We live in an era marked by the dangerous belief that the State holds legitimacy to appropriate the time, energy, and destiny of young people under the justification of a supposed “collective necessity.” Yet, if we examine this with logical consistency, we quickly realize that compulsory military service is reduced to a fundamental choice: either freedom is the organizing principle of life, or coercion is.
Applying these premises to national defense makes one thing clear: there are only two ways to conceive the relationship between individuals and the armed forces. The first treats a young person born in Brazil as a public resource, an instrument to be used according to the directives of central planners who will always align with the thinking of the federal government. The second recognizes the individual as a free and inviolable being, with full autonomy to choose whether or not to join the country’s military ranks.
A system based on compulsory enlistment rests on a clear premise: that the State holds authority superior to the will of the citizen and that, in order to guarantee order, it may temporarily suspend freedoms for a so-called “greater good.” As in centrally planned economies, where bureaucrats decide what will be produced, here it is state authorities who determine who will serve, in what role, and under which conditions. In short, Brazilian youths, upon turning 18, are merely pieces in the eyes of the State, waiting for orders to learn whether they will take part in the game.
Historically, in countries where conscription was the rule, the justification of “defense” often concealed far less noble objectives: territorial expansion, ideological wars, persecution, and political control, all of which cost not only tax resources but also lives. That millions of young people were drafted to die in conflicts later regarded as historical mistakes, as in the First World War, the Vietnam War, or Afghanistan, is not merely a planning error. It is the logical consequence of a system that grants the State the power to decide over the bodies and destinies of young people in the name of causes that shift with governments.
In Brazil, the situation is not very different. Compulsory military service coexists with a discourse that presents the Army as an institution devoted to defending the nation. However, if the State were truly a defender of freedom and individual autonomy, it would first refrain from seizing a year of Brazilian young men’s lives under legal threat, such as by preventing those who have not enlisted from leaving the country. The narrative that “military service builds character” is a contradiction: no virtue can be produced by imposition, and no institution demonstrates morality when it operates through coercion.
Moreover, the system itself reveals its failure. Thousands of young people who are dismissed after discharge end up returning to communities dominated by drug trafficking, which, unlike the State, offers belonging, function, immediate income, and still takes advantage of all the knowledge acquired inside the barracks. Compulsory enlistment creates an illusion of “civic formation” while leaving behind precisely the most vulnerable young people, those who would most need opportunities within the free market.
To this is added another problem rarely discussed on social media: the harmful impact on the health of those who actually serve. As an institution, the Brazilian Army fails to modernize its training and structures, insisting on outdated, repetitive, and often harmful methods that result in unnecessary physical stress, overuse injuries, and even temporary disability. Freedom is not the only value violated by compulsory service. Physical integrity and mental health are also sacrificed for the sake of obsolete training and standards that do little to produce a modern, well-prepared defense.
For these reasons, compulsory enlistment must be understood as a serious violation of private property. The State does not have, and never has had, a record that justifies blind trust in its ability to manage human lives. The numbers of history are not favorable: wars, massacres, and totalitarian regimes were almost always conducted by governments that believed they had the right to summon their citizens to die in the name of interests.
From a practical standpoint, defenders of compulsory military service argue that without it the country would be defenseless. But this objection ignores a fact demonstrated by international experience: the most efficient, professional, technological, and prepared armies in the world, such as those of the United States and Japan, are structured on voluntary service. Strength, discipline, esprit de corps, and operational capacity are born of voluntary commitment, not imposition.
Just as economic freedom generates innovation and progress for a country, freedom in military service tends to generate professionalism. When individuals choose to serve, they do so with purpose. When they are forced, they do so with resentment and even ill will, creating situations that harm the institution’s image.
Defending the end of compulsory enlistment is not a radical or reckless position. It is simply the logical conclusion of those who take freedom seriously. If freedom is a fundamental value, then it cannot be suspended whenever the State finds it convenient. If, on the contrary, we believe that the State owns its citizens, then there is no coherent limit to its intervention.
The dichotomy is unavoidable. Either we believe the individual belongs to himself, or we believe he belongs to the State. There is no third way.
