Sweden brings back military conscription | Hacker News Reader

Sweden brings back military conscription

bbc.co.uk

188 pointssjcsjc409 comments

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 the Army in the first place because it's competitive so we know they're motivated.

What do you do with a conscript who never wanted to be there and possibly fundamentally isn't suited to military life anyway gives up? Threaten them with legal action?

What do you do if they sort of do what they're told, but not really putting any effort into it?

Conscription seems counter-productive to me. If you can't attract enough motivated and talented people to join your military then maybe your military is not representative of your society anymore and you should fix that.

>'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 does not go around the world fighting wars, and whose only objective is to retain the independence of your own country, most conscripts take it as their civic responsibility and don't cause problems.

Those who are fundamentally unsuited for military usually ended up getting discharged quickly. Most before ever stepping into service.

>Conscription seems counter-productive to me.

Britain has 150k active military personnel with 80k reserves. 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?

> 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).

As a former conscript, this was definitely the ultimate motivator.

Conscript service was so incredibly dull that one would do almost anything just to get off-base over the weekend.

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.

One of the strengths of a conscript military is that you get everyone, which includes all kinds of current and future skill sets. Modern conscript armies aim to put that expertise into the best possible use.

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.)

Well, both the Swedish and Norwegian Armies have a long tradition for using conscripts to do a lot more than what you think. E.g. on the main battle tank (Leopard 2), everyone except the tank commander (i.e. driver, gunner, loader) is a conscript. My brother-in-law was in the forward sigint ops division as a conscript. 90% of ship crews are conscripts, as are most of the air force support personnell.

To make sure these skills are not just forgotten, some portion of each years conscripts are selected for regular returns to the army for drills. (Army pays your employer for the time it takes, you get your regular dayjob salary.)

That used to be the case in Sweden, but if I understand things correctly, the GSS system (professional soldiers and NCOs, the system that replaced conscription in 2010) will still be in place, and that tank crews may be GSS/K and not conscripts.

A rumor I heard was that the now voluntary GMU will be replaced with conscription.

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.

This is actually true. When we took 100% of all able men in Norway, the got the top guys as well as the lump. Now, when it's gotten a lot easier to get out of conscription, a lot of the well people with other ambitions skip this.

A few years ago we had a french student (ENA) placement for a year and he had sorted out his national service with the force de frappe.

They will sign up voluntarily for a military that is decently funded (having to shout 'pew pew' in training because your training rounds have ran out is ridiculous.. and yes this is real). Plus a wage that would be semi-competitive with the civilian sector.

I think it's not that bad. When you've had a conscript military for decades, the service is a fact of life. Just like school and taxes. People get over it.

Also my impression is that a lot of military equipment isn't very high-tech precisely so that it doesn't require that much expertise to operate and service in the field. So you need only a limited amount of specialists, and conscripts can just become trained users.

I think a lot of people equate the march of technology with complexity, but this isn't even typically the case. Advances in tech often make less complicated weapons more workable. Think steel production techniques enabling better armor. Armor's not getting more complicated, just better.

The M1A1 Abrams tank is extremely simple to operate and man. Regardless, it's quite formidable.

I was a conscript, and while calling me a "SIGINT operative" would be too much, I worked in a SIGINT role, with security clearance and all that.

There are always things you can use rather unqualified (but generally intelligent) people for.

I don't remember much, but I'm pretty sure I could fill that role again after a day of re-training.

> 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.

The Singapore military puts their men in the reserves after they're done with mandatory service, and calls them back for 10 years of reservist training or until they hit 40 [1].

> Oh, and officers by their very definition cannot be conscripts.

Why do you say this?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservist#Singapore

But here is the thing: conscripts is everybody, including the best of the best. Professional soldiers have a tendency to not come from ivy league schools, and are often recruited from the less well off parts of society (citation needed).

You probably won't find Gates, Zuckerberg or Jobs in the US Army, but he quite possibly would have been in the Swedish one.

> Oh, and officers by their very definition cannot be conscripts.

There are different definitions of "officer". In Finland conscripts are trained to rank and file, NCO (Corporal/Sergeant), and junior officer (2nd Lieutenant) roles. Both reserve NCOs and officers may be later promoted if they accumulate a certain amount of refresher training days and are otherwise seen fit for the promotion.

This system, where the majority of junior officers are conscripted, has been the basis for the Finnish Defense Forces for the whole Finnish independence, and it has been battle-tested during both hot and cold war.

> Oh, and officers by their very definition cannot be conscripts.

That isn't even true in the US. There are avenues for folks that start at the bottom to become an officer, at least in the US Navy. I don't see why conscripts wouldn't follow the same path of promotion that an enlisted person would. Besides, you are assuming all of the people in the conscript start at the bottom, when it would be more intelligent to train those capable of being an officer to use their skills more effectively.

Israel.

At least in the US, right now, all the hi-tech death machines get maintained by contractors or civilian employees of the services.

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 slavery

I abhor hyperbole. Slavery is the legal ownership of one person over another person and their progeny. Since they are property, slaves have absolutely no rights or any access to the legal system. You commanding officer cannot rape or kill you with impunity. He/She cannot force you to do fight with another conscript to the death. Conscripts also get paid, while slaves do not and are well fed and clothed. There is no such requirement for slaves. Your commanding officer also is not going to beat you if he/she finds you reading a book.

I'd advise you to actually do research on what slaves endured and stop disrespecting their ordeal by comparing it to military conscription. These thoughtless comparisons make light of how brutal and devastating chattal slavery was.

>Conscription is slavery, and many conscripts will consider themselves to have a moral obligation to resist slavery.

On the contrary, conscription, and armies consisting of the population of a country in general (as opposed to mercenary armies) are a democratic achievement of (among a few other factors) the French Revolution.

In the actual times of slavery, e.g. in Ancient Greece and Rome it was free men that first and foremost did the fighting (and who considered it their honor and what made them and kept them free), and in the dark medieval times of peasants, feudal lords used mercenary armies (including against their subjects).

Conscription appeared on the scene as a way to have the army be controlled more by the population -- as opposed to it being professional soldiers ready to be used against the people.

I agree. In my refusal to serve in the Norwegian military, this was one of my arguments. Coupled with pointing out that I could not guarantee that I would agree with the political views of any future regime, and so I considered it immoral to be put in a position where I might be threatened into using violence in favour of a cause I might fundamentally be opposed to. I also made it clear that should that happen, I'd consider it my moral obligation to shoot at my own officers. They didn't like that.

Conscription is a form of taxation. Many say taxation is slavery, but the argument doesn't hold very well.

> Conscription is slavery

In much the same sense as jury duty is slavery.

That seems to be a very theoretical position with no evidence that it happens in the real world.

> Conscription is slavery

I'm at a loss for words here, this might be the dumbest thing I've heard all week.

First, go get a dictionary and look up what slavery means.

Second, go get a history book and read about the last two world wars where conscription has been widely embraced by the belligerents. Not only did it have public support, but it was also the only thing that gave the Allies enough manpower to stay in and win the war.

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 living being and human structure in Afghanistan without much effort, they just didn't because they don't do that kind of stuff as a matter of policy.

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.

Russia isn't going to utterly destroy Sweden either.

What they want is to disintegrate the European economy so they can have better access to it.

Leveling Sweden would be both expensive and unprofitable. Bullying Sweden is much more up Putin's alley.

Huh?

Who is in control there? Hint: not the US.

> save for nukes which will likely never be used.

save for nukes which will likely never be used, again.

>save for nukes which will likely never be used, again.

save for nukes which will be used the very instant a nuclear armed nation faces the prospect of brutal conquest by a hated enemy, or a last desperate stand to defend dwindling resources.

Good correction.

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

But not easily held. Both nations would probably think twice before trying it again.

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.

Genghis Khan did it too but it sure as hell didn't stay occupied.

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

Finland was lucky to be invaded by the Soviets when their military was at their peak of incompetency, after Stalin had killed tons of the officers.

They quickly learned, and in the followup war(s), Finland was thoroughly beat, and lost 1/10 of it's territory.

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.

It's not that Sweden or Finland could alone stop Russia from conquering their territory. It's that they would make it costly to achieve, and much, much costlier to maintain.

During the Cold War, Sweden had one the most formidable air forces in the European theater (supported by homegrown industrial base), whatever passes for a navy in Baltic Sea and large not that badly armed conscript force, together probably quite capable of at least providing a credible hindrance to any forces the Soviets would throw against them.

I always wondered how quickly that was dismantled. I guess they still have a navy.

>A credible deterrent in 2020 is not 200k dudes with guns.

Modern weapons are of course necessary, but in the end wars are fought and won by soldiers on the ground with rifles in their hands. Modern combined arms operations require the effective coordination of all aspects; air, sea, and land.

I wonder why you'r downvoted, because even if one were to disagree, yours would be a legitimate position civilly expressed.

