Very few Europeans born after the first part of the 1980s
had to complete compulsory military service
with the professionalization of the Armed Forces and the uselessness of having hundreds of thousands of soldiers without professional preparation.
The European armies did not need large numbers of troops, but had specialized in recent decades in peacekeeping operations outside Europe or in highly localized anti-terrorist and military operations for which only a few hundred or so were sometimes needed. a few thousand highly trained soldiers.
Nobody expected a big war
, much less on European territory.
But Vladimir Putin arrived, ordered an attack on Ukraine and everything blew up.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen speaks at a press conference about strengthening the Armed Forces.
Photo EFE
Suddenly European governments saw how Ukraine needed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of men (it considers that it will need another half a million this year alone) and they thought that in a similar situation they would not have the population trained.
Some are beginning to take measures and
the main one is to return to mandatory military service for several months
, sometimes even longer than a year, so that when they come of age (or when they finish higher education), young people have the education minimum military force to be able to be mobilized.
The novelty for some countries is that now, unlike decades ago,
girls will also have to do military service.
In Denmark
Denmark is the latest government that has ordered the extension of its already mandatory military service to young women.
Prime Minister, Social Democrat Mette Frederiksen, said Wednesday that she is trying to achieve “complete equality between the sexes.”
The Minister of Defense, Troels Lund Poulsen, said for his part that “a more robust military service, which includes full gender equality, will contribute to solving defense challenges, national mobilization and the provision of our Armed Forces.” .
Girls can now do military service,
but for them it is voluntary
.
The obligation will begin in 2026. In Europe, only its neighbors Norway and Sweden include young women in compulsory military service.
Germany eliminated compulsory military service in 2011
but its Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius, plans to reintroduce it, also for boys and girls, starting next year if he obtains parliamentary approval.
In Austria it was reinstated in 2013, in Switzerland it was never eliminated and in Poland a Territorial Defense Force, made up of volunteers, was created in 2017 after the elimination of military service in 2009. It
already has 50,000 people
.
It is not a typical military service, but those who enlist undergo seasons of military training.
Estonia never eliminated it, Lithuania did, but reintroduced it in 2015 (Russia forcibly annexed the Ukrainian province of Crimea in 2014) and Latvia will make it mandatory this year.
Latvian is a different system.
Instead of training young people for a year or similar period upon reaching the age of majority,
Latvia will do so immediately for all men between 18 and 27 years old
and then call up about 7,500 men each year, in a country which barely exceeds one million inhabitants.
In the United Kingdom the debate returned in recent weeks, but the political class rules out returning to a mandatory conscription that was eliminated 60 years ago and that was never very popular.
There have only been mass conscriptions to train men during the world wars and there was conscription similar to the rest of Europe between 1949 and 1960.
France abolished compulsory military service in 1997 and dedicated its efforts to professionalizing the Armed Forces.
In March 2017 Emmanuel Macron, then only a candidate for president,
announced that he wanted to reinstate him
.
Little by little, now president, he was postponing the implementation of his promise, which still has not been carried out.
Italy abolished compulsory military service in 2005 and Spain its “military service” in 2001. Of the large European countries, they are the two where its reintroduction is least debated for now.
Fear appears to increase with proximity to Russia.
P.B.