Germany Moves Toward Ending Draft

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

BERLIN — Germany moved a step closer to ending military conscription on Monday when conservative party leaders agreed to halt a draft embedded in the Constitution half a century ago to help keep the armed forces from ever again developing into a self-directed state within a state.

The announcement by the governing Christian Democratic Union, and its sister party, the Christian Social Union, was a victory for Germany’s popular defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who last month proposed effectively ending the draft as part of the most far-reaching restructuring of the military since the cold war.

While Mr. Guttenberg has also proposed slashing the size of the armed forces, or Bundeswehr, and streamlining the command structure to produce a more nimble military, it was his decision to press for an all-volunteer force that ran into the headwinds of history.

When West Germany re-established its military after World War II, conscription was intended to break with the country’s militaristic past and create a “citizen in uniform” and a military linked to society and loyal to the civilian leadership.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/world/europe/28germany.html

[BolivarianHero]

1. What's this?

Other countries have conservatives who don't play half their country's wad on military shit?

Cool.

[Drale]

2. People in Germany

might be wary of being "crazy Conservative" since the last one caused a war that killed 50 million people.

[Socal31]

3. It is easy to end your draft....

when the most powerful military in the world has a major AFB on your soil. Believe me, if it was even possible to have a major land war without nuclear winter (it isn't anymore), they would keep a draft.

[pampango]

4. "In 2009, 68,304 young men went into military service, while 90,555 served in health care facilities

"Mrs. Merkel’s conservative allies were slow to accept the idea of freezing the draft, a move that was supported by the Social Democrats and the opposition Green Party. “When it comes to questions of our military, Germany’s population is always sensitive,” said Ernst-Reinhard Beck, a member of Mrs. Merkel’s party. “The heritage of two lost world wars is still tangible in our country. This is changing only slowly.”

But opponents, and even supporters, of conscription say the decision to freeze the practice is in many ways more symbolic today than substantive, since recruits serve only six months, a period that even supporters say is so short as to render it largely pointless.

Over the years, as the size of the force shrank by about half, only 17 percent of those eligible were even called up, and in recent years many more conscripts chose civil service over military service. In 2009, the most recent year for which final statistics were available, 68,304 young men went into military service, while 90,555 served in health care facilities.

The Bundeswehr currently has 188,284 professional career soldiers or temporary career volunteers; 29,652 conscripts serving their basic military duty; and 21,801 conscripts serving for a longer period of time voluntarily, according to its Web site."

I read a while back that some are concerned that eliminating the draft will perversely hurt public sectors that rely on those 90,000 a year who choose civilian service over the military. The 68,000 who do get drafted into the military annually are only there for 6 months and never get enough training to be sent to combat. Still it's hard to justify retaining a draft just to scare people into volunteering for socially useful projects.