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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> I'm pretty sure they mean owners of citizenship

I know what the word 'citizen' means. I was saying I think it's the wrong word because it's redundant. Of course they're hiring citizens - almost no military recruits anything else (except for commonwealth issues).

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Is that true? According to this, in the US at least, "Roughly 35,000 non-citizens are serving in active duty military and about 8,000 join each year."[1] The US government also deports some of its honorably discharged veterans.[2]

[1] https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/eligibility-requi...

[2] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/06/12/...

Yes the US and UK are notable examples of exceptions. But in most countries it’s the case.

That list includes, US, UK, France, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. Further, many EU countries accept EU citizenship rather than limit things to their own countries citizens.

So, it’s reasonably common among western countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_militaries_that_recr...

It’s common across big countries. Lot of that list contains things like from specific area only.

Rare amongst smaller countries. For me it sounds odd to serve in a military without citizenship. Finland even allows some men to skip the conscription if they do not live in Finland and have dual citizenship.

I wouldn't call Australia, New Zealand, and Russia "western countries".

I agree that Russia is generally not considered a western country. But Australia and New Zealand are generally on such lists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

The US Armed Forces allow enlisting as a permanent resident: https://www.usa.gov/join-military

There are quite a few exceptions to "militaries don't recruit non-citizens": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_militaries_that_recrui...

Most relevant to the case at hand, a number of EU countries allow EU citizens to serve in their militaries: Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and Luxembourg

But I mean it’s not what the story is about - the story is about them being a new class of non-deployable soldiers - them being citizens or not is unchanged and orthogonal. So why’s it in the title as if it’s party of what’s newsworthy?

Deplorable? Deployable maybe?

The Dutch military is actually considering hiring from other EU countries to bolster forces.

[1] http://content1b.omroep.nl/urishieldv2/l27m117bb9ab7f68485c0...

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