OPINION
Is Conscription Ethical?
An argument from a conscientious objector
“Britons: Lord Kitchener Wants You. Join Your Country’s Army! God save the King.” — Lord Kitchener, British Secretary of State for War (1914)
“The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service” — Albert Einstein
“It is a war, and the soldiers on both sides will die. I get it. I hate their deaths, but at least they signed up for it. But what kind of a sick society are we to tolerate civilian deaths?”
Fred and I were preaching to the choir about the war(s). We’re both vehement pacifists, whose views were shaped by our peaceful upbringing.
He grew up in Bavaria, in a unified Germany, as did I in Kerala, in southern India. Neither of us had a war within 1000 km of our homes growing up. It either made us ignorant fools or naive dreamers who believe in the power of peace. To us, no war is just and none justifies killing people.
“But where do you draw the line between soldiers and civilians when the country demands the military service of its civilians?” I asked.
Caught between a Jewish sister-in-law and a Muslim friend, Fred had the war of Gaza on his mind. I was thinking about the one in Ukraine and its conscription laws.
With the strict military conscription for all eligible males, Ukraine was separating my friends, the ones living in Berlin, from their families. In this war, Russia attacked their home country but Ukraine splintered their homes.
From the beginning of the war, none of my male expat friends could visit their families in Ukraine for fear of being arrested into servitude. All of them were eager to serve the country, and they did so by volunteering in refugee resettlement programs across Germany.
They signed up as translators and sometimes offered up their apartments to the crowds of Ukrainians flowing into Berlin, fleeing the war. But they refused to sign up for the killing machine.
Despite living outside Ukraine for several years and roaming around as restless ghosts, they were all still Ukrainian citizens. Each renewal of their passports brought them to that enclave of Ukrainian soil in whichever country they lived in. That was until Ukraine decided to shut down that enclave.
On April 11, 2024, to boost its atrophied military, Ukraine decided to end consular services abroad. Any male expat who had to renew his passport had to travel to Ukraine instead of a consulate. The moment they stepped onto Ukrainian soil, they could be forcefully conscripted to the front lines, so long as they were over the age of 25.
Men in Ukraine over 27 were already mandated to serve on the frontlines since the war began in 2022. The new legislation brought the age down a notch while also spreading the net widely among potential escapees and those who had already escaped.
The law made it mandatory to present proof of military service when driving a vehicle or renewing a passport. However, the troops weren’t allowed to demobilize even after 36 months of service. So, there was only a slim chance of someone walking out of that war in full piece, able enough to drive a car legally.
As the BBC reported in November 2023, 35,426 men preferred to swim dangerous rivers or walk impossible distances rather than offer themselves to the war. The lucky ones made it to the other side.
What makes a country, even a victim such as Ukraine, presume the right to force its citizens into sacrifice or sacrilege? Ukraine isn’t alone in this. At least 66 countries still have mandatory military service, and 16 others have a form of callup or military draft when necessary. Throwing the social contract in the face of its helpless citizens, these countries seem to say, Kill or be killed.
This haughty presumption is neatly packaged as a noble, patriotic duty to protect the country. But what is a country if not its people? What does a country gain by protecting its territory while sacrificing thousands of its people?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the author of The Social Contract, propounds it as a morally virtuous act for every citizen to participate in the defence of their nation. A country is built and defended by its people, or so thinks Rousseau. As a citizen of the city of Geneva who never had to fight a war himself, Rousseau can be forgiven for such lofty ideals. Would he still consider it virtuous if he were donning the military helmets in Kharkhiv today?
A social contract, or any contract for that matter, is valid only between equal parties. The participants need to have the liberty to tear it apart if they disagree with the contractual clauses.
So if a country demands military conscription in exchange for citizenship, the individual must be able to rescind the citizenship. However, rescinding one’s nationality without an alternate citizenship will render them stateless and is considered illegal in most countries. Thus, even when an individual disagrees with military conscription or drafts, he doesn’t have a remedy.
