Putin’s willingness to launch a full-on invasion on Ukraine without provocation and sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Russian lives is scary. In Germany this sparked fears about a potential war against Russia which has led to a significant increase in military spending and discussions about a compulsory military service. It is no secret that the state of Germanies military is far from stellar. Still the plans to address this issue are questionable. In this essay I will address some statements and notions I have picked up in debates on the compulsory military service and give my thoughts to them. In the end I will outline some concerns that receive little attention in the current debate.

“Democracies must defend themselves”
A common conception is that we must fight if we are being attacked. Killing the aggressor is always better than being conquered. It has become almost a precursor to debates on military service to say that “democracies must defend themselves”. Usually this is done by people who most certainly would not fight themselves. But must democracies defend themselves?

Let’s say France invades Germany with the goal of introducing French rule of law and force all Germans to speak French. Most people would not be happy about that, but neither would they be willing to fight a war over this. I hope. Sure, it is not great, but do we need to kill people over it? Luckily, we have democratic institutions to decide. So, we could have a referendum before mobilizing the military in which two thirds of Germans vote to accept French rule of law. Well then, we would not fight right? That is all to say that democracies are the only political system in the world where its citizens (should) decide whether they want to fight or not. Undermining this idea by saying democracies must defend themselves as if it is the most common-sense idea is undemocratic and shows a lack of understanding for the democratic privileges we enjoy.

I do want to add three things. First, a Russian invasion does not mean we must learn Russian. At least not only that. It also means targeted killings of minorities, opposition and the arrest of all dissidents. And that is just the bloody tip of the iceberg. Ukraine where (to my knowledge) a majority is still willing to fight is a good example of people in a democratic system choosing to fight, because the alternative is worse. Second, we must ask ourselves under which conditions it may be democratic to vote on the end of democracy and if democracies can and should be able to abolish themselves through a popular vote. I do not want to go into this discussion but I think in a defence scenario a lot of it depends on what the consequences of a military conflict would be. Third, I think it is important to have democracies build in a way where citizens can decide who and when to fight. Martial law and forced conscriptions can very quickly lead to a point where it is not the citizens deciding but a few political and/or economic elites who will never be on the frontline themselves. Putin, by means of being a psychopathic dictator, can force Russians to fight. Democracies and their citizens do not have to fight, they can fight, if they so choose, let’s keep it that way.  

Why does Germany need 20.00 soldiers?
So, Germany does not have to fight, but let’s say its citizens choose to fight or to invest in their military as part of a deterrence strategy. What do we need compulsory military service for? Well to fill the free positions in the military. But what do we need those for? Why do we need 20,000 additional people working for the military and how will compulsory service fill these positions?

In short, it was decided that to defend Germany and based on current and predicted vacancies the military needs around 200,000 soldiers. Currently it has only around 180,000 soldiers. That means we need 20,000 more. Simple enough. Why exactly we need them is hard to discern. In official statements and interviews terms like “the ability to defend Germany” are often used, but it is hard to come by any specific information. Germanies military is relatively small, but I find it surprising that there is hardly any information on why Germany needs more soldiers to defend itself. Why are 180,000 not enough?

An interesting problem that the German military does have is that according to some experts only half of all military units can be deployed. The rest is lacking soldiers or equipment. Some, like me, might find it surprising that despite lacking only 10% of the 200,000 soldiers Germany seeks to have, 50% of its units cannot be deployed. Now of course there is not necessary a linear relationship. Just because the military lacks 10% of soldiers, does not necessitate that only 10% of units cannot be deployed. But it is still a striking discrepancy. Imagine we could increase the deployable units to 80% simply by providing the equipment. Would we still need the additional 20,000 soldiers that desperately then? Furthermore, imagine Germany manages to hire more soldiers but deployable units are still around 50%. Then nothing was gained.

To summarize the point so far, I just wonder where these numbers come from, who calculated them and if having more soldiers means more deployable units which I am guessing is the goal (although again that is hard to tell because there is little public information). But I mean why have soldiers if you cannot deploy them? In the next step we must ask ourselves if compulsory military service is going to help fill these gaps.

How do 700,000 people do compulsory military service?
Each year, around 700,000 people would have to do compulsory military service. Some of those will not be able to do the service because the military discriminates against disabled people. Some might refuse to serve and will probably have to do civil service as “punishment”. In addition, the 700,000 currently include women who by constitutional law cannot be forced to do military service in Germany. It might be seen as unfair, but I would count it as a win if 350,000 less people had to do compulsory military service.

So, we are left with around 300,000 conscripts. Given that there are currently only 180,000 professional soldiers I guess the military would first have to hire more training personal to train these people. If we have one trainer responsible for 300 conscripts we would need around 1,000 trainers. But wait. Isn’t the problem of the military that they struggle to hire new personal? I am sensing a problem here. But let us assume that the military simply reduces its capabilities even further, at least in the short term, and has some of its professional soldiers train the 300,000 potential soldiers. Would it work?