I happen to agree: you can win battles with air power and armored forces, but you can't keep an area without feet on the ground, hands carrying rifles, and if you can't keep an area, you won't win the war.

> It's air and naval power. Expensive and complex hi tech death machines.

Afghanistan would beg to differ...

> Of course, a 10m country will never have a really credible defense against nuclear super power Russia by itself.

Unless the goal of fighting a war is to wipe the opposing side off the face of the earth, no, it's a credible defense. You bleed the enemy until they lose the will to fight.

> Afghanistan would beg to differ.

You're not looking at this from the Afghan perspective. From the American and Russian perspective, yes, occupying Afghanistan is a painful deathtrap. But for the Afghans their occupation is...also a painful deathtrap. Eventually winning (or even sort of winning) a war of low-tech attrition involves sacrificing a lot of lives, losing political control, and having foreign soldiers soldiers patrol your territory imposing their own laws. Afghanistan has to go through all this because they don't have a credible way to deter an invasion. That's why they keep getting invaded!

The goal is not to get invaded in the first place. If you can make the conquest too expensive for the enemy then they won't try it, even if it's also expensive for you.

Obviously this didn't work for Afghanistan, but their example can help it work for others.

Edit: if you become part of a larger war then it can also be advantageous to make the occupation painful for the enemy when it happens. The more you hurt them, the easier and faster your allies will win. Consider Norway in the Second World War: they had no hope of overthrowing the German occupation themselves, but the resistance still contributed significantly to its eventual end.

His argument isn't that you need air and naval. Its that air and naval are, generally, more cost effective.

No, he flat out said that a bunch of dudes with guns are not a deterrent in this day and age. If that's not what he said, let him speak for himself.

Depends on the threat you're facing.

If you're worried about NATO or former Warsaw Pact aggressors, no, men with rifles are not a deterrent.

If you're worried about a neighboring region's warlords sending people to steal your food, kill the men, rape the women and conscript the children, yes, men with rifles can convince them that their activities will be more fruitful somewhere else.

For a threat like Russia or the USA, your only recourse is to ally with one or the other.

> A credible deterrent in 2020 is not 200k dudes with guns. It's air and naval power. Expensive and complex hi tech death machines.

I don't know — that's certainly the reason why many nations have gotten rid of conscription, but I think it may be mistaken. Sure, in the initial stages of a force-on-force, peer conflict it's going to be all about complex, hi-tech machines, but what about sustained, low-level operations. fewer than 200,000 dudes with guns & bombs have given the U.S. a bit of a pause in Afghanistan & Iraq, after all.

If Iraq is your model, you don't need conscription, just widely disseminate copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook for IED

If the threat is annihilation, well, I guess it depends how advanced Sweden's bio- and chem-engineering is in order to quickly create weapons severe enough to counter a nuclear power.

When your threat model isn't annihilation but simply being overrun and submitting to a new ruler and set of foreign laws and customs, having a population with guns and gun training works pretty well to make it difficult for an outside party to achieve that even with massively better war tech.

Don't underestimate what a defensive force fighting on their own turf can achieve.

Not to mention that European defensive doctrine is to hold on until allies can be rallied.

Why would Russia want to invade Sweden? This is political fearmongering and bullshit.

Russia has attacked other nations next too its borders, if Sweden can not project any acceptable military strength then Russia may potentially target Sweden with limited territory takeover (its strategically located islands for example) or just threaten to use force to support its political motivations. Why? Because they can.

That's what keeps puzzling me. Everyone throws the word "Russia" around without providing any kind of reason as to why it would invade any of those countries in the first place.

Do they have Russian military bases of strategic importance? No.

Do they have population that is ethnically Russian? No.

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 opposition? Check.

Do they despise democracy? Check.

Do they have a media that is spreading propaganda about neighbours and is controlled by the government? Check.

Do they think in terms of "spheres of influence"? Check.

There are enough parallels to Stalin's USSR to make neighbours worried.

Right now Sweden is a military vacuum. Anyone with a decent army can walk in and take what they want.

This makes the country a path of least resistance. If you are NATO trying to plan for defending the baltic states from Russia, you must plan for stopping them from taking Gotland.

So the first goal of improving Sweden's defense is to make that better.

Look up Finish Russian war

Its more about creating a delaying force against the "zerg rush" towards the capital than actually defeating an attacking superpower. If they can hold off the attacking force for 24-30 hours, they will have done their job.

>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?

Well... you PAY THEM (enough)? You make the workplace worthwhile and attractive, like you have to for every job ever? How do you get enough nurses? Policemen? Engineers? You conscript them all? This is a deeply authoritarian mindset and it concerns me. Conscription hurts troop morale. Let people serve in the military when they want to serve.

It doesn't really work. Everyone getting into the army knows that they're potentially risking their life. Something which doesn't really happen in most modern jobs.

You'd have to pay a ton of money to get middle class citizens into the army and at that point you'd probably spend half of your budget on the military.

I don't see this as something really authoritarian if your country does have a very aggressive neighbor.

Heh, nice idea, pay them. With what money? Even Switzerland would have a really difficult time with that. The problem with small countries is that, well, they are small and poor. Even if you pay small wages, 200k is still a lot of paychecks, that has to be funded from taxes to the small population.

For the record, I am against military conscription.

Taxes and printed money (so basically you pay with taxes and inflation). Sure if you have to tax so much and inflate so much that everyone not in the military is broke and starving then it's close to the same thing as just conscripting them, but at least the cost is then shared by the entire populace rather than young men in most cases and young men and women in Swedens, and results in more proper compensation of soldiers.

In a low wage + draft scenario you're basically sending the young (usually poor) of a country off to die so the seniors (wealthier than the young) can still enjoy holding property. Then the surviving young come back and are getting fleeced just the same as they were pre-war by the people whose status they just defended. If not fighting in a war is not a viable option then it should at least result in massive wealth transfer. Hell, I'd rather see straight up seizure of wealth to pay for the military over a draft.

Maybe you could focus on more tech related to battle ie drones. In the same way that machine guns make an enemy army's size not really matter, drones will do the same thing if they just have manpower

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 for.

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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_arme...

It doesn't seem like anyone simply cedes territory and gets to stay a country.

They don't, that's kinda the point. The idea is to place the blame on the people.

Cute, but the tragedy of the commons means that you still might not get enough.

The people allow the government a monopoly on violence in expectation that it will use it for their benefit. Putting the ultimate responsibility for national defense back on them is a betrayal of that trust.

No, it's not. It is utterly impossible for the government to defend the nation without soldiers. It's also impossible for the government to create soldiers out of thin air; they have to come from the populace (or hire foreign mercenaries perhaps, but that has its own ethical problems). If the populace isn't willing to serve as soldiers in sufficient numbers, then it's impossible for the government to satisfy its responsibility to defend the nation. The people cannot blame the government for not defending the nation if the people are not willing to be part of that defense.

>The people cannot blame the government...If the people are not willing to be part of that defense.

What about a person who would fight and not desert if conscripted, but would not volunteer?

Are they "willing to be part of that defense," or not?

I submit that most people fall in that category, and that conscription is aimed at them.

That's still slavery, because some fraction of them doesn't want to serve. So if there's any punishment for refusing to serve, or for deserting, then it's slavery. If there's no punishment, or if they're allowed to opt-out, then it's not really conscription.

You don't. I served in the Greek air-force for 17 months as a conscript some twenty years ago which is also obligatory. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was wasting my time at the best years of my life, and the feeling was the same for pretty much most of the guys there. I learned a few things here and there but for the most part it was an utterly boring experience.

The one thing no one tells you about the army is that pretty much 90% of the work done is in management/logistics. A very small percentage is about war per se. There are tons of red tape in the army and there are procedures for everything. So you spend most of your time doing boring stuff that require little to no creative thinking and depending on where you come from, from a point on this becomes miserable. Fortunately by then you're discharged.

Most of the guys who served with me, once they got their bearings they spent the time doing the stuff they enjoyed. For me that was reading books. I read a shitload of books while serving, like one every couple of days. A guy I knew went for wind-surfing every afternoon since we served on an island and the sea was like half a mile from the base. From a point on it becomes like a routine job. You do the army stuff in the morning and in the afternoon spend time on your leisure.

Sweden had conscription until 2010, and there has been some political rhetoric about resuming it ever since then. So it's not the same thing as if, say, the US started a conscript today.

edit: and when I was conscripted in 2003, there was still a culture of "conscription is where boys become become a man". among my social group there was pretty widespread support for it (ranging from support to apathy to "it's just a waste of money". you could also be a conscientious objector and get civil service instead.)

edit2: random local news "asking youths on the street" article about the decision. ranging from positive to "i wouldn't agree to it" responses. https://www.sydsvenskan.se/2017-03-02/malmoungdomar-positiva...

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 next year miserable.

