THW REINTRODUCE NATIONAL SERVICE

MOTION #95: THIS HOUSE WOULD REINTRODUCE NATIONAL SERVICE

Conscription refers to the compulsory enrolment of citizens to national service. National service does not always include military service but traditionally revolves around the prospect or existence of a state of war. The object of conscription is to permit the mass recruitment of young men and women, in times of need, to come to the aid of the state. Of the contemporary examples of conscription being used, the Vietnam is perhaps most infamous for its popular images of American conscientious objectors burning their draft cards in objection to the war's justifications. Conscription was subsequently abolished in the United States in 1973, but it remains in many states, such as Finland and Austria in the developed world and Mexico and Thailand in the developing world, as a bulwark against potential aggression. Proponents also argue that conscription benefits the citizens enlisted, encouraging their patriotism and teaching them invaluable life skills. Opponents respond that the lives of one's citizens cannot be used as property to use in times of war and that regardless, there are economic disincentives to conscription.

Pros	Cons
Conscription serves to promote patriotism and a sense of belonging. National service helps to promote patriotism and a sense of nationhood. In many countries national pride is at an all-time low in the wake of recent the financial crash and resulting austerity budgets and this gives us the chance to rally around a shared cause, no matter what race or culture you come from. The individual has a duty to put something back into society and national service allows this. Whether it be through protecting the country or helping with social or environmental projects, this encourages the idea of working as a community instead of merely for selfish ends. Even when not in active service, the mere knowledge that one is trained and, at a moment's notice, deployable to the front line in the protection of one's society and way of life promotes a wonderful togetherness. An example of this is the Irish in World War I. Although they were only recruited as volunteers even nationalists signed up. A Nationalist MP John Redmond described it as 'a distinctively Irish army, composed of Irishmen, led by Irishmen and trained at home in Ireland' 'the achievements of that Irish army have covered Ireland with glory before the world', this was in stark contrast to the disillusionment and risings nationalists back in Ireland were participating in. A volunteer army, often separated from society at large and operating as a 'state within a state', does not serve such purposes so easily.	Patriotism should not be based on the military. This can produce extreme nationalism and xenophobia which we do not want to encourage. National pride should be engendered in other ways. Furthermore, a citizen has a duty to pay taxes and follow the rules of society. Beyond that any service to the community should be voluntary. This way people will be committed to doing a good job, which they would not be if they were working under force. Conscription also reduces the freedom of those who do not currently serve; many are not even permitted to go abroad lest they become law-breakers in the event of conscription.
Conscription into the armed services benefits the young men and women drafted. In the military, young men acquire many skills for everyday life. These include personality traits like self-discipline, teamwork and leadership and practical skills like first aid, driving an ambulance, extra practice for surgeons, swimming, etc. that might be beneficial either to their own careers or, in cases of emergency, to everyone as these skills are transferable. As William James once wrote about national service, 'our gilded youths would be drafted off to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas'. Furthermore it acts as a test of manhood. As Ann Marlowe points out, 'if we showed all of our young people a closer look at danger, if we forced them into some form of self-testing, perhaps we would not only give them a sense of greater purpose, but also strip the false glamour from depictions of cruelty and destructruction.	Conscription does not benefit those drafted. If young people are forced to go into the armed forces against their will, it will only foster resentment against authority and will dampen the up-take and effect of any skills they might learn. The government would be better off running training schemes. This would also teach skills but would save all the money that would go into the bureaucracy of running national service. Furthermore, the substitution of a volunteer army would 'permit young men to plan their schooling, their careers, their marriages and their families in accordance with long-term interests'. With conscription in place, the inherent uncertainty acts as a bulwark to such planning.
