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Sweden's government has a message for you Swedes:
The security environment in Europe and in Sweden's vicinity has deteriorated and the all-volunteer recruitment hasn't provided the Armed Forces with enough trained personnel. The re-activating of the conscription is needed for military readiness. Trained personnel are fundamental for building military capability. In 2016 the Armed Forces lacked 1,000 active squad leaders, soldiers and sailors as well as 7,000 reservists.
Recruitment to the Armed Forces will be both voluntary and conscription. Individual motivation, interest and will should to be considered as much as possible. The Armed Forces is planning for 4,000 recruits annually in basic military training in 2018 and 2019. The modern conscription is gender neutral and will include both women and men.
What's that about the security environment? Oh, it's about Russia:
Sweden is reinstating the military draft — for men and women — because of dwindling volunteers and growing concerns over a more assertive Russia in the Baltic and Ukraine. [...] Marinette Nyh Radebo told the BBC the "security change in our neighborhood" prompted the move by Sweden, which is not a NATO member. "The Russian illegal annexation of Crimea (in 2014), the conflict in Ukraine and the increased military activity in our neighborhood are some of the reasons," she said.
[...] Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist said he was inspired to make the draft gender-neutral by neighboring Norway, which in 2013 introduced a law applying military conscription to both sexes. That made Norway the first NATO member to draft both men and women, joining a tiny group of countries around the world, including Israel. Turkey and Germany are the only major NATO countries that still use a draft. Conscription also exists in Austria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece and Norway, according to Deutsche Welle. France ended the draft in 2001. Italy and the Netherlands put the draft on hold.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Saturday March 04 2017, @08:26PM (2 children)
Now that's actually a pretty good reason to bring in immigrants. "You can join our country, but you're going to fight for us too if needed."
Gets them integrated into the culture, keeps 'em busy, and makes them provide a (potentially) valuable service.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Saturday March 04 2017, @08:40PM (1 child)
Sounds like a good idea in theory, except that so many of those refugees spent years trying to escape a war zone and seeing their relatives killed or forced to join one side or the other...
The military already has trouble dealing with PTSD after sending people to war...
The foreign legion is a concept that works well, but they are volunteers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @06:56PM
The solution to this would be to put the refugees into national service, but in cases of pre-existing PTSD, put them into non-combatant roles. Frankly, I think native swedes in the military would be more comfortable not having their ass depend on an opportunist with no ties to the homeland in the first place anyway.
What really needs to happen is for military service to return to the honorable status it held prior to the Hippie generation, beyond mere lip service. Tax write-offs for any company providing niceties to former or active military personnel, partial or full exemption from taxation of military personnel, just to start. In an age where more and more military tasks are being carried out by robots controlled by personnel safely located in a bunker somewhere, they should have people clamoring for the honor, rather than needing to force people into it.
That all said, mandatory public service, military or otherwise, does have its perks in forging national identity. While I'd say the US has more need for this than Sweden, it probably wouldn't hurt to offset the threat to national identity posed by the massive influx of foreigners. Whether you oppose the influx or not, it's pretty hard to deny that it WILL impact culture in some potentially problematic ways. Taking measures to offset any damage incurred is only sensible.