time to pay retroactively for the rights you had and pay so that you can have them in the future.

In practice you can always serve unarmed or be in civil defense organization, but when whole nation prepares for self defense, everyone must make an effort.

I think professional armies are ethically more problematic. You create profession that fights and kills for your nation and government and it can be used to fight wars that are not that important or well thought. If war is not big national emergency, it's probably not a just war.

I think 'War Is a Racket' by Major General Smedley D Butler provides ethical solution. When there is a war, you conscript everything, people and profits. If one is not going to war, one works with the same pay as a conscript until the war is over. Business can't keep the profits until the war is over. This would take the ethical problems out from professional armies.

https://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#132

Post by jcranmer »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #113

I can give a bit of context. Mandatory military service in Sweden only ended in 2010, so this is not a huge change. During the cold was period, almost all men did ~1 year of military service. After that it was a regular job, but in case of war everyone could be conscripted. By the '90s it dropped to maybe 1/3 of young men. Everyone went to a 1-2 day testing session, and then some were selected. In practice, it became…

> One good argument for it is that a conscript army is unlikely to stage a military coup in a democracy.

Turkey has mandatory military service and suffered an attempted coup less than a year ago. Napoleon came to power in France after the levée en masse, really the first major mass conscription act in history. Egypt, last coup being ~4 years ago, again has mass conscription. As does Thailand. And Eritrea, Sudan, Chad, and Equatorial Guinea, although I don't know if mandatory military service dates back before the time of those coups.

Coups are often instigated by the officer class, whereas mass conscription is primarily used to fill out enlisted ranks. There's definitely room for the upper echelons of a military to support a coup while the lower echelons remain largely apathetic.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#133

Post by atom-morgan »

samcodes wrote: post #121
entropyneur wrote: post #57

I am quite surprised by the number of people here (and even larger numbers elsewhere this is being discussed) who don't seem to have any ethical problem with conscription. Thought the idea of killer slaves was completely off limits in the West. Now all of a sudden we are debating cost effectiveness. Guess I thought wrong.

What western military doesn't pay service members? Pretty sure you mean "a job, that rarely, but sometimes involves killing." There are many jobs like that: policing, security, and depending on your moral framework, murdering animals.

Parent comment said nothing about pay. It's about conscription.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#134

Post by zilean »

qaq wrote: post #92
zilean wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.rt.com/news/346287-sweden-russian-submarine-hunt... Russia has nothing to gain in baltic that it doesnt have with Kaliningrad. Same goes for Ukraine w/o Crimea.

Russia's whole propaganda machine is predicated on having Ukraine as integral part of Russia since they base their whole value system on promoting the view that Russia is continuation of Kievan Rus which is modern day Ukraine.

Russia is also considers itself (for a quite some hundreds of years) a successor to Byzantine Empire. That does not mean that they want, would or should take any land in that direction.

Ukraine is special not because Kiev has to be in Russia, but because a lot of the current Ukrainian land was for, again, some hundreds years Russian and have almost no sovereign history. That makes it easy to play by all sorts of powers and Government is really not the main one there. Just look at Alaska it never gets same attention. Or North Kazakhstan. Same would be with Ukraine in coming 50-100 years if they would be able to hold the country together.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#135

Post by thearn4 »

dvdhnt wrote: post #95
chrisseaton wrote: post #6

How do you motivate a conscript? When I was in the British Army, which is volunteer only, commanding a basic training troop if someone was wanted to give up we could say to them 'if this isn't for you then you can go home' (of course we did coach and mentor people to help them, I mean in cases where people just give up and stop soldiering when an exercise gets tough). They usually worked extremely hard to get into th…

This is a topic I've often contemplated. On deployment (US Army) I couldn't help but notice how counter-productive all the "amenities" actually were. I believe one of the driving factors behind individual military success in theater (aka war), in addition to protecting your peers and pride, is that urge to finish the fight so you can get home. Having Burger King and Subway stifles that sense of urgency, IMO. During w…

I was also in the US Army, and thought the same thing. There is a delicate balance between MWR and focusing on the mission. I don't have a great feeling on where that should be.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#136

Post by literallycancer »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #45
67726e wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, it worked for my uncle. The judge gave him the option to join the Marines or go to prison. He chose the former and he ended up becoming a productive member of society.

sounds like GoT, take the black or be executed. Still, I think this is a point in favor of conscription - there's a big generation of young adults that don't learn how to adult anymore, basic stuff like laundry, ironing, regular exercise, (self-) discipline, etc.

Why not have a laundry course then? Why force people who don't need it to waste time there?

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#137

Post by pm90 »

muninn_ wrote: post #66
DamnYuppie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need massive air and naval power to be very tough to attack. All you have to do is see the Afghan wars, both Russian and American, for great examples. They had no airforce and no need for naval forces. A large armed and mobile force is very able to put up solid resistance to pretty much anything you can throw at it save for nukes which will likely never be used.

Whatever military force was in Afghanistan never posed any sort of credible threat or resistance against the US military. The "resistance" that the US military faced came in terms of the US military wanting to try and recreate the society there, and having troops attacked while just driving around or facing resistance while conducting raids. If the US military wanted to, they could have easily destroyed every single…

You could basically say the same thing about any post WW2 engagement, but it means nothing. To wipe out all humans/buildings is an empty threat. Theoretically, the US could get rid of any country it didn't want by nuking them.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#138

Post by zilean »

mzs wrote: post #118
zilean wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cant just occupy country w/o sanctions, export/import chains breaking, you need to rebuild what would be inevitably destroyed during the invasion, etc.

Ukraine shows how much can be tolerated.

Well, Russian economy is still in recession. And Russian forces tecchnically never fired a gun in Ukraine or Crimea.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#139

Post by exDM69 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #6

How do you motivate a conscript? When I was in the British Army, which is volunteer only, commanding a basic training troop if someone was wanted to give up we could say to them 'if this isn't for you then you can go home' (of course we did coach and mentor people to help them, I mean in cases where people just give up and stop soldiering when an exercise gets tough). They usually worked extremely hard to get into th…

> How do you motivate a conscript?

When I was a conscript, it was relatively simple. Do as you are told or you don't go home for the weekend. Repeat your offense and you're not going home in a few months. Outright disobey your superiors and you're going to jail right now.

The alternatives for conscription was doing community service for about 2x the duration of the military service or face criminal charges with certain imprisonment.

It's pretty easy to get a medical discharge, though. It's much more common now than when I did my service.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#140

Post by pm90 »

cjslep wrote: post #85
BurningFrog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A credible deterrent in 2020 is not 200k dudes with guns. It's air and naval power. Expensive and complex hi tech death machines. Of course, a 10m country will never have a really credible defense against nuclear super power Russia by itself.

You would be interested in the Winter War between Finland and Soviet Russia in 1939. Finland absolutely outperformed the Red Army to such an extreme that it convinced Hitler invading Soviet Russia was not going to be a problem at all. Nothing more entertaining in my mind than Finns chucking logs into tank treads to disable an entire armored division. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

It wouldn't pan out that well today though. I don't see how Sweden could ever stand up to a modernized Russian military without external assistance. But they would probably fare better than Ukraine.
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