This argument about social contracts also presumes that the two parties entered into the contract voluntarily, which is also never the case. One acquires their citizenship by accident of birth. This remains unchanged until they get to adopt a new one.
One could also argue that conscription is just in a just war. But is there such a thing as an objectively just war? There were Americans who believed they were fighting a just and holy war against the Communists in Vietnam, as do several terrorists in IS states.
So, if the justness of a war is subjective, shouldn’t one’s response to it also be subjective?
How can a country demand that all its eligible males enroll in a war regardless of their subjective opinions on the matter? That war might have also been the culmination of years of government policies over which the citizens had no control.
With all the polarity in news reporting, we wouldn’t know the truth in any situation, including this war. Western media paints the war as Putin’s schizophrenic efforts to capture Tsarist territories. The Russian media tells the tale of defense against NATO expansion in their backyard. The centrist ones speculate about the role of the CIA in instigating regime changes in Ukraine to make it pro-western, which eventually precipitated this war.
There are so many narratives, but so little understanding and control over the course of events. In such a situation, is it right to demand that civilians clean up the government’s mess?
It is one thing to seek services from volunteers, and another to force them into the firing line. Such servitude is intolerable in any modern and civil society. But are we reiterating the archaic notion that everything is permissible in matters of war?
To make matters worse, this is propagandized to be a war between dictatorship and democracy. This is considered a war to defend individual liberty. Where is individual liberty when the country arm-twists its citizens into the butcher’s field?
Conscription is also one of the most sexist practices in the world. Targeting only males, it unambiguously declares its preferences. Fewer than a third of all UN member states have ever had a female head of state. So it’s a valid argument that all wars were initiated by men.
I’m not eager to be conscripted myself. However, neither am I eager to see my husband or my brother forced to serve in the military. It’s a thinly veiled involuntary servitude legalized by the powers that be.
The sexist counterpart of conscription looks like Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. Fertility rates across the world are dropping, and countries such as South Korea and Japan are already edging towards extinction. In war-torn countries such as Ukraine, there are so many lives lost without replacement.
In such a situation, let us suppose the government imposed a draft on its menstruating women to offer up their services to deliver babies every year. Instead of Western weapons, they request sperm donors from their allies to help the women repopulate Ukraine. At first, the draft requires each woman to deliver two babies as the bare minimum replacement rate. As the death toll climbs, the draft criteria increase without demobilization.
Would we accept that?
The great error of nearly all studies of war, an error into which all socialists have fallen, has been to consider war as an episode in foreign politics when it is especially an act of internal politics and the most atrocious act of all . Since the directing apparatus has no other way of fighting the enemy than by sending its own soldiers, under compulsion, to their death-the war of one state against another state resolves itself into a war of the state and the military apparatus against its own people.
— Simone Weil
My ire is directed at Ukraine because it directly affects my friends. But it’s not alone in this barbarity. Even when a country has ended forced conscription, as majority of Western European countries have, their governments still have it within their power to revert the laws.
I asked Fred where we could draw the line between soldiers and civilians. The truth is, we can’t — not unless it’s a country without forced conscription. I don’t believe in the utilitarian ideal of sacrificing 10 humans today so that 100 can live tomorrow.
A country is for the people. Signing away thousands of its citizens to protect territory, a piece of land is unpardonable. If that is worth defending, those citizens must have the liberty to volunteer their services.
Conscription is also forced servitude. It doesn’t become ethical just because a government does it. It reeks of the same brutality as when the plantation owners did it. When a country shuts down its consular services or arrests the conscientious objectors, it’s painted with the same color as the bounty hunters pursuing the runaway slaves.
At times of war, a country, by which I mean its government, can fight or secure the borders with its professional or voluntary military force. It can seek assistance from mercenaries. It can pursue diplomatic and peaceful resolutions to the conflict.
If it fails in all of that, the war must be considered lost. At that point, its people have made the choice to get on with their lives rather than sacrificing them for the sake of territorial integrity.