We're doing useful important things here, and you can play a role in that, while learning (medical care/mechanical work/computer skills/languages/leadership skills... whatever).

If you really dont want to be there, you have ways out (both civil service, and flunking tests badly, or in an extreme case, go to jail).

I got jail time for refusing. I was born 1975. My reasons for refusing? I was totally uninterested in it.

Sorry :(. 1977 here, just told them I couldn't sleep from home and had no interest in it at all and that was that.

I couldn't agree more. I've trained regular volunteer soldiers and even then it's hard to motivate some of them from time to time, I can't imagine how hard it would be with conscripts...This also annoys me when idiot right-wing politicians vomit out the idea that criminal youth etc should be pushed into the army. It's both an insult to volunteers and professional pride/cohesion and impossible. This is not the 1930s, NCOs are quite rightfully not supposed to or should be going around kicking the shit out of people to "motivate" them.

The world and the military has moved on.

Certainly not all, but some people with criminal tendencies could and do benefit from the structure and support of serving in the military. How much crime do you think is caused by people who didn't grow up learning discipline and responsibility and can't keep food on the table or a steady job? You don't have to kick the shit out of most of those people to turn them into an effective soldier.

Yeap, if they're going to shoot other people, might as well make it official.

Yes, I'm being facetious, but if we're going to have reeducation camps paid by public money, I'd rather have them learn more useful things than how to handle military equipment.

There is a ton of real world experience that "troubled" kids often become reliable citizens by a few years in the military.

What they learn is working in a team, taking responsibility and being accountable.

Not to mention that actual combat skill is a small minority of what is needed and trained in the military. Sure, the cook has a gun and knows how to use it, but otherwise he's more or less a cook only. Ditto for very very many positions both high and low skilled.

That's my whole point: since it's such a small minority already, let's take it out completely and replace it with something better.

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.

I've never heard of this type of judgement. Was this in the USA? What was your uncle's crime?

Happens quite frequently from what I'm told. Judges have quite a bit of discretion sometimes and try to sentence intelligently.

[anecdote] I used to know someone who was an addict. Judge gave her the choice of going on probation for a year, or 45 days in jail. The catch was if she took the probation offer but was picked up for drug offenses in that time, it was an immediate sentence of a year in jail.

She took the 45 days. Better the devil you know than the one you can't control! [/anecdote]

This was in the US, Pittsburgh, PA to be specific. However this was during the Vietnam war. Googling around, this sort of arrangement would make one ineligible from enlisting nowadays. There's an article referring to at least one case in which someone was denied enlistment[0] because of just such a case. Further research indicates that this is asked of recruits, meaning one could hypothetically perjure himself and maybe not get caught. I couldn't find any other references to this happening today, but there were loads of waivers issued back in the days of "the surge", so it wouldn't surprise me if some folks slipped through the cracks and got a "jail or enlist" talk from a small town sheriff or magistrate.

[0] - https://www.stripes.com/news/judge-said-army-or-jail-but-mil...

Hear of it at least 2 dozen times, various states, usa. Seems a bit less common now, but still happens. Usually for when a judge wants to give you an out. If you bail, you get full judgement.

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.

If young adults are getting by without knowing how to iron, I suggest that says more about ironing than it does about the adults.

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

The point isn't that they didn't learn to do laundry. Fixing it by offering a laundry course is just putting black tape over a warning light. They didn't have the environment growing up that made being an upright citizen easy or particularly likely. You can't teach a course about "responsibility" and expect good things.

South Korea you do 3yrs mandatory service or 2yrs jail and life long shame so motivation isn't a problem. After basic it often involves just working at a desk somewhere only a few stay as professional soldiers rest are moved into cheap civil service labor.

I suspect Sweden has brought back conscription to try and integrate it's new massive foreigner population as a way to make them more Swedish not because of any shenanigans in Kosovo. ...edit oops variable scope error, threat:= Russian shenanigans

A minor point, but Baltic tensions, not Balkan tensions.

Coincidentally, kinda relevant though, because a large part of Sweden's foreigner population are actually immigrants from former Yugoslavia, a lot of them because of the Kosovo War.

Balkans =/= Baltic

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 war, you're motivated to do tasks 7,8, and 9 because they directly contribute to the success of task 1 - ending the war, and once the war is over, the war you've been conscripted into, you probably get to go home.

So, yes, I believe conscription without an active conflict makes it difficult to motivate individual soldiers.

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.

>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.

Really? Personally, having nothing to eat but Burger King and Subway trash would be a huge motivator to get home where I can get some decent food.

Well, the local food was pretty darn good, too.

However, it wasn't so much actually indulging in the imported goods, fast food in this case, it's the sense of familiarity that normalized being there.

> How do you motivate a conscript ?

Same you motivate anyone anywhere, except that in the end you have institutionally-legitimated physical threats to back up your orders. Field-proven method since about 6000 years !

Was there motivational problems among Brits in WWI and WWII? Maybe there is difference when you train to defend your own country versus going to some foreign country to fight abstract and vague threat or advance foreign policy goals.

At least here in Finland the motivation comes from clear and well defined threat. Enemy comes always from the east, if we don't fight we suffer other ways.

>What do you do with a conscript who never wanted to be there and possibly fundamentally isn't suited to military life anyway gives up?

Conscription does not mean that everyone serves. Everyone is called to be evaluated, some are not called to serve, some are sent home because they can't make it.

In Band of Brothers (the HBO docudrama), the featured unit are paratroopers. They discuss volunteering for the more severe duty because they think they will then be around similarly motivated individuals.

Still true. You can see the difference between the Marines and the army. You also see a huge difference between the professional forces of the US and the conscripted forces.

I was a conscript in the Danish army. Roughly speaking, they examined all 18 year olds, sorted out those with low IQ and those with physical injuries and asked the rest if we wanted to join voluntarily. They never got enough volunteers so they drafted around 1/3 of the rest of us using what was basically a tombola drum. Then we did 6-12 months. I did 9.

I think most of us thought we had been unlucky to draw a low number in the tombola meaning that we had to serve. But we also felt some kind of pride in what we did and you got to meet kids your own age from all walks of life. Most of us had fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers who had been in the military as well.

We were literally craving physical activity, weapons training, exercises, difficult tasks etc. since a lot of the time we were just a bunch of teenagers waiting around.

The Danish military mainly recruited professionals among the conscripts. I think such system works very well.

That sounds more like mandatory training (like school) more than mandatory service. You were useful useful soldiers at the end of the conscription period, when many of you volunteered to stay on

"Your country needs you."

If that isn't working, then you probably need to re-think why you've gone with a conscript army. I think in this case, a solid case could be made that recent aggression means we need to be able to defend the homeland and other powers we might normally depend on won't do it for us so "Let's go!"

Once folks are in, I'd imagine that some powerful team dynamics take over. All this said, I'm speaking out of turn because I've not served, just worked alongside for a number of years.

Been a conscript myself. Brainwashing is still a science in the military. And it works kind of well. Of course, some people are just generally not suitable for the military, and they should be let go faster than the Norwegian army did when I was there. Of course when push comes to shove and you need meat for the meat grinder then things are very different. I know nothing about that.

Netflix has a funny movie out of Israel that deals with this subject, some conscripts that have absolutely no desire to be in the military. It's called "Zero Motivation":

https://www.netflix.com/title/80000347

It very much pokes fun at a system where everyone needs to serve in the military.

> 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.

In the US military, peer pressure was the traditional motivator when the draft was being used. Your peers are aware they have to pick up the slack if you're not pulling your weight. Typically, all the leaders needed to do was to point this out.

At least in the Finnish conscript military this is the primary method. And not only do the peers have to pick up the slack, there are collective punishments, which have the designed tendency to turn the peers against the "unmotivated" people. Although this has its limits, as most people are very unmotivated, mostly because the whole service is dehumanizing and boring shit.

It's cheap.

On the other hand, the professional army in Sweden is largely recruited out of the conscripted soldiers, and unless it's propaganda they are considered to be professional and reliable, for instance in recent missions in Afghanistan etc.

It was a long time ago 99% of the men where forced to do their military service. The idea is that you are forced to at least go through a recruitment process and/or a short introductory education, you can swoop up those that are talented but uninterested initially, but might reconsider.

I think you are right in that if you can't attract motivated and talented people, you should fix that rather than force people.

In my own case, the idea of mandatory training did more harm than good as it just pissed me off on principle... I got drafted to a probably quite interesting service actually - that I likely would not have appreciated. But as the Soviet union just had collapsed, someone decided that they could spend the money on something else before I actually started, so I did never find out.

It's a difficult problem. I did it in '97 which was one of the last years in which all (men at that time) were required to do it, and more than half actually did. We were many who hated it. The budget wasn't enough to train that many, leading to lots of down time and low excercise budgets. Pay was ~$10 per day iirc. I envied those who could go to university instead.

