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Sweden brings back military conscription

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#141

Post by literallycancer »

avn2109 wrote: post #53
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…

>> "What do you do if they sort of do what they're told, but not really putting any effort into it?" You transfer them to some variant of a penal battalion. Simon Murray has a good description of this (from the French Foreign Legion) in [0]. During his stint in the Legion, the generic punishment was having to run around carrying heavy rocks in a backpack that has wire straps, coupled with sleep deprivation. It sounds…

You mean it sounds like torture?

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#142

Post by nkrisc »

thedevil wrote: post #39
nkrisc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't cite propaganda to support that conclusion, precisely because it's propaganda.

I see propaganda as very indicative of future conflicts, especially in countries like Russia, where the news stories are more heavily influenced by the government. I think propaganda is necessary to support a war effort (and avoid insurrection). Think of it this way: If you're a soldier and your government tells you to invade a random country with nice people, how willing are you to fight? On the other hand, if your…

The point I was making is a lack of propaganda to support a war against a target country doesn't necessarily indicate that country isn't a target, just that the propaganda machine might not yet want to make that country a appear as a target.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#143

Post by qaq »

zilean wrote: post #134
qaq wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 powe…

"Or North Kazakhstan" :) you don't watch Russian news much do you?

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#144

Post by RobertoG »

crystalmeph wrote: post #105
BurningFrog wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afghanistan was easily conquered by both the USSR and the US.

For certain values of "conquered." The "bad guys" never seem to be completely conquered, and still enjoy significant freedom of movement and access to supply lines.

the conquered are the "bad guys"?

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#145

Post by pilsetnieks »

zmb_ wrote: post #89
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.

> 200k dudes with guns Conscript military doesn't mean that you just teach everyone to dig a hole and sit in it with a rifle. You train conscripts into every role you need in a 200k strong modern military. Including operators and maintainers of the hi-tech death machines, sigint operatives, radar operators, tank crews, missile forces, officers of all kinds, and yes, the guys that dig holes and sit in them with rifles…

You literally cannot use conscripts for anything of "operators and maintainers of the hi-tech death machines, sigint operatives, radar operators, tank crews, missile forces, officers." First of all, most of them take at least a year to get up to speed, if not more, and they have to maintain their competence. You cannot just release a conscript after his year long stint, and call him up ten years later - the ten year old tech he was trained on will probably have been replaced, and even if not, he'd have forgotten most of his training. Oh, and officers by their very definition cannot be conscripts.

So you're looking at guys to dig holes and sit in them with rifles and maybe some supporting jobs (administrative, kitchen, IT, construction, etc.)

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#146

Post by billpg »

iamatworknow wrote: post #99
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.

"killer slaves" is a bit dramatic.

But is it unfair?

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#147

Post by mrob »

zmb_ wrote: post #89
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.

> 200k dudes with guns Conscript military doesn't mean that you just teach everyone to dig a hole and sit in it with a rifle. You train conscripts into every role you need in a 200k strong modern military. Including operators and maintainers of the hi-tech death machines, sigint operatives, radar operators, tank crews, missile forces, officers of all kinds, and yes, the guys that dig holes and sit in them with rifles…

Conscription is slavery, and many conscripts will consider themselves to have a moral obligation to resist slavery. If you give them access to the whole military machine you greatly increase the opportunities for sabotage. With the traditional rifles in trenches style each individual conscript has very limited chance to fight back, and you can always call them traitors and murder them if they try.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#148

Post by throwaway-r »

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?

Frighten them with the prospect of being put into the penal battalion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NyI6krdZ08

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#150

Post by zilean »

qaq wrote: post #143
zilean wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 powe…

"Or North Kazakhstan" :) you don't watch Russian news much do you?

I dont watch news much. But that doesn't stops me from getting Ukraine from all sorts of angles for a long time (you have to justify Crimea).

I dont get much about NK from anyone but some ultra-right aligned personalities (but i am also getting stuff about Alaska from them, so there is that).

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