Ex-generals: Bring back conscription (Germany)

TheLocal.de ^ | 25 Mar 2014 10:29 GMT+01:00

[Olog-hai]

Mounting tension in the Crimea is prompting calls for compulsory military service to be reintroduced in Germany.

A number of German ex-generals have raised fears over the nation’s military strength should it be drawn into a NATO-led conflict.

“We need compulsory military service. There is no other way for Germany to guarantee national defense within the [NATO] mutual defense alliance,” retired NATO general Egon Ramms told Bild newspaper. “[It certainly can’t be done] on a voluntary basis.”

Ramms was commander of the Allied Joint Forces Command between 2007 and 2010, one of the highest-ranking positions in the NATO alliance. …

[Olog-hai]

There’s a clear need for a European Union military? I think perhaps that’s the last thing that needs to appear. The EU elites are very ambitious, remember; they see the EU as a “third power” and they’ve already proven themselves to have imperialistic aims; even worse, the EU’s “supranational” government has a very authoritarian structure.

Think back to the Cold War days, with certain politicians from West Germany fomenting undue rapprochement with the USSR. There have been some forces behind the scenes who have sapped the will and strength of the USA by design. There are many ways to fight battles besides on the open field, after all; and we have more than one enemy that has embraced the principle Sun Tzu spoke of in the Art of War with regards to “breaking your enemy’s resistance without fighting”. George Washington, I dare say, would be appalled, since he exhorted the USA to be “always ready for war”.

[Amberdawn]

Thank you.

[Billthedrill]

I can't disagree all that much, but it does occur to me that the alternative is a collection of armies of individual European states that has proved historically worse. Are German interests more reliably to be protected by a collective EU army or by one of Germany herself? If the former, do we risk an EU with imperialistic ambitions? And if the latter, do we risk returning to the days of German imperialistic ambitions?

I haven't an answer, only questions. There are, clearly, Russian imperialistic ambitions at work in the present, whether as a result of some recrudescence of Soviet pretension or simply because power flows to a vacuum. I find it very difficult to identify American responsibility to oppose it, frankly, especially after a half-century of impoverishing ourselves to do so. I don't think that's isolationism so much as a sober assessment of the limits of American power.

It looks to me, at least a bit, like the Great Powers alignments before the thing devolved into bipolarity between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Many on the European side find a deserved dignity in this but are at the moment unable or unwilling to shoulder the concomitant costs. That's what I'm referring to by a need for an EU military. Or something, anything, only it cannot be us because that phase of history is over.

And so do we cut them loose and watch freedom die if it cannot be maintained by the Europeans themselves? I think we do, I do not think we have much of a choice despite the ridiculous posturing on the part of our current administration.

We will certainly be underestimating the determination of the Poles, for example, if we take too dark a view of the possible results of disengagement. But the spark of freedom has been extinguished before in European history, frequently. We didn't, after all, teach them that the choice is between arming and kneeling, they taught us that.