The idea that every man1 has a responsibility to fight for his country is ancient. But different societies have implemented this in different ways, and it's worth taking a deeper look at the system that was developed in the late 19th and early 20th century, and which continues in some countries to this day.
The most important fact to understand about modern conscription is that it is at core based on voluntary compliance, much as the tax system in the US is. I don't particularly like paying taxes, and if the government told me I didn't have to, I would be quite happy, but I (and almost everyone else) accepts the fundamental authority of the government to tax us and complies more or less willingly. Likewise, the sort of broad-based conscription that provided the manpower for the World Wars essentially rested on society as a whole being fundamentally behind the idea that demanding young men pay2 in time and danger is normal and fine. Contrast this system, where people get a letter and generally show up, with (for instance) the impressment system, which was implemented by the government sending out a gang to grab people by force, and the gangs were often resisted by force, too.
It's worth noting that conscription like this isn't a modern invention, and we can see the same sort of process at work in the Roman dilectus, but it is a system that can only happen if the government enjoys a degree of popular support that was rare in the premodern world. Instead, conscription, where it occurs, is generally grabbing a small proportion of the population for long periods, which also usually included provisions for the wealthy to pay others to serve in their stead. This sort of conscription is much easier to enforce on a relatively uncooperative population, but isn't all that effective at mobilizing manpower. The first modern, universal conscription was the Levee en masse of the French revolution, which took advantage of the new nationalism to mobilize a much higher fraction of the nation's manpower than other countries could muster. By 1900 or so, this type of conscription was standard throughout Europe, and even the countries which had avoided it before WWI, most notably Britain and the US, adopted it without too much resistance when they entered the war, and the basic consensus behind it lasted through the middle of the 20th century.
The best way to understand how conscription actually worked is to look at the cases in which it failed. In 1917, Canada faced a serious crisis over conscription, centered around culturally-distinct Quebec, which was far less invested in supporting the British Empire than Anglophone Canada, which ultimately led to the abolition of the draft. A similar crisis played out the next year in Ireland, where public support for the British was not particularly high. Ultimately, it was a major contributor to Ireland's not being in the British Empire any more. During WWII, Canada faced a similar crisis to WWI, where promises that conscripts would not be deployed outside of Canada had to be broken due to heavy casualties in Europe. On the flip side, the United States actually banned voluntary entry into the military in late 1942 to regularize the manpower supply and prevent those with vital skills in the war industry from joining up.
But the biggest and most obvious failure of public support for conscription happened in the United States during the Vietnam War. Much of this is obviously down to a lack of broad public support for the war that the draftees were being sent to fight, which made draft evasion broadly accepted instead of shameful. A second major factor was a general view that the system was not fair. The increasing cost of military equipment meant that the US could no longer afford to draft everyone who was eligible (a growing population, thanks to the baby boom), which in turn meant figuring out how to allocate the burdens of military service. This was always going to be somewhat unfair, but it was compounded by various policies such as the use of the draft as an inducement for volunteers (who overwhelmingly tried to find less unpleasant jobs than wandering around the jungle being shot at) and the college deferment, which was seen as a way for the upper and middle classes to avoid service while the lower classes died in Vietnam. Ultimately, support for the system collapsed, and last men were drafted in 1972.3
With all of this in mind, we can take a look at the cases where the draft continues successfully today. By far the easiest way to generate support for a draft is to have a clear enemy, someone who might well come and destroy your country if they aren't stopped. This threat underlies the draft in South Korea and Israel, both of which have very clear threats on their borders and which also impose unusually long conscription terms (18 months and 32 months respectively). Israel is also nearly unique in widely conscripting women, although until very recently, they have pretty much only served in support units. But even in Israel, we can see the basic voluntary nature of conscription, with the Israeli Arab population (who might be less willing to grant the basic legitimacy of the government) exempted from the process. There are also predictable tensions involving exemptions, such as that granted to married women (many of whom may not be married very long after their call-up date) and the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews, who can study the Torah instead of serving. But despite all that, the system still has very broad support, as seen by the fact that the reserve callups after the recent attacks saw greater than 100% response4 despite the political tensions that have rocked Israel this year.
