Conscription
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine imposed a general mobilization of all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 60, and banned them from leaving the country. Irrespective of their own opinions, Ukrainian men have been forced into a butchery of a conflict in which violations of human rights are frequent. The savagery has been escalating continuously. Just yesterday, footage was released showing a Ukrainian man being castrated with a box cutter. Heads have literally been put on spikes. Women, children and men have been raped, dismembered and executed.
I am not disputing who the aggressor here is - clearly Russia carries the responsibility of starting the war by invading Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have every right to fight back.
But when a country imposes conscription on its citizens, it begs the question, for whose interests is the country acting? Is the country mobilizing to save its citizens, or is it mobilizing to save the existing power structure?
A person might prefer to live under a Ukrainian rather than a Russian government, but might also think that they would prefer to live in general; that both governments are bad and that the Ukrainian one is just the lesser evil; that whatever evils come with Russian dominion, that the real potential for torture and death out in the battlefield are worse, etc.
I guess the logic is that by living in a country, you enjoy all the benefits provided by it, and that if the country's existence is threatened, you owe it to the country as your duty to fight and possibly die in order to preserve it. You're a selfish cowardly traitor if you don't.
Yet the conflicts that arise between countries are not the fault of individual citizens. The soldiers and citizens who are fighting and dying on the front lines are doing so not because of anything they themselves did. They are pawns in a power struggle between larger institutions.
I am not disputing who the aggressor here is - clearly Russia carries the responsibility of starting the war by invading Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have every right to fight back.
But when a country imposes conscription on its citizens, it begs the question, for whose interests is the country acting? Is the country mobilizing to save its citizens, or is it mobilizing to save the existing power structure?
A person might prefer to live under a Ukrainian rather than a Russian government, but might also think that they would prefer to live in general; that both governments are bad and that the Ukrainian one is just the lesser evil; that whatever evils come with Russian dominion, that the real potential for torture and death out in the battlefield are worse, etc.
I guess the logic is that by living in a country, you enjoy all the benefits provided by it, and that if the country's existence is threatened, you owe it to the country as your duty to fight and possibly die in order to preserve it. You're a selfish cowardly traitor if you don't.
Yet the conflicts that arise between countries are not the fault of individual citizens. The soldiers and citizens who are fighting and dying on the front lines are doing so not because of anything they themselves did. They are pawns in a power struggle between larger institutions.
Comments (217)
Simple answer: Those countries where armed forces are there to protect the existing power structures don't have conscription, usually. The last thing they would want is for their people to be trained to use arms and fight in a disciplined manner. Remember that the largest threat to existing power structures comes from the society itself.
Countries that face an existential risk usually do have conscription (and a reservist army). The question you asked is then quite easy to answer. Think about Israel. If Israel in the Six-day war or in the Yom Kippur war would have lost, been utterly defeated by the Arab armies, you really think it would just have been "a change in existing power structures"?
I'm pretty sure that if now it was the Palestinians that have endured their Nakba and have become second rate citizens in their homeland, or in Gaza inmates of a huge concentration camp, the same or worse fate would have happened to the Israelis, if the Jewish state lost a war.
The question was not about the nature of the change (that was a proposed explanation) the question was about the need, and justification, for the imposition.
Let's take your assumption for granted. Israel would have ended up under the Palestinian thumb had it lost. That's not the question the OP is asking. The question the OP is asking is why does a state feel compelled to decide in opposition to those citizens, which state of affairs is preferable - war, or Palestinian rule.
Normally such monumental decisions are even considered too much for representative democracy to handle and are given over to referenda or personal choice. The oddity the OP is picking up on is that in the case of war, the decision (of literally life and death magnitude) is not only removed from any democratic process, but removed from personal choice too.
To argue that the decision can be explained by a beneficent concern for quality of life is ridiculous.
Think of the quality of life improvement if nonessential car journeys were simply banned. Millions saved from early death.
Think of the quality of life improvement from banning the consumption of excess sugar. Again in the millions.
And on... Dozens of impositions a government could make, of far less impact than conscription to war, which would have far greater impact on quality of life than a change in government.
So I don't see how concern for the outcome of regime change could possibly be the motivating factor, such concern would manifest in a whole slew of far less dangerous impositions first.
Not really. People can volunteer to fight in Ukraine, and they do, so it's not like it's totally removed from personal choice.
Usual garbage.
Conscription removes personal choice. It's literally the definition of conscription.
It's not complicated.
[quote=Cosmpolitanism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)]In fact, the first philosopher in the West to give perfectly explicit expression to cosmopolitanism was the Socratically inspired Cynic Diogenes in the fourth century BCE. It is said that when he was asked where he came from, he replied, 'I am a citizen of the world [kosmopolitês]' (Diogenes Laertius VI 63).[/quote]
Your comment had nothing to do with complexity. It was just a very basic error.
That some people choose to be involved has no bearing on the question of why a government would want to force others to be.
National defense is a collective good, which means it is non-excludable: the benefits that a given person derives from national defense do not depend on that individuals contribution to the effort. Everyone benefits, including those who don't contribute to the cost in blood or treasure.
This is the matter we're discussing, so just asserting it is begging the question.
National defense is good. Fighting in a war is bad. So if national defense requires fighting a war one must weigh the good and the bad and decide which outweighs which.
The question is why the government forcibly imposes its conclusion on that weighing exercise when it doesn't do so in many other far less impactful decisions.
Actually under Egyptian and Syrian rule. In 1948 the Arab countries didn't give a damn about the Palestinians, they were trying to conquer as much of the former British Mandate as possible. But onward...
Quoting Isaac
I'm not sure I get your point here. The state always tries to do what is the best for and understandably there always will be some who oppose it's policies.
Rarely but sometimes states have decided voluntarily to join another one. For example East Germany and West Germany uniting. Or North Yemen and South Yemen uniting (which later didn't go so well).
Quoting Isaac
This is the utter fallacy of people living in countries which go to war without any repercussions or effects on the country's own people AND have a paid volunteer army.
The fallacy is that it makes a big difference in war that if you have conscription or not. Well, in wars the city you live can be targeted by the enemy where you live, and you can die even if you would be totally against the war or any policies your state implements. Once war means that you are going to fight it on your own background, the question of mandatory or volunteer service is a simple manpower issue.
Yet if your country just fights "colonial wars" in other continents without any threat posed to your civilian population, you have no need for conscription. Or that conscription in the end will backfire, just as it did for the regime of Portugal in 1974.
Quoting Isaac
We live in representative democracies. In these, the decision to go to war is usually done by the Parliament or a similar institution. These institutions already decide what we can do and can't do on a daily basis. Hence you can argue that the government forcibly imposes it's agenda on to you at a daily basis. In things that it considers dangerous for the collective, these regulations can be far more drastic than otherwise. Just think about the limitations you were forced to live under the pandemic. And wars typically are the most dangerous things for the collective.
So what's the problem?
Just ignoring the counterargument and restating your position is not discussion. This is a discussion forum.
I've already addressed this with examples. The government frequently ignores even minor impositions which would provably reduce harm to the collective. So the question remains why war is considered an exception. Massive imposition (risking death), uncertain danger (some citizens actually want foreign rule). Where's your precedent for such behaviour?
Quoting ssu
Wars are, not the consequences of not fighting, those are much, much harder to judge. So with a clear and definite harm on one side, and an ambiguous, uncertain harm on the other, by what precedent does the government consider forcing people to take a very high risk of torture and death to avoid such an uncertain outcome.
If you think this is normal behaviour for governments, you shouldn't have any trouble coming up with a similar action. Something where the harm is near certain injury, torture and death, the benefits are not even agreed upon, and the government gives no choice.
There are, in fact, a very small list of things governments actually force their citizens to do. Most government interventions are proscriptive, not prescriptive. Those that are prescriptive are either harmless or justice-based.
I can't think of a single example of a prescriptive government intervention which risks the death or torture of the citizen concerned, so I find the idea that this is just normal government behaviour in no need of special explanation completely absurd.
Like what decisions?
Every single other decision. There is no precedent at all for forcing people to risk their lives for a gain they might not even agree with. None.
There's not even a precedent for governments forcing fairly minor impositions on otherwise innocent people for gains they might not even agree with.
I can't even think of a non-choice imposition a government makes on free, innocent adults at all, let alone one which carries such a high cost.
Why do you assume that not fighting a war the other option is "an ambiguous, uncertain harm on the other"? What are your examples for this idea?
OK. The Baltic states decided not to fight the Soviet Union and ended up annexed. Let's look at what that meant for example for Estonia:
In 1939 Estonia had a population of 1,1 million hence that means that 7% of the population died. Nearly all Estonian officers and the political and economic elite were purged immediately by the Soviets. Over 100 000 were forced either to the Red Army or to the German army and bitter battles were fought in Estonia during WW2. Over the course of the war, Estonia lost a fifth of its population as compared to its pre-war population. Several Estonias traditional ethnic minorities, Germans, Swedes and Jews, had left the country or were exterminated.
Quoting Isaac
War isn't normal.
Certain injury, torture or death is also very possible when the government chooses to surrender when faced the threat of war. Where do you get this idea that countries that invade others are somehow very benign and friendly to the people they conquer? Hasn't been so in history, isn't so in the present.
You have very strange ideas about war and just in what conditions nations choose to defend themselves with military force.
Because more people disagree with war than disagree that death is bad.
It's quite simple. Take a population like Ukraine. How many would be happy to be ruled by Russia? We know it's at least a notable portion. How many don't care either way? Again, we know from interviews it's a not insignificant number.
Now conduct a survey on how many want to be shot or tortured. Do you think you'd get anything less than a unanimous 'no'?
