23 June 2024

Quoting Tallyrand

The suggestion being made by the German Minister of Defense to reinstate conscription is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

This is not about the defense of the Reich Republic, it is about supporting NATO's (actually the United States') proxy war against Russia.

The political consequences of this are positively suicidal, both for the current German government and for NATO:

Germany scrapped the draft in 2011, but Russia's war in Ukraine is forcing a rethink.

“I’m convinced that Germany needs some kind of military conscription,” Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told an audience at Johns Hopkins University in the United States last week, calling the decision by former Chancellor Angela Merkel to end conscription a "mistake."

"Times have changed,” he said.

While the idea of reinstating some form of national military service is gaining ground, doing so could require changing the constitution and raising billions to cover the extra costs of mustering, feeding, training, arming and housing tens of thousands of new recruits.

Pistorius' team has spent weeks drafting proposals for how such a system could work, and officials say he plans to kick-start a public debate on the topic before the summer parliamentary recess.

On April 22, defense ministry planners presented a report with three options: Keeping the military as it stands but increasing efforts to boost recruitment; reactivating conscription for 18-year-old men, and selectively choosing up to 40,000 a year to serve, as is done in Scandinavia; or going all the way and making military service mandatory for all men and women.

I can predict with a significant amount of confidence that if military service is not mandatory for everyone, and likely even if it is mandatory for everyone, that the sons and daughters of privilege will find a way out of this.

Even absent this, it's likely to enrage younger voters, who had the biggest swing toward the right wing  AfD in European Parliament elections.

This is a remarkably stupid move.

0 comments :

Post a Comment