- Position1 of 3›
- Yes, military conscription should be banned.
Education, work, and personal ambitions are often compromised by mandatory military service
The argument
Opponents of conscription begin from the gap between the size of a drafted force and the number of people who would actually choose to serve. As polls have determined, only 15% of individuals indicate a willingness to join the military if a draft were implemented, which means a conscripted army is composed overwhelmingly of people who do not want to be in it. On this view that large majority is the whole problem with the policy: mandatory national service does not merely ask something of citizens, it compels most of them into an undertaking they have already said they have no desire to participate in. What compulsion costs, opponents argue, is measured in the plans it interrupts. A period of mandatory service falls on people at the stage of life when the decisions that shape the rest of it are being made, so the disruption is not an inconvenience but the displacement of whatever an individual had organized their life around: attaining a college degree, starting a family, taking care of a business, or something as simple as wanting to travel the world. None of these can be set down and picked up again without cost, and each would have to be cast aside in favor of service the individual never sought. Opponents argue that a state which reassigns a person's years in this way interferes with aspects of life that properly belong to the person living them. The final step is that the interference buys nothing that could not be obtained some other way. Reports claim that a volunteer-based system tends to do quite well in obtaining soldiers, which on this account removes the justification for compulsion altogether: if the armed forces can be staffed by those who want to serve, then the disruption imposed on an unwilling majority is a cost incurred for no corresponding necessity. Because conscription overrides important aspects of a person's life to secure what volunteers already supply, opponents conclude that it should be banned.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Simply put, military service is overlooked and underappreciated by citizens. These individuals do not realize how significant of a role a nation's military plays in their own lives. If they were to truly understand such a sentiment, national security would in turn be everyone's first priority— But this is not the case. The military is not infringing on our own lives, instead, it has and always will be a part of our lives in regards to safety and security. Without it how would we even continue individual milestones in our lives? Moreover, a failure to acknowledge and agree to this idea is inherently selfish. In other words, although military service does benefit the individual in a variety of ways, participating is a truly selfless sacrifice. You are protecting your country, and those who are too weak to defend themselves. Sure, military conscription may postpone important dates, but that is no justification for the refusal to serve and as a result, allow countless innocent lives to be lost.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Unwillingness to serve is the reason conscription exists rather than an objection to it; on this reasoning no compulsory obligation, including taxation or jury service, could be justified. The 15% figure is also given with no source, no wording and no population. [Rejecting P2] Disruption is a cost to be weighed, and the premise never says against what. Its second half also undercuts its own conclusion: if volunteer recruitment works, conscription is not used and the disruption described does not arise — which is a case for keeping conscription in reserve rather than for the outright ban the position asserts.