So when weighing the two (we have to risk being shot to avoid Russian rule), the former is unambiguously bad, the latter isn't.
Quoting ssu
It's irrelevant. No one is claiming that being invaded is good. We're talking about the weighing of that badness against the badness of war. So...
Quoting ssu
Where do you get this impression that war is nice and harmless?
Quoting Isaac
Apart from you, who just above asked "How many would be happy to be ruled by Russia?" and answer yourself "it's a notable portion".
Well, the Sudetenland Germans were enthusiastic about the German annexation too. But the Czechs and the Slovaks weren't for some reason.
When it comes to Ukraine, I think we have seen just where some people are happy with being ruled by Russia and just in what parts of Ukraine they aren't. Yet this isn't a topic for this thread.
How is any of that related to the discussion. Are you claiming that more people want to be shot than want to be ruled by Russia? Because unless you're making that claim then it remains the case that forced foreign rule is a more ambiguous harm than being shot.
As such it remains the case that when weighing the risk of one against the risk of the other, the risk of war is the less ambiguous.
I'm still waiting on those examples your argument requires of government action which impose a risk of death for a non-unanimous gain.
It's very related, because war can cause such immense destruction and death, it is something you cannot easily relate to peace actions of the state. You should understand that.
Quoting Isaac
I have no idea what you are talking about here.
Quoting Isaac
I don't understand what you point here is.
Or is it just why would countries and their people defend themselves with military force and opt for war rather than surrender?
Do you understand the concept of weighing two bad things trying to decide which is the least bad?
You gave examples of how bad it was to surrender. We already agree that's bad. So is war. Hence the weighing exercise.
The question is why, in this specific case, the government does that weighing and then forces it's decision on its people.
It doesn't seem to behave that way in any other case. I can't think of a single thing people are otherwise forced to do with such a massive risk of harm, on the basis of the government's idea of the pros and cons.
Hence...
Quoting Isaac
...that might counter my claim of uniqueness.
The simple fact is that there is in war a massive risk of harm and to be defeated in a war the whole society takes also a massive risk. And the people also understand this. You are making a separation with the government and the people here as if the threat would not be extremely dangerous for everybody in the society.
The simple fact is that especially in case of war "the government" isn't some different entity from the people making decisions to fight a war totally independently from the people. It's delusional to think any government or regime would contemplate war or to defend itself by military means if there is no support for this from it's people for this. If there's not the will to fight, whatever the government decides is irrelevant. The soldiers will either surrender or will shed their uniforms and run away and simply go home. In war not only the army of the opposing side becomes the enemy, also the people are under intense scrutiny from the attackers.
In some weird way, conscription is, well, rape! :snicker:
Taxation would be the obvious candidate.
Then conscription is unnecessary. So why instigate it.
Quoting ssu
As would the threat of war.
You're just completely ignoring the issue. War is bad, being taken over by a foreign power is bad.
Two bad things. You can't have neither, you have to choose which.
The question at hand here is simply why does the government decide and force its decision on the people?
Governments simply don't behave that way in any other area. People can be living lives of utter destitution, on the streets, living out of a cardboard box, the government doesn't even force anyone to give up a Sunday afternoon to help.
Citizens are harmed in all sorts of ways all the time. So what is so special about the harm from foreign rule that gives a government the right to force its citizens to risk torture and death, to mitigate it?
Not even funny as a joke.
Taxation would be the obvious candidate.
If you don't want to pay taxes, don't earn above the tax threshold.
Now what am I supposed to do if I don't want to be conscripted. Change age?
Not to mention that the first half of that comment was clearly rhetorical, the second half is the content of the argument. So unless you're going to argue that taxation is as harmful as war I don't see you've got anything useful to say.
Even the poorest pay the VAT tax though.
To avoid having to kill people, there is always the possibility of conscientious objection.
During WW1, and perhaps many other wars, conscripts would shoot their own fingers off, break an arm or some other self injury to avoid being on the front.
Conscription is basically a manpower issue: if you have enough people to man a wartime army on a volunteer basis, then you can have voluntary service.
If you didn't have enough manpower otherwise to counter a foe in the 20th Century (Israel, Finland, Switzerland) then conscription and basically a reservist army is the answer. The war in Ukraine has now shown that manpower in the 21st Century is important: smart gizmos won't do the trick.
Quoting Isaac
And you don't understand my answer. Seems you never haven't served in the military or even thought about the issue...as likely there's no threat of war where you live. But war for a society isn't similar like paying taxes. It's not a question if the government provides some service or not. For you it seems that wars are likely fought by some other people in other countries far far away where you live. Your not involved in any way.
I've said again and again: Governments don't decide if people are willing to fight for them or not. The state can put you into the army, it can give you an uniform and an assault rifle and try to teach you to fight. But once in the battlefield, no authority will make you fight. You can always raise your hands and hope that the enemy will accept your surrender. Or you can try to flee, put on civilian clothes and try to make it home or to go abroad and hope to get political asylum somewhere.
Hence it's not just the government's decision to choose war or to choose surrender. Even if the government surrenders, military resistance or an insurgency can develop however willing a new government is to serve the new masters.
Taxation is not an impositions at all, it's the government collecting its legal property.
Besides which, unless you're arguing that VAT payment risks death and torture, all this is pointless.
So? What's that got to do with conscription?
If you just want to keep a record of random things you think, I suggest a diary might be a better format for you.
This is a discussion forum. The topic is the ground on which a government has a right to conscript.
If you haven't got anything to say on that topic, maybe just focus on other threads?
Nope, it's how the state pays for public goods, such as national defense.
I thought of a more costly non-choice imposition a government can make on free, innocent adults: bomb them, like the Russians are doing to the Ukrainians.
Are you suggesting that the government is taking property not legally belong to it?
Quoting Olivier5
So bombing is justified? That sounds a little sociopathic to me. I don't think you're going to get much sympathy for such a view.
That would be because of your perverse narcissism, a form of sociopathy where the diseased tries to calm his inferiority complex by putting down others.
I never said bombing was good, I siad it was worse than conscription. You asked for something worse than conscription, that a government can do. I gave that to you: a war of agression, bombing people out of the blue like Russia is doing, is worse than conscription.
Another thing worse than conscription IMO, that governments can do, is climate change denial, as done by many US governments over the years.
No I didn't.
This position is precisely what I was responding to: a government can obviously do far worse than conscription: it can bomb folks.
Motivation, the will to fight, is quite essential if a conscript/reservist army is effective or not. The classic view is that a professional/volunteer force is better trained and motivated than conscripts.
Conscription is basically a manpower issue. Yet how motivated and well trained conscripts/reservists depends on a lot of things starting from geopolitics and the society itself.
Quoting IsaacThis thread wasn't started by you and from your comments it seems that you don't know much about the military or especially about conscription.
1. Where did I make the claim that a government cannot do worse things than conscripting people?
2. How is being bombed worse then being shot/tortured?
3. What has any of this got to do with the grounds on which s government conscripts (you know, the actual topic)?
Quoting ssu
Very interesting in a thread about whether conscripted armies are effective. Why don't you start one if you'd like to discuss the issue?
Quoting ssu
Yep...
Quoting _db
Where in that are you reading the question "what factors determine how effective a conscript army is?"
States choose conscription or a volunteer force based on how effective the choice would be. This is essential to understand before answering @_db's question. Because if you don't think just why some country has chosen conscription and not a volunteer professional force, then you'll likely be carried away to some irrelevant reasons.
The obvious answer every armed forces would give is that their interests are both the people and the existing power structures, irrelevant of the armed forces being made up of conscripts/reservists or a volunteer force. Since a volunteer army is made of countries own citizens also, the question is actually a bit confusing. (I guess the Vatican's Swiss Guard is the only force that is genuinely made up of foreigners and not it's own citizens. There might be other mini-states with similar issues.)
If the military's primary function is to "save the existing power structure", it likely means that it's focus is on the domestic threat towards the state. For many Third World countries this is the primary objective of the armed forces: they aren't worried about foreign countries or neighbors invading them. But they are worried about keeping things peaceful inside the country. Hence the size of the wartime military depends on the size of the domestic population itself. If the primary function of the military is to deter foreign threats, meaning that the armed forces can deter hostile nations from invading the country, then obviously those threats form the requirements for your army for it to create a credible deterrence.
Hence if Ukraine is facing one of the largest armed forces in the World, it is quite rational for it to rely on conscription (as it has done in peacetime). Especially now as it is obviously fighting for it's existence.
Just putting the word 'hence' at the beginning of a proposition doesn't magically turn it into a valid conclusion.
You've listed reasons why a conscript army might be useful at deterring a foreign threat. No one is questioning how useful a volunteer/conscript army is to the state. The question is about why the state overrides the decision of its citizens about the relative harms.
If your answer to that question is "because the state will find it useful", then it is power structures being defended.
I think in the case of Corona pandemic, which didn't turn into the next Spanish flu or the Black Death by death count, such a debate about relative harms and the state overriding the decisions of its citizens is useful.
When a foreign entity attacks a country and the people find themselves in a war, similar debate of relative harms isn't useful. People do understand the threat if the cities they live in are bombed.
As I said, if the state would override its citizens actual will, the army simply would surrender or even simply melt away. The idea that any state can force people to take up arms when they don't want to, simply will not happen. Sure, there can be (and usually are) some individuals, but do not underestimate the ability of people to do something collectively.
Perhaps you should give a historical example where the state overrides the decision of its citizens about the relative harms to advance this discussion.
Then conscription is unnecessary. People will voluntarily join the army if they understand the need.
