Some things have become very clear in the last 29 months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It’s obvious that Russian aggression won’t stop; that European NATO has miscalculated the risks of war and conflict while massively underspending on defense; and it’s painfully obvious that Western armies have too few people.
Personnel is far from the only issue, but it really matters. As Britain’s then-Chief of the Defense Staff Gen Patrick Saunders said in January: “Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.” The British Army has missed its “other ranks” recruitment targets almost every year since 2010, and other European armies are similarly failing to recruit people.
Finding the missing men and women has become an issue of some urgency given our understanding of Russian intentions. While conscription is returning in some places (Latvia is the obvious example), others like Germany are debating the issue and seem likely to move in that direction.
But while Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has outlined plans that amount to voluntary enrolment (just 5,000 of the country’s 400,000 young men would actually be selected to serve annually), even that comes with huge problems.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has suggested the military’s needs are manageable and the plan has not yet been put to parliament. And while a majority of Germans support the idea, there are huge cost implications for a financially restricted government. Barracks building alone would cost billions.
But the issue may be unavoidable as US military engagement in the continent may shrink.
The UK has had an all-professional army for most of its modern history, but even here the debate has flared up.
In January, Gen. Saunders annoyed the government with a speech suggesting a “citizen army.” While he made clear this was not a call for all-military conscription, he did make plain that Ukraine’s fight had shown the need for reserves of trained personnel. He suggested a voluntary call-up should start when a war began.
Given Downing Street’s irritation in January, it was slightly odd to see the Conservatives making voluntary national service a part of their election platform in June, when they lost to the Labour Party. This proposed one year of national service for all 18-year-olds, although only a minority would be given military training.
The idea was met with widespread criticism and it’s unclear whether the Conservatives will pursue it at a later date. Regardless, such ideas are rarely discussed in UK politics, and they demonstrate that some political and security classes are worried about the issue.
So, what does military conscription look like?
There are two basic models. The first is to train the soldier and then add time when they serve as a member of the operational force. For example, basic training is eight months, followed by two years in the force.
That leads to a situation where almost 1/3 of the conscripted force is training for a job that only lasts two years. The soldiers in training are not ready to participate in any missions or campaigns and will only be placed in a unit afterward. When the two years in the operational force are up, the soldier is demobilized and returns to civilian life.
The total length of the draft is close to three years. It is unlikely that the draftee will return to military service unless the soldier volunteers and enlists in a full-time unit.
The second model calls up conscripts and sends them to basic training for eight months, after which the soldiers are demobilized and return to civilian life with an obligation to return to their unit during mobilization.
Their unit is demobilized with their weapons, vehicles, and equipment stored in dispersed warehouses until the soldiers return for drill or mobilization. The unit is activated every 12, 24, or 48 months for drill and training for a month, with the exercise providing a test of the ability to mobilize.
After the initial training, during the first decade, the soldier belongs first to the regular army and then the territorial units until the end of service. All trained, formerly conscripted soldiers form a pool of personnel far deeper than those currently serving.
The additional personnel in the mobilization pool solved three issues. First, with extra personnel assigned, you can mobilize quickly. If the unit has 150 soldier “positions” and 200 assigned, the unit needs only to reach 75% strength to be complete and can start moving from the base areas to the actual operational area.
Second, as we have seen in Ukraine, large-scale wars are very destructive, and the casualty numbers run high. The large personnel pool of non-assigned soldiers enables the mobilized army to quickly restore a unit’s manning level, even after hard fighting, by assigning replacements. Third, health issues, family, and other reasons for non-service allow attrition of soldiers in this reserve pool.
The second model in many countries keeps the demobilized soldier living their civilian life in their personnel pool and assigned to units until they are 35–40 years old — the first 10 years in the regular army, then in a territorial unit.
Let’s run some numbers and say that the UK needs 80,000 drafted soldiers in the standing army who are operationally ready. According to the first model, there will be 40,000 soldiers in training and 80,000 drafted soldiers in the standing operational force.
The UK has 66 million inhabitants, and with gender-neutral conscription, about 500,000 young citizens would be up for registration with the draft board and testing. To produce 40,000 soldiers trained after eight months, about 50,000 draftees would have to be called up, assuming that one out of five will not complete the training due to health, injuries, and other reasons.
That would require 40–50 battalion-sized training barracks, which would be a substantial investment in infrastructure and buildings. Calling these draftees up twice a year and cutting the essential training to six months will reduce the need for training facilities, as each contingent now is 25,000 instead of 50,000.
In this example, out of a half-million young UK citizens, only 10% will serve in a conscripted force that will enlarge the existing professional British Army. So who will serve – and why?
That is a tricky question. In smaller countries like Israel, Finland, and South Korea, almost everyone has to serve. If, as in the UK example, only one out of 10 are needed, it raises questions about fairness and equal treatment of citizens, and whether it is fair in a democracy to pick out just a few. Meanwhile, the vast majority can avoid the duty to serve.
Draftees would also have to be motivated to stay in the service. If you pay the national service draftees the same salaries as full-time soldiers, you simply expand the professional army. On the other hand, if the pay is too low, there will be higher attrition with fewer soldiers in the operational force.
Other incentives could be more accessible access to college after the national service. In Sweden, in the 1980s and 1990s, conscripts were given bonus points in the college entrance exam (Högskoleprovet) as national service counted as professional experience.
The call for national service is a call to gather around a common goal. It sounds appealing, and knowing that the average voter is middle-aged, national service ideas tend to be politically well-received.
What is often ignored is the need for a greater sense of national cohesion because the younger generation is now more disconnected from the nation-state. Many will simply refuse to serve and the military has no desire to spend time and effort on recalcitrant trainees. National service also raises issues about who will serve, fairness and equality, and practical infrastructure issues such as housing, training grounds, and integration into a larger force.
So it’s easier said than done. It is not a quick fix to unify a country. But in some form or other, it seems likely to make a return in much of Europe. We need to get thinking now about how to make this work.
Jan Kallberg, Ph.D., LL.M., is a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a Fellow at the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, and a George Washington University faculty member. Follow him at cyberdefense.com and @Cyberdefensecom.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
From the Ashes: Cultural Identity and National Security in the Age of Conflict
Date: November 19, 2024
Time: 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. CT
