French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a voluntary military service on Thursday as he seeks to bolster France's defences amid growing concerns over Russia's threat to European nations. Macron said…
As I understand the proposal, it’s currently voluntary and comes with some sort of pay, so it could be worse. But I am fully skeptical that this is the intended end result. Once you’ve got the infrastructure in place and it’s ‘normalised’ it’s a much smaller step to move from voluntary to mandatory.
Similarly, paying 18 years old 900€ a month for “volunteering” isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s obviously going to be a much bigger incentive to teens from poorer families. And I can very much foresee the stripping of unemployment benefits from young adults, arguing that if they aren’t in education and can’t find a job then they should sign up for the military.
Mandatory military service ended somewhat recently in France (1997), but it’s still enough of a gap that the military isn’t ready the massive influx of new, reluctant recruits that bringing it fully back would imply.
The idea has been floating around for a few years now, especially since the start of Ukraine’s Invasion by Russia, but it’s still very unpopular among both the military and civilian society.
I do think you’re in the right though: this is clearly a first step to build back the infrastructure and to test the waters for a full reintroduction, but I don’t think anyone is ready to cross that bridge just yet
As I understand the proposal, it’s currently voluntary and comes with some sort of pay, so it could be worse. But I am fully skeptical that this is the intended end result. Once you’ve got the infrastructure in place and it’s ‘normalised’ it’s a much smaller step to move from voluntary to mandatory.
Similarly, paying 18 years old 900€ a month for “volunteering” isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s obviously going to be a much bigger incentive to teens from poorer families. And I can very much foresee the stripping of unemployment benefits from young adults, arguing that if they aren’t in education and can’t find a job then they should sign up for the military.
Mandatory military service ended somewhat recently in France (1997), but it’s still enough of a gap that the military isn’t ready the massive influx of new, reluctant recruits that bringing it fully back would imply.
The idea has been floating around for a few years now, especially since the start of Ukraine’s Invasion by Russia, but it’s still very unpopular among both the military and civilian society.
I do think you’re in the right though: this is clearly a first step to build back the infrastructure and to test the waters for a full reintroduction, but I don’t think anyone is ready to cross that bridge just yet
kind of like how it works in the US. :(