Quoting ssu
So why did Ukraine instigate conscription. It can't force its citizens to fight, you say, so the only real fighters it's going to get are free volunteers. What's with all the laws then? A joke?
Quoting ssu
Conscription. The whole point of the argument is that there is no other.
If you're seriously going to advance the argument that every conscript actually wants to fight then we've nothing more to say. I'm not discussing with such blatant nonsense.
Oh, that's easy. Here:
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
I never said it was. You are trying to misunderstand me.
Quoting Isaac
The link is that governments often resort conscription once another nation starts to attack and bomb them and their citizens. For example, that's what Ukraine did. Do you understand? This is a bit of a subtle point.
What's that got to do with the OP? I don't think anyone is wondering whether governments resort to conscription, nor what circumstances they might do so in. Did you read anyone asking either of those questions?
The OP opens with...
Quoting _db
So how could you possibly read that and think the thread was about whether and when a government might use conscription?
Because for all practical intents and purposes the state owns its citizens. The citizens are subjects of the state.
Yep. That's the answer I'd go for. Conscription is about the aims of the state, not the population.
The Russian aggression of Ukraine is literally mentioned in the OP. How could it be irrelevant to it?
Quoting Isaac
Because the OP speaks about that too. You should try and be a better reader.
In any case, I think now you agree that a government can do far worse than conscription. Like it can bomb folks.
Even its own folks like they did in Chechnya.
I would think that the worse a government can do is kill a whole lot of people. Like waging a war of aggression, or committing a genocide, or anihilating the chances of survival of future generations.
Stop this.
You both derailed the thread by getting into a condescending insult spiral. Any complaints, take it to PMs or feedback, not here.
Fair enough.
I might steal this.
Training an army from civilians doesn't happen in an instant. In WW1 for the British Army it took one year to man a larger force into France after the war had started. Initially the so-called "Kitchener's Army" of half million men was intended to be ready in mid 1916, but it was used first in September 1915. Another example is just how long in WW2 it took to create the US wartime armed forces after Pearl Harbour as prior to the war the US army was smaller than the army of Belgium.
And if the opponent can invade your country before that, then it's meaningless to try to create an army that will take a year to create. Hence one option is to have conscription to create a large reserve force.
Quoting Isaac
Manpower and actual combat capability are two different things, Isaac. Don't confuse the two. With conscription your manpower problems are solved. But morale, training and good equipment are needed to form military capability.
With conscription you simply get far more men (in some countries women) to train in the military than by having military service voluntary. (I can speak of my own experience: I would have never thought to join the armed forces if it was voluntary. I simply thought it wasn't for me, I wasn't good in shape, I was a bit shy in my youth and didn't think I was the type for military service. Well, my prejudices about military service were proved false).
With conscription you have the potential for a large reservist army, but naturally then that reserve has to be trained an has to have equipment for it. Large countries opt not have a large reserve. Basically Ukraine has this problem now: it has a lot of potential reservists, but it lacks the equipment and training to form capable military formations from this source.
Russia is a case example where you do have conscription, but basically after the obligatory military service the reservists aren't actually used: there is no logistical system to mobilize them and they haven't been trained afterwards their conscript service. Hence Putin has a real manpower problem, even if there are many under 30-years males that have done their military service as potential reservists. And naturally he doesn't dare to draft reservist from Moscow or St. Petersburg, as this isn't a war, remember? Soviet Union had basically on paper a huge reserve, but mobilizing this reserve would have meant such a gigantic effort, something that to mobilize was basically more theoretical than realistic.
Quoting Isaac
Your strawmanning again, Isaac
Even in a volunteer force likely not every one will fight when the bullets start flying.
Quoting Isaac
I think this is your main point. And when you can't (or won't) understand that conscription is basically a manpower issue, you'll just stick to this meaningless dichotomy of the state's agenda and the "people's" agenda.
Yet answer this, if conscription is about the aims of the state, not the population, then just what aims of the state aren't for itself, but for the people?
Read twice, couldn't find an argument. It seems the OP has lost interest anyway, so there's little point in my replying. If you and @Olivier5 just want to swamp the thread with pointless diversions about how conscription works, then do so. With no one discussing the justification for it it seems a waste of time trying to keep such a line of debate open.
Luckily there are others here than you.
No. You're absolutely right. I should try and join in with the spirit a little more.
The thing you have to understand about conscription is that the word originates from the latin "conscriptionem" - a drawing up of a list, but the 'compulsory sense is meaning "enlistment (of soldiers)" is from the French Republic act of Sept. 5, 1798.
You see the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon English army, called the fyrd, was composed of part-time English soldiers drawn from the freemen of each county. In the 690s laws of Ine of Wessex, three levels of fines are imposed on different social classes for neglecting military service.
So when it comes down to it The range of eligible ages for conscripting was expanded to meet national demand during the World Wars. In the United States, the Selective Service System drafted men for World War I initially in an age range from 21 to 30 but expanded its eligibility in 1918 to an age range of 18 to 45. In the case of a widespread mobilization of forces where service includes homefront defense, ages of conscripts may range much higher, with the oldest conscripts serving in roles requiring lesser mobility.
Sorry, just been busy with stuff. I have been monitoring this thread and reflecting on things though.
Quoting Isaac
:up:
Conscription for a defensive war strikes me as far more...defensible that that for an offensive war.
It does seem a little wrong to stay behind in a safety that is only made possible by the risk of others. This seems like a version of freeloading. The devil is in the details though. Do we send old men ? Teenaged boys ? The differently-abled? It's going to be messy.
If possible, perhaps those who didn't want to fight could be allowed to leave the country entirely, as a kind of compromise. "You don't have to kill/die for us, but we don't have to kill/die for you either."
Good point. That was more or less what happened with those Americans who fled to Canada because they didn't want to go to Vietnam.
Oh, not a problem. I just felt for a minute I was wasting my time trying to keep the thread focused on what I understood to be your question about the justification for conscription. Had you picked any country other than Ukraine for your example it would have been a lively and interesting discussion, but since there's a contingent of posters who think that saying anything bad about Ukraine amounts to Russian propaganda so you'll get a pretty clipped discussion.
Quoting Pie
It's this assumption of safety that's in question. In Ukraine, for example, there's a not insignificant number of the population who wanted to be under Russian rule, or who couldn't care less whose flag they were under.
So the question is - if these people don't want to risk their deaths for the gain being offered, then in what sense is forcing them to do so in their interests (the people)?
Also, if there's a moral justification to forcing people to act for the greater good, then why are we still struggling with climate change, why are thousands still dying every minute from poverty? The actions people might be forced to take to resolve those travesties are way more minor impositions than risking being shot or tortured.
Quoting Pie
In the case used by the OP, this has already been ruled out...
Quoting _db
That indeed makes it messier and more questionable.
Quoting Isaac
To me it's only reasonable/decent to pressure people to fight whose lives are already in serious danger -- and who otherwise plan to remain safe only at the cost of those who take up the burden. Even then it might not be prudent to trust the reluctant in battle.
The guy who makes me die for a cause I don't believe in is my enemy, no matter what flag he waves. Forbidding males leaving seems wrong. I doubt the leaders and the rich are exposing themselves much to danger.
I agree. The tricky part is in how we judge that danger. The problem being that fighting a war is bloody dangerous, so the alternative has to be pretty clearly more so before one could justify forcing the former to avoid the latter.
This is the point @ssu was obfuscating earlier. It's insufficient to simply point out that things would be bad for Ukraine under Russian rule. To justify forcing people to fight a war (by claiming it's for their own good), it must be clear that things would be more bad than war. And that's a pretty tall order since war is really, really bad.
To me, the Vietnam draft was unambiguously wrong. Send the young and the poor to die for the old and the rich.
Reminds me of lyrics from The Boss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPhWR4d3FJQ
:up:
Big fan here.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/489830
Absolutely.
Bruce eh! An American singer, songwriter, and musician. He has released 20 studio albums, many of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Originally from the Jersey Shore, he is one of the originators of the heartland rock style of music, combining mainstream rock musical style with narrative songs about working class American life. During a career that has spanned six decades, Springsteen has become known for his poetic, socially conscious lyrics and energetic stage performances, sometimes lasting up to four hours in length. He has been nicknamed "the Boss".
Just doing my bit to keep the thread firmly on those rails you're so concerned about.
This is an exaggeration. The main purpose of the blocking troops were to prevent uncontrolled and panicked retreats. Most of the retreating troops were sent off to the front again and only a small minority were actually executed.
Quoting Isaac
Right, exactly.
On the other hand, there is some evidence to support the claim that retaliatory action is an effective way to deal with bullies (tit-for-tat, Axelrod). If nobody resisted the invasion of Ukraine, this would likely only encourage more bad Russian behavior - if nobody resists, then they're gonna take everything they can for themselves. But the problem then is that the Ukrainian power structure took it upon itself to decide how the resistance would happen.
Maybe there's a more effective way to resist Russian dominion, but if this would entail the destruction of the Ukrainian power structure, it's not considered. First and foremost the military of a country serves to protect the interests of the existing power structure; human life is not the number-one priority. And the media can be used to trick people into thinking that the interests of the people are the same as the interests of the power structure.
At the end of WWII, Hitler & Co. ordered children and the elderly to defend Berlin, tooth and nail. That's obviously just a total waste of human life - the corrupt and evil leadership were just throwing away their own citizens so they could cling to power for a few more days. If the same thing were to happen in Ukraine though, there would be worldwide sympathy, the media would portray the child soldiers as martyrs, etc - yet it would largely be the same thing, just the leadership of a country trying to hold on to their positions of power for as long as possible, regardless of the costs.