Conscription is necessary as a precaution against future aggression. We accept the need for national service in wartime and this is just an extension of this. Conscription during peacetime would mean that the country was prepared for emergencies when they happened, rather than having to prepare after the fact. As US Congressman Charles Rangel has argued, the fairest way of ensuring that all share in the sacrifice is a military draft (Poutvaara & Wagener, 2006, p.3). It would ensure that at the time of a military conflict the state has enough trained troops, therefore the security of that state is enhanced - a benefit every citizen can enjoy. The philosopher John Rawls believed similarly, arguing ‘conscription is permissible only if it is demanded for the defence of liberty itself’ (Carter, 1998, p.79). Furthermore, it also acts as a potential deterrent against aggressive action, for the existence of a large pool of well-trained reserves is in principle little different to the existence of a large, well-trained standing army. The cause of peace is well-served	Conscription is not necessary as a precaution against future aggression in the contemporary world environment. At the time when countries all around the globe are becoming members of military organizations such as NATO and signing treaties concerning military cooperation and support, why should a country need further protection? The concept of keeping a national army and a large pool of trained reserves is becoming obsolete. Even American armed services leaders prefer a volunteer army for the tasks of contemporary warfare, 'which demand specialized skills in operation sophisticated weaponry, not the massing of bodies'.  Furthermore, under conscription, the military cannot legally exclude low quality volunteers to make room for high quality draftees, which means that conscription in fact lowers the quality of military personnel and decreases its net security. As Milton Friedman points out, 'aside from the effect on fighting spirit, (a volunteer army) would produce a lower turnover…saving precious man-hours that are now wasted in training or being trained’
Conscription is the most effective means of raising and bolstering an army in wartime. Conscription permits the state to raise, both cheaply and quickly, a large, able-bodied force ready for combat. States with conscription-based armed services are able to prepare for combat without the expense of housing a large volunteer force. Furthermore, in the context of surprise attacks, conscription permits the instantaneous raising of a large, competent army. A volunteer force faced with a sudden and extreme threat would not be able to raise, equip and prepare a sufficiently-powerful force within a similar time. In 1967, when faced with the threat of an Arab alliance led by General Nasser, Israel was reliant on the swift mobilization of its conscripts in order to first deter and then repel the Arab forces. A volunteer force would likely have been slower to respond, less able to deter and incapable of repelling. Without conscription, a state leaves itself at the mercy of an enemy able to conceal its intentions and strike rapidly.	Conscription is not the most effective means of raising an army in wartime. Effectiveness is not simply the number of men or women available, but their utility. A good soldier is worth a number of bad ones. Volunteers are more likely to be motivated and willing to fight than those who are conscripted into a war they may disagree with. The illustration of the 1967 Six-Day War is misguided; the Israeli conscript force was successful due to the motivation of an existential threat, not simply because they were able to quickly mobilize a large force. It was the skill and prowess of a well-motivated force that granted Israel victory, not sheer attrition, which is all conscription guarantees.
Conscription allows for the protection of the very society that it is claimed to be harming. The Democratic Leadership Council, to which Bill Clinton belonged, once proposed a citizens corps, arguing 'we live in a prevailing climate of moral indolence…where such venerable civic virtues as duty and self-sacrifice and compassion towards one’s less fortunate neighbours are seldom invoked’.  Moreover, whilst many of the skills taught to nationals are transferrable into daily life, like leadership and self-discipline, predominantly they are taught so that in the event of war the conscripts will be able to contribute positively to victory. The ‘indoctrination’ of young men and women is a series of life-saving tools, designed to help the conscripts help the society at large by repelling any future aggression. The goal of any national service program is not ‘bellicose attitudes or militarism’ but the fostering of ‘national unity and love of country’. Conscripts are not asked to obey orders for the sake of showing subordination to their superiors, but rather to do so as a means to the end of protecting society. Democratic societies proud of their flat hierarchies may be proud of their power-sharing and egalitarian ways, but they will not win wars without authority, obedience and unfortunately, violence.	Conscription harms a society's collective values. Using conscription as a 'rites of passage' is harmful for a country's collective values. Bertrand Russell in a 1930 manifesto deemed it 'a form of servitude'. The point of military training is not to educate the population in 'useful skills' (for example: The skill of digging a foxhole in under six hours is unlikely to be of any use for a commercial based economy such as Singapore) or to make them physically strong and understand the importance of team work (PE classes in schools or fitness camp can do the same thing). It's only real purpose is simple, it is to indoctrinate a group of 18 year-olds that they have to obey orders from their officers without question. To kill someone just because your commander tells you to do so, and to line up every morning to be trained in ways to take another human's life. A normal person is going to hesitate to do things that a soldier needs to do in order to survive, killing without hesitation would be on the top of the list. The augment that conscription is good as a 'rites of passage' isn't only implying that being a cold-blooded killer a 'manly' act that should be encouraged (this in itself implying that being violent is something that is associated with males), but it also (intentionally or unintentionally) implies that the entire population should be united by a common value: violence and obedience to the state without question.
