It is still unclear whether Olaf Scholz will succeed in his efforts to implement a draft lottery. What is clear, however, is that conscription won’t make Germany or Europe any safer.
As the Russian threat intensifies, Europe is grasping at desperate measures, none more telling than the German chancellor’s plan for a draft lottery. According to the reports in the last few months, Olaf Scholz’s push to conscript thousands of teenagers has been sharply curtailed. Following extended coalition negotiations, the Bundestag approved only compulsory medical screening and new incentives for volunteers. Implementing the draft lottery would still require assembling a parliamentary majority under the new law. By slowing the march toward compulsory service, the outcome ultimately safeguards Europe’s freedom and security, as conscription promises safety it cannot deliver, and at an enormous cost.
Europe cannot afford to waste a single euro of its defence budget. Yet from an economic standpoint, conscription pulls entire cohorts of men out of productive civilian work and into menial military roles that willing volunteers could perform more effectively. It disrupts career paths, closes up university pathways for young men, and ensures lower lifetime earnings and retirement savings. In fact, a study published just last month by Swedish Forces found that conscription costs men an average of €47,000 in lifetime earnings, due to the negative impact on their careers, and results in significantly lower pensions.
Conscription weakens the army’s physical strength by forcing unwilling men into service. Legitimate reasons that would normally exclude someone from the defence forces are ignored, as draft boards are littered with fraudulent or exaggerated exemption requests that obscure genuine health concerns. As a result, the conscript army becomes burdened with men who would never meet the standards of a professional force. Men who will most likely no longer be fit to fight once the war comes.
On the manpower side, conscription destroys the valuable self-selection mechanisms that strengthen a professional army. A 2017 study of the Estonian Army illustrates this clearly: only 35% of conscripts volunteered, yet they were far healthier, fitter, and more active than those drafted, who showed nearly double the rate of poor health. Instead of attracting capable volunteers, a draft forces the army to waste resources managing unmotivated and less suitable recruits.
Institutionally, conscription would further exacerbate the dysfunction of existing German military structures by forcing thousands of new recruits into organisations already struggling to operate. The Bundeswehr is notoriously disorganised and bogged down by excessive bureaucracy that undermines readiness. Soldiers frequently complain about rising administrative burdens, while the army remains far behind in digitisation, lacking even basic electronic health or work-time records.
Persistent lack of equipment leaves soldiers idle in barracks plagued by mould, decay, and inadequate amenities. Years of underfunding have created massive maintenance backlogs, and despite ongoing procurement efforts, the army still faces shortages of essential gear like night-vision devices, digital radios, ammunition, spare parts, and even tanks, ships, and aircraft.
The German army is in no condition to induct thousands of unwilling conscripts, maintain discipline, or make effective use of their time. Most would simply lose a year of their lives performing menial chores and meaningless drills. They might inflate statistics for the chancellor’s press conferences, but they would do nothing to make Germany any safer.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz ought to know better, and by all indications, he does. An expert report prepared for Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance found that when fully accounted for, conscription with all its externalities would be 45% more expensive than a professional force of even the same size. This is the most striking part: we can actually pay young people enough, and have an army of better quality and quantity, if only we adopt a sensible policy, that is, if we halt conscription.
Attracting young people to serve does not have to be all that costly. A recent poll shows that the will to serve is already there: hundreds of thousands of young Germans say they would volunteer even under today’s modest conditions; enough to shrink the Bundeswehr’s manpower gap without resorting to coercion. A few smart incentives, such as higher pay, better training, and tangible career benefits, could turn that willingness into action at surprisingly little cost.
Forcing people into the army is deeply inefficient, and it ultimately undermines Germany’s military readiness. It diverts scarce resources toward a wasteful system, instead of channelling them into far more effective forms of defence spending. So why the sudden push to resurrect this military relic? The case for conscription has long simmered in defence circles, propped up by myths of its supposed success in Northern Europe. In truth, much of that narrative has always been a convenient fiction.
In Finland, soldiers fighting in Ukraine warn that the training they received in the Finnish Defence Forces is now obsolete for the modern battlefield. Meanwhile, conscripts endure starvation-level pay, and reports of routine abuse against female soldiers persist.
In Norway, former career officers sound the alarm that none of them would know where to report if there were a war tomorrow, exposing that the vast reserve conscription system was meant to ensure, exists mostly on paper.
In Sweden, the rapid expansion of conscription is straining the Armed Forces, as a shortage of experienced officers hinders the training of new recruits. The military continues to grapple with unmotivated conscripts who intentionally delay tasks, feign inability, or fail to follow orders. Oh, and the army is persecuting conscripted teenagers for innocent jokes they tell in their free time.
The case for conscription is built on comforting illusions rather than hard facts. Its main appeal is that it lets governments project false military strength without making real fiscal sacrifices. In truth, the draft functions as a hidden tax on the young. It offers an easy refuge for politicians eager to appear tough on defence while avoiding hard choices, like reforming bloated budgets or reining in unsustainable pensions. If Europe wants to endure, it must grow up and confront its own fiscal irresponsibility instead of passing the bill to its youth. The party is over.
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