Europe turns to mandatory conscription amid growing threat from Russia

Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many, including Kiev, were skeptical that a major war would return to Europe.

More than two years later, another previously unthinkable change is underway.

Several European nations have reintroduced or expanded conscription amid the growing threat from Moscow, part of a series of policies aimed at bolstering defenses that are likely to be expanded further.

“We’re coming to the conclusion that we may have to adjust the way we deploy for war and adjust the way we produce military equipment and recruit and train personnel,” said Robert Hamilton, head of Eurasia research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, who served as a U.S. Army officer for 30 years.

“It is tragically true that here we are in 2024 and we are dealing with the questions of how to mobilize millions of people to be thrown into the carnage of potential war, but that is where Russia has put us,” he said.

The risks of a wider war in Europe have increased after Russian President Vladimir Putin “finally resorted to open conflict” in Ukraine in pursuit of his goal of “recreating the Soviet empire,” said retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who served as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Europe.

“So now we have a war in Europe that we never thought we would see again,” said Clark, who led NATO forces during the Kosovo War.

“Whether this is a new Cold War or an emerging war is unclear,” he continued, but “it is a very pressing warning to NATO that we need to rebuild our defenses.” Those efforts include conscription, he said.

Return of mandatory conscription highlights new reality

Several European countries ended conscription after the end of the Cold War, but several nations — particularly in Scandinavia and the Balkans — have reintroduced it in recent years, largely because of the Russian threat. Failure to enlist can result in fines or even jail time in some countries.

Latvia is the latest country to implement conscription. Compulsory military service was reintroduced on January 1 this year after being abolished in 2006.

Male citizens will be called up within 12 months of turning 18 or after graduation for those still in the education system.

“There was a lot of resistance at first,” said Arturs Pīlācis, a 20-year-old student. He has not yet been drafted, but he voluntarily took a month-long military course.

But in the end, “the need for a state defense service was clear,” he said. “There really wasn’t an option where we could sit back and think that things would continue as they were before because of the unprovoked aggression in Ukraine.”

In April, Norway unveiled an ambitious long-term plan that will nearly double the country’s defense budget and add more than 20,000 soldiers, personnel and mandatory conscription reservists to the armed forces.

“We need a defense that is adequate for the emerging security environment,” said Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

Conscription in Norway is mandatory, and in 2015 it became the first member of the NATO defense alliance to enlist men and women on equal terms.

Economics student Jens Bartnes, 26, completed his military training at the age of 19. “I’m glad I did it, I learned a lot that year that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise – about myself, about my limits and physical and mental abilities, I suppose, but also about teamwork. It’s a completely different way of life,” he said.

“I am willing to fight for my country if necessary because I believe in the values ​​that Norwegian society is based on and I believe that these values ​​of inclusion, equality and democracy are worth fighting for,” Bartnes added.

Max Henrik Arvidson, 25, was enlisted in the Norwegian army for a year between 2019 and 2020. Like Bartnes, he sees military service as an essential duty.

“I know that the only way we can face further Russian aggression is to continue providing arms and aid to Ukraine, while remaining strong together with NATO as a whole and the European Union.”

“Big mental shift”

Debates about conscription have also been taking place in other European countries that do not currently require it. In the UK, the Conservatives raised the idea of ​​military service in their failed election campaign.

But perhaps the most surprising transformation is taking place in Germany, which has had an aversion to militarization since the end of World War II.

For the first time since the Cold War, Germany this year updated its plan in case conflict breaks out in Europe, and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius put forward a proposal in June for a new voluntary military service. “We must be ready for war by 2029,” he said.

“We’re seeing the debate now boiling over. And that’s the first step,” said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow in the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a big mindset shift.”

Not everyone is ready to answer the call. In Lithuania, for example, opinions on military service among students vary, said Paulius Vaitiekus, president of the Lithuanian National Union of Students.

Since the country reintroduced compulsory military service in 2015 due to a “changed geopolitical situation,” around 3,500 to 4,000 Lithuanians between the ages of 18 and 26 are conscripted each year for a nine-month period.

