Mandatory Conscription For War

[Raptorsin7]

How would the people on this forum react to mandatory conscription to go fight in a major war that poses a serious risk to your life. What you use your personal development training to become an exceptional soldier? Would you try and draft dodge and run away? Thoughts?

[CreamCat]

If you don't want to fight the war, you will want to run away and become a homeless refugee.

If you want to fight the war, you will proactively join the war.

it's that simple.

[Hansu]

@CreamCat

Yup.

Personally I would join war to defend my country, but I'd become conscious objector the moment I was requested to be on the offense.

EDIT: (When I say defence I mean defence of borders, not like "We have to invade our neighbour to defend my fellow people". The latter one is a slippery slope to evilry)

My reasoning is that powerful defence force can cause huge financial and manpower losses to the attacker and that is the best way to stop the war from ever even happening

 

Edited November 10, 2019 by Hansu

[CreamCat]

10 hours ago, Hansu said:

Personally I would join war to defend my country, but I'd become conscious objector the moment I was requested to be on the offense.

EDIT: (When I say defence I mean defence of borders, not like "We have to invade our neighbour to defend my fellow people". The latter one is a slippery slope to evilry)

My reasoning is that powerful defence force can cause huge financial and manpower losses to the attacker and that is the best way to stop the war from ever even happening

Personally, no country is worth my life. That said, if you want a tough defense, you want to fight in cities. Even a small city makes tanks much less useful. Each modern building is like a medieval castle. Street battles are expensive unless you are willing to nuke a small city with at least 10 nuclear warheads.

During world war 2, stalingrad battle consumed more than a million people and broke the backbone of german army. Stalingrad was a small city. Imagine a war in new york. It will take at least 10 million enemy soldiers to subjugate SWAT and US army in new york.

Also, don't rule out offence if the enemy is going to wage a total war no matter what.

Edited November 10, 2019 by CreamCat

[Hansu]

8 hours ago, CreamCat said:

That said, if you want a tough defense, you want to fight in cities

Depends on the country

[CreamCat]

Anyway, I don't like mandatory conscription. If I was a president, I would rather hire reserve force and organize paramilitary forces.

What most people don't realize is that reserve force can be hired instead of being conscripted.

It's something you are going to pay for anyway. It's not free.

Hiring reserve force is cheaper than hiring regular soldiers, so you can build bigger reserve force with the same amount of money.

If the government doesn't pay for it directly, people are going to pay for it. The government pays for it anyway by loss of tax revenue.

It's worth paying for properly.

If a war is worth fighting for, people are going to organize voluntarily. If you have to conscript them, then you are probably doing it for your selfish purposes which other people don't feel are worth fighting for.

Edited November 11, 2019 by CreamCat