Even though we are witnessing the proliferation of conflicts and the
pressure to adopt rearmament policies is growing, difficulties aregrowing in Western countries to recruit the soldiers needed to form
armies. For this reason, many governments are preparing proposals for
the introduction of compulsory military service that involves, albeit in
different ways, the entire population considered fit for arms, including
women. ---- The United Kingdom was the first, at the end of the 50s, to
decide to abolish compulsory military service when on 31 December 1960
its suspension was ordered. Taking note of the transformations that had
taken place on the battlefield, the English government decided that the
army needed specialized personnel and therefore resorted to volunteers,
forming a professional army considered more suited to the needs of a
modern war. This choice was shared by France only with the law 97-1019
of 28 October 1997, effective from 1998, wanted by President Chirac,
coinciding with the effective demobilization of the French colonial
presence. It was necessary to wait for the 2004 law n. 226 for Italy to
follow the same path so that the following year the compulsory military
service would end, not coincidentally coinciding with the same decision
taken in 2004 by the United States. The process spread to other European
countries with the exception of Cyprus, Greece, Austria, Lithuania,
Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, where compulsory military
service remained in force with different modalities. Under the pressure
of the war in Ukraine, today a reversal of the trend is beginning to
emerge, adopting solutions that provide for partial or temporary calls
to arms that depend partly on the unavailability of citizens to perform
military service, partly on the demographic situation of the different
countries, partly on the observation that a modern army still needs
specialized personnel, even if it cannot do without the shock mass
constituted by all the conscripts.
The demographic problem and the use of mercenaries
Limiting our considerations to the United States and European countries,
we note that especially with regard to the latter, the demographic
winter that many of them are going through numerically prevents the
possibility of having mass armies due to the lack of raw material
constituted by people of age to carry out these activities. It is then
thought to extend the audience of the population involved by
introducing, as Sweden does, compulsory military service for women in
order to increase the number of personnel, but above all in the short
term it is thought to solve the problem by resorting to the enlistment
of volunteers, giving life to a professional army that partly responds
coherently to the need for technical specialization of the troops to be
deployed on the battlefield. The process seems to be facilitated by the
spread of electronic warfare that allows the deployment on the field of
technical skills possessed by militarized personnel who may also be female.
The increased interest of the States in volunteers available to carry
out military activities is reflected in the growth in Western society of
volunteers who for various reasons choose to offer themselves to fight
already now in the wars underway. Among these we must certainly include
those who make this choice for ideal reasons by deciding to embrace a
cause for ideal, political, religious or ethnic reasons, but certainly
the majority of them are people who make combat activities a profession
and who therefore decide to undertake combat activity by serving in
companies specifically set up by private individuals as well as state
entities, to be recruited according to need to defend both the
commissioning State and the private entrepreneur who decides to protect
his investment, supporting it through military force.
It may also happen that by developing their own organization and
realizing the growth of operational capacity, these military companies
themselves become subjects who decide to operate on the market in
defense of an investment space in their own right as a real company, for
which the military apparatus is only an essential and necessary part of
the operational organizational structure of the company that ensures the
investment in the field.
These agencies are so numerous that they cannot be counted in Western
countries such as Russia, where the best known of them, Wagner, is now
known by all as one of the operational tools of the Russian government,
but there are many others that operate on the market. We can indeed
affirm that especially with regard to territories such as Africa but
also Latin America, many investments by mining or gas and oil extraction
companies are supported by structures of this kind or offer themselves
as the armed wing of the States to ensure control of the territory to
the political authority of the day, naturally in exchange for a large
payment or a participation in the exploitation of the natural resources
of the "protected" country. The economic power achieved by many
multinational companies that have budgets that exceed those of some
States allows them to bear the costs that the support of such structures
entails, operating in those areas where the control of the territory by
the political authorities is weak.
Soldiers of fortune
Even more widespread is the phenomenon of individual volunteers who
decide to be recruited to fight in the service of a cause, whatever it
may be, as long as the economic conditions they deem advantageous. This
practice, which has always existed, so much so that the French
government thought of institutionalizing it with the establishment of
the Foreign Legion, founded by King Louis-Philippe of France on March
10, 1831, to support the French conquest of Algeria, incorporating all
foreigners who wanted to voluntarily sign an engagement, is today in use
on the fronts of the war in Ukraine, especially by the Ukrainian state
and the Western countries that support it, which have made available the
economic resources for the recruitment of fighters and which has allowed
the establishment of military units composed of these subjects, given
the shortage of men that Ukraine has, the large number of desertions
among the conscripts in the country, forced by force to take up arms.
