How would UvA students feel about the reintroduction of conscription?
After 27 years, the Ministry of Defence has examined what it would take to reintroduce active conscription. At the moment, the armed forces are far from ready for this, major investments in personnel and equipment are necessary. Would UvA students fight for their country?
If it were up to Defence, the Netherlands would have to better prepare itself for a possible military conflict in the years to come. According to Defence, “the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East show that security can no longer be taken for granted”. The 42,000 professional soldiers the Netherlands currently has would not be sufficient in case of war, so reactivating conscription is being explored as a last resort.
Before it could come to that, a lot would have to happen. Currently there is a lack of training capacity, equipment, ammunition, weapons and housing, for instance. Despite these obstacles, Defence says it would want to act immediately when neighbouring countries introduce conscription, and in that case follow their example. It does stress, however, that the exploration is theoretical for the time being, so there are no plans to actually introduce conscription.
Unsufficiently prepared
On the Roeterseilandcampus, students do not seem to be worried about a possible convocation for now. Twenty-seven-year-old Yorick Weiss sits at a round table in the B building with four fellow students. Whether he has time to answer some questions? “We didn’t really have anything important to do anymore anyway,” he says, laughing. About reintroducing conscription, the Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology student is not very enthusiastic. “I am not a fan, I think everyone should make their own choice in that.”
“Military bodies are not my favorite aspect of government anyway. Make peace, not war,” Weiss continues. Therefore, should it ever come to it, he does not feel he would fight for his country. “I’m just not in favor of war, so I would probably try to get out of it. Maybe by failing the psych test on purpose, or throwing myself down the stairs. Or I’d have to flee.”
That the Dutch army is currently insufficiently prepared for a major military conflict is, according to Weiss, no reason to invest extra money in Defence. “I just think war is unnecessary, and I don’t like all that money going to military bodies.” Security still feels natural to him. “The global North has been good at making sure no wars take place on our turf in recent decades, and I think that will stay the case. We have a lot of international influence.”
Dutch men are conscripted from the age of 17 to 45; since 2020, women can be called up from the age of 17 to 23. Weiss reacts to this information with shock: “If I still have to go onto the battlefield when I’m forty, I will start to worry. So once again I have no intention of joining, I will work my way out of it. I’m just not a militant type.”
In the auditorium, twenty-three-year-old Felice Rade is drinking coffee with a friend. She too is not a fan of reintroducing conscription at the moment. “No, that doesn’t seem ideal to me,” she says euphemistically. “It depends on the situation, of course, but I think it’s really not necessary right now. Maybe it will be necessary if the threat increases and another country invades us, but the fact that war is being waged in other countries I don’t think is a reason to introduce conscription.”
Despite the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East being cited as examples by the Ministry of Defence, Rade cannot imagine that things will really come to a point in the Netherlands where she will have to report to the battlefront. “Based on how the world is now, I don’t think it will happen, maybe if the situation changes.” And should it happen? “If it is compulsory, then I will have to. Refusing service is not an option.”
No homosexuals
The latter is not entirely correct, explains UvA professor of military history and senior lecturer in strategy at the Dutch Defence Academy Floribert Baudet. Those who want to refuse service can in fact object. “There are two forms: refusal to become military, and refusal to serve at all. The former leads to a route where you have to be recognized as a conscientious objector, and then you are allowed to do substitute service. This is also the idea behind ‘community service’. The second is punishable and will lead to a conviction for service evasion. Making yourself intentionally unfit for service, for example by breaking a leg or something similar, leads to postponement, not procrastination.”
Another way used in the past to get out of conscription was to feign mental instability. “Then conscripts were rejected with the so-called ‘S-5’ rule. That was socially accepted to the extent that people did not suffer from it in their social careers,” Baudet says. Until 1974, homosexuals were also rejected on the basis of S5.
Building a conscription army “extremely complicated”
Whether the reintroduction of compulsory attendance would apply to students as well remains to be seen. “The law provides for opportunities to request postponement of compulsory military service. The moment compulsory attendance is reactivated, it is expected to mean that those options will also be reactivated. It is quite conceivable that suspending the possibility to ask for deferment will lead to resistance in parlement,” Baudet explains.
He also stresses that building a conscription army is extremely complicated. “After all, a military costs a lot of money: equipment and training are expensive. There must be equipment for every soldier. There must also be space for training, and the soldiers must have somewhere to eat and sleep. It has also been a long-term process in the past. Training a conscript army, especially if you want to keep some control over the number of conscripts to be trained each year, takes a lot of time. If the knowledge is not to fade away, regular refresher exercises must also be conducted.”
