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…
>'if this isn't for you then you can go home' I did compulsory military service, including in a leadership role. "If you don't do what you're told, you don't get go home next weekend." Worked very well for conscripts, who usually get to go home for many weekends (unless on exercises). There are also many smaller privileges you can take a way for smaller infractions. Although when you have a defensive military that do…
Sweden brings back military conscription
271–280 of 418 posts
Re: Sweden brings back military conscription
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This anecdotal, but it was suggested that after the Dutch government suspended conscription, the military lost easy access to lots of highly educated people. There is quite a large group of people with a university degree who can very quickly pick up the theory behind complex systems. The same group group will not sign up voluntarily.
Re: Sweden brings back military conscription
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Conscription is a form of taxation. Many say taxation is slavery, but the argument doesn't hold very well.
Re: Sweden brings back military conscription
#275Re: Sweden brings back military conscription
#276Re: Sweden brings back military conscription
#277How 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…
Instead of practical motivators like weekend holidays and such, in more philosophical sense some of the better arguments in my opinion:
1. "So you don't feel like doing this and you want to go home. Consider this. If one day the shit gets real, are you sure there will be still home for you to return to afterwards?"
Many countries have Ministries of Defense and call their armed forces "defense forces". That sometimes makes me uncomfortable because the (not unintended) likeness to the Orwellian ministry naming scheme of 1984. However, compared to some countries, with some other countries a better case can be made that their military really exist for a defense of a political system against a potential immediate existential threat.
For example, South Korea still has conscription. European countries started moving to volunteer forces en masse only after the Cold War was over. Consider the political climate Sweden is in and why they suddenly think they need an army.
Of course, this is going to be as effective as credible the threat is and (more importantly) how willing the populace is to trust the their countries' political institutions. For example, looking at the map, Switzerland does not face any immediate military threats from its neighbors, but I understand that their conscript force is reasonably popular and motivated. According to Wikipedia numbers quite many people simply do not serve for some reason or another.
2. "If this isn't for you, then you are free to fill in the forms for declaring yourself conscientious objector and you will shipped to the non-armed civilian service to serve rest of you term ASAP."
This one hasn't been relevant in all conscript-based systems in all time and places, but in modern times it is. If the strategy does not call for absolutely every person capable of holding a rifle to do so, this is an option.
Additionally, if failing the service is considered shameful enough, the military may very well be willing to simply kick the unmotivated out.
In general, I believe it's more or less established that people are less likely to volunteer to do boring things, but if participation is mandatory and you need to do make a decision to get out, most people are going to do the compulsory thing. Of course, many people are quite averse to war because it's quite possible that you may really die, so usually the armies of the world make the "getting out" option penalized somehow. In the ideal world I'd actually like to see the "opt-out" version without any further penalties tried sometimes somewhere.
3. Additional forms of persuasion known to exist in various countries at various points of time are different forms of legal consequences, ranging from extra tax to jail to prison to death penalty.
Re: Sweden brings back military conscription
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just what the neighbours have. It's what Russia is and has. Do they have a leader who is disconnected from regular life, poses in absurd settings and gets his information from intelligence agencies? Check. Do they have a political system that has an internally dysfunctional economy and that needs external enemies to keep people from looking at what happens domestically? Check. Do they repress internal opposi…
Problem with your argument is, the last thing Russia wants is more sanctions, precisely because of it's currently collapsing economy. People are not happy and it is 2017, exactly a century since the Great October Revolution of 1917. This severely limits them in search of external enemies.
Re: Sweden brings back military conscription
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Now imagine you're a country with less than 10% of the population and need to produce a force of 200k soldiers in order to have a credible deterrent against an aggressive neighbor. How do you do that without conscription? Just go without, and tell the population that you don't have enough forces to serve as a deterrent, so if the neighbor decides to invade you're just going to voluntarily cede any territory they ask…
That does not seem like a long term plan for keeping a country. It would need to be paired with expert diplomacy at a minimum. I can think a few countries with no military Costa Rica and Lichtenstein. Costa Rica defers to allies in time of conflict and Lichtenstein just pays another country for their military. According to wikipedia most are island nations and get to rely on the ocean and vast distance for safety: ht…
Re: Sweden brings back military conscription
#280How 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…
Swedish conscription (before it was cancelled) was very close to voluntary anyways. When I did the tests for it, about 20 years ago, only about one in five or so were picked from the tests, and it was trivial to avoid being picked if you didn't want to do it. You motivate people the same way you motivate anyone I guess - you're here, you can make the best of it and learn some useful skills, or you can be spending the…