Fun fact I got the same model of heavy iron sight carbine that my dad used in 1970 (not all units were equipped with the newer ones in 97 - ironic considering we now probably have 5 guns per soldier...). The basic training was good and I don't regret doing it even though I hated it.

I'm thinking this is a necessary move if we need a large fraction of the population trained. If the pay is half decent and the selection is small enough that volunteers are enough - then it's only a pseudo conscript system imho.

> you should fix that.

I think there are people who would be very interested in solutions

I think very high minimum wages, low unemployment and free higher educations doesn't help - the military is having a hard time competing for people coming out of school.

I think this particular system will work because attracting just a few thousand should be possible if the pay isn't silly and the training gets a reputation for being good even for people who don't pursue a career in the military.

One key is making it an attractive career. That idea has been utterly ruined by the turmoil of recent years, now no one trusts that they can have a long term career in the military. Who knows what size the military is in 10 years ? Can be 10x smaller. Or bigger. We were too quick to scale it back. A stable organization is key.

Another idea is to let people 18-25 choose when they want to do it. Having an opportunity to do a conscript year when you happen to be between jobs etc would be perfect. I wasn't really ready when I was 18.

> 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

>> "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 unpleasant.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Legionnaire-Years-French-Foreign-Legi...

But in terms of motivation it should be noted that the Legion hasn't used conscripts since the early years of WW1.

In fact in later decades its usefulness, other than the aggressiveness and expendibility of its soldiers, was based on the fact that French conscripts in the home-based Armée Métropolitan legally could not be deployed overseas.

You mean it sounds like torture?

Keep in mind that normal life in the Legion involves running around carrying heavy backpacks (with normal straps) and being slightly less sleep deprived.

The article says, "The aim is to encourage them to become military professionals or to join the reserves." I'm not quite sure if that's reasonable, but it's a bit different from just forcing people to fight.

So... 9 month brainwashing camps? That doesn't exactly sound like a good idea either.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35456535 :

> "I always had a dream to come back as an officer and to do it here on Gotland and establish a new unit, it's perfect," he tells me.

That's exactly the kind of people who have no business even being in charge of what they themselves eat for breakfast. This mess makes me ashamed of my country.

No army can exist without brainwashing. The only difference between volunteers and conscripts is that volunteers are not threatened/tricked into joining, but are incentivized to do so. Plus there is always a lot of government propaganda pushing "patriotism", trying to make military look "cool", shaming those avoiding service, etc, making some more willing to volunteer and some conscripts not opposing to it as much.

> not representative

That's where we are in the US with an All Volunteer Force (AVF).

Some thought an AVF would lead to a smaller professional force and would give the President less flexibility to do dumb things (political & military leaders wanted fewer Vietnams).

That hasn't really worked out, and it's easier for a President to commit forces knowing protests will never reach the scale of the 1960s. Few who don't have skin in the game care about our FP and those who do don't have a say in it once they put the uniform on.

> Conscription seems counter-productive to me.

"The Chiefs of Staff do not want a conscripted mob of punks, freaks, and junkies and riff-radd, a quarter of a million hooligans on its hands with nothing to do except peel potatoes at Aldershot. The generals are afraid that this would turn it into an ordinary army. [Like the one that won World Wars I and II - Ed.]"

- The Complete Yes Prime Minister: The Diaries of the Right Hon. James Hacker

> What do you do with a conscript who never wanted to be there and possibly fundamentally isn't suited to military life anyway gives up? Threaten them with legal action?

Military jail.

> What do you do if they sort of do what they're told, but not really putting any effort into it?

Crap assignments (ex: peel these 1000 potatoes then go clean that latrine) or military jail.

Both are surprisingly motivating.

What if a group of conscripts decide that they'd rather "save themselves" by blowing themselves up, along with $100mm of your materiel? And then this becomes a meme—something other conscripts hear about and copy? I could see that happening if conscription ever returned in the US—we have an awful lot of "violent pacifists" (picture what happens if you draft some of the police-brutality protestors.)

That's called being a domestic terrorist and, IMNSHO, is a prime candidate for a long prison sentence.

Actual terrorists generally aren't deterred by the threat of prison. You're talking about people willing to blow themselves up; they're not worried about prison.

I'm not saying it will deter them, I'm saying it's already a crime. There's nothing special about going after them for it.

With our current volunteer system nothing stops a nut job from signing up. That's why they have psych exams and ongoing mental health monitoring.

It's no different if you have a draft with everybody having to join. Heck, I'd bet you'd get less overall craziness (as a percentage) from the population of people that otherwise wouldn't join the armed forces.

We have thousands of years of histories of armies. How often has this happened?

We don't have thousands of years of people thinking they're entitled to never do what anyone else tells them. That's something unique to "the Western world, post-conscription."

(Or, we do have some examples: look at what happens when a country's nobles are conscripted [directly commissioned, rather] into service during wartime. Frequently they lock themselves in their mansions garrisoned with the very private standing armies they were supposed to bring to draft.)

Ever heard the phrase "rabble of conscripts"? Napoleon was the first to use conscripts successfully; before him, it was proverbial that a smaller force of professionals (volunteers, landowners, adventurers, or typically a mix of all three) could wipe the floor with a much larger conscript army. Conscripts could make adequate garrisons, where they'd seldom be called on to fight (and if the castle or fortress fell, everyone in it would be killed, so there was that too), but not much more than that.

As a citizen of a country with a conscription-based military, and having served myself, that "what if" question is better aimed at https://what-if.xkcd.com/.

I'm truly amazed that it took so long for this answer to be posted!

How do you motivate a non-existent volunteer?

If not enough people are volunteering for the military, how else are you supposed to defend your country? It's not as good a situation as if you had an all-volunteer army, but that doesn't seem to be an option for Sweden.

If not enough people are joining and you conscript people to fight for you, you don't have a country, you have slaveowners.

The civilian world deals with the problem of having few applicants every day without resorting to manhandling people.

If you're proposing higher pay for soldiers, then you go from an army of slaves to an army of mercenaries.

Swedish society is already primed to accept conscription, and it's not totally ineffective. It may be the most cost-effective solution to the problem.

>If you're proposing higher pay for soldiers, then you go from an army of slaves to an army of mercenaries.

Is that such a bad thing? I'd rather have an army of mercenaries any day over an army of slaves. The mercenaries are serving voluntarily at least, and they're likely to be far more effective in their duties as soldiers. Sure, there's some ethical concerns with it, but far less than with slavery IMO.

IIRC, this question came up with Westmoreland in the Vietnam War. The US was considering transitioning to a volunteer army (which did happen after the war), and a reporter asked Westmoreland what he thought of the idea. He was adamantly opposed to an army of mercenaries, and the reporter shot back by asking if he preferred an army of slaves. Westmoreland replied that he didn't want such insulting language used of "our patriotic draftees" -- meaning that he had internalized an if-by-whiskey argument. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey)

> What do you do with a conscript who never wanted to be there and possibly fundamentally isn't suited to military life anyway gives up? Threaten them with legal action?

In some countries, you will get punished - get assigned bathroom cleaning for a week, get assigned lots of manual labor, or your whole squad gets punished which means they will have reason to 'motivate' you themselves. You can also go to military jail and get dishonorable discharged.

Basically, there is the carrot motivation method, and then there is the stick method.

The traditional answer is various ways of forced community-building (collective punishment & reward, forming in/outgroups, etc) as a way of building loyalty to their individual unit.

Also note that in modern militaries, the ratio of behind-the-lines support troops to front-line trigger pullers is absurdly high. Depending on the country, you can end up with conscripts e.g. running the vehicle pool and doing logistics while the core infantry is essential volunteer.

You can also remimd them that serious offends during conscript service can also lengthen their service time.

When you're a small country you can't afford many and top level people. I was in the army research and out of 130 people I had two with people two CS PHDs and most of them had at least one. Designing a database with these people was nightmare :)

Norway has conscription, and the threat is a prison sentence. Usually a total of up to 7 months spread over two sentences. If you get convicted a second time, you generally also lose the right to serve in the Norwegian military as a means to avoid having to go through the whole thing over and over - before that was introduced in the 70's, Norway started facing comparisons to the Franco regime (which had people stuck in prison over military service for decades) as some people during the Vietnam war started getting convicted for a 3rd or 4th time in protest against Norways NATO membership.

Few people refuse today, but largely because they "weed out" those who simply do not want military service by offering 16 months civil service as an alternative to 12 months military service, and because it's very easy to get out of it entirely these days (less than half actually end up serving, which to me just makes it more offensive that they still hold up the pretense)

I had military police calling for me the day I moved to the UK because I'd been evading the conscription notice, and they then eventually (after a couple of years) give up just sending a letter and instead try to get MPs to hand deliver it so they have evidence that it has been received, as a prelude to legal action.

