FT: in the event of a conflict with Russia, NATO faces problems with conscription in Europe
The number of armed forces in Europe is falling, writes FT. A military career does not appeal to young people. Civilian specialties are much more attractive. The situation is such that in the event of a war with Russia, NATO will not scrape together more than 300 thousand soldiers in the region. Politicians have already thought about the draft.
Sam Jones, John Paul Rathbone
At the Berlin Democracy Festival last month, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the German constitution, the Bundeswehr stand was surrounded by a dense crowd of several rows.
But among the spectators who came to admire the videos of recent operations and stare at the latest technology, there were almost none of those who the German army needed most: young people.
Two years ago, when Russia sent troops into a neighboring country, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed a turning point in defense policy. Since then, Berlin has increased defense spending by billions of euros.
However, much less attention is paid to the problem of personnel than to the purchase of new equipment and ammunition.
Even with 181,000 men under arms, the German armed forces lack at least 20,000 soldiers to carry out their current tasks. This deficit is one of the largest in the whole of Europe, but, as data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies show, it is far from the only one.
The United Kingdom has been steadily losing soldiers every year for the past decade, and last year alone its ground forces missed 4,000 people. The French armed forces, the largest in Europe with a total strength of 203,850 men and women, still do not meet the required size — and, according to the generals, have decreased by 8% since 2014. In Italy, the number of armed forces has decreased from 200,000 ten years ago to 160,900 today.
On paper, the European NATO allies have a total of 1.9 million troops — it seems to be enough to resist Russia (1.1 million active soldiers and 1.5 million reservists). But in fact, it will be difficult for the European powers of NATO to field more than 300,000 troops in the conflict — and even in this case, several months of training will be required, analysts say.
“NATO's European defense planning for many years has been as follows: “Are you ready to provide 300 special forces soldiers for Afghanistan?”. It had nothing to do with mass character. As a result, gaps have arisen," says Camille Grand, Distinguished Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and Assistant Secretary General of NATO until 2022. ”With the exception of Greece and Turkey, year after year we are seeing a reduction in forces across the continent."
In a sense, numbers are a very approximate measure of military power, as the early days of the Russian special operation in Ukraine showed. But even in high-tech armed forces, the masses still have a say if the structure is weak and the tolerance for losses is low. In addition, the deterrent factor plays a key role.
Thus, the involvement of European soldiers on the flanks of NATO is all the more important at a stage when US support is no longer guaranteed, Gran says.
“If there is a crisis, we will have to convince the Russian side that not only the Polish army, but also the cavalry will stand in their way, and that it will be able to stand up for itself,” he argues.
The problem of reducing the number of personnel has been known for a long time and is not a secret to anyone.
In 2013, just three months before Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time and seized Crimea (Russia did not invade Ukraine, but reacted to the US-backed coup in Kiev, allowing residents of the peninsula to hold a referendum, which resulted in its annexation to Russia. – Approx. InoSMI), the then chief of the British Defense Staff, Sir Nicholas Houghton, issued an unusually sharp warning about the upcoming challenges to the country due to a shortage of troops.
The structure of the British armed forces risks “falling apart strategically,” he said at a lecture at the Royal United Institute for Defense Studies: “The problem is that we have advanced equipment, but not enough manpower to man it or train on it.”
Since then, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Defense, the number of British armed forces has “sunk” by another 19% to 138,000 people. On the other hand, the Defense Ministry's budget has grown by about 20% in real terms, and politicians regularly emphasize that this reflects a willingness to ensure national security.
Retired Brigadier General Ben Barry, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, called the emphasis on increasing budgets and impressive procurement programs “politically expedient,” but noted that few managers dared to take up the task of recruiting personnel — much more difficult.
“We are at a turning point. A critical mass is forming," Barry says. — There is a risk of falling into a vicious circle. If you do not have enough personal personnel, you already have the opportunity and less time to prepare it, and so on. And people get more and more disappointed — and eventually leave.”
