cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/3541178

Archived version

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Over the next few years, European countries will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on aircraft, artillery, armored vehicles, drones and fortifications. However, the rush to rebuild militaries that have shrunk over decades of underinvestment has exposed a major challenge.

Almost without exception, Europe’s largest militaries face significant shortfalls in personnel, as demographic change, economic factors and long-term shifts in attitudes towards service weigh on their ability to recruit and retain soldiers. Some governments are raising wages, others are trying to invoke a sense of crisis or patriotic duty. Some have even reinstated or extended the draft, marking a profound change to the social contract.

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As well as increasing their defense budgets, European countries are trying to recruit personnel in large quantities. Germany’s top general said in February that the military may need to add another 100,000 active duty soldiers to its current 180,000. Poland plans to grow its forces from 208,000 to 230,000 this year, and eventually to 300,000 professional soldiers and 150,000 reserves. The Dutch government has said it wants to more than double its military personnel from 70,000 to 200,000, including reserves, by 2030.

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Lithuania reintroduced conscription in 2015. Each year, 3,900 men aged between 18 and 26 are called for nine months of mandatory military training. Like its Baltic neighbors, it has dramatically increased its defense budget, aiming to spend more than 5% of GDP in 2026. By 2030, the country wants to have 18,000 full-time troops, backed by 50,000 in active reserve. To get there, it will need to push conscription numbers to something close to universal military service.

According to a report by the national audit office, the number of volunteers for military training — people who didn’t wait to be called for conscription, but chose to undergo it — rose by 41% last year. However, more than half of conscripts were declared unfit for service, 40% of those, for “mental health disorders and psychological problems.” The army has also struggled to retain higher-ranking servicemen, with many officers and non-commissioned officers leaving due to a lack of career progression, the audit office found.

Lithuania’s recent history of Soviet rule has proved a powerful motivator for volunteers. Since 2014, the number of active volunteers in the Riflemen’s Union has more than doubled to 17,000. Of those, 6,500 joined after the full-scale invasion, among them Lithuania’s former prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė. The government has tripled its financing of the organization. “No one wants to go back to the gulag. We know what it means to be free.” Giknius said. “We are on the front line, we’re on the edge. We feel the breath of the enemy up close physically. We have a small territory with few people, so universal defense is our only option.”

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While other countries in Europe have set out plans to increase the size of their regular forces, or reinstated national military service, France — with a large regular military and its own nuclear deterrent — has focused on its reserves. Any French citizen aged 17 to 72 can become a reservist, making them liable to be called up for combat missions in France or abroad, to protect civilian and military sites, or to contribute specific expertise in areas such as cyber-security or logistics.

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For reservists [in France], there is a financial incentive to sign up. New recruits earn on average more than €80 ($94) per day while they’re with the reserves, as well as free accommodation and food. If they move up in rank, the pay rises further. The government has signed agreements with more than 1,000 public and private sector employers to allow reservists to serve without losing pay. Since reserve missions are usually conducted on weekends and over the summer, Luan said he can treat it as a student job. “It’s a useful bonus.”

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In 2023, Latvia, which has a 285-kilometer-long border with Russia, reinstated the draft, taking the number of EU countries with some form of conscription to nine: Greece, Cyprus, Austria, and the Baltic and Nordic states minus Iceland. Facing acute recruitment challenges, lawmakers in other countries, including Germany, Poland and Italy, have discussed returning to national service.

A quick return to universal conscription is unlikely in most of Europe. But policymakers in several countries have pointed to a model pioneered in Sweden as a possible blueprint.

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Sweden suspended conscription in 2010. At the time, its system, under which men over the age of 18 were liable for service, was criticized as being “ineffective on the battlefield, but also unfair,” said Sanna Strand, a researcher at the University of Stockholm. When the government wanted to reinstate the draft in 2018, “politicians and defense authorities had a lot of work to do in order to explain why this was being done.”

The system they designed tried to balance the need to recruit personnel with the expectations of a progressive European population. Rather than simply forcing all men to serve, they created a more selective draft. At 18, all Swedes — of any gender — fill out an enlistment form in which they are asked to declare their willingness to serve in the military, alongside questions on education and health.

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When Emmely Søgaard Hansen volunteered for military service in Denmark last year, it wasn’t a grand patriotic gesture but a spontaneous decision. She was tired of her job, and looking for something that would challenge her. By the time she completed her four-month training in the army, she felt ready to serve her country in the event of war. “What started as a personal journey of self-development turned into something much more meaningful,” Hansen said.

All Danish men over the age of 18 are currently eligible for conscription, but in practice very few are actually drafted because the spaces are filled by volunteers. Women aren’t yet obliged to serve, but many volunteer. In 2024, nearly 5,000 people began military service, almost a quarter of them women.

As Denmark increases military spending and preparedness, it is expanding the draft.

For the first time, women will soon be obliged to register for potential conscription. Girls turning 18 after June 30 will be assessed for service, and may be drafted if not enough volunteers come forward.

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There are major questions about whether or not conscripts have much value in modern war. “To make a proper infantryman takes a year,” Globsec’s Burilkov said. “In Germany, there was a proposal for three months of training to make it attractive. And I can tell you that soldiers like that will be essentially worthless from a combat perspective.” Conscription is at best a stopgap measure. Even Russia, which has had to keep ramping up its financial incentives for recruits, has been hesitant to send conscripts to the front, Burilkov said.

That means reinstituting conscription is more often than not a political, rather than a military decision. Superficially, national service seems like a simple, catch-all solution, and one that has often attracted more conservative political voices, who see value in it for defense, but also for instilling a sense of nationhood, patriotism and discipline into the population. In a political environment characterized by partisanship and mistrust of authority, conscription promises a sense of universal identity, solidarity and social resilience.

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