The alternative model is perhaps best shown by Switzerland, which continues to conscript about 80% of males5 despite being studiously neutral and NATO-locked. Service terms are much shorter, basically the six months or so it takes to impart basic military skills, and then recruits are in the reserves until age 34. This system is broadly popular, getting 73% support in a 2013 referendum, and relies on the fact that service is short and pretty close to universal. There is no risk that Swiss troops will be deployed to fight in an unpopular war, it is a part of national identity and frankly a lot of 19-year-olds would probably not mind too much being made to play with guns for 6 months.
Finland uses a similar system to Switzerland, although their adoption of that model was driven by treaties restricting the size of their active armed forces, and support for it is presumably solidified by the presence of Russia on their border. Norway and Sweden have rather unusual systems, where conscription is technically mandatory but only a third or so of the population is actually called up, essentially because they can't afford to equip more. This looks to be surprisingly stable, with priority given to those willing to serve, but it seems unlikely that such a system could survive an unpopular war.6
The lesson from all of this is that conscription can work in the modern world, but that it inherently shapes the forces that make use of it, and the options those forces give to policymakers. It takes months of training to make use of even the most basic of modern weapons, time which is close to how long most countries are willing to tolerate their young men (and sometimes women) being forced into uniform. In many ways, the basic goal of the Swiss military is to force any attacker to replay the American experience in Afghanistan in a prettier setting and against an opponent with fancy watches and better training. If the threat is clearer, then it's easier to maintain a full-scale modern army with conscripts, as Israel and South Korea do.
But then there are the countries where conscription doesn't really make sense for the situation they face. The most prominent recent example of this is Germany, which met all of the requirements for conscription during the Cold War. After German reunification, the military focused on overseas intervention, secure in the knowledge that Europe would never again see large-scale warfare, but conscription was maintained until 2011. By the end, only about 15% were serving in the military, with twice that fraction in alternate civilian service, and most of those who did join the military being rather poorly utilized, at least in part because the term of service was shortened to shrink the Army. Similar problems have occurred in most places that would really rather have professional military. Russia is a particularly egregious case, where draft dodging is relatively easy for the upper class and conscripts are hazed mercilessly. But even as the war in Ukraine strains it to the limit, the Russian government has officially never deployed conscripts to fight, in compliance with laws prohibiting their use outside of the country.7
It's also worth noting that even countries which seem like they should meet the requirements for conscription can still struggle to make it work, as most notably took place in the case of Taiwan. Despite the fact that they have one major problem to solve, and it is the type where conscription works well, Taiwan spent most of the last 20 years winding down conscription and transitioning to an all-volunteer military, presumably out of a desire to imitate the US military. This is a clear mistake, as the US military is carefully designed to deal with the threats facing the United States, and should not be slavishly copied.8 In the last few years, Taiwan has restarted conscription, although the fact that they still have a Marine Corps does raise questions as to their commitment to the anti-invasion mission.
And all of this also comes to bear to the United States, where we occasionally see criticism of the all-volunteer force and the fact that military service is increasingly concentrated among a small percentage of the population. This has obvious implications for civil-military relations, and those have indeed deteriorated over the 20 years or so I've been paying attention to this stuff. But conscription is clearly not the answer. The US military is a high-cost, high-tech force, and there is no way we could have a draft with anything approaching universal service. We are effectively an island nation, without even the vaguest hint of the threat of land invasion, and lack the unifying civic institutions that underpin conscription in places like Switzerland and Singapore. Even those who don't have a moral problem with conscription in the abstract should be opposed to a plan that essentially boils down to wasting a ton of the time of young men (and maybe women) without any plausible utility, and which might destroy the world's most powerful military in the process.