My main reason for refusing was simply that it was mandatory and I don't believe the state should have the right to force anyone into military service. It's easy enough to get discared as medically unfit if you just want to get out the easy way, or get assigned some trivially easy 6 month stint somewhere, but I found it sufficiently offensive that they tried to force it to find it amusing to use every opportunity to frustrate the process, fully expecting it to end with prison until I happened to get involved in a startup that moved to the UK instead.

It involved amusing demonstrations of the idiocy of bureaucracy: When I was called in the first time, I wrote a letter demanding to be released from conscription. I made very sure my demand (which had no legal basis) did not meet the requirements for them to sneakily try to transfer me to civil service, by e.g. making it clear I was fine with picking up arms, just not on their terms. It's kinda tradition in my family - my dad and one of my uncles both served prison terms over it.

So I got a rejection letter, rejecting my application to transfer to civil service - because they had no boxes to tick for "is being generally obnoxious and refusing everything". I was then called in to a police interview. This is a pre-requisite so they can try to "trap you" in saying something that proves that you do no meet the requirements for civil service. Usually that means trying to prove you're not a pacifist or similar. Since I didn't want civil service that was a rather weird affair, where the police officer asked me silly hypothetical questions to try to get me to admit I'd be willing to use violence, and me readily admitting I'd happily use violence in said situations (along the lines of "if someone is about to kill [some relative] ...").

Then they sued. They wanted the court to confirm that I had no right to be transferred to civil service. So I wrote to the court, copying my court appointed lawyer (a very nice guy - the late Ole Jakob Bae - who used to take on a lot of these cases because he genuinely wanted to help; in Norway the public defender role is taken on my private lawyers who can charge the state fixed rates; my lawyer was one of the top private lawyers in Norway at the time, all paid for by the government so they could sue me better) and pointed out that their case was baseless as I had never applied for transfer to civil service, and so agreed with the Norwegian Department of Justice that I should not be transferred, and in fact I'd get very miffed if someone tried to transfer me. I then went for a meeting with my lawyer just to have a chat so he could be sure I knew what I was in for, before he wrote a short letter concurring with my statement.

A few weeks went by, and I received a nice letter from the court confirming that the judge agreed with my assessment. The Department of Justice didn't even get a hearing - they were basically told the case was off the calendar and to go away and stop being stupid.

It didn't end there, of course, but I still take great pleasure in those events in particular.

That's a pretty nice story. In Estonia the burden of suing is on the individual. We have a really streamlined system where if you don't show up to some event you were called for you get a fine and a new date. [1] If you don't pay it in time then they will deduct it from your bank account. It's possible to avoid the fines if you don't hold a local bank account, but then life gets a bit more inconvenient if you actually live here.

I view conscription as slavery and so I had to pay these fines for years, waiting for my age to go over the limit. Just as I was about to hit the limit, they changed the law to add 3 years. The fines were increasing in frequency & size. Near the end I had to pay around 300 euros per month with constant threats of 2 year prison. Eventually I got myself diagnosed with enough defects to be unfit for service.

[1] There's a law that if the demand is less than 6400 euros then you can get a court order for this payment without an actual trial. Guilty until proven innocent. You have to sue yourself if you think it's unjustified.

They get the motivated people first

They're aiming for a low number, so it should be easy to achieve

Of course, there might be some punishment as well if a person fails to perform to the expected level of duty

Yeah, 4,000 out of a cohort of 13,000 means you can be very selective. Easy enough to get rid of the real fuckups and the hell-no-way refuseniks. Give the rest some real choice in what they'll be trained for, and you might only have to say no to those with a clear mismatch between their hopes and what they are fit for.

It's interesting that they are choosing to draft both men and women. Not a lot of places draft women.

That's out of ~100,000 kids per year.

Oh. So they can probably just take volunteers, then. And they don't even need to take all of them.

Volunteers provided 95% of the recruiting target. Conscription is to fill the rest.

you might enjoy this movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigerland

Would you consider Israeli mandatory service conscription?

It is impossible. If I was conscripted, I would actively sabotage those who did this to me, just out of spite. I live in a country with conscription. Luckily, I was seen unfit for the army before it went that far.

I felt that way when I was called in for evaluation as a teenager. I was a peace loving left-wing Swedish boy. That was maybe 8 years ago or so, I remember conscription being scrapped a year or two later.

I regret not making an effort to do it. I chose to underperform in my test because I believed all is better than war. But as an adult I've changed, and realised I wouldn't quite mind dying for things like my language to be dominant in my home and spoken by my leaders, as well as dying to not lose honor. Things I would at the time had considered naive. I now consider by old stance naive, as it implied my own life as the most important thing in the world.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that I'll likely be of another stance at 40, just like I'm thinking along the same ideals as at 18. If anyone older than me remember thinking these things at 25 I'd be love to hear.

>I felt that way when I was called in for evaluation as a teenager.

I am no pacifist. I definitely subscribe to the non-aggression principle, but a defensive war is always justified. I'd die for certain things I believe in, too. I just wanna decide that for myself and serve when I want. How dare the state make this decision for me.

It's all propaganda. Every war is based on this non-aggression principle and is a defensive war, offensive wars are long gone. If those in power want to fight a war on another country's soil, they simply invent a group of people they "need" to protect there, demonize the enemy and go to war there. Like Russia was "defending" russians in Georgia.

That's why I go by my own definition of defensive war, and not the government's ;)

And it's one more reason not to comply with conscription and sabotaging this authoritarian practice.

You should also recognize, that as long as other states use this authoritarian practice, every state would have to use a similar practice to protect the order it imposes on people from other states.

So, yeah, opposing a state is always a good idea. States are not your friends.

> but a defensive war is always justified

Really? If a foreign power intervened in, say, ethnic cleansing, defense would be justified?

Ethnic cleansing by itself violates the non-aggression principle, but nice try.

as well as dying to not lose honor.

While recognising the differences in our attitudes towards life, this evoked from me a very big WTF.

Not just because your life is all you have while honor is basically someone's opinion, but also because it's not even as much as one whole step away from being prepared to kill people for your own honor.

Parent poster said they want to die (and presumably kill, for what else would risk dying?) to prevent them from _speaking a different language_ near posters's home, so I don't think killing for honor will give them pause.

Yes, that was a bit of a trip to read.

"I wouldn't quite mind dying for things like my language to be dominant in my home and spoken by my leaders"

I wonder if the parent poster's language is currently the dominant language or a minority language. There are people who already kill and die for their culture to become dominant.

They know. So you end up with people in your situation and you realize that if you don't behave and perform you are sabotaging for your peers. So you do what you are told because of that. It has worked for centuries in many many countries.

Speaking as someone who went through compulsory service (12 months at age 20 in Norwegian air force), I don't think "motivation" is the problem.

Once someone is in the system, they can of course be flake out, but the routine and schedule both limit just how unmotivated individuals can be. In Norway, if you're a contrarian and refuse to do push-ups along with everyone else, eventually they'll send you home. That happens all the time, and I don't think it's a problem for the military: After all, they can just grab more people from the pool of candidates. But most people, once they're in the system, just don't dare to rebel.

There are countries, like Israel, which do make compulsory service work. My own experience in Norway was that the service was not executed seriously or even competently. Kids entered in with zero belief that war was ever likely to occur, and the attitude was that if it did occur, they were not going to play a meaningful part. This attitude was entirely validated by the ridiculously half-assedness of the training itself.

Generally, the basic training was more like a taster than real training. I was taught to fire a gun, but I probably fired 30 shots in total, and didn't feel I got good at it or comfortable wielding a gun. I was taught to throw a live hand grenade — one throw. Presumably they wanted to save on materiel. At one point, we were to do a rather exciting two-day war simulation in the woods, but around midnight, just as we were getting to the "dig a trench and watch for enemy patrols" stage, some colonel stepped in and shouted that we should all pack up because a lot of people were leaving for the Christmas holiday the next morning.

Also, the way compulsory service worked in Norway, you had one month of basic training, followed by 11 months of being stationed at some base. If you're, say, an army engineer, you might have some useful experiences, but for most people, it's just sitting around doing very little, and learning nothing. The real jobs are done by career professionals.

Long story short: If you want a good army you have to train them well, not treat them with kid gloves. Norway's system lead to a situation where a lot of young kids were given a small, not very serious look at military life, after which they'd go home and promptly forget everything. (Not that I'd have appreciated harder training at the time; I really didn't want to be there.) Part of fixing that would be to invest in recruits, just like you do with a regular army: Better materiel, more simulations, more specialization, and so on.

That still leaves the problem of what you do when people go back to real life. Norway's solution was to recall part of the population for a one-week "repetition" exercise every decade or so, which of course was just as silly and half-assed as the original endeavour.

In Finland I went through several hundred rounds. Wasn't even regular infantry. Served the shortest term possible in the signals corps.