I don't see how I'm guilty of hyperbole? I merely mentioned but left out the details, making it quite impossible for me to blow things out of proportion, oui monsieur?
True.
Quoting _db
Yep. Exactly. Not to mention the fact that they had their hands tied in that decision by the constraining circumstances placed on them by other institutions of power.
Quoting _db
Yeah, the media have managed (largely by some fairly extreme censorship and swamping) to fortify this fairly weak idea that Ukrainian sovereignty is some kind of moral good, that fighting for it is like fighting for freedom, or democracy, or human rights... It's clearly not. Ukrainian sovereignty is the ability of a particular power structure to determine the laws in a particular geographical area. There's nothing especially noble about it and it's certainly not worth risking such monumental death, pain and destruction over. Ukraine wasn't even that great a country, worse that Russia in some measures, marginally better in others. All in all much of a muchness
I think a lot of Ukrainians recognise this, and I think conscription is the government's answer to that problem.
There is no evidence that this diagnostic applies to Ukraine.
The use of conscription constitutes the evidence. That's the whole point of the OP (@_db will correct me if im wrong). If the government were concerned about something other than its own survival, then it would not need conscription. Getting a government to behave the way you want it to is done by voting (if you're fortunate enough to have both a democracy and a majority), protest, unionising, lobbying... It doesn't matter who that government is, by and large. It's not sufficiently in the interests of the people themselves the exact group of people who run the place to be forced into risking their own death to preserve.
What's in the interests of the people is the means at their disposal to influence that government, the freedoms and benefits that government offers. And literally every single metric there is on measures of human welfare shows little difference between Ukraine and Russia on that score.
There's little to choose between them, many Ukrainians see this and don't want to risk their lives for the sake of it. Forcing them to is inhumane.
Why not?
Quoting Isaac
And in English?
Read the next paragraph.
Quoting Olivier5
The make up of a government (Zelensky or Putin, to put it simply) is of little relevance to serving the population's interests relative to their ability to influence what that government does. Turnout at elections, for example, is often very low.
A government justifying conscription purely to preserve sovereignty on the grounds of public good is claiming that the people's interests are served by who is in government, not how that government relates to them. Not only this, but that this is so strongly true that young men must risk death to preserve it.
But the claim is false (or mostly so). It is of very little relevance to an individual's interests who makes up the government, only how that government exercises its power.
Hostomel and Bucha bear witness that there is a huge difference between the two.
Quoting Isaac
Not really, no. It is rather, in this case at least, to defend an independent polity, free to make its own collective choices.
All this talk about "the leadership of a country trying to hold on to their positions of power" applies squarely to nations of slaves, such as Russia. Evidently, Putin is trying to hold on power and waging a war was a way to try and do that. The worth of a Czar can only be demonstrated in battle.
But the case is more complex for democracies, that may sometimes (in war times) impose stringent obligations such as conscription, that may appear undemocratic, for the purpose of safeguarding their democratic system from an aggressive dictator.
How do those atrocities have any bearing whatsoever on the relative ability of citizens to influence peacetime governments?
Honestly. You can't just answer every single question about Ukraine and Russia with "look Russia did a bad thing". It's puerile.
Quoting Olivier5
For which you'd need evidence that the polity would be less free to do that under the threatening government than they would under the defending one. And that this difference is significant enough to risk unwilling lives for.
Evidence you lack.
Quoting Olivier5
Yes. It does. So? Russian conscription is also immoral.
Quoting Olivier5
Again, if you want to present anything other than your comic book fantasy version of reality, you'd need to show some evidence of the peacetime difference between the two nations involved in terms of the interests of the unwilling population (those who don't want to fight).
It might work on Facebook, but here I'd like to think we expect a higher degree of evidence than the crap you pick up from the telly. If your argument is that the unwilling conscript's interests are so much better served by peacetime Ukraine than by peacetime Russia that they'd best risk their lives to retain it, then I think at least a modicum of evidence is the minimum requirement.
Almost every single metric of human well-being that's so far been devised puts the two nations about the same. So what's your evidence for an improvement of such worthiness that even the unwilling must be forced to fight for it?
Russia did more than one bad thing. In Ukraine alone there are hundreds of cases. And remember Aleppo, and Grozny. They murder journalists and political figures wherever they can. The Putin regime murders people with impunity in your own country, too.
It is pretty obvious that a majority of Ukrainians are in favor of the current resistance. A poll in March indicated that 3/4 of men and a majority of women were willing to fight personally in the war. I assume that they have good grounds for saying so. In fact I would feel exactly the same if some goons invaded my country.
Strategically, the proof of concept will have to wait for when the Ukrainian conscripts reach the frontline. It's not a given that they will make a difference there, but the Ukrainian side clearly expects their "million men army" to prove decisive.
When you read the word 'unwilling' what happens in your brain? Does it just go blank? Does it struggle for a bit before giving in? I'd love some insight.
So your idea of democracy is that absolutely anything the majority decides to force upon the minority is morally justified?
No human rights? No constitutions? Might makes right, yes?
Your entire response was...
Quoting Olivier5
There's nothing to straw man there. You've literally said "The majority usually trumps the minority" that's a word-for-word quote.
If your answer to the question "what justifies imposing a massive risk of harm on a minority who don't see the risk as worth it" is "the majority usually trumps the minority". How is it a straw man to suggest your argument is about majority rule? You literally gave it (and nothing else) as a counter argument. It's not like I picked that part of your argument out of context. You said nothing else but that majorities trump minorities.
Then stick to that. Human rights and constitutions are different issues which I did not evoke and which are irrelevant.
If you suggest that whatever the majority think is right gets to override the minority, then you, by necessity, deny the authority of something like human rights. If a majority decide that one race ought have fewer rights than another, that is wrong. It is contrary to Article 1 of the UDHR. According the the maxim that you've espoused here, the majority would be right to enforce their preference.
Alternatively, you agree that there are rights and there is justice which supersedes simple majority rule. In which case your argument that a majority of citizens in Ukraine want to fight for their sovereignty is insufficient to demonstrate that it is either right or just that they get to impose that will on those who disagree.
Irrelevant to the issue of conscription.
If the majority is fine with conscription, what human right is being trampled, pray tell? Are there human rights to selfishness and cowardice? I am not aware of them.
Conscription was first instituted by French revolutionaries, precisely to defend the young republic and the newly minted Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen (1789) against the Austrian empire. As it turned out, the French conscript army managed to push back the Austrian professional army, e.g. at Valmy (1792).
So without conscription, there might be no such thing as human rights.
Likewise, Ukraine might not enjoy its human rights for long if the Ukrainians fail to defend them against the attacks of the Russian empire.
That seems to be a contradictio in terminis. Nobody's fine with forced enlisment into the armed forces. Conscription, if it happens, implies the country's on the verge of defeat - such deeds occur on smaller scales too (fractals) and is one of the hallmarks of desperation (use your imagination).
And why not?
That is just too obvious to state, oui monsieur?
That is a possibility I can't rule out, monsieur. Apologies.
Article 3
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 2
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion
Article 4
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude
Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 13
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Quoting Olivier5
Historicist bullshit. You've no alternative non-conscription history with which to compare so there's no argument there. You might as well say "without Nazism there might not be any human rights, since that's the way history played out".
Quoting Olivier5
What human rights? Look at Ukraine. Actual real world Ukraine. Not the adolescent comic book version you get from your TV. Actual Ukraine had virtually the same record on human rights as Russia. Pretending they're some bastion of freedom is just bullshit, not an argument worth taking seriously.
It is a historical fact.
Quoting Isaac
Really? Have you looked at some actual data?
It isn't.
Quoting Olivier5
Yes.
Of course you doubt it. Your Facebook feed tells you all Ukrainians are superheroes and anyone denying that is a Russian propagandist. Hang the facts.
[math]\to[/math] Conscript [math]\leftarrow[/math].
Sic vita est, sic vita est.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country
https://ourworldindata.org/human-rights (several different measures available)
https://www.humanium.org/en/rcri-world-ranking-by-countries/ (children's rights is a particular interest of mine, so this one's specific)
https://uhri.ohchr.org/en/countries (you have to select Ukraine and Russia, they have just over 1000 active recommendations each)
So what data are you working from? We can compare sources perhaps.
Edit - I realise a lot of that data is from reputable sources like the UN. Not very balanced of me, so, for balance here's some contrary data from an alternative source you'll be more familiar with.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17775238/ukrainian-heroes-fight-to-death-with-russian-invaders-kyiv/
Pathetic.
In other news you'll be delighted to hear that in addition to slaves, Zelensky is bolstering his army with convicted torturers and rapists...
Quoting https://thegrayzone.com/2022/07/30/zelensky-militants-convicted-child-rape-torture-military/
But it's alright boys and girls these are healthsome, heroic, Ukrainian torturers and rapists, not at all like the evil nasty torturers and rapists in the Russian army.
I'm fine with conscription, and so is the majority of Finns also. Of course, there is the option of siviilipalvelus, a "civil service" where you basically go work in a hospital or fire brigade etc. for 11 months. Hence it's not forced enlistment to the military, even if by the Finnish constitution every Finn has to participate in national defense with the abilities they have. And if you are a male (and healthy, capable to serve) and opt not to serve either, you can spend your time (a bit over five months) in prison. A little bit less than one fifth get a medical discharge from the army.
Quoting Agent SmithRussia has 145 million people and Finland just over 5 million. And history has told us you can survive even from the verge of a catastrophic defeat and yet fight it on to a cease fire.
Where conscription usually doesn't work is where the military is mainly for internal security. Trained reservists are then more of a liability and usually you see that in these countries the armed forces are divided for political purposes. For example in Russia and Saudi-Arabia both there is a large National Guard force to counterbalance the role of the army. In these countries a military coup is a genuine possibility.
