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.