Training is scheduled into three parts. 8 weeks, after which you are assigned into leadership track or your rank and file specialization. Then 5 weeks of personal specialization training and 7 weeks of squad training. Adding to 6 months. There are some more difficult rank and file assignments, lasting 12 months. Rank and file medics stay for 9 months.

NCO training after that initial 8 weeks is in two parts, 7 and 9 weeks. Those sent to reserve officer training swap the latter 9 for 14 at the reserve officer school. NCOs lead after that for 28 weeks and reserve officers 23.

Finnish conscription is very limited in its selectiveness. 25k conscripts serve yearly, which is roughly 70-77 % of male cohort. The numbers add up quickly: there's a massive trained reserve of 900k which eclipses most of European armies combined. Their usefulness is obviously somewhat debatable. Still all of them had 6-12 months of military training at some point. 230k have actual war time allocation and up to date kit. There's a similar 12 months of civil service or serve jail time "options" like in Norway. In 2009 2,5k picked civil service, 25 went to jail and 20 took a very niche option, which is to serve unarmed.

Answer to question "in your opinion, if Finland is attacked, should Finns take up arms in any situation, even if the end result seems uncertain?" has been very high for the whole of 2000s: 71–81% say yes. So the willingness is high, owning to mostly to geographical realities. The same thing which has ensured that there's never been serious intent on getting rid of conscription.

>'if this isn't for you then you can go home'

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.

Firing squad?

So to add some needed background information to this:

Every 18 year old has been forced to submit a form stating if they want to be conscripted. That's about 100k people every year.

Out of the 100k, about 20k state that they do want to be conscripted.

Out of the 20k that say yes, 4k are selected during a screening process that evaluates physical and mental fitness.

So there are no less than 2 points where you can opt out of being conscripted if you so like.

That doesn't sound like conscription, then. If they didn't have enough people saying yes, do they start drawing from the "no" pile?

Yes they do - if not enough people volunteer, they will force the ones seeming most fit for the tasks at hand.

Also, if I know the Swedish military, they'll chose the most fit for the task, but make absolutely sure to fill the gender quotas.

What's the required gender ratio, out of curiosity?

I have never heard of such a thing.

> That doesn't sound like conscription

It's not, but the headline serves as a catalyst for a conversation people want to have anyways.

That's how it works, folks.

If there's not enough voluntary participants they'll opt for forced labor. That's conscription. What do I miss here?

We'd like to, and hopefully will, train many more each year but the budget and organization doesn't allow it at the moment.

When we do, the question of drawing non volonteers will be raised. Today's decision just says the legal framework to do it is there.

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

Here we're talking about one modern country invading another. It's just the land changing owners - you, as a citizen, never really owned it anyway. It belongs to the ruling class and it doesn't really matter who they are. We're all one people, we should have one language and one culture. Every modern country has the concepts you outlined above. If the new government doesn't treat you humanely, you can always take civil action to plead for your rights. What's the difference if you speak Swedish, Finnish or Russian? None. What's the difference if you're Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim? None. What's the difference in who takes your taxes? None. The system is always the same, so why should I care that some fat politician will get killed by another fat politician who wants to be the one taking the taxes? Hell, I'll pay to learn his language, too. War only makes sense when they're coming to actually kill you, not when they're coming so that they'll be the one taking the taxes, rather than the current pigs.

>What's the difference if you speak Swedish, Finnish or Russian? None. What's the difference if you're Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim? None.

You may see yourself as a non-1% with no particular ethnicity or religion, but there are poor Muslims who would rather die than be rich Catholics, and there are poor Finns who would rather die than be rich Russians.

I understand that you don't fit in those categories. But there are actual human beings that do.

Then let them volunteer to die for it! But the existence (or even plurality) of poor Finns preferring death over becoming Russians doesn't justify forcing those who don't share their sentiment to die with them.

There are two things, one proveable and one unproveable, that I don't think you understand:

1. You are very much in the minority. The vast majority of people have some amount of ethnic, religious, or nationalist pride. They want to be ruled by one of their own. They are not eager to die for this, but are often willing to do so, as long as they're not being made chumps of.

2. They're right, and you're wrong. Or, to put it another way, their way promotes the success of their civilization, and yours does not. This seems fairly intuitive, as what we're discussing here is the willingness to die for one's civilization. Should it surprise anyone that the willingness to die for a civilization helps that civilization?

I really need to make some sort of Selfish Gene type simulator for these conversations.

>The system is always the same,

Russian and Finnish systems are not the same. Not even close.

Yes, but the difference between them is nowhere close to the difference between slavery and freedom or life and death.

The Russian government has killed more of its own citizens than any war has.

>When there is a war, you conscript everything, people and profits.

Wouldn't you have issues with the most capable people just leaving?

I don't think you realize how everything changes when nation is mobilized and war powers step in. People can't just step in a plane and leave the country, or move large amounts of money.

Everything doesn't change overnight. There are plenty of warnings beforehand, and plenty of opportunity even during war. It takes quite a bit of time to lock everything down.

Conscription is straight up slavery. I don't see any way around that. The arguments seem to be, "you'll only be a slave for a while, if you live", "we need slaves", "you'll get paid to do the work you're forced to do".

If you want an army, be worth defending -- both in terms of paying the soldier and being a country that a soldier would want to work for.

As a male that is forced to register with the US Selective Service, (I wanted financial aid for college) it sure does stick in my mind when I vote for our leaders, who can then authorize a draft if needed...

>Conscription is straight up slavery. I don't see any way around that. //

Which person owns you in your analysis of that being slavery? Or is being owned by another person not a part of your definition?

In a democracy, you're a slave to your own country, effectively. There are people making decisions on your life, all the people voting in the country including you, no?

It may be wrong, just doesn't look like slavery to me.

What does single ownership have to do with anything? Is it somehow better than any number of people can spend your life for you?

What other compulsory actions does the government take that authorize the expenditure of your entire life?

>What does single ownership have to do with anything? Is it somehow better than any number of people can spend your life for you? //

No, it's not automatically better AFAICT, in practice I think it's likely to better on average. It's more that it was claimed to be "slavery" in actuality, not "like slavery" but actual slavery. So it's in some ways semantic but more it's that I think the position is substantially different to slavery - it's not just that it's a group of people, it's that it's a democratic country that you are also part of (as opposed to a corporation owning you, or an individual owning you). They're different conditions. In practice they perhaps share some [a lot of] downsides.

As others have pointed out, if the nation state you live in does not have a secure hold on its territory, then you can either lose some of your freedom to conscription, or lose a whole lot more in foreign occupation.

> lose a whole lot more in foreign occupation

I don't think that's the case in modern times. Unless you believe Russia (that's what we are talking about here, right?) would enslave swedes or subject them to genocide this argument doesn't work.

The modern leader of Russia was an active member of the government of "pre-modern" Russia that slaughtered millions of its own citizens.

Dude, you don't have to be enslaved outright for your life under military occupation to suck.

I am not saying my life wouldn't suck under occupation, but rather that it wouldn't suck "a whole lot more" than under conscription at war time. In fact I'd argue it would suck quite a bit less (and I'd have a lot more chances to have a life at all).

So, will the new Swedish conscripts be securing any territory?

What do you think they'll be doing?>

If it's like it was in Germany they are probably drinking and messing things up.

Which is reasonable, given someone disrupts your life and gives you a force hourly pay that borders satire.

> seem to have any ethical problem with conscription.

Here's my personal perspective:

I was born in 1991, in South Africa. South Africa was involved in the South Africa Border War[0] from 1966 to 1989. Because of this war, we had conscription up until around 1994.

So I have no obligation to join our military, nor do I want to. (It has become really shitty since after the war). I look at my father and his generation. None of them wanted to go to the army because it seemed like a waste of time, and no one believed in the war. But they went anyway because it's better than going to jail for 2 years.

Reading up on the war, I also don't agree with the justification behind it at all. Nevertheless I would have loved to be conscripted into the army. A 2 year (paid) break from studies and/or work. A time to get super fit, learn new skills, make new friends. And the best part of it, is that no one can give you shit for it because it's expected of everyone.

I really wish I had the time/money to just take 2 years off (where I am provided with food and shelter by someone else) and I can just focus on self improvement.

I mean, I could join the army voluntarily, but it sucks, we are not at war(less to do, less to learn, less exciting etc), and it puts me back 2 years in my career. (But if everyone was forced to do it, I wouldn't really be 2 years behind)

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Border_War

> Nevertheless I would have loved to be conscripted into the army. A 2 year (paid) break from studies and/or work. A time to get super fit, learn new skills, make new friends. And the best part of it, is that no one can give you shit for it because it's expected of everyone.

I am a former conscript. We were paid approximately $350 USD a month and rarely had time for personal improvement. The way I see it: many of us lost two years of earning potential, and entered the workforce two years later than our peers.