(in 1993 Yeltsin had a constitutional crisis and ordered the Parliament to be fired on by tanks, hence there is this domestic political role for the army in Russia. Russia has tried to turn the armed forces into an all volunteer force, but hasn't been able to do this.)
(and btw, not every Finn likes universal conscription - which obviously is the case in a democracy.)
So, having established in what circumstances conscription works. In what circumstances is it just?
Off-topic, but nauseatingly enough, this is exactly what Yuval Noah Harari argues in Sapiens: apparently, racism and eugenics were discredited because the Nazis lost the war. Shit book :vomit:
What threat?
Yeah, the "this is the way it played out once so that's how it must be" argument is pretty poor.
If I tried to produce a paper supporting a theory based on a sample of one I'd be rightly ridiculed, yet this is what historicism does all the time. We've had one go at this.
That carries a lesson relevant to this thread: a self-governing people can muster, through conscription, a stronger military force than a dictatorship can, everything else being equal. Whereas a dictator would be liable to be toppled by an army of conscripts, a democracy would be less prone to that.
Firstly, you've completely missed (or more likely ignored) the argument against historicism. That it happened once is not sufficient evidence to support a theory. Never was, never will be.
Secondly, it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the thread which is about the justification of conscription, not whether (and where) it works.
But then you know that, it why you're so desperate to swamp the thread with anything but a discussion about justice.
That's actually true. The Nazis showed the rest of us what a society based on racism and eugenics looks like, and the rest of us thought it was horrible. The post-war decade saw a flurry of new or rejuvenated antiracist movements in the West, e.g. the civil rights movement in the US. The decolonisation of Africa proceeds from the same historical logic: if it's so bad for the Germans to invade France, why can France invade Algeria?
I am not making an historicist argument. Just saying that that's how certain things happened. We owe human rights to the French revolution, and this revolution defended itself from European tyrans by way of general conscription.
Of course it could have happened differently. Nothing is predetermined. The Italians or the Poles could well have invented human rights, if the French had not.
...[proceeds to make exactly the historicist argument]...
Quoting Olivier5
Then bringing it up is irrelevant to the discussion. It's insufficient justification to say "conscription helped there, then" since that's not evidence that it will help here, now, and this thread is about justification.
So what? Who cares?
The question (the one you keep dodging) is "ought they?", not "can they?".
Oh, and... Bollocks. A self-governing people did, in the past, in France muster, through conscription, a stronger military force than a dictatorship has ever manged in the past, in other countries, to.
This neither proves, nor even constitutes robust evidence for your theory that "a self-governing people can muster, through conscription, a stronger military force than a dictatorship can" because it is a sample of one. No population yields a sample size of one as a statistically significant data set.
Great question!
Not my question.@_db asked it in the opening post. It's only being reiterated now because of @ssu's and @Olivier5's Herculean efforts to deflect attention away from such a question lest the answer reflect badly on Ukraine (which is apparently now some kind of eighth deadly sin).
In history, this is often the case. However the fact that something happened, if only once, shows that it is possible. Therefore, a self-governing people can muster, through conscription, a stronger military force than a dictatorship can. It is doable, because it's been done.
And mind you, this is precisely what Ukraine is trying to do.
Starting from basic premises, a democratic government ought to find ways to optimise the public good in their country, while implementing the will of the majority most of times. It follows that, if those two conditions (necessity for public good and majority support for conscription) are the case, then a democratic government ought to implement conscription.
In the case at hand, there is evident support for the measure among Ukrainians, and it appears to be necessary to protect Ukraine from invasion and transformation into "Malorus", whence the public good element.
Right. And what point in the thread confused you into thinking anyone needed telling this? Who was it you thought was making the argument that conscription was not possible?
Quoting Olivier5
So who decides what the public good is?
And why implement the will of the majority only [i]most[/] of the time? Why not all the time?
Quoting Olivier5
...which is the question right at the beginning that you're still dodging.
Why does this public good override the very obvious public good of not being shot?
It's not like picking sweets off a shelf, where the only decision is which ones are nice. To gain the public good of "not becoming Malorus" the public have to submit to the public bad of long drawn out war. Why does gaining the former outweigh avoiding the latter? And don't say 'democracy' because we're talking about the public good here, a point you listed separate to democratic will.
I think the point is not that conscription is possible. As even you managed to realize, this is agreed by all, and therefore not debated at all.
In my mind, the important point is that a democracy can use this tool more effectively than a dictatorship. Dictatorships have their own advantages of course, and they use them. Hence conscription features among the tools that may be necessary to defend democracy, even though the policy may appear undemocratic superficially.
Quoting Isaac
I wouldn't know. Maybe you could ask the question to an Ukrainian, or to a Russian? It's their policy, not mine.
....
Quoting Olivier5
Obviously, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. That it can be a useful tool doesn't in any way imply that it is a necessary one.
Quoting Olivier5
We then perhaps you can spare us your asinine commentary on this subject you've clearly no real opinion on.
I love you too, Isaac.
Do ask your questions to Putin, whenever you have a chance. "Why do you asshole Russians have conscription?" And, for good measure: "Why do you asinine cretins illegally send conscripts to wage war onto a foreign country?"
Unless Putin is somebody you can't question?
I think defending your country from an attacking other nation is just.
Quoting _db
The threat of another state attacking your country. We have seen that such actions aren't confined only to history, but can and have happened in the present.
If the threat is independent terrorist groups etc. I would think the response could (and should) be handled by the police.
I think that the British and people in their colonies were aspiring the same rights. And they also understood that the powers of the state ought to be limited and individual should be protected from the state.
Some can argue that Magna Carta just showed the weakness of the English king, but it was quite important for the future. And your correct too about Poland: it had limited the power of the king also early on, yet even if Poland exemplified religious tolerance and the kings rule was limited, this also made Poland so weak that it could be divided by it's neighbors. So creating an efficient and functioning democracy as an end result was a real challenge for humanity. (And many would say we haven't yet perfected it yet.)
Care to attempt an argument, or are we at the stage of exchanging arbitrary preferences?
Oh and the argument was whether using conscription to defend your country from an attacking other nation is just, not whether defending your country from an attacking other nation is just. Your efforts to avoid the question are remarkable.
Do you think using chemical and biological weapons to defend your country is just? Do you draw the line anywhere, or is anything acceptable when it comes to flags?
Yes. Though I think it may be worse than that in a way. We haven't perfected democracy yet, that is true, but 1) I believe it would be impossible to do since perfection is not mixable with politics; 2) there is a dynamic aspect to it, in that as pro-democratic forces try and perfect democracy, the enemies and parasites of democracy keep finding new ways to undermine it. New threats appear regularly, as in a darwinian system were parasites and hosts are co-evolving.
I'm afraid there will be no end to it, no time, however distant in the future, when we can rest and say: "now we have perfected our democracy."
What do you think in war would be just?
Self defence is usually thought of being just.
Why do you think that is an arbitrary preference?
Even if one does not want to 'reify' or 'essentialize' evilness and goodness (a concern I feel sympathy for), it still seems to me that some folks tend to behave more generously and kindly than others, or more selfishly and rudely than others, on average.
I don't think war is necessarily unjust. I don't think it was unjust to go to war against the Nazis, but I do think the bombing of Dresden was unjust. I base my ideas of justice on things like universal equality, humanity, social cohesion...
Quoting ssu
Countries are not people. There's no 'self' to defend. Self-defense is just because it's reasonable to want to live, and avoid harms. States have no such claim to reasonably want to continue existing. That you'd put a state on the same level as a human says a lot. Does a corporation have the same right to self-defense?
Quoting ssu
Because it's unargued for. You just asserted it. Usually we do that with indubitable presuppositions, which are arbitrary.
So the Ukrainian fighters are not good people? It seems pretty self-evident they think they can improve their society by killing the Russian invaders. Weren't you just previously arguing for the justness of self-defense?
So the 'killing' is not the problem, is it? It's the reason. In the case of the defending military you agree with their assumption that killing the invader will improve their society. In the case of the revolutionary, you disagree.
But states go to war. Individual people do not have the ability to declare a war. War is something that has been formalized and legalized between states. Not between individuals. Hence the idea of legal and illegal combatant, just to give one example. Similar to the difference between law enforcement and vigilantes.
And if you say that "I don't think it was unjust to go to war against the Nazis", then obviously defending from the attack of Nazi Germany (Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium) was just also.
Quoting Isaac
Well, you argued that it wasn't unjust to go war with the Nazis. So I guess self defense and a country defending itself from an another state attacking it would be just.
Quoting Isaac
No. I wouldn't say defending yourself from a violent attack is similar to improving yourself. Yes, if you don't defend yourself, obviously you can at worst get killed. But that isn't same as improving yourself, it's self preservation. It is quite different.
Ukrainians defending their country aren't improving their society, they basically are trying to preserve it. Improving it would be things like getting rid of the worst aspects of corruption in their country.
I don't see how that has any bearing on the argument. I'm not denying that states go to war. That doesn't make states people or 'selves' so it doesn't make the self-defence argument any more coherent. States are not 'selves' so there's no such thing as self-defence for a state. State's defend states, not selves.
Quoting ssu
Yes, but not on the grounds of self-defence. It is not just simply for a sate to defend the state. There's no principle of equality, humanity etc inherent in a state. It doesn't have a right to exist. It was just to resist the Nazis because the Nazis were attempting to impose unjust laws on people. Not because our state had a right to defend itself tout court.