1 Only a few countries conscript women, and only Israel has prominently drafted women for more than a decade or so. ⇑
2 Because, yes, conscription of all types is basically taxing in terms of time instead of money. ⇑
4 A lot of people who were not on the list, either because of age or their unit not being activated, showed up anyway. ⇑
5 Those who are found unfit for service have to pay an additional 3% of their income as tax for 11 years. ⇑
6 Note that Norway, like a number of countries, prohibits using draftees outside of the country except during wartime. Norway's contribution to the NATO mission in Afghanistan was primarily from the volunteer Telemark Battalion. ⇑
7 Unofficially, they have been using some conscripts since the beginning, but this is clearly a measure intended to limit the kind of discontent they saw over casualties in Afghanistan in the 80s. Also worth noting that this kind of official lie can be constraining on a government's behavior even if everyone knows it is false. Much like, say, Japanese "compliance" with the naval treaties. ⇑
8 Only part of the previous sentence is true. ⇑
Comments
...Excellent writeup! Will there be a part 2?
Mike
I also assume that Swiss conscripts are far less likely to be enslaved or raped than Russian conscripts.
hmmm.
Maybe you meant that it is more-or-less done with consent of population?
Nowadays people are in general against ideas such as "we will cancel all taxes and all government services", while in past people would celebrate such change.
Paying taxes is not voluntary at all. One of my friends messed up some taxes and as discovered paying her taxes was not really voluntary (she has not tried to fight it, just paid what government demanded but outcome would not improve by refusing paying it). At the same time she would make fun of people proposing to abolish taxes and services provided by government. While in past peasants which were taxed got nearly nothing out of their taxes.
Excellent article except for your Canadian example in the First World War. Conscription was enforced after a federal election in late 1917, albeit with a lot of manipulation. There were riots, deaths, and evasion in Quebec but for the most part it was accepted in the rest of the country.
A better example of failed conscription is Australia in the First World War. The Australians served with considerable skill and effectiveness in the Middle East and on the Western Front fighting with the British. There were two national plebiscites to approved conscription and both failed.
@Mike
I wasn't planning on it, but who knows.
@Mateusz
That seems like a safe bet.
I admit that I chose the word "voluntary" to be slightly provocative, and this has also spawned a lot of discussion in the discord. I'll definitely hold that there are varying degrees of voluntaryness that can accompany processes like paying taxes or conscription, and the modern version is a lot more voluntary than the old ones. Yes, ultimately there's a man with a gun waiting to make you pay by force, but he's a lot more abstract and less likely to show up than in other systems. Compare the Swiss draft to British impressment.
@Bill
I'm pretty sure I got it right. The whole point is that conscription worked everywhere except Quebec.
Regarding the Swiss conscripts, while they remain in the reserves they have to take two weeks of refresher every year.
Also they keep their service weapon at home, they also had ammunition, but that was changed after too many 'accidents that did not really happen' happened.
A friend at home had his rifle, his father's rifle, and his grandfather's rifle.
Also in some Cantons (mostly the German ones) when they have to vote for a referendum they do the voting raising their rifle.
Excellent work as always, bean.
I feel like a stronger distinction should be made between:
Not getting runover in the first year of a war is an important concern for non-island nations. Russia, in particular, has to plan for a nightmare scenario of a war with Europe and China at the same time.
Also sad that the phrase 'Grand Army of the Republic' never gets used, as it is very handsome.
@Bill Stewart: To partially contradict you: Australia did have conscription in WWI, but for home defence only. The referendums, if they had passed, would have removed that restriction, allowing conscripted units to be deployed overseas.
In WWII the same restriction was in place, but was (through legislation, without a referendum) substantially watered down: a conscript could be deployed overseas if enough of the other soldiers in his unit agreed to it, or to some areas (e.g. New Guinea) regardless.
oh, I agree. To take taxes as example, things changed a lot since "if you do not pay taxes then we will kidnap and enslave your children/you" that as far as I know was done by Romans.