I don't remember the exact figures, but my uncle said he wished he did an extra year in the army, because the money was pretty good. (to be fair, he also really didn't feel like going to university)

Why were you conscripted and not your peers?

> rarely had time for personal improvement.

I guess it depends on which army you are in, and at what point in history.

My dad joined the Signal Units (He got a degree in Electrical Engineer before doing service) and he got a ton of practical experience which helped him in his career after the army.

Everyone I talked to that was conscripted into the SADF didn't regret it.

> Why were you conscripted and not your peers?

All male citizens here are conscripted. Females and foreigners aren't.

Does conscription tend to make armies (and the soldiers in them) more violent or more peaceful? Is there any data on that?

My human guess and desire is that conscription would give the average citizen a better understanding of what their human rights are and why they are worth defending. I think a major issue with the US military is that the average citizen is distant from the decisions and consequences of military actions made on their behalf.

There's no such thing as a good war.

There are necessary wars.

And ultimately, a failure to be able to defend against neighboring beligerants is fatal to a society.

Some people wouldn't volunteer unconditionally, but would fight to defend their country, as long as everyone does. If you only differentiate between voluntary/non-voluntary these people will just be in the non-voluntary group.

That said, I'd be one of the first to get the hell out if it came to war. I have better things to do with my life.

Well, the opposite of conscription is a professional military. And that has issues too, like for example in the US where mostly impoverished people join.

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.

Well, I guess most of the countries do "pay", but at least in Finland that pay is 5.10 euros per day for first half of year (increases first to 8.50 for days 165-256 and then to 11.90 for remaining). If someone other entity was paying that low wages for even a normal job (let alone 24/7 availability requirement), the employer would be facing criminal charges.

I was paid less than a prison inmate as a conscript :) Had it been twice as much I would call it symbolic. It was around 10% if a regular job.

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

The mandatory part of it is the problem.

"killer slaves" is a bit dramatic.

But is it unfair?

The traditional definition for a slave is a human who is treated as (usually tradable) property for their labor.

I always like to point out that the predecessor to the Western civilization, the ancient Mediterranean, including Greek city states and then later on Rome, was famously built upon slave labor. Even the democratic Athens had a large slave population. However, in a Greek city state like Athens (or the earliest form of Roman legions) the free men -- the slaveowners of the society -- were also the hoplites fighting the wars the city would be involved in. Being a citizen of such a city-state is one the origins of the Western concept of citizenship.

The distinction if you are able to view your community as "us", towards whom you have obligations and duties, not as "them" who rule over you.

Another definition from the Oxford Dictionary is, 'A person who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something'[0].

Being forced to fight in a war is being 'controlled by something'. In this case, a government. They're government slaves.

[0] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/slave

Yes, we also can say in English stuff like "Uncle Joe is slave to alcohol".

Here we are discussing slavery as a concept, which is different.

I'm not sure why Sweden would be concerned.

I read Russian news/propaganda occasionally. Over the last few years, Russian news/propaganda prepared Russian minds for interfering in Ukraine. And the propaganda includes arguments to justify a military buildup. And it seems to be preparing Russian minds for a possible invasion of Baltic states one day.

But I don't think I've even seen Sweden mentioned in Russian news/propaganda. I don't think Sweden is a target.

> I don't think Sweden is a target

As Andy Grove said, "only the paranoid survive" [1]. Good strategy means being prepared for the worst case. As a plus, being prepared for a worst-case scenario goes a healthy way towards deterring it.

Keep in mind that Sweden is neither a NATO member [2] nor a nuclear power [3]. If Russia needed to make a strongman pitch at home or sow confusion abroad, it would be easier (and more meaningful) to cause trouble in Sweden or Finland than virtually anywhere else. Hence the perennial submarine drama [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grove

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO#Sweden

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_progra...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_submarine_incidents

War is not something that can be controlled once it breaks out. Non-aligned militaries that come into close proximity is something that's very dangerous. At the very least an incident between militaries can cause a diplomatic crisis or at worst start a minor war. The very presence of military forces in the Baltic is a deterrent for that reason.

Also Russia has continually violated Swedens air space. Russian pilots have acted aggressively towards Swedish pilots and Russian submarines have been spotted in Swedish waters.

So while Russia may not be plotting a war against Sweden, they are certainly stirring up trouble. Furthermore a war in the Baltic would be a disaster for Europe. If Russia perceives that they risk a wider war, they may back down.

>Russian submarines have been spotted in Swedish waters.

this bullshit has acquired a life of its own no matter how often it's debunked. Please educate yourself

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_submarine_incidents

there is not a single confirmed case. (But there is one from the distant USSR times.)

Overall this hysteria is an excellent example of Western/Swedish propaganda.

I suspect that "Russia has continually violated Swedens air space" is much of the same.

Russia does send military jets regularly into other countries airspace. It happens regularly over Iceland for example[0]. The lie is not in saying it happens, the lie is by omission by selectively reporting it when convenient to make it seem that it's something new or surprising. We always see these stories during periods of increased tensions, suggesting that these flights are a response to recent events, when in fact they have been a standard thing for decades. The other omission is that NATO countries (yes, I know Sweden is not in NATO, I'm talking generally here) do the same for the Russians, and western media never reports on that.

I mean, it's understandable, right? The military has to be prepared for lots of different situations, and in order to properly prepare you need to know your neighbors defenses. Finding out at what point your jets get intercepted tells you a lot about what you can get away with. It would practically be negligent of them not to do it.

As for the submarine issue, I'm not familiar enough with it, but I believe you are right that there are no confirmed cases in recent history. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if it's common for Russia and NATO to send subs to probe each others defenses for similar reasons.

[0] http://icelandreview.com/news/2016/09/26/russian-bombers-fly...

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.

By that reasoning, America has cause to go conquer Britain.

Russia Today? It would be nice for Russia to have a swath from Crimea to Dontesk up through Latvia, just look at a map.

Whats wrong with RT in general (besides funding) and this article in particular?

> It would be nice for Russia to have a swath from Crimea to Dontesk up through Latvia, just look at a map.

Why take this land? It does nothing strategically, has population that you need to subsidise, etc. Crimea allows Black Sea control. Kaliningrad effectively makes Baltic inner sea for Russia and if there ever would be any baltic action you would see that, not many (if any) ships would be able to enter.

Russia has nothing to gain by fighting any war nowadays. It fights because its leaders want to stay in power and it seems to work for now.

Sweden is probably not a target in and of itself, but the island of Gotland is pretty much an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Baltic Sea. If Russia invades the Baltic states they probably don't want NATO based on it.

>Non-aligned Sweden is worried about Russia's Baltic military drills.

>Ms Nyh Radebo said that "70% of parliament is behind the decision to strengthen the military and co-operation with the countries around us".

>The closest co-operation is with Finland, she added.

>Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Löfven, told a national defence conference this week that he “cannot rule out” Russia trying to influence the country’s next elections, which are due in 2018.

>“We should not rule it out and be naive and think that it does not happen in Sweden. That’s why information and cybersecurity is part of this strategy,” Löfven told the TT news agency.

>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/11/russia-waging-...

And that's besides the massive russian campaigns to cut off electricity to estonia. It'd probably be something akin to a professional negligence for a military commander not to recommend this, and it seems Swedish politicians for some reason aren't buying the 'put down your weapons and abandon your allies' line of argument.

You are misinformed because you are reading propaganda. They won't be relaying their plans of that channel.

Here are some recent events:

russian planes flying into Swedish air space

russian sub in water near Stockholm

Norway beefing up their border troops

etc.

Russia launching attacks on Estonian critical infrastructure.

Active disinformation campaigns targeting Norway, Sweden.

Those are more like events that have been ongoing for decades. Russian airspace incursions aren't much of a signal. (see e.g. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/full-list-of-... )

That's not what the article you linked to says. If anything, its message is the exact opposite.

War has a way of spilling over borders.

As do refugees, which sometimes require military resources to feed and house

Sweden had already shrunk their military in recognition of these things. The problem is they overshot, and can't recruit enough volunteers to maintain even a tiny force.

Lots of countries weren't a target when Germany decided to annex most of Europe. Neutrality worked for a lot of countries in WWI, but Germany was like "well screw you". Ukraine never asked to be invaded by Russia.

Germany wanted resources and territory, "living space for the aryan race". Russia has more than enough of both.

I think this is actually more about Sweden's migrant situation. Conscription at 19 is a disincentive to migrants claiming to be minors. Co-ed conscription is probably also a way to encourage integration.

I would be very surprised if they drafted anybody without a Swedish passport.

I don't think Sweden is a target.

Let's just say they're thinking in the very, very long term.

In the short-term, the move is most likely intended as a signal to discourage an invasion of the Baltics, rather than their own territory. But in the longer term, what they're signaling to their much larger neighbor is: "Look, we know your history, and we've seen you play this game before. When it comes to Swedish territory -- don't even think about it."

