In seeking to grow the size of its armed forces by more than 40 percent, Germany’s ruling coalition has agreed to an approach that calls for all 18-year-old men to complete medical exams assessing their fitness to serve, and requires the country’s defense minister to report on the progress of recruitment every six months. For now, the plan stops short of conscription, but members of parliament will be asked to consider other options if efforts to recruit volunteers fall short.
As John Boyce wrote in WPR last year, Germany isn’t the only European country that has been jolted into considering compulsory military service in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and amid the realization that the style of combat that has prevailed in Ukraine requires larger conventional armies. But it’s not clear that conscription is the best way to bolster force size, in part because military leaders themselves say it has the potential to reduce combat performance. “On paper, military conscription may appear to be the most effective way to rapidly boost force size, and it is finding increasing favor among prominent European politicians, such as German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius,” Boyce wrote. “There are, however, a number of serious political, institutional and cultural obstacles to its implementation, which suggest that conscription may not be such an effective panacea in practice.”
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