Conscription is resurging across Europe. Is that a good thing?

https://www.euronews.com/2023/09/01/conscription-is-seeing-a-revival-across-europe-is-that-a-good-thing

Does conscription mean sending poorly trained, disgruntled young people into battle, or can it encourage civic duty and help defend Europe?

3 points · 6 comments · view on lemmy.world

6 Comments

Gecko@feddit.de · 2 pts · 2y

Tbh, what annoys me the most is that conscription usually only applies to males. Stop taking gender into account and just make it apply to everyone...

MrMakabar@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 2y

We need a EU Military and thats basicly all the insurance needed. Only the US and China have higher military spending then the EU right now. So that and nukes is easily enough.

tetha@feddit.de · 0 pts · 2y (1 reply)

A former Wagner mercenary in July told Euronews that while he served in Ukraine one of his main duties was to ensure Russian conscripts - “barely 21-years-old” - would not run away, as they were so reluctant to fight.

Doesn't this compare apples to oranges?

One is an aggressive war. People are shipped into Randomiskan without clear indication what's going on, why they should be there and they are supposed to die for the glory of the state. Sorry, but that's when everyone wants to run. That's also distinctively different from WW2, when concrete evidence of mass murder in occupied europe was available.

The other would be a defensive war. An outside aggressor wants to wipe out your culture and accepts killing or deporting anyone you consider important in your life. Putting it like that, WW2 was very much a defensive war from the allied side. That's a very different motivation.

Sternout@feddit.de · 1 pts · 2y

To be fair ukrainian men weren't (aren't?) allowed to leave the country either

DieguiTux8623@feddit.it · 0 pts · 2y (1 reply)

The EU was formed explicitly to prevent new wars from happening in the continent. At this point we should reconsider this and admit something has gone terribly wrong. We just elected a whole new set of greedy beurocrats and politicians...

Gecko@feddit.de · 1 pts · 2y

The EU was formed explicitly to prevent new wars from happening in the continent. At this point we should reconsider this and admit something has gone terribly wrong.

Why? There are still no wars between EU countries. As such, the EU has been a huge success ^^