As Russian I don't agree. I don't watch TV and read news (other than HN and a couple of other sites where I try to avoid politics as much as I can), but why the hell do we need these Baltic states? What do they have that Russia needs? Territory, natural resources? Nothing.

I don't know the real motivation for annexing Crimea, but making a conclusion: first they take Crimea, then they're going to take Sweden and Baltic states - is nonsense.

Right now, the EU/NATO are wondering if they're on their own or not. They might have 8 years of a US President who just doesn't care or will blame them.

Putin would be crazy not to take advantage of an opportunity to chip away at NATO and destabilize the EU edges. What else is he going to do, be a good boy and wait for them to drop sanctions?

Then why is Russia constantly interfering with the Baltics?

Why did Russia abduct that Estonian border guard?

Putin wants to revive USSR without any of it's benefits but all of it's power & resources available to him.

He might get his way-we have a "Gorbachev" in the White House or a KGB asset.

Are you sure you really know that Putin wants to revive USSR? Did he personally announced this goal? Or you're quoting CNN or some other media?

This is typical political fearmongering. There're many reasons to create a fear-inducing stories: "Bad Russians are going to take our land and they replaced our president with a puppet. We must unite and buy more guns!".

Relax, nobody wants to take Sweden. It also wasn't ever a part of USSR or even pre-USSR Russia.

Full disclosure: I am Russian.

Even Belarus and Kazakhstan don't really want to join, forget about the rest ex-USSR countries.

Taking countries by force makes even less sense - there do not exist resources or territory that make it profitable enough to offset military spending and new rounds of economic sanctions.

it gives political momentum-as did Hitler's blitzkrieg in Poland

Military wise you buy large buffer between US ground & air forces based around there.

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 government convinces you that the target country is full of Nazis that eat babies and plan to genocide your people, then suddenly you're a hero if you go kill a bunch of strangers who never did anything to you.

So if you're running a country and you want to invade another country, you better start running the propaganda months, if not years, in advance.

Edit: As another example, take the Iraq War. The US and NATO didn't just randomly invade Iraq without propaganda preparation. Bush was even calling Iraq part of the "axis of evil" for at least a year before the Iraq war.

> If you're a soldier and your government tells you to invade a random country with nice people, how willing are you to fight?

Ironically Western counties are very good at it.

Well, no, not really. Western countries always get a huge backlash for any military activity in any region. This is where the propaganda and state controlled media opinion would be very useful, at least for the military.

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.

why not?

Propaganda is a very good way to be informed. Precisely because the first law in good propaganda is "you never lie, just do not say anything about what you don't want mentioned". A lie like the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is going to backfire when people realize, and they will.

I found very useful watching RT propaganda along CNN, or BBC propaganda.

If a group of propagandists fail to state a very important issue while the other do not, let's say they omit the official conclusion about a plane that went down months ago that you accused the other party of shooting down, well you know this party is lying.

> But I don't think I've even seen Sweden mentioned in Russian news/propaganda. I don't think Sweden is a target.

not immediately, not if a greater conflict breaks out Sweden is a key chokepoint to enable Russia to get out of the north. They will need it.

Cause Norway is?

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/2017/03/norway-moves-milit...

Norway is part of NATO and thus is absolutely a target.

Outside Stockholm:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/10/20/1413790933744_wps_...

Also Sweden is has been aligning more with UK in particular lately and Russian media has noticed.

Getting a 404 error on that link. Mind resubmitting to Imgur?

> I'm not sure why Sweden would be concerned.

So the rush of mass imigration by Russians buying up border property in Finland - Sweden's next door neighbour - shouldn't bother them?

> And it seems to be preparing Russian minds for a possible invasion of Baltic states one day.

That's interesting; can you lend more color?

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 increasingly voluntary. Soldiers on peacekeeping missions in foreign countries are all volunteers.

In 2010 mandatory service was dropped completely. I think the Swedish military found it difficult to recruit enough after that, and the politicians now think the military has shrunk a bit too much. I don't think it will be a huge growth (that would cost money), but perhaps a return to early 2000's level. This time it includes women.

I am not a big fan of conscription, but I can somewhat accept it as long as it's strictly defensive. One good argument for it is that a conscript army is unlikely to stage a military coup in a democracy. If the soldiers are more or less random people, they will more or less support the elected government, at least a portion of them. But, as military power becomes more about technology than numbers, I suspect this argument becomes less important.

> 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.

> One good argument for it is that a conscript army is unlikely to stage a military coup in a democracy. If the soldiers are more or less random people, they will more or less support the elected government, at least a portion of them.

At the same time, military training involves quite a lot of indoctrination as part of getting people to shut up and follow orders. I'm not sure it's particularly healthy for democracy to send a large part of its citizens to indoctrination camps.

It is sobering to think that if you have the technology you can conscript a workforce to build war fighting robots more effectively than you can conscript a force to fight for you.

I believe one of the developments in Syria and Iraq that is under appreciated by strategists is the force multiplication efforts of "cheap drones with hand grenades". Assuming that 50% of the videos on these things are fake, that is still a good case that it is getting easier and easier to turn money into usable offensive capability.

In my estimation, THAT pivot is going to have as much impact on conflicts as the machine gun did.

When the US had conscription (at least in ww2) it supposedly had the effect of creating a "we're all in this together" mentality. I wonder if, in addition to the threat of a perceived expansionist Russia, the influx of new immigrants has anything to do with this. A year of servitude might may assist in integrating new swedes. Or in part help the indigenous swedes see the new arrivals as somehow more Swedish for having served?

9 to 12 months is short. The first six months are lost to training. The US used to draft people for 2 years (Vietnam) or, in WWII, "for the duration, plus six months".

About 75% of the US military-age population couldn't qualify for the US Army today. Too fat, too criminal, too sick, too crazy, or too dumb. This worries some military manpower planners. What are Sweden's stats like?

It is training. Traditionally the 18 year olds were all trained 8-15 months and then return to civil life immediately.

Now they want those who do the training to stay as employed soldiers afterwards - but traditionally Sweden had only a conscript army, no standing army in peacetime apart from those employed in the organization to do the training.

This makes sense as we don't have wars, don't have large foreign bases to staff etc.

Not exactly what you are looking for but in terms of having a fit population Sweden is doing (comparatively) well:

http://www.worldobesity.org/resources/world-map-obesity/?map...

So who are we at war with today? Oceania?

We should have this in the US, starting with the children of Congress and the Senate. I think Mark Twain or Will Rodgers said something like this.

What's the point of conscription? Surely there must be a good reason. Boosting the numbers of your military by forcefully bringing in some barely-motivated, hardly-trained conscripts that are discharged just a few months after completing basic training seems ineffective.

Is there some larger "get the public used to military service" social goal?

Discharged just after training was always the norm in Sweden. Once trained there was never an army to "serve" in - unless you wanted to become an officer and train others. The peacetime organization is tiny compared to the wartime one. At it's pesk the swedish military was over 10% if the population. Most of them of course were just butchers and bus drivers who trained for a year. It was common to be called back for repeat training however.

I think the social effects are just positive side effect.

These effect do however only work when everyone is conscripted like until the 90 I think.

They bring together people from all backgrounds social ethnic and economic and force them to cooperate. I learned a lot from it. I think it can also be a great laguage training for refugees.

We have a long history of conscription. I think it's a good thing. I think it's the moral choice when it comes to defence (but obviously not enough). That is because a conscript is not a professional soldier - and a conscript will never invade another country without good reason. Conscripts will defend their land, but not unjustly attack others.

Then I'd be a bad conscript. I don't even own land.

If you're having trouble getting volunteers, the solution is simple. Pay them more.

The trend seems to be lately to end conscription or national service, as Sweden did itself, but is this the first time in recent history that a country introduced or reintroduced conscription?

You'll see that many European nations ended conscription during the last decade(Sweden in 2010)[1]. If anything this seems to signal a new trend: reactivating conscription.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service

"In Russia all men aged 18-27 have to spend a year in the armed forces."

I don't think that's correct. College graduates only have to serve a few weeks, IIRC.

Not true. Graduates serve for 1 year just as all other men. People who graduated from colleges with military departments get the rank of lieutenant and indeed serve a few weeks, but as of 2017 not too much universities have those departments and even if they do, not every student can enroll there as there are certain requirements for health and physical abilities.

Bork bork!

How is this post not flagged and anything negative related to Trump gets flagged and downvoted because it is "too political for HN"?

Has HN started to take political sides now?

If you think this submission (or any other) are inappropriate for HN, please do flag. As for political sides, humans are generally biased to see actions against their own beliefs and miss those that are congruent. Political submissions in general regardless of political persuasion tend to attract flags, and this one likely has as well: it has 170 points and is only 8 hours old, yet is no longer on the front page.

4,000 troops? Ok.

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