Conscription Panic Isn't the Debate Europe Needs
Ukraine’s struggle for younger, able-bodied fighters is reverberating around the old continent. Governments must plan, not panic.
Ukrainian soldiers gather.
Photographer: ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP“The French are all soldiers and must defend their homeland.” So decreed the 18th-century law that made military service mandatory in France, until the end of the Cold War banished it to the history books and replaced it with a kind of glorified recruitment day — which I dutifully attended as a teenager and promptly forgot about. Nobody under the age of 45 in France has forcibly worn army fatigues or picked up a weapon, including Emmanuel Macron.
Yet the return of war to Europe’s doorstep means France is one of several countries anxiously watching the Ukrainian frontline and debating whether it’s time to bring back the old ways of conscription or mandatory military service. But what’s needed now is planning rather than panic.