Leaders | Your country needs (more of) you

How to get more people into military uniforms

Why mandatory military service makes sense for some countries but not others

Soldiers make their way through an obstacle course at a public presentation in Dresden, Germany — Photograph: Alamy

Apr 18th 2024

MANDATORY MILITARY service is under discussion once more in Europe. The reasons? The possibility of Ukraine’s defeat looms large, as does the threat of a future president Donald Trump abandoning nato. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, says that Europe must be ready for war before the decade’s end. He describes dropping a one-year period of service for school-leavers in 2011 as “a mistake”. Britain’s army chief, General Patrick Sanders, has called for a “citizen army”.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Your country needs (more of) you”