I think yes. But for no good reason other than conscripts with an average age of 18, they spent around 5% of their life in the military and 100% of their post-school professional career. If you would force 300,000 people into any job after school for one year some would probably stick around. If German politicians are so keen on taking rights away from young people, why not for more critical professions like teachers or nurses?              

Can we force young people to serve
That brings me to my next point, can we force young people to do military service and sacrifice a year of their life so that they can kill people? In my opinion the answer is no. I want to highlight one argument, a response to it and a counterargument. If you have read a previous post on voting rights for children, you will already be able to anticipate my argument. Can we force children to do things if they were never able to vote? Most people who will be forced into military service never had the chance to vote and are thus forced to something on which they had no democratic influence. I find this highly undemocratic and in general a pretty shitty move. In addition, young people are a minority in current democratic systems. In Germany people above 55 make up half the voting population so they would be able to decide whether young people should do military service or not. At the very least I would find it a lot fairer if we were to discuss military service for 30-year-olds. They are, I think, still young and fit enough for military service but also have the chance to spend their adult life lobbying and voting against a compulsory military service. To make it most fair conscripts should have the average age of those eligible to vote, so 55. Ok maybe not.

A common counter argument against the notion of not wating to force minors to do stuff is that we are already doing it: School. There are two important differences though. School is only compulsory in Germany until age 16. Compulsory military service would be compulsory also for adults who are 18 or older. Infringing on adult rights who we consider to be old enough to make their own choices is much different than infringing on children’s rights. But there is another important point to consider. School is intended purely as a benefit to the kid. It aims to increase equality and educate young people in a way that they can understand today’s world and live in it. Now you might say that it is simply a production of educated workers for Germanies labour market and that is fair, but I think it is important to recognise that I still have the freedom to move to Canada, change my citizenship and use my German education to have a good life there. There is benefit in educating children that goes beyond the nation state. Ultimately a large majority of children benefit from compulsory education. In difference to that, military service has hardly any proven advantages except if you decide to continue your military career afterwards. Furthermore, the benefits are purely for the state. Most teenagers who are forced into military service will not benefit but the state will be able to fill the gap of 20,000 soldiers in its military. 

The Free-Rider problem
This is probably the dumbest argument of them all and I will keep it brief. Some people who are against a compulsory military service or generally reject fighting for their country are accused of freeriding on those who are willing to serve. But all citizens are paying for defence through taxes. If anything, German soldiers are freeriding because most of them never fought anyone. We just pay them in case, because the enemy is doing the same. They almost never fight are a bigger risk to their own lives than anyone else’s and would not be necessary if all countries simply would not have a standing army. But that is beside the point. Accusing a taxpayer of freeriding because they do not want to serve in the military is like accusing paying customers in a bakery of freeriding because they are not willing to become bakers themselves. It is such a stupid argument and yet I hear it regularly. Says a lot about political debates in Germany these days.

Now I will move away from points that are often discussed in debates and move on to points that are, surprisingly, not talked about.

Labour shortage and more military
The military is currently employing around 180,000 soldiers and an additional 80,000 staff that is working for the military. If we assume that some of that staff have other jobs on the side, we might end up with something like 250,000 people working only for the military. Although some might question the intelligence of someone joining the military, many soldiers are highly educated and include everything from pioneers to doctors. The people who work for the military could just as well work for the private sector. That is a hefty chunk of qualified labour taking out of the labour market. If we now add 300,000 teenagers and young adults who could otherwise start their work or further education sooner, through compulsory military service we end up with 550,000 people who could fill other important gaps in our labour by becoming teachers, nurses, or craftsmen. The military would then make up 1% of Germanies total labour force (43,000,000). Sure, we might need some military but 1% of Germanies labour force just sitting around while the whole country hopes they will never have to be deployed is a bit odd to say the least.

How fair will it be?
I also want to point out that I have serious doubts about the fairness of a military service in general and especially a compulsory one. People with lower incomes and few perspectives in life will always be overrepresented in military because why become a soldier when you could be a lawyer. If a service is compulsory, I would be surprised if the rich and powerful do not find ways to circumvent this. That would make military service discriminatory against people with a poor socio-economic background. Furthermore, the outright exclusion of disabled people in the compulsory military service raises further doubts. Another issue would be people from the LGBTQ+ community and People of Colour. Will trans-men be allowed or excluded? Does the fear of discrimination within the military allow them to avoid service. All this to say, compulsory military service will likely be only for strong, non-queer, men with a weak socioeconomic background.

Threats from within: the AfD
Now you might have read this whole text and still think that we need a compulsory military service because it is the best way to defend Germany. I think if you want to make anything compulsory in Germany let it be being a teacher. We have a party that, among other things, takes bribes from Putin, considers the Nato as the aggressor instead of Russia and is willing to hand Ukraine over to Russia. Not only do we have such a party, but it also is the second largest and given current trends could soon be the largest. If you want to worry about German security I would worry about them first. Maybe even defund police and military so that the AfD has little to work with if they come to power.