But I would not describe "there’s a man with a gun waiting to make you pay by force, but he’s a lot more abstract and less likely to show up than in other systems" as voluntary either.
I feel that it is outright wrong. I can say many things about paying taxes (like acceptable evil) but it is definitely not voluntary.
I assume this is the reference to impressment? It would be interesting (though I think somewhat before the time period of interest to you) to learn more about that alternate model. (Especially in the British context)
Because a lot of people are getting hung up on this, I have rewritten that paragraph. Voluntary compliance is much closer to what I was trying to get at, and I'm contrasting it to impressment, which I have written about before.
@redRover
This is all from memory.
In Catherine the Great's time it worked like this: The authorities went into a village, rounded up all the able bodied men. Then they drew lots, and some fraction (one in ten?) were told, "Congratulations, you are now soldiers for the next twenty years!". I think it was common for families to hold mock funerals &c, because they were not seeing their men again.
My understanding is that systems like that were standard throughout continental Europe since about the XVI cent and just persisted longer in Russia.
Having been married to one, I know a few Russian women of the generation that lost brothers and boyfriends in Afghanistan. They are understandably not enthusiastic about the same thing happening to their sons.
But without such things (or at least the ability to be in a somewhat safe job) the powerful aren't going to be inclined to accept it.
The US could have avoided most of the unpleasantness simply by assigning anyone studying at university they enslaved to a behind the lines technical job, home defense or Europe.
Of course if you do that the argument that conscription is somehow equal becomes even more obviously nonsense.
If you want fairness you must have an all-volunteer military, there is no way to do slavery fairly.
I understand that the concern near the end was what ending it would do to their health system which heavily relied on conscientious objectors.
Mateusz Konieczny:
Because they were considered property.
bean:
Some of the countries that still practice it basically let anyone opt out without consequence by just refusing.
There is also the option of moving to a different country that won't enslave you, of course that requires you to be able to convince another country to let you in but a lot of people have used that method and as Russia is discovering it can still work.
Mateusz Konieczny:
Tax havens do exist.
Bill Stewart:
Not only that but the second one had been rigged to return a yes but still got majority no.
DampOctopus:
Where there was almost no fighting.
DampOctopus:
At the time it was Australian territory.
ike:
If an aggressive neighbor is sufficiently more powerful the only thing it will actually do is get more of your people killed.
ike:
Isn't that why they have nukes?
redRover:
I thought this place already had something on that.
This isn't necessarily true. The powerful have long been disproportionately affected by war, as they tended to make up the officer class, and those are rarely drafted. I will point to JFK and George H W Bush as two cases of men from very powerful families who served in very dangerous positions in WWII. Were there some who leaned on family connections to get cushy jobs stateside? Undoubtedly. But everything I know about this suggests that was probably the exception rather than the rule.
I am not sure this would have actually solved anything.
Look. I get from your choice of language that you are not a fan of conscription. I express an anthropologist's careful neutrality towards the morality of the concept because I am interested in how the institution works. I am speaking of relative fairness, which is an obvious thing that exists between different versions of the institution.
Beside the two methods mentioned in the article, I would like to mention a third (first?), primarily in a ladder of state capacity model.
Similarly,
1. Vassals that are in many ways properly understood to be allies rather than actual subordinates.
2. Definite-term governors who have the powers to both collect taxes and to spend it on the army, thus whose ability to revolt is only limited by the deadline on their legitimacy.
3. Ministers siloed at the topmost level into the separate functions.
Switzerland..... Guns and shooting are a huge part of the culture. Everyone who serves takes home their issued weapon along with a case of ammo. Who wouldn't want to serve?
@The Fatherly One: "...along with a case of ammo."
Not anymore, too many 'accidents'...
@Emelio: You are right, the practice ended in 2008.