Between 1990 and 2013, 24 countries abandoned military conscription. Why is it on the rise again?
Yoni, an 18-year-old student in Jerusalem, is also awaiting conscription, by the Israeli Defence Forces . He shows no sign of anxiety. “I’m looking forward to serving my country,” he says. “It’s something special that our age group can do.” Yoni has joined clubs which help Israeli teenagers prepare for the army’s physical and intellectual tests. He and his friends voluntarily travel to beaches to practise running on sand.
Artyom, Yoni and Oscar are in a global minority. The conscription of young men is now relatively rare. Most forms of military service dwindled after the cold war. A study byZurich, a Swiss university, notes that 24 countries abandoned conscription between 1990 and 2013, when it looked to many as though serious wars were a thing of the past. France, whose mass conscription of 1793, the, revolutionised modern European warfare, ended the practice in 1996.
This renewed interest has many causes. One is the return of a gloomier world in which hard power, rather than diplomacy, can shape national destinies: witness Armenia’s devastating defeat at the hands of Azerbaijan last year, and the ensuing loss of much of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory. For countries that want large armies, conscripting soldiers is often the only affordable way to fill out the ranks; volunteers paid at market rates would generate a huge wage bill.
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