On that note, what do people here think of mandatory military service? Personally, I‘m against it. It‘s something completly unnessesary in a modernized society such as ours.
Well I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I don‘t believe that forcing people to enlist adds strength to any military, it just lowers the moral of the people that chose to serve...well, sort of.
On the otherhand, having a population that had done some form of military service does have the benefit of increasing public support for military spending. This is good for the military...well, sort of.
Basically you run into the problem of training a significant number of new recruits every year, most of whom will never stay past their minimum required term of service. This is of course not the cost effective way to build a strong military. You also end up with a very large military with very limited abilities, which in turn ends up decreasing support for said military.
Spain is a very good example, under the dictatorship of General Franco, military service was cumpulsory (not surprising). Spain ended up with quite a large military but it‘s resources were drained and throughout Franco‘s rule Spain‘s army lost it‘s strength and its effectiveness. No money was availiable for new equipment, services or operations. Since Franco‘s death conscription was eleminated and Spain has spent the last thirty years rebuilding a smaller but much more effective military. Now the advantage that they had was that they started with a decent budget (the byproduct of a military led dictatorship) and reduced numbers in order to effectively work within that budget even the purchase of aircraft carriers seemed cheap compared to what they were used to. Here we have bigger problems, we have a limited budget
and limited numbers.
So where does that leave us? Without public support it doesn‘t really matter what you do and in this day and age public support is more about media and politics than actual reality. Conscription doesn‘t fit into the modern world, in the west we pride ourselves on our freedom of choice no matter how ignorant the basis for the decision. Until the west wakes up I only want to see the guys who want to defend my country standing on the front lines.