Otherwise you end up with the ludicrous result that the US, Britain and Russia had no right to push their advantage to Berlin. By the time they reached the German border, apparently, they should have stopped.
It was just even to invade Nazi Germany entirely because the Nazi state did not have a right to exist. It was a monstrous state, it didn't have a right to defend itself, and it wasn't just of it to do so.
Quoting ssu
That's just semantics. The state of affairs where Russians are no longer bombing, murdering and torturing is an improvement on the state of affairs where they are doing all those things.
You've still completely dodged the actual question - Is it just to use conscription to defend the state? If so, on what grounds?
Do you understand then the difference between law enforcement and vigilantism?
Quoting Isaac
Look, they I see it, it was totally logical to push the war to Germany itself and destroy the Nazi regime for self defense purposes. If the Allies had stopped at Germany's border, the regime wouldn't have collapsed. Hence it would be a real threat later, perhaps then armed with it's own nuclear weapons.
What you are stating is that it didn't have the right to exist. Well, just where do you then draw the line? What if Nazi Germany didn't invade Poland and not even annexed the whole of Czechoslovakia? Totally OK then for other nations to declare war and invade it?
Quoting Isaac
Have I dodged the question?
I think I've answered already that conscription is basically a manpower issue. If with a volunteer force you cannot create a force big enough to create a credible military deterrence, then you need conscription. If the population is big enough, then you can use volunteer force.
If you think it is so unjust for the state to demand military service conscription, just a while ago you and I were quarantined to home and set a lot of limitations thanks to the pandemic.
In legal terms, yes. How's that related? We're talking about what ought to be, not what currently is.
Quoting ssu
The existence of a threat to the state is not in question. The question is whether it's justified to use conscription to deal with that threat.
Quoting ssu
Are we having some translation problem? I'm asking you about justification, and you're replying with ability and requirements. Do I need to rephrase the question?
I can walk into a shop, shoot the cashier and walk out with my food. If I wanted free food, I would need to do something like that. This has nothing whatsoever to do with whether those actions are justified (I think we'd both agree they're not).
Im asking you if conscription is justified and you keep telling me how it's possible and would work. I know it's possible. I know a state might require it for defence. But is it justified?
Quoting ssu
I thought that was unjustified too, but that's on technical grounds. Let's assume they had the science right...
1. Being quarantined hardly compares to being shot at, captured, tortured and injured. The justification has to be significantly greater.
2. Being quarantined is (usually) scientifically proven to save people's lives. It's not a wild guess, nor is it a political opinion. The benefits of retaining one flag over another is not in any way the same quality of evidence.
So comparing enforced quarantine with conscription you have a monumentaly higher risk of harm for a much less well proven gain.
There are legal terms in war too. Just starting from that combatants can be legal or illegal. That enemy soldiers are prisoners-of-war, not treated as ordinary criminals.
Quoting Isaac
Seems like you don't want to understand my point. If you don't have the ability to defend your country and the potential enemy knows it, meaning your defense has no deterrent, then what is the justification for having a "defence force" in the first place? Perhaps it's just to lull your people into thinking that the army can protect the nation, when it cannot. I think there's enough justification on universal military service when otherwise you wouldn't have the ability to defend your country.
Quoting Isaac
Well there you go. What you are talking about are the rights of the individual compared to duty of the state to protect the society and it's people, where the state then limits your freedoms because of the collective. And if you are somewhat OK with the state posing limitations on your freedoms during a pandemic, you think it's so totally different when the state faces a bigger threat of war.
So if you are an American, just how much does the obligation of serving on a jury when summoned tramples your freedoms. Is that justified, because it's an obligation too?
Quoting Isaac
And irrelevant of your status of being either a civilian or not, you might be shot, captured, tortured and injured in war. What is so difficult to understand in the grave threat a war poses to a society? It's not comparable to anything in peacetime. Just being an able military aged man is grave risk when enemy soldiers arrive to your neighborhood.
I think what ought to be discussed is the relationship between the state and it's citizens.
I know. You're still not relating any of this to justifications.
Quoting ssu
It's simpler to just answer the question, but whatever....
If you don't have a capable defence force you can't defend your nation. We agree on this.
Now. Why is it justified to solve the problem of not having a capable defence force by using conscription?
Quoting ssu
Yes. Finally! That is exactly the question.
And yes, it is totally different for the reasons I've already given.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting ssu
Not if your state surrenders. War takes two parties, the aggressor and the defender. Many Ukrainians, particularly in the east want to surrender. They believe that their lives under Russian rule will be insufficiently different from their lives under Ukrainian rule to justify war.
Others want to leave the country, to run away.
Being a civilian victim of war is not the only other option.
Quoting ssu
War (vs no war) is not the choice we're discussing. It's the current State vs some other State. You're assuming war. War is not a given . The state could simply hand over control to the invading party. No war.
And just why wouldn't the surrendered people then fall to what surrendered people have fallen in history many, many times: to be second rate people in their own country and finally being assimilated to be the part of their conquerors after losing their language and their own culture? Or if not being assimilated, then live as a lower caste or live in a reservation.
Perhaps these days an own independent nation state is taken as such an obvious given that one has to be a Palestinian or a Kurd to understand what an own independent country means.
Quoting Isaac
And you think that one state to another doesn't matter? Well, benevolent and friendly states that value your freedom usually don't go and invade other countries and annex them.
Quoting Isaac
What would have surrendering in 1939 meant for us? Likely rape of women, pillaging, elimination of our political and cultural elite, deportations of entire families and villages to Siberia, masses of basically forced immigration of Russians (and Belorussians, Ukrainians) to our country. The Russification of our society and being under Soviet control perhaps until finally getting our independence back when the Soviet Union fell apart. We'd just be far more poorer with and ugly, painful history. We can see it all from what the Baltic States had to endure.
Or was it so simply to all those countries that were colonized by the Europeans? Just surrender? I think the few non-European countries that didn't become colonies or protectorates of Europeans are quite happy with putting up a fight and staying independent.
But that said, of course surrender and hope for the best is an option. History has told it's a really lousy option.
Yet who cares about people or societies that don't exist anymore?
Well they might. Or they might not. that's the point. the argument is about the degree of imposition the government considers reasonable in the face of a reasonable disagreement as to the consequences.
Consider the lockdown again. Some people disagreed with the government there about consequences. But the imposition was small and the government consulted scientists (whereas those who disagreed generally didn't).
This is no the case with war. The imposition is huge, and undeniably and the government consults no special experts as to what life would be like under foreign rule, it's just their opinion.
Quoting ssu
No. There are objective facts about the matter we can turn to, Belarus is not an independent state. It scores higher than Ukraine on several measure of human well-being. There's no reason to think an independent state is better than a foreign-controlled one.
Quoting ssu
No, they don't. Something which would only make a difference if the state you currently have was a friendly, benevolent one. Otherwise the swap is irrelevant. The war, though, isn't.
Quoting ssu
Probably. One of the reasons I think the war against the Nazis was just,
Quoting ssu
Yes. Absolutely. In most cases resistance was useless and failed anyway. Surrendering would have been much less harmful and resistance could have taken the more successful form of political action. The thing which actually repelled the colonists in the end.
It's not a sufficient argument to say that because in some wars, we would have been worse off surrendering, that this must then be so in all wars.
You do understand that it's a great, enormous risk?
And think about it from the invaders viewpoint. If you invade and annex a country and then give autonomy to the country and have them have their own laws and institutions etc, why wouldn't they in the future just demand back their independence, if you are so benevolent and friendly? The actions that Russia has made it pretty clear what Putin has in mind for Ukraine, the state that he has called "artificial".
As I've said earlier, there have been times when countries have joined voluntarily another, but that is totally different matter.
Quoting Isaac
And you think those that did successfully resist colonization are unhappy of their choice to resist?
Quoting Isaac
You think so?
What do you happened then to the native Americans, the Aztecs and or the Incas? Or the Maoris in New Zealand? Did they get their nations back? With what political action?
No.
My wife is Mexican (and now a Finnish citizen also). She doesn't speak nahuatl, but Spanish.
I can totally imagine that Finns and the Finnish language would be in a similar situation like many Fenno-Ugric people and their languages in Russia today (the Komis, the Udmurts, the Mari). And Finland would be a "natural" part of Russia proper inhabited by Russians. Five million people are quite expendable. Nobody would care a shit if they would have disappeared.
More of a risk than marching toward a line of machine guns?
Quoting ssu
I doubt an annexed country would be given autonomy. What's so special about autonomy? I live in a rural county of England. We don't have autonomy, we're dictated to by London. In America, states are dictated to by federal law. What's so special about existing states that they have a right to autonomy which is denied individual counties, or villages, or households?
What about the autonomy of those who don't want to enlist? Why is their autonomy trodden over but the autonomy of their state paramount?
Quoting ssu
I doubt it, no. That some military defenses are successful is not an argument that any given military defense will be. No one would ever attack anywhere if that were the case.
Quoting ssu
Now you're just making the same error the other way around. That some political activism isn't successful is not an argument that any given political activism won't be. No one would ever act if that were the case.
The matter is clearly uncertain. So the question is about what right a government has to force such an enormous imposition for such a disputed benefit.
Same could be said of the Russian Crimeans or the the independents in Donbas. Same could be said of the Basque separatists, the Scottish, the Taliban in their strongholds...
Does Northern Ireland have a right to autonomy? Israel (at what size)? Did South Korea? What about the Pacific Islanders?
Your notion that the world can be neatly divided into these shapes whereby a majority within them can rightfully tell the others to walk into a tank, but anyone from a different shape is monstrous to do so.
