Before Russia begins its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many, including Kiev, were skeptical that a major war could break out in Europe again. More than two years later, views are changing in a number of European countries, CNN commented.
Risks of a larger war on the continent are increasing after Russian President Vladimir Putin “finally resorted to open conflict” in Ukraine, pursuing his goal of “rebuilding the Soviet empire,” said General Wesley Clark, who is the former supreme commander of NATO's allied forces in Europe. “It is not clear whether this is a new cold war or an emerging real war, but it is a very clear warning to NATO that we need to rebuild our defense forces,” he added.
Return to conscription
After the end of the Cold War, a number of European countries suspended conscription, but in recent years several countries - particularly in Scandinavia and the Baltics - have reintroduced it, mainly because of the threat from Russia. Latvia is the last country to introduce conscription on January 1 this year, after it was abolished in 2006. All youth over the age of 18 will be called up for conscription within 12 months.
In April, Norway also unveiled an ambitious long-term plan that nearly doubles the country's defense budget and adds more than 20,000 conscripts, servicemen and reservists to the armed forces. “We need a defense that is suitable for the purposes of the emerging security environment,” Prime Minister Jonas Gar Støre explained the government's decision. Conscription is compulsory in the country, and in 2015, Norway became the first NATO member to draft men and women into the army on equal terms.
Debates about conscription are also taking place in other European countries that do not currently require it. In the UK, the Conservatives floated the idea of conscription during their ill-fated last election campaign. But perhaps the most surprising transformation is underway in Germany, which has been averse to militarization since the end of World War II, CNN notes. Berlin updated its plan in the event of a conflict in Europe, and in June Defense Minister Boris Pistorius presented a proposal for a new voluntary military service. “We must be ready for war by 2029,” he said.
His plan, which is currently being considered by lawmakers and the minister's coalition partners, calls for asking all 18-year-old males, estimated to be around 400,000 a year, to fill out a questionnaire. Of these, about 40,000 will be selected to undergo medical examinations, and subsequently 10,000 will be admitted to basic training, writes “Politico”.
Conscript military service remains an unpopular topic in some countries, but NATO is struggling to meet its new target of having 300,000 personnel ready for activation within a month and a further half a million available within six months, said Sean Monahan, guest contributor to the “Europe, Russia and Eurasia” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
A possible solution is a more flexible and modern army
One of NATO's newest members, Finland, has the capacity to deploy more than 900,000 reservists, with 280,000 military personnel ready to respond immediately if needed. However, in peacetime, the Finnish defense forces employ only about 13,000 people, including civilian personnel, CNN notes. “Finland is a good example” because its reserve forces can be integrated into very small active forces, explained Robert Hamilton of the US Institute for Foreign Policy Studies.
Norway and Sweden, NATO's newest member, have similar models, both maintaining significant numbers of reservists, though not as many as Finland. Sweden, where conscription is already gender-neutral, has called for about 7,000 conscription in 2024. According to the Swedish Armed Forces, the number will rise to 8,000 in 2025, and the government has already said , that he wants to raise that number to 10,000 a year in the near future.
Swedish Defense Minister Paul Jonsson has highlighted the importance of conscription in a series of recent speeches. “Conscript military service is a basic prerequisite for the continuous development of the armed forces”, he said during a recent parliamentary session in Stockholm, quoted by “Politico”. “The needs of our military organization cannot be met with hired personnel alone,” he added.
Is NATO ready for war?
Over the past decade, NATO has been revising its strategy and increasing its capabilities in response to the growing threat from Moscow. Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022, which followed its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea in 2014, inevitably led allies to reassess their readiness for war and strengthen their defenses.
„Since 2014, NATO has undergone the most significant transformation in our collective defense in a generation,” alliance spokeswoman Farah Dahlala told CNN. “We have put in place the most comprehensive defense plans since the Cold War, with more than 500,000 troops currently on high alert,” she added.
While NATO allies are “definitely ready to fight tonight”, the question remains whether they are ready for a protracted war like the one in Ukraine, Monahan said, however, and pointed out that there is still work to be done in a number of areas. Among them are industrial capacity, defense spending and public sustainability - where the question of conscription will be raised.
Defense Expenditure
After years of military capacity cuts in the UK and Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union, defense spending has until recently been at levels far below those maintained during the Cold War, the “Daily Mail” commented. But now, in the words of the British defense minister until recently, Grant Shapps, the “peace dividend is over”.
NATO expects by the end of this year two-thirds of its members will devote 2% of their GDP to defense spending, of which at least 20% must go to developing new military technologies and equipment. The European Commission has also allocated almost two billion euros to increase the production of defense products in EU member states. 500 million euros of these funds will go to the production of artillery shells, with the goal of producing two million shells a year by the end of 2025, among other ammunition, most of which will be sent to Ukraine.
The rest of the budget is earmarked for increasing production capacity and strengthening research and development in key defense areas, including countering hypersonic missiles, developing a range of unmanned aerial vehicles in the air and on the ground, and providing secure space communication“, as well as “next-generation defense systems such as helicopters and medium-sized cargo aircraft”.
Military exercises and enhanced security cooperation
Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of Europe's renewed focus on improving its military readiness is in the form of NATO military exercises, writes “Daily Mail”. “Steadfast Defender 2024“ (Steadfast Defender 2024), a series of exercises and exercises that took place from January to June, were among the largest such events ever held by the post-Cold War defense pact.
Ninety thousand military personnel from all 32 member states of the alliance participated in a wide variety of missions, including live-fire exercises, strategic and logistical planning, and the deployment of intercontinental forces from the Far North above the Arctic Circle to central and eastern Europe. Parts of the ground forces, hundreds of military aircraft and more than 50 warships took part in the exercises.
At the same time, Britain continues to increase its stockpile of nuclear weapons from 225 to 260, bringing it close to that of France, and is believed to be producing a new class of warheads.
France is also beginning to upgrade its arsenal of nuclear submarines, announcing in March that it had begun construction on the latest generation, dubbed the “SNL 3G“ (SNLE 3G). Three more are scheduled to enter service before 2035 and are said to be so advanced they will remain in service until 2080 and beyond.
It all came amid commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings earlier this year, when World War II veterans gathered to mark D-Day. Their descendants must now shoulder a responsibility they hoped would never be needed again, CNN noted.
„I think young people in Europe and the United States will realize that the generation that fought in World War II did not want to be the “greatest generation”, but circumstances put that burden on them,”, he said gen. Wesley Clark. “In democracies, we don't like to prepare for war, we don't want to think about these things,”, he said, adding that nevertheless, “I think people will have to react to the circumstances they see.