Gunner13 said:
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I sincerely think you are wrong one this one. A free society should NEVER compel its citizens to serve! As Robert Heinlein once wrote ".... a free society that can't find enough volunteers to defend it probably does not have a right to exist...." (or words to that effect).
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I agree with you in that generally speaking it would be a bad idea for the US or UK for instance to reinstate the draft. People who are doing compulsory service have very low morale when shipped abroad.
however...
I can't agree with you universally. For instance I am quite certain that there would be no lack of volunteers should Finland be attacked (According to polls over 80% think that we should defend ourselves with arms even if the outcome looked bleak.) Nevertheless we are in a very secure situation right now and people do not like to have so much trouble if they do not see it to be necessary. (If nobody is going to attack anyway, why serve?) Under such circumstances only perhaps half of the age cohort, if that, would do military service voluntarily during a time of deep peace.
While this would be more than enough say in UK if they had such will to defend their country, it will not do in Finland. Why, you ask.
Uk has a population about 59 million. In comparison Finland has a population of about 5 million, and it is geographically larger than the UK. If 40% of men in each UK birth cohort volunteered for service each year, they could train about 150000 men for reserves each year. If each man would volunteer for a year and then spend 5 years in reserves, then UK could have a volunteer army of 700000 to 850000 men (Not everyone would be available at all times.) that would have a mean age of 22 or so years. (Physically very fit) This is much more than the UK Armed forces (Including the TA) have now. So in UK 40% volunteer rate would indeed bring more men than necessary.
In Finland however 40% volunteer rate would however enable Finland to train mere 12000 men yearly. Now we need a field army of 350000 men (Minimum) to defend Finland. So even if we'd have the incredible 40% of each birth cohort volunteering for a year of service (which we actually just might get :shock: ) , we'd need the volunteers of 20 birth cohorts to fill the ranks of the minimal war time army! So in Finland it would be 1 year of active service folowed by 19 years of reserve servive. Does that sound tempting?
As things are now we need only 12 birth cohorts to fill the ranks. This reduces the time spent in the primary reserves to 11 years or so. This means that the mean age of the wartime force is lowered from 30 to 25. (Meaning a generally fitter field army)
In addition the "oldtimers" are also trained should they want to volunteer come an invasion. Very little time is needed to brush up the skills of once compulsorily trained reservists in comparison to training the other 40% that volunteer once the fight breaks out. We do not have the time or the resources to start training men after the fact. A potential overwhelming enemy is mere 200 miles from out capital!
These are only the practical reasons, why compulsory service is in some conditions very much needed. While I'd prefer that each man would want to voluntarily learn how to defend Finland already in peacetime, I don´t think that will ever happen. People are just generally too lazy. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it is too late to start training when incoming artillery hits your neigbours house. And we all know the fate of untrained volunteers on a modern battlefield.
![Frown :( :(](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png)