The state exists to provide security to its citizens. Inherent in such a social contract is the right of the state to call on its citizens to pool together, in a fair and equitable fashion, to protect society at large. As Ruth Grant put it, 'in consenting to membership in a community, the individual leaves the situation where his own preservation takes precedence over any other obligation and enters one where his obligation to the community supersedes his own preservation'. A conscript military, far from the professional army set-up that draws disproportionately from the 'poorly educated, the lower classes, ethnic minorities or otherwise marginalized strata of society', is both 'more egalitarian (and) a melting pot for diverse ethnic groups'. Furthermore, while 'army structures are inherently non-democratic as they operate on the basis of order and command rather than voting… conscripts act as mediators between society and its army’, preventing the military from alienating itself from society. Conscription is not about taking one’s freedom away, but ensuring that the aforementioned freedom is maintained.	The lives of one's citizens cannot be treated as the property of the state. The state does not own the lives of its citizens. The ideology behind military drafting is simple: the individual citizen is the property of the state. They have no value beyond his or her utility to the government, whether as an expendable instrument of war or production. As far as the state is concerned, it cares no more for the loss of an individual citizen than a human would about individual cells in their body. Von Theunen, writing about Napoleon's campaigns in the early 19th century, reasoned the 'scandalous misperception in military recruitment of those times was to view human life as a commodity'. It is the embodiment of the idea that your rights are given to you by the state, and therefore can be taken away at will by leaders and politicians (in other words, you have no unalienable rights). It is a clear and transparent violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it's article three, which states 'everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person', and article twenty's 'no-one may be compelled to belong to an association'. If this principle is allowed, then despotism and a dictatorship will be its only logical conclusion.
The military effectiveness of an army is subject to a number of factors, not least of which is the size of the force concerned. Conscripts are drafted not because they are necessarily better soldiers than volunteers, but simply because they are a source of soldiers, and in desperate times, a plentiful source. Therefore, the military effectiveness of a force comprised of both volunteers and conscripts is largely germane, for the alternative is a well-motivated, well-trained but entirely inadequate and undermanned force of volunteers.	Conscripts reduce the military effectiveness of an armed force. Conscripts provide manpower, but they do not promise the expertise, the ethos and the energy supplied by volunteers who sought out enlistment. As such, combat cohesiveness is affected by the different motivations and paths to enlistment between conscripts and volunteers. As Congressman Ron Paul has noted, 'a draft …introduces tensions and rivalries between those who volunteer for military service and those who have been conscripted. This undermines the cohesiveness of military units’(Paul, 2002). A military force that cannot adequately co-ordinate its activities due to tensions between its own troops is not an effective force. Furthermore, if a government wishes to introduce conscription but do so in a fair and equitable manner, it cannot distinguish between a ‘good’ draftee and a ‘bad’ draftee. Therefore, the conscript force will never be as effective as a volunteer force with strict criteria, accepting of only the most appropriate men and women. A volunteer force, where in times of war and peace, civilians are permitted to align themselves with the sector most suited to their skills would increase military effectiveness inexorably.
We accept the need for national service in wartime and this is just an extension of this. Conscription during peacetime would mean that the country was prepared for emergencies when they happened, rather than having to prepare after the fact. As US Congressman Charles Rangel has argued, the fairest way of ensuring that all share in the sacrifice is a military draft. It would ensure that at the time of a military conflict the state has enough trained troops, therefore the security of that state is enhanced - a benefit every citizen can enjoy. The philosopher John Rawls believed similarly, arguing 'conscription is permissible only if it is demanded for the defence of liberty itself'. Furthermore, it also acts as a potential deterrent against aggressive action, for the existence of a large pool of well-trained reserves is in principle little different to the existence of a large, well-trained standing army. The cause of peace is well-served by a policy of conscription.	Conscription is economically unfavourable. We accept the need for national service in wartime and this is just an extension of this. Conscription during peacetime would mean that the country was prepared for emergencies when they happened, rather than having to prepare after the fact. As US Congressman Charles Rangel has argued, the fairest way of ensuring that all share in the sacrifice is a military draft. It would ensure that at the time of a military conflict the state has enough trained troops, therefore the security of that state is enhanced - a benefit every citizen can enjoy. The philosopher John Rawls believed similarly, arguing 'conscription is permissible only if it is demanded for the defence of liberty itself'. Furthermore, it also acts as a potential deterrent against aggressive action, for the existence of a large pool of well-trained reserves is in principle little different to the existence of a large, well-trained standing army. The cause of peace is well-served by a policy of conscription.