It's insane. These shapes are an entirely arbitrary result of various wars, settlements and ongoing truces throughout history, they have absolutely no other meaning. To say that those within them are morally obliged to risk their lives to protect the line drawn by some autocrats hundreds of years ago is crazy.
I would think they have a right to be reunited with the rest of Ireland. NI is an anachronistic remnant of colonialism.
Quoting Isaac
@ssu is not arguing for a moral obligation.
Every border is an anachronistic remnant of some act of colonisation. Where else do you think borders come from? God?
The Russian Empire granted autonomy both for Congress Poland and the Grand Duchy of Finland. Poland, which had been for a long time a large independent nation, revolted several times against the Russians. Finland, which hadn't been an independent nation, revolted only when Imperial Russia started Russification and later when the empire collapsed.
Quoting IsaacLocal institutions. The government you face basically isn't the foreign power, but for example your old previous institutions. A county isn't a country: both your county and London are in England. In fact Scotland with their Scottish Parliament (or the Welsh Senedd) are examples of autonomy in your country. The Scots have been an independent country and have had now referendums about independence (and I guess one purposed for 2023 now), which just underlines my point. Whales shows even better how assimilation works: only a third or so of Welsh people actually can speak Welsh and only a tenth use it daily.
Quoting Isaac
Now your off to build your own strawman arguments.
Quoting Olivier5
Correct. :up:
But seems that Isaac views these questions only from a moral point of view and cannot see any other way to look at it. Well, for a person living in the English countryside where the last foreigners that invaded the place did so 956 years ago, these issues can be only a question of freedom and morality.
Why are you telling me all this?
Quoting ssu
It's the topic of the thread. If you want to start another thread about the history and function of conscription, do so.
Quoting Isaac
Not exactly.
To answer the question "Is the country mobilizing to save its citizens, or is it mobilizing to save the existing power structure?", you need to look at the function of mobilization of the society in a war.
And what happens to countries and societies if they loose the war (or surrender) to an invading power whose objective is annex the country.
Sure, but in relation to the balance of value to citizens vs the value to the state. Simply declaring that citizens benefited won't cut it. We're talking about Ukraine here. I've given the evidence of overall similarity between Ukraine, Russia and Belarus (as an example of a puppet state). Since the evidence shows there's not much to choose between them, I'm struggling to see where you're getting your argument from about civilian benefits.
Quoting ssu
Again, since I'm not disputing that some wars benefit the populations committed to them, your argument is wasted.
...
The point here is that whether the benefit of any war is worth the cost is disputed. I don't think you can seriously raise an objection to that.
So, given the enormous risk, and disputed benefits, how does a state justify not giving its citizens the freedom to choose?
If your answer is "it wouldn't work otherwise", then that opens the state to the criticism that its own survival is the paramount objective.
That can happen to you in war regardless whether you're a civilian or a soldier. It can also happen to you regardless whether there is officially war or not.
And anyway, you'll probably suffer more harm from capitalists and mean neighbors in peace time than you'd do in a war from an invading force.
Crassest post of the day.
Quoting https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2022/08/ukraine-civilian-casualty-update-8-august-2022
Out of a population of 41 million, that's a death rate of 0.243/1000 (assuming a full year of war)
Rates of avoidable mortality in Ukraine (due to lack of investment in healthcare, corporate irresponsibly, and lack of regulation) is 6/1000. One of the highest in the world. (According to WHO mortality database).
So which figure do you dispute?
What's "crass" is the almost total media whiteout over the war compared to the almost complete and negligent silence on the corruption and profiteering killing 30 times as many people.
And we haven't even touched on the victims of air pollution, low wages, industrial diseases, poor nutrition...
You may think that all the world's evil is perpetrated by Russia. Others are not so childishly naive.
You can do the paperwork here:
https://fightforua.org/
Which figure do you dispute?
Over 30 times higher? Don't be absurd.
The point is not to claim that war zones are no worse than peacetime communities under capitalism. The point is that overall suffering is caused in greater degrees by profiteering and corruption than it is by war, whole orders of magnitude greater. OHCHR estimation error has no bearing whatsoever on that fact.
Why not? Also, do add the maimed, the traumatized, the tortured, the raped, and then those suffering from hunger, poverty, or forced migration.
People who have never seen a war speak of it easily, I guess. As I said, you're welcome to enlist in the Ukraine foreign legion, if your neighbours in Sussex are killing you.
Apart from the total lack of evidence that it's anything like that?
Quoting Olivier5
OK, so shall we add those consequences to the tally for capitalism too. What kind of figures do you think that will yield? How many are hungry because of profiteering agricultural companies?
Quoting Olivier5
People who've never been on the brink of starvation or worked in a chemical plant for starvation wages speak of it easily too. So what?
The Russian offensive is less harmful than the Holocaust, so what's your problem with it?
Of the list of stupid things you've said to avoid conceding a point, this is definitely getting a runner up prize.
"One ought not oppose anything for which something else is worse". Brilliant.
Now all we need to do is find the activity with the worst outcome in the world do that we can at least oppose something.
Well, if we follow your reasoning, the Russians are in fact helping the Ukrainians survive longer by drawing them into a war, thus avoiding far worse dangers such as their neighbours or air pollution.... :chin:
Eh?
6 deaths per thousand from profiteering.
0.25 deaths per thousand from war.
War + profiteering = 6.25
Just profiteering = 6
I don't know what kind of crazy maths your Facebook feed now wants you to use but us old fashioned types still see 6.25 as more than 6.
But you crack on with your 'newspeak' maths. I'm sure it'll be fine.
In general it seems you lot are discussing whether it would be better for Ukraine to be occupied by Russia than not, and leaving both the conscription issue (is any conscription just? and is this conscription just?) and the inference from just resistance to just conscription (in this case and in general) unexamined.
Just fight implies just conscription, why and why here?
My argument has been that the value of the outcome in any war is necessarily disputed. Argue against this first point we'd have to divide all the world into the 'bad' countries and the 'good' countries, such that if a 'bad' one invaded a 'good' one we'd know the outcome would be universally disapproved of. Despite the media's best efforts, we can't reasonably do that, so the idea must be rejected.
As such a government, in conscripting, is taking away a meaningful choice over what outcomes a person wants to contribute toward and imposing a very severe burden in doing so. I don't think there's any precedent for that.
As to Ukraine. I've given the data (uncontested, as things stand) showing that Ukraine is not that dissimilar to Russia or Belarus (as an example of a Russian puppet state), by almost any measure of human well-being.
Ukraine is in a very difficult situation. It's a very useful country (large, agriculturally very productive, oil access, trade access...) but no real military power. So it's going to get used, and abused, by one of it's more powerful neighbours. The only choice it has is which.
Russia has forced it's hand by invading, and NATO have restricted its options by not seriously defending it. So really now, in terms of who they get abused by, it's Russia or Russia. Conscription in this particular case is therefore even less justified because it's very likely that the outcome of the severe imposition will be negligible either way. If Ukraine win, there'll still be all the corruption and fascism, plus decades of indebtedness and 'modernisation' to endure. If Russia win, there'll be further restrictions on political freedom, but maybe more investment (as there was in Crimea), and less 'modernisation'. If they surrender, there'll be all that plus less war, but perhaps more boldness in Russian future dealings. Their choices are all shit. It's nothing short of adolescent role-playing for a government to force it's citizens to risk their lives pursuing one of the three shit options.
If war is a minor nuisance, then conscription is barely worth talking about.
Why would the aspects of a peacetime environment all disappear during war? If gravity forms part of a peacetime environment, does it disappear during war?
I think that's a solid argument sketch for the claim that conscription isn't just unless (insert caveats here). And that makes sense of the sub argument regarding harm trade offs of being ruled by Russia vs being ruled by Ukraine.
There is a bit of an equivocation there though, the expanded conscription in that instance is a response to invasion, and so the trade off ought turn on the disruptive consequences of unresisted or successful invasion rather than the steady state of an established government's qualify of life statistics. If you took the measure in contested territory, those measures would go down.
However, I think your argument does hit more home against conscription in the abstract, in which an abstract trade off between the suffering of surrender+politics vs the imposition of individual suffering that is conscription. That bears on whether it's a permissible continuous government policy. I say permissible rather than just there because the ground for conscription being 'okay in the abstract' isn't that it's just in every case, it's that it's not unjust in some cases (permissible).
Can you think of a case where conscription wouldn't be unjust? (By that I don't mean that it would be just, I mean that it could be like meh rather than hell yeah or the devil)
Though that may be weakened by the extent to which an individual is obliged, through social embedding, to defend something which is worth defending from the real risk of its waning or destruction. How much of that is a romantic attachment to a culture being rationalised remains to be seen, in each case (like _db and their Graeber quote said below)
Quoting _db
I repeat:
Quoting Olivier5
Yes, that's true, and harder to predict. But my argument (in the general case) only requires a reasonable dispute as to the benefits. I think even if we accept your criticism here, there remains a reasonable scope for dispute as to the benefits of military resistance, although smaller?
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, I don't see any reason why it must be the case that there's sufficient reasonable dispute as to the merits of military resistance. There will always be disagreement, of course, but ethically, we're importing notions of reasonableness anyway, so...
One would be hard pushed to make a reasonable argument that life under the Nazis, for example, would be no less equitable than life under Churchill/Chamberlain. They had unequivocally unjust policies. So I think conscription might be justified to fight something like that. With caveats. I think the OHCHR guidelines are sensible with regards to the right to express a religious belief, for example.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah. We owe our countries. But this is about a government's right to dictate how we pay that debt. We're not just passive recipients of benefits, we're the creators of them too.