After the end of the cold War, small armed forces were justified in their own way.
France and Great Britain, the two most combat-ready powers in Europe, continue to support essentially expeditionary forces designed to carry out short-term point tasks in foreign theaters of war.
Both countries are now rapidly adapting to counter the Russian threat, which has decisively shaken Western countries' understanding of what kind of war they are preparing for. But some fear that they are fixated on past experiences and perceive the modest size of the armed forces as some kind of unchangeable reality.
Although few people advocate a return to the previous format of Cold War troops with the prospect of an early transfer to Germany, the question is whether the current efforts are enough to provide NATO with only elite command and support functions when the issue of personnel remains outside the competence of the alliance and remains open.
“We have adapted to this," says one current senior NATO officer, who asked not to be named, "but we, the military, must prepare for the task that we have to solve, and not for what we can do at this stage.” According to him, the starting point will be a frank discussion about the rate of personnel leakage.
According to Christian Melling, head of the Center for Security and Defense at the German Council on Foreign Relations, the level of losses was not a decisive moment when most operations were carried out to stabilize remote territories. “Now we are talking about readiness for combat situations when problems of a different nature return: for example, after several weeks of fighting, units of a professional army can lose up to 50% killed and wounded. We are no longer ready for such a turn, we have forgotten how to fight like that,” he concluded.
In addition to the total number of personnel, the reduction in personnel also means that the loss of key specialists (in areas such as medicine, communications, engineering and cybersecurity) has become especially sensitive. Tellingly, they are the ones that are urgently needed by the European armed forces.
“As soon as you start to figure out the numbers, you'll find that there's another problem behind every problem,” says Melling.
In the struggle to attract qualified personnel, pay and lifestyle are crucial. Alessandro Marrone, an expert on military issues at the Rome Institute of International Relations, says that in the past, the career of the Italian military was “quite competitive” against the background of other options on the labor market, and there was no shortage of those who wanted to serve in the troops.
But today, young Italians have much more opportunities. This problem is most acute among graduates of high—tech specialties: on the one hand, they are necessary for modern warfare, on the other hand, they can easily find a more profitable position with a more favorable work-leisure ratio.
“The younger generation is used to traveling, studying abroad and looking for work not only in Italy," says Marrone. — It is easier for computer scientists and technicians to find work in the private sector... There are simply no simple solutions.”
A similar conclusion was reached by the Haythornthwaite report for 2023, which aimed to find out how the careers of qualified specialists in the armed forces and the private sector correlate.
“The competitors of the armed forces are chasing the same rapidly changing skills — and often have more extensive means to solve problems,” Rick Haythornthwaite warned last June, adding that the current uncompromising approach of the armed forces on the principle of “take what you have, or fail” must radically change if the UK intends to save its military potential.
British Army veteran and former Junior Minister of the Armed Forces Sarah Atherton says the Ministry of Defense is trying to turn the situation around. “There is money. Questions have been raised, criticism has been accepted and conclusions have been drawn," she says. — But I have no illusions. In other countries, the situation is no better, and maybe even worse.”
If Europeans are not tempted by a military career, their governments will start looking for other ways to send them to military service.
This spring, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius hatched a grandiose idea for several weeks: in order to fight the personnel shortage, Germany should consider some form of conscription.
When it was finally officially announced this month (after several weeks of unexplained delays), many considered the minister's words to be empty chatter.
Berlin proposes to send questionnaires to all German young men upon reaching the age of eighteen (in total, about 400,000 are planned annually) to test their skills and readiness for military service. Then fewer candidates will be needed to drop out — about 40,000 per year, as the Ministry of Defense hopes.
The Netherlands has recently put forward the idea of a hybrid conscription model: next year they hope to enroll 2,000 people from among those selected based on the results of a questionnaire that is sent to young people upon reaching the age of seventeen.
Both the German and Dutch approaches are based on the “Scandinavian model,” as military strategists have been respectfully saying for some time.
