Can military conscription be ethical?

16 comments

1. Yes. If you enjoy freedoms you should be prepared to defend said freedoms.

2. The American army decided after the Vietnam war that conscription didn’t work, they prefer people who can finish what they start, and decide they want to be military. It costs a lot to train soldiers and having people who don’t want to be there endangers the rest of the team.
   Forcing people to do anything is almost guaranteed failure

3. Ethical no, necessary yes, smart no.

   Conscription is a tool with a fringe purpose that should only be used when other options have been exhausted and comes with various practical drawbacks the most glaring of which is that it will drop standards across the board. The current military already has a hard enough time keeping a standard of discipline, competence and moral with a 100% volunteer force, if you start bringing conscripts who never wanted to be there in the first place with little investment into the service and heavy resentment towards the organization they serve discipline, competence, and morale go out the window, standards drop and operational capabilities become much more restrained with slower and less trust worthy troops.

4. Sure.

5. It can be. Depends on the ethics.

6. I think by definition of the word (I just googled to double check), yes. It can be ethical depending on the circumstance.

7. no.

8. No

9. Only if it’s necessary to protect the nation from imminent conquest or destruction by tyrannical forces. Ukraine’s conscription is ethical, as it’s necessary to prevent all Ukrainians from losing their rights to Russian tyranny, but Russian conscription is unethical, as it’s done in the service of a war of conquest, which is never acceptable even before you get to all the brutality and massacring.

10. Yes. It can.

    Lets take places like South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel. These countries have an existential militaristic threat to their countries existence. South Korea has North Korea, Taiwan has China, and Israel has the majority of the middle east. I believe it’s ethical for these countries to implement conscription because it is necessary to their survival.

    Now for places like the USA, Germany, and the UK, conscription is unethical. None of these countries have an existential militaristic threat. So therefore ethically, there is no reason to conscript soldiers.

    TLDR

    Has threat=ethical

    Has no threat=unethical

11. Yeah

12. Ethical? I think yeah, but not a good idea and probably wouldn’t want to see it unless it was truly 100% necessary.

    Most Americans aren’t qualified to join even if they wanted to. If we really really needed people, Uncle Sam would probably just opt for a combination of offering more waivers for small things barring people from enlistment and supplement with more contractors.

13. Only in legitimate national defense. Conscription for deployment internationally is a no

14. Absolutely not.

    Speaking as a veteran, we need a constitutional amendment that makes military service voluntary.

15. Define ethical. Cause there are both super easy arguments for both and you can run in infinite circles depending on what you value.

16. No. Absolutely not. Compulsory labor is slavery.