I think it still comes back to the relationship between individual autonomous contributions to a common goal, and a government dictating that process. I think there's a balance to strike based on reasonable dispute over methods and the scale of the imposition. I don't think anyone could raise a reasonable argument that the imposition is small, so it's about how reasonable it is, in any case, to dispute the method.
It seems the alternative is to suggest the government can impose anything, no matter how severe, only on the grounds it thinks it will thereby improve things. I don't think anyone wants to go there.
Why would you do that? It's nonsense. Do corporations stop profiteering during war? No.
So why would the deaths caused by their doing so stop during war.
War involves a lot of death, on top of the deaths already caused by greed and profiteering.
The choices are profiteering plus war, or just profiteering.
According to your fake 'statistics', war involves only a minute increase in casualties, almost negligible.
They're from the OHCHR and the WHO. Are they part of the Russian propaganda machine too? They get everywhere those damn Ruskies!
Except the OHCHR warned that their data is not reliable statistic but a count a minima. I explained it to you already but you didn't listen, bent on lying as you tend to be
The death toll would need to be 30 times higher to refute the argument, making this invasion one of the deadliest invasions ever, outpacing the Nazi occupation of Poland, the genocides in Congo, the Napoleonic wars, even the entire first world war... Is that the claim you're making?
On what grounds? Absolutely no one from any agency, official or otherwise, is giving figures anywhere near that magnitude.
Not true, because you are comparing very different variables. One, the OHCHR data, represents a very partial account of civilians (only) casualties from bombing and other direct war effects, which according to their site might vastly underestimate the real number of directly war-induced civilian casualties.
The WHO data, on the other hand, is an estimate of excess deaths due to avoidable factors such as pollution or poor access to health care in peacetime.
In order to do a proper comparison between the respective lethality of war and peace in Ukraine, you would need to estimate the number of excess deaths due to the war, including through an induced deterioration of the civilians' access to health care and many many other indirect risk factors affected by the war. This number won't even stop rising at the end of the war because the Ukrainian society will take time to recover from the blow.
And this number might well be 30 times higher than the very partial OHCHR body count. You cannot possibly know until you estimate it.
No. The claim in question was...
Quoting baker
...so the only account needed is of deaths from invading forces.
And more importantly, @baker used the word 'probably'. So to dismiss those comments as "crass" you'd have to show it's not even probable. Your current argument that we can't know either way falls massively short of that requirement.
But for the sake of argument. Is it your claim that the resulting figure would be 30 times larger?
If you want to include all the knock on effects of war, then we'd need to include the knock on effects of profiteering too, yes? All the social issues, the food crises in other countries, the environmental damage - pollution, global warming... Do you want to go there? Is your claim seriously going to be that war outstrips the death toll from all that?
I'd love to see the figures you'd use.
So?
What?
We're either measuring 'harm' or 'death'. I measured 'death' - deaths from bombings etc, vs deaths from profiteering. Same measure.
We could measure harms, but I don't see any reason why the result would be any different. If anything war is more likely to have a higher kill/harm ratio simply because the purpose is to kill. That would make a harm to harm comparison even more unbalanced.
I was comparing deaths per thousand population with...deaths per thousand population.
But I'll bear your excellent advice in mind in future should I ever be tempted into juxtaposing fruit.
So, the last time your own country faced a possible threat of invasion, that time conscription was OK. :roll:
Because then, the enemy was exceptionally bad. But otherwise, seems it hasn't been. :snicker:
But didn't Hitler want a peace with the UK in 1940?
Wouldn't then making peace with Germany have been then reasonable, Isaac?
If you're suggesting that the difference between the Nazi regime and 1940s England is much the same as the difference between modern Russia and modern Ukraine then there's nothing more to say. If you're seriously prepared to sink that low, no arguments are going to have any impact.
Where, in 1940s England, were the plans to exterminate an entire fucking race?
In September 3rd 1939 Great Britain declared war and immediately went ahead with the National Service Act, which imposed conscription on all males aged between 18 and 41. Only those medically unfit were exempted, as were others in key industries and jobs such as baking, farming, medicine, and engineering. Later in 1940 the enemy state, Germany, sought peace without any territorial demands from Great Britain.
I'm just asking how this goes with your line of thinking on this thread.
Quoting ssu
...is not 'just asking'.
I've already made it fairly clear. My argument is that the balance between autonomy and civil duties ought be weighed by factors such as the degree of imposition and the reasonableness of disagreement over means.
In most cases of war, there is a very reasonable disagreement over means.
In the case of Nazi ideology attempting to dominate Europe, there is far less reasonable disagreement over means.
There's nothing complicated about that except for the dogmatist desperately trying to warp the facts to avoid having to even contemplate the possibility that Ukraine might be anything other than a nation of saints and angels.
Personally, I don't see much of a difference between MM. Putin and Hitler, prior to the Holocaust, or between the UK in the 40's and Ukraine now, for that matter...
Seems that Isaac see's a lot of difference.
Let him tell us what those differences are.
Quoting Olivier5
If you two want to embarrass yourselves by suggesting that the differences between Nazi Germany and 1940s England were about the same as those between modern Ukraine and Russia I'm happy to just leave you to it. I consider the argument already won when it reaches that level of utter stupidity.
Isn't the Putin regime a fascist and militaristic dictatorship, just like the Nazis were?
Unlike your good self, I don't feel the need to use discussion forums just to tell the world how I feel about things. If someone wants to put forward a proposal that what Putin's doing is fine and normal, I'll happily critique it, but no, as yet I don't have this narcissistic driving passion to inform the world at large how I feel about every damn thing happening in it.
Quoting Isaac
:rofl:
Oh yes, when it was Ukraine and it's conscription/mobilization, @Isaac had much to say. Yet when it's Russian leaders not keeping their promises and mobilizing their reservists, nope, he hasn't got anything to say. Especially when some of those opposing the mobilization are protesting the mobilization or fleeing the country. Or someone even shooting the leader of the local draft committee in siberia. All events I would presume would be something notable to this discussion. Especially if the war isn't popular, how much can the government threaten the conscripts even in theory.
Nah. Good ol' tankie won't do that!
Oh @Isaac, you are so funny.
No one has presented any arguments to the contrary. There's nothing to say.
What is this obsession with having every thought committed to social media? Do you also find it odd that I haven't declared to the world how I feel about my breakfast?
Someone wrote an OP on conscription in Ukraine. I responded. I presume that's what people expect when they write an OP.
If you want to discuss the Russian conscription, write a post about it. If I disagree with you, I'll respond.
Otherwise, could you and @Olivier5 please desist from trying to divine what I think based on what I don't write. This is a discussion forum, not my fucking diary.
Quoting _db
Here the actions of the citizens themselves tell a lot how they view this.
Yes, when Ukraine mobilized it forces and prevented every military aged man from leaving, there were also examples of (male) citizens wanting to leave the country. But usually these were foreigners, who for example had gotten the citizenship to work in Ukraine and didn't have family in Ukraine. Yet if there were some instances of this in the case of Ukraine, it was nothing like now in Russia where it's estimated that quarter of a million people have fled Russia since February 24th. Even my country is getting thousands of military age men here daily trying to avoid the mobilization.
In Georgia (where Russian's apparently don't need a visa), it's even more obvious.
Far more dangerous it is if the mobilization is focus on minorities and poor and isn't universal. The rich getting off by corruption and the poor going to the front is something that isn't good for social cohesion. This creates a lot of social tensions. In riots in Dagestan, one of the poorest parts of Russia, are likely caused by this.
Hence it's actually the people and the conscripts themselves who answer @_db's question in the OP. If they feel that the mobilization is done to protect them, then there's no problem. If on the other hand the mobilization is to save the elite, the power structure, then the mobilization is on shaky grounds.
The western media is reporting it like all Russian men of fighting age are being pushed into the military. This is absolutely not what partial mobilisation means. Are the Russians sticking to partial mobilisation or actually enforcing a full mobilisation policy? That is another question.
Conscription? I a not a massive fan of it. I can understand arguments both for and against it. It would be interesting to see how opinions varied between men and women on this matter.
What is full mobilization? 25 million people in the case of Russia? I think they worry that the partial mobilization will call them.
The tiny little problem is that those 25 million men, even if Russians, aren't just sitting idly in a bar drinking vodka. Even 1 million to the army means basically 1 million crucial jobs lost from the society. That makes a huge economic loss for the economy. Then Russians should look at their history and notice what can happen if a many million strong army is demoralized and in no mood to follow the leaders. And the simple fact is that the limited arms and equipment limits the size of the army.
In fact, we can see totally clearly this from the case of Ukraine. It's happy with a reserve of 700 000 and large part of that isn't mobilized and not on the front. Yet when you take all the military aged men, you are talking about over 7 000 000 men in Ukraine. Russia has military aged men 33 million and of whom theoretical reservists are 25 million. Even a million strong force would be a huge problem to arm, train and deploy. And notice then that would be far bigger than the Putin's security system policing the people.
If you are in the Russian territorial army or not I would not blame you for running, but I would ask such people to think before grabbing a quick buck next time maybe. I have seen some suspect reports about calling up people who are not in the TA, but needless to say any hint of this kind of story will get wide attention in western media whether it is fully validated or not.
Actually it is to mobilize reservists, those who already have served their military service (conscription). Those that are on the military payroll have already been through. The idea was to use only these volunteer soldiers and not the conscripts in Ukraine. But the likely fact is that conscripts, those that aren't raw recruits, have been used in Ukraine for a long time already.
The fact that students have been put into service, who have since Soviet times been free from conscription just tells how badly the process has been.
You can see from the photos, that obviously not everybody now mobilized is in his twenties:
Russia doesn't have a territorial army (?), that's what I guess the UK has.