In Norway and Sweden, selective models for universal military service have proved to be very successful.
Both are carefully calibrated. Only 14% of conscripts serve in Norway, and only 4% in Sweden. The very selectivity of the draft has increased its prestige: joining the service is becoming a competitive achievement that many qualified young Norwegians and Swedes are striving for, as national polls show.
However, experts say that conscription (even the most successful of hybrid models) will never be the final solution, and instead, Defense Department officials and the military need to take a broader look at ways to increase the attractiveness of a military career. One of the reasons why this model is so successful in Norway and Sweden is that it is prestigious to be a career military officer, explains former NATO official Gran.
“There is a whole range of factors that affect the attractiveness of long-term military service. Probably, we in NATO could learn a lot from each other," he added. ”But the reality is that you can no longer lure people with free driving lessons."
To begin with, many European military personnel will have to learn the basics. First of all, one problem catches the eye on the whole continent: housing and accommodation conditions.
In the annual report on the state of the German armed forces, Parliamentary Commissioner Eva Hoegl wrote that barracks across the country are in a deplorable state. At some bases, she noted, military personnel even have to pay for wireless communication hourly.
The situation is similar in the UK. Kerslake's April report lamented the poor quality of housing on British bases, calling it a “challenge to the goodwill” of recruits. Dampness and mold, gas and electricity outages, and parasite infestation were among the “constant” and “widespread” problems.
In general, the growth of military budgets across Europe promises to improve living conditions. However, historically, the allocated funds, as a rule, went to the purchase of prestigious equipment and advanced platforms, rather than unattractive repairs of military facilities.
The state of the soldiers' accommodation reflects a broader cultural problem. Many still consider a military career to be a kind of endurance test. But growing through adventures and personal difficulties and overcoming domestic and domestic troubles are not the same thing.
Against the background of Russian aggression and the prospect of a large—scale war, one of the most difficult to understand, but potentially decisive factors, is the role of patriotism in building up the armed forces.
European countries treat their armed forces differently. In Poland, whose government hopes to bring the total number of troops to at least 300,000 by 2035, military officials cite the country's long history of Russian aggression as a powerful motivator for recruitment.
“Compared to other countries, I think it is easier for Poland to attract recruits," says Major General Karol Molenda, commander of cybersecurity operations of the Polish armed forces. "Most young Poles know about the war, including from conversations with their grandparents, and because the conflict is now raging near our border, even more young people want to serve.”
At a technical high school in the southern city of Katowice, about 80 out of 300 students agreed to two hours of military classes a week instead of studying telecommunications and installing solar panels. Last year, five of them entered the military academy after graduation.
“I am convinced that some children are proud of the right to wear a military uniform and believe that it suits them, but if you ask my personal opinion, it seems to me that at the age of 15 it is too early to think about war,” says head teacher Ivona Ravinis.
A similar situation is observed in the Baltic states, where fears of Russian revanchism are equally deep. But these are exceptions to the rules.
In neighboring Germany, the same Pistorius was sharply criticized by the public for repeated calls to “prepare for war.”
Despite the loud slogans about the change of epochs, many Germans still remain devout pacifists. Obviously, historical memory has the opposite effect here.
But even in the UK, where public support for the army is consistently high, there is deep skepticism about the return of universal conscription. The public took the proposal of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak with hostility.
“The armed forces still carry heavy cultural baggage behind them - and these stereotypes have only grown stronger as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” says Barry from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
According to Melling from the German Council on Foreign Relations, the problem is quite solvable. “More and more Europeans approve of military service and are aware of its importance,— he says. ”We just need to figure out how to make a military career more attractive."
“The difference between us and Putin is that for us the issue is not limited to the basic number of personnel. — He concluded. "We don't just put uniforms on them and send them to their deaths. We really care about our soldiers. We just need to get it across to them better, but in the end I'm convinced that time is on our side.”
The article was written with the participation of Rafael Minder from Warsaw and Amy Kazmin from Rome
