On the one hand, conscription is essentially forced labour. Some countries take that concept even further and allow the potential conscripts to choose between military service and straight-up forced labour e.g. in social jobs like emergency services or care jobs. Im my home country this goes so far that some parts of the social system wouldn’t work without this system.
This is also an equality issue, since almost all counties only apply something like that to young men and not women, even though women are totally capable for that kind of work as well.
On the other hand, if a country has a military that is primarily based on carreer soldiers, it becomes much easier for an emerging dictatorship to order these soldiers to e.g. shoot at protesters. A military based on mostly ordinary people who were conscripted as young men and stay trained using a militia system (like e.g. the Swiss does) is imho much more stable against e.g. military coups.
But it is a significant and non-voluntary investment.
In the Swiss, for example, every man has to spend ~2% of their work life in the military, which can be directly equated to a ~1% loss in GDP, just for mandatory military service.
In Israel, men have to serve for a minimum of 2 years and 8 months, while women have to serve 2 years, which roughly equates to a loss of ~5% GDP.
Conscription doesn’t make a military cheaper of stronger compared to a complete volunteer/carreer army.
(Take these back-of-the-napkin calculations with a lot of salt, they are just there to show a rough dimension.)
So yeah, forced labour and lots of involuntary time investment of a significant portion of the population vs higher resistance against coups.
Do you think if the period demand served was shorter (6 months to a year) and it was equal regardless of gender that would be much better?
I feel like that time in a social program wouldn’t be too off putting for someone’s goals in life and I imagine if someone were to go the military route instead most of that time would be eaten up by basic and trade training.
Over here (Austria) it’s 6 months for military or 9 months for social. The people in the social program are actually contributing labor and their work is really important.
The people going into military spend most of their time in training. While there they can learn some skills free of charge, e.g. they can do their driver’s license or the truck driver’s license or get some medical training, stuff like that. So it’s not completely wasted time for the individual, but almost completely. They serve mostly a political/ideological purpose.
One thing to note here regarding Austria’s military service that will not apply to other countries: Our military is total and utter crap when it comes to combat. Like, they aren’t even pretending that they could defend the country.
Instead, the biggest part of the real usage of the military is in disaster mitigation/recovery. So for example, currently there are some severe floods in southern Austria and some villages are actually completely cut off by the floods. So the military is there to first airdrop supplies, then they built a temporary ferry service and now they are building a new road through the muddy forest. Recruits doing their mandatory service are used for these purposes. So even from a social aspect, they aren’t completely useless either.
The question is whether it is fair to force people to do that, and also if they wouldn’t force them, who else would do it? That’s not really the point of conscription at all, but it’s a major side effect over here.
If we have a system like that, it should totally be equal regardless of gender.
But if we should have a system like that, I cannot answer that.
I am conflicted.
On the one hand, conscription is essentially forced labour. Some countries take that concept even further and allow the potential conscripts to choose between military service and straight-up forced labour e.g. in social jobs like emergency services or care jobs. Im my home country this goes so far that some parts of the social system wouldn’t work without this system.
This is also an equality issue, since almost all counties only apply something like that to young men and not women, even though women are totally capable for that kind of work as well.
On the other hand, if a country has a military that is primarily based on carreer soldiers, it becomes much easier for an emerging dictatorship to order these soldiers to e.g. shoot at protesters. A military based on mostly ordinary people who were conscripted as young men and stay trained using a militia system (like e.g. the Swiss does) is imho much more stable against e.g. military coups.
But it is a significant and non-voluntary investment.
In the Swiss, for example, every man has to spend ~2% of their work life in the military, which can be directly equated to a ~1% loss in GDP, just for mandatory military service.
In Israel, men have to serve for a minimum of 2 years and 8 months, while women have to serve 2 years, which roughly equates to a loss of ~5% GDP.
Conscription doesn’t make a military cheaper of stronger compared to a complete volunteer/carreer army.
(Take these back-of-the-napkin calculations with a lot of salt, they are just there to show a rough dimension.)
So yeah, forced labour and lots of involuntary time investment of a significant portion of the population vs higher resistance against coups.
Do you think if the period demand served was shorter (6 months to a year) and it was equal regardless of gender that would be much better?
I feel like that time in a social program wouldn’t be too off putting for someone’s goals in life and I imagine if someone were to go the military route instead most of that time would be eaten up by basic and trade training.
Over here (Austria) it’s 6 months for military or 9 months for social. The people in the social program are actually contributing labor and their work is really important.
The people going into military spend most of their time in training. While there they can learn some skills free of charge, e.g. they can do their driver’s license or the truck driver’s license or get some medical training, stuff like that. So it’s not completely wasted time for the individual, but almost completely. They serve mostly a political/ideological purpose.
One thing to note here regarding Austria’s military service that will not apply to other countries: Our military is total and utter crap when it comes to combat. Like, they aren’t even pretending that they could defend the country.
Instead, the biggest part of the real usage of the military is in disaster mitigation/recovery. So for example, currently there are some severe floods in southern Austria and some villages are actually completely cut off by the floods. So the military is there to first airdrop supplies, then they built a temporary ferry service and now they are building a new road through the muddy forest. Recruits doing their mandatory service are used for these purposes. So even from a social aspect, they aren’t completely useless either.
The question is whether it is fair to force people to do that, and also if they wouldn’t force them, who else would do it? That’s not really the point of conscription at all, but it’s a major side effect over here.
If we have a system like that, it should totally be equal regardless of gender.
But if we should have a system like that, I cannot answer that.