These formations also include soldiers who were already volunteers in
Western armies, formally discharged, but in fact charged by their
respective armies to gain experience on the battlefield in order to then
return to their units of origin to act as trainers to the troops on
modern combat techniques learned on the battlefield. War, in fact, like
all human experiences, involves experimenting with solutions to problems
that arise, which have an innovative nature and therefore contribute to
strengthening operational combat capabilities and therefore an army that
does not have experience on the battlefield is certainly at a
disadvantage compared to its competitors: hence the need for the General
Staffs to have a suitable number of these subjects.
It is quite evident that the military commitment of these subjects is
limited to the rules of engagement, including the period in which the
service is provided and the economic conditions under which it occurs
and does not constitute any guarantee of continuity as it is not
supported by the duty inherent in belonging to the nation that makes
national armies a direct emanation of at least a part of the populations.
There is no doubt, however, that when it is happening it clearly
demonstrates the European populations' low propensity to engage in war
and their difficulty in bearing the economic and social cost of
rearmament, consisting not only in the obvious sacrifice of life but
also in a drastic reduction in their standard of living, having to
allocate a significant portion of resources to rearmament, taking them
away from welfare and citizen well-being expenses.
A threat to the freedom of the West: Zelensky's peace plan
Ukrainian President Zelensky seems to have fully realized all this, as
is clearly evident in his so-called "Victory Plan" where, at point five,
he proposes the Ukrainian army to "replace part of the US troops
stationed in Europe because, thanks to the experience gained during the
war, Kiev's men can significantly contribute to maintaining peace on the
continent". In other words, Zelensky proposes that the Ukrainians act as
Europe's Praetorians, who, in the absence of the strength and will to
fight on the part of a cowardly, idle, pacifist population, act as paid
guardians of their freedoms and democratic institutions, maintained by
the populations, to guarantee their safety, obviously with respect to
the Russians who would like to exploit them. That is, the alternative to
Russian exploitation would be to maintain the Ukrainians, indomitable
warriors, at the expense of the Europeans. Frankly, reading these
proposals makes one think that in Kiev they think that in the West the
people are all made up of imbeciles, who are unable to recognize the
profound evils produced in the minds and intentions of those who
formulate these proposals by a war permeated with xenophobic nationalism
against the Russian populations that began in 2014, repressing the
requests for autonomy of the territories of Donbass and Crimea that
asked for respect for their linguistic, economic and religious freedom
rights in the face of a sell-off of collective property by the central
Ukrainian state and the introduction of the State Church. Today, Ukraine
is not only an immense territory polluted by war and the ecological
disasters it has produced, covered in ruins, but also destroyed in its
social fabric, in its national structure, in its common feeling and
above all devoid of institutions that respect the rule of law at least
as much as it happens in parallel in Putin's Russia that the Ukrainians
are fighting. On the other hand, it is not surprising because this was
already the objective that the British government was pursuing when in
2022 Boris Johnson did everything to stop the peace negotiations in
Turkey, succeeding. If peace had been achieved, the reform plan already
underway in 2020 would not have been able to continue to unfold, when
the British government supported Kiev in drafting labor reforms aimed at
reducing workers' rights and limiting the influence of unions. It is
demonstrated that huge cooperation funds have been used to "convince a
hostile public to give up workers' rights and implement anti-union
policies", by putting pressure on communication strategies (source;
Steigan).
This information is confirmed in 2021 by Epu, a European network for the
defense of workers, which claimed that "the United Kingdom is funding
propaganda to create a climate against Ukrainian unions".
The reforms were implemented immediately after the Russian invasion in
2022 through emergency legislation that allows employers to cancel
collective agreements and affects working hours, rights and conditions,
dismissal and compensation. Then the conference for the recovery of
Ukraine in Switzerland in July 2022, where, Steigan says, they plan "to
cut labor laws, open markets, lower tariffs, deregulate industries and
sell state assets to private investor companies". Meanwhile, the
financial house Rothschild & C. was busy reorganizing Kiev's debt but
soon, according to Norwegian analysts, "it will demand its pound of flesh".
How evident it all connects!
G.L.
https://www.ucadi.org/2025/03/02/antimilitarismo-guerra-e-lotta-di-classe/
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