Vaitiekus said students had launched initiatives to send supplies to the Ukrainian front lines. There had been “a change in the mindset of young people towards being more active, although not necessarily through enlistment,” he added.

With conscription remaining an unpopular topic in some countries, NATO is struggling to meet its new target of having 300,000 people ready to be called up within a month and another 500,000 available within six months, Monaghan said.

“While NATO has said it has already achieved this goal, the EU has said its members would struggle. NATO relies on American forces to achieve its goal. European allies need to find new ways to generate personnel. Something has to give here,” he said.

Another problem is that such a target would only allow NATO to fight a relatively short conflict of up to six months, Monaghan added.

Broad Strategic Reserve Force Models

One possible solution is a more agile and modern military. One of NATO’s newest members, Finland, has the capacity to call up more than 900,000 reservists, with 280,000 troops ready to respond immediately if needed. However, in peacetime, the Finnish Defence Forces employ only about 13,000 people, including civilian employees.

“Finland is a good example because its reserve force can be integrated into a very small active force,” said Hamilton of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Historically, he explained, Finland was “sandwiched” between NATO and the Soviet Union, not aligned with either, so it needed to be able to defend itself on its own.

Norway and Sweden, NATO’s newest member, have similar models, both maintaining significant numbers of reservists, though not as many as Finland.

Sweden, where conscription is now also gender-neutral, has called up around 7,000 individuals in 2024. The number will rise to 8,000 in 2025, according to the Swedish Armed Forces.

“Sweden has had conscription since 1901, so it’s actually part of our culture in a way,” said Marinette Nyh Radebo, a communications manager for the agency that helps test recruits and reports to the Defense Ministry. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, “what we see is that both knowledge and attitudes have changed,” she said.

“When conscription was activated again, at the beginning we said that conscription is good for your CV, for example when applying for a new job,” Radebo said. “But today our communication is more like, this is a duty you have to do for Sweden.”

Is NATO ready for war?

The NATO alliance has been revising its strategy and increasing its capabilities over the past decade in response to the growing threat from Moscow.

Russia’s large-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022, which followed its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, inevitably led allies to reassess their readiness for war and to strengthen their defenses.

“Since 2014, NATO has undergone the most significant transformation in our collective defense in a generation,” NATO spokeswoman Farah Dakhlallah told CNN .

“We have implemented the most comprehensive defense plans since the Cold War, with more than 500,000 troops currently at high readiness.”

But there are calls for allies to increase their capabilities even further and faster.

While NATO allies “are definitely ready to fight tonight,” there is still a question of whether they are ready for a protracted war like the one in Ukraine, Monaghan said, noting that there is still work to be done in several areas. These include industrial capacity, defense spending and social resilience — where the issue of conscription would come in.

How military personnel are recruited and trained is a decision for individual nations, Dakhlallah said, adding: “About a third of NATO members have some form of compulsory military service.”

“Some allies are considering conscription. However, as an alliance, we do not prescribe compulsory military service,” Dakhlallah said. “What is important is that allies continue to have armed forces capable of protecting our territory and our populations.”

In addition to the fighting in Ukraine, Russia has also launched a hybrid war across Europe, experts say, involving attacks on infrastructure, cyberattacks, disinformation, sabotage, electoral interference and the manipulation of immigration.

“It’s only become more aggressive,” Monaghan said. “All of this is to say that NATO allies face a very different geopolitical situation than they have faced in decades.”

The situation could be further complicated by the US presidential election in November. Things will look very different if former President Donald Trump – who has said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever it wants” to any NATO country that fails to comply with the bloc’s defence spending guidelines – returns to the White House.

“I think there is a good understanding among NATO military leaders that they need to cooperate, and there is a desire to do that,” Clark said.

This year, World War II veterans gathered for D-Day commemorations, some possibly for the last time. Their descendants may now have to shoulder the kind of responsibilities they once hoped would no longer be required.

“I think young people in Europe and the US will realize that this generation, like the generation that fought in World War II, did not ask to be the ‘Greatest Generation,’ but circumstances imposed that burden on them,” Clark said.

“In democracies, we don’t like to prepare for war, we don’t want to think about those things,” he said. However, “I think people will respond to the circumstances they see.”