Should there be mandatory national service?

Mandatory service promotes patriotism and unity

Question: Should there be mandatory national service?
Position‹2 of 2: Yes, mandatory service is essential
Argument‹3 of 3: Mandatory service promotes patriotism and unity

Mandatory service provides a sense of patriotism and duty for citizens. An increased level of pride from an individual to their nation leads to a healthier population.

The argument

Mandatory national service gives citizens more pride in their nation. Citizens become more invested in keeping the country safe and thriving. In countries with deep partisan divides, like the US and UK, mandatory national service would help foster cross-partisan relationships. Sweden, rated one of the happiest countries in the world, has mandatory national service. An appreciation and commitment to the country enhance the respect that the citizens have for it. This respect is crucial for the success of the nation's politics and economy. Mandatory national service helps citizens better understand the sacrifice and process of serving their country. Citizens' engagement through national service, in turn, promotes voting and increases government to citizen interaction. Mandatory national service would help citizens bond and come together over their shared experiences.

Premises

[P1]Mandatory national service gives citizens more pride in their nation and a greater investment in keeping it safe and thriving. [P2] By bringing people together over shared experiences, it fosters cross-partisan relationships in divided countries like the US and UK. [P3] This appreciation enhances respect for the nation and promotes civic engagement like voting, as in Sweden, one of the world's happiest countries. [C] Therefore, because mandatory service promotes patriotism and unity, mandatory national service is essential.

Counter-arguments

Mandatory service harms the quality of life for citizens and does not promote unity. Racism, sexism, and misogyny would continue to permeate these spaces. Mandatory national service can cause post-traumatic stress and other disorders in those who are forced to serve. These disorders do not promote unity or patriotism in citizens, but harms the views of the nation by the citizens.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Pride is asserted as an effect of compulsion with no mechanism given. Service that is required rather than chosen can produce resentment as readily as investment, and the premise neither distinguishes the two outcomes nor says what would count as evidence for either. [Rejecting P2] The cross-partisan contact the premise relies on is not guaranteed by conscription. Contact between groups reduces hostility under fairly specific conditions — roughly equal standing, shared goals and institutional support — and unequal or resented contact can harden divisions instead. Conscription has also historically been stratified in practice by deferments and exemptions that fell along class lines, which places different groups in different parts of the system rather than alongside each other. [Rejecting P3] Sweden cannot carry the evidential weight placed on it. A country's happiness ranking has many candidate causes, its conscription was suspended for several years before being reintroduced in a form that calls up only a small share of each cohort, and a single case cannot establish that national service is what produced the outcome.