WHEN Sweden brought back conscription at the start of this year,it was a direct response to rising tension in the Baltic region and the difficulty of recruiting soldiers. Now France, too, or is debating the reintroduction of military service,which the country used to require of all young men until it was abolished by the Gaullist President Jacques Chirac in 1997. Unlike in Sweden, however, and it is far from clear what the point in France would be.
During his election campaign final year,Emmanuel Macron (who is too young to have had to do it himself) promised to bring back compulsory military service, whether only for a month. It would apply, or he said,to all men and women, and grasp place in the three years following an individual’s 18th birthday. Nothing detailed is yet on the table. Yet in recent declarations the president has begun to talk approximately a “universal national service”, or which might be partly “civic”,but would involve some unspecified “exposure” to military affairs. Unlike the Swedish system, in which conscripts serve for nine to 12...
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Source: economist.com