Comment by impossiblefork
1 year ago
No.
Here in Sweden we instituted mandatory military service we did so because we wanted to ensure that there was no military class that if they decide to can take over. We knew the cost, and the cost is worth it.
In normal times the cost is simply to do ones mandatory military service.
This protects against coups, ensures your power in society and prevents groups of officers and soldiers etc. from taking over.
> This protects against coups, ensures your power in society and prevents groups of officers and soldiers etc. from taking over.
Meanwhile Spain suffered an attempted coup in 1981 [0] while mandatory military service was still in place [1]. The conscripts did not play a role in protecting democracy.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_attempt
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Service_(Spain)
There are no silver bullets. It's just that having (solely) an elite warrior class is an extra risk.
Decision-making in the armed forces is always performed by a "warrior class". The people who operate heavy war machinery are also career soldiers; conscripts are light infantry.
And there is a very real economic cost to mandatory military service. It only makes sense in the context of a small country (in terms of population) bordering a large aggressive neighbor, such as Finland or (possibly) Canada.
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This is similar to the argument behind the American constitutional right to own guns.
In both cases I very much doubt that people lacking the training, organisation and weaponry of the professional military will be able to beat them in contemporary circumstances.
I realise military service means people have some training, but as much as the professionals? What about air cover, heavy weaponry, communications? What about timing - a coup might be over before conscripts can react.
Most of all, is there historical evidence this works?
An insurgency doesn’t report to a battlefield to be slaughtered by the professional army. To see what a large-scale American resistance would look like, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan are instructive.
The people doing the mandatory military service is the army. There is no army without the mass army.
They can at least shoot machine guns and carbines, use artillery etc. Even elite units such as jaeger troops/commandos are ordinary people, not necessarily people who stay for longer than their military service.
Maybe it's unrelated to the thread topic, but the benefit of the American 2 amendment system is that the conscription officer knows he can be shot in the face when visiting the home of an unwilling conscript. Maybe this would have prevented the war with Ukraine
It did not historically stop conscription in the US though, so I do not think it would do so anywhere else.
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> the conscription officer knows he can be shot in the face when visiting the home of an unwilling conscript
Generally such conscripts realize they're dooming their family to at best prison and at worst dying in the raid on their home.
Surely there's a difference between the folks just doing their national service, and the career soldiers (who are the people likely to start a coup)?
In actual coups, it's often a small cadre of well-connected higher officers who do the work. It's not the whole military. By the time the whole military (or country) realises what's happened, it's already happened and there's not a lot they can do.
The career soldiers are recruited from people doing their mandatory military service, and upon this, many people having done their mandatory military service are part of the home defence and practice now and then.
I did my conscription service in 2005-2006(iirc), plus one tour in Kosovo and another in Afghanistan.
This is the first I hear that this would be the motivation.
The main motivation is that for a small country like Sweden to have enough manpower to defend itself adequately, conscription is necessary.
Man, with all the respect to Sweden, you're in your own [very high] class.
I feel we're behind the Swiss, and want to imitate them.