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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, har
by nateberkopec 10y ago
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?
- yjgyhj 10y agoWe 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.
- fwn 10y agoThen I'd be a bad conscript. I don't even own land.
- alkonaut 10y agoDischarged 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.