At the beginning of March, Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) defence policy spokesman Florian Hahn called for the reintroduction of compulsory military service before the end of the year.
“We can’t just sit back and watch as the world around us becomes more insecure,” he told German tabloid Bild.
No, we are afraid of Germany having an actual army. But telling the biggest economy to just lay back and chill is no option either.
So we need to find a way for them to waste enormous amounts of money on defense without getting anything to show.
Enter: conscription.
Because this way you can then spend massive amounts of money on infrastructure for a lot of people instead of buying actual stuff like equipment or ammunition. And as a bonus for the country that has perfected keeping the population poor and on low wages while the top 1% make all the money (see: Germany’s GDP while at the same time having a median wealth more fitting for eastern Europe*), they can get a lot new
slavesserfsforced workerscheap labor from those refusing to serve to optimise corporate profits even more.*reference (because I know people love to deny reality): median/wealth…
I also agree that investing in training, equipment and deployment capabilities seems like a better option than having a conscription as the number of fighting personnel is roughly equal (and as a defender you need less people for defense). From what I heard the European armies match Russias army in power overall - however I’m not sure if they could be as fast as Putin in getting this power coordinated to the Baltics.
Regarding the median and wealth statistics: I agree that they are concerning especially for a rich country as Germany. However I think that is mainly due to the lower home ownership rates compared to most other countries. So I think it’s more an accidental situation (with f.e. historic reasons) than result of more neoliberal policies. Still an important point to highlight and work on.