Brit here, not sure how it is in Germany but the UK fucked up recruitment with two main problems (from my perspective as a member of Gen Z)
- We treat veterans like shit the same as the US does
- We functionally have no territorial army, militia or equivelent, we used to but now those are elegible for overseas deployment which ruins the entire purpose of signing up to be better able to defend your homeland.
Kids were never ready for war. We just never bothered asking them.
I’m a millennial who was happy to not be required to go through military training back when it was still a thing but already phasing out. Bundeswehr was a thing for gun fanatics and manly men, nothing that was actually necessary. I was a pacifist. My work ethics today are now close to what Gen Z apparently has. Work is simply not the center of my life anymore.
These days I’m wondering if a 40 year old man (in better shape than my 18 year old self though) can still enlist voluntarily because I want to fight for our European values. I’d rather die in battle than being occupied by power hungry dictators. Not sure this Gen Z guy understands that his work life balance days are over if that happens.
My problem with that is that I will be fighting for those old fucks sitting in the seats of power making decisions about our lives and living comfortably and safely.
I will die fighting if I have to, but it will be defending my house and my relatives, that’s my compromise, I will not be sent to defend some random piece of land
It’s one of the last pieces of land where we ourselves still have some power over those old fucks. But democracy is fragile.
In a book published this week, Why I Would Never Fight for My Country, the 27-year-old argues ordinary people should not be sent into battle on behalf of nation states and their rulers — even to fend off an invasion. Occupation by a foreign power might lead to a “shitty” life, he told the Financial Times. “But I’d rather be occupied than dead.”
Is he familiar with occupied Palestine?
Occupied
PolandAlgeriaChinaUkrainethe dude with that photo… i never seen someone so out of touch, a 27 year old boomer
I mean, even if it doesn’t go towards genocide, have they considered the new power’s probable policy on military service? They have to have a chapter on that, right?
What a mess.
Fuck war! No one should be in the military, those who cause wars should go and fight them instead of sending others.
Sure, but unless you can get Putin to come out, someone has to kill several thousand Russians each week
Perhaps it’s the military that is outdated.
I’ve been thinking about that several decades ago, watching my friends come back from the military training with completely useless skills regardless of their ranks. The “war time” skillset and communication are based on ideals from the 1950s. It’s been allowed to exist as a separate culture inside the military only because the authorities inside the military keeps repeating the same ideas through generations.
There’s no doubt that military work does require a very efficient and brutally direct communication, but the top down chain of command and hierachy often fails to take advantage of more modern skills where communication happens more efficiently across networks instead of tree-shaped structures, and where every node is important, not just as a link in a chain.
Businesses have had many of the same experiences with generation Z. They don’t want to play the role of the pawn in chess and would rather walk away than take orders blindly. I don’t blame them, but it’s obviously a bad starting point for army recruitment. The military will have to come up with something new to address the issue.
Very good! War is never a solution.
Why be ready to fight and possibly kill or die for a country that is less and less worth it everyday?
Because it’s going to get a LOT worse once a greedy dictator decides to annex another country.
When a state is annexed, the people who will lose out the most will be the people who own property which is enforced through the laws of that state. Dying to protect greedy bastard’s property from other greedy bastard is not in my interest. The greedy bastards can send themselves and their own family to protect their property.
Don’t need to tell me but one thing is visible and tangible everyday and the other thing is something way more abstract for most.
Bucha isn’t abstract.
Can you not understand what I’m saying or do you not want to?
Can’t blame anyone for not wanting to risk their lhealth or even lives. More and more people doing that is probably a good thing in general. Brings everyone closer to making the old adage “imagine there’s war and nobody comes” a reality.
It can only be a good thing if the enemy shares the same values, which is not the case with Russia.
It can only be a good thing if the enemy shares the same values, which is not the case with Russia.
Even if it only leads to reconsidering and restructuring conventional “militaries” then I’d also count that as a drop in the good-bucket. I can’t quite see values factoring into it, what do you mean by that?
You’ve got to be joking acting like you dont understand the stakes of war
You’ve got to be joking acting like you dont understand the stakes of war
I think there might be some misunderstanding here - what do you think I wrote in my previous post? What am I missing?
For example that you cannot just invade other countries to take them over, that you shouldn’t kill people with other religions or sexual preferences, or that your country is superior to all the others.
For example that you cannot just invade other countries to take them over, that you shouldn’t kill people with other religions or sexual preferences, or that your country is superior to all the others.
Apologies for not wording that more clearly, but I was not asking for examples of value differences. I was asking why you think value differences make more and more people refusing to risk their lives not a good thing.
