WI Conscription

What if Western countries kept the draft? How would the military be affected, and would affirmative action get a foothold? Perhaps a National Service Administration similar to Singapore, Peace Corps or CCC?
 
What do you mean by "Western"? As iirc some Western countries like W Germany had national service of some kind at least until the late 1990s and may still do for all I know. My male German friends who came of age in the late 90s certainly appeared to do some form of national service ranging from ambulance driving for the Red Cross through to more traditional military occupations
 
What do you mean by "Western"? As iirc some Western countries like W Germany had national service of some kind at least until the late 1990s and may still do for all I know. My male German friends who came of age in the late 90s certainly appeared to do some form of national service ranging from ambulance driving for the Red Cross through to more traditional military occupations

Germany still has conscription, as does Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Greece. A quick check on wikipedia shows that out of the European NATO countries Belgium and The Netherlands abolished it in the mid 1990's and Spain, Portugal, France and Italy all retained it until the 21st century.
 
No nation that had major overseas military commitments and cared about defense would preserve conscription. Sending undertrained, unwilling boys overseas is a bad idea militarily and a even worse idea politically. Vietnam showed that to the world. An AVF US military would have won in Vietnam just the AVF US military is winning in Iraq and Afgan.

Edit: what is AA and EE?
 
No nation that had major overseas military commitments and cared about defense would preserve conscription. Sending undertrained, unwilling boys overseas is a bad idea militarily and a even worse idea politically. Vietnam showed that to the world. An AVF US military would have won in Vietnam just the AVF US military is winning in Iraq and Afgan.

Edit: what is AA and EE?

Quite funny - we do send boys who'd have just a few months of conscript service and a few more months of training off to Afghanistan which actually in relation to the size of our nation IS a major overseas military commitment. Numbers do actually count and we are lacking in those so there nothing to do about it. Its difficult to get peoples with ten years of service to enter in due time and then be shipped off for overseas service.
Actually our boys are all volunteers and highly motivated - but long time service - no!

US AVF win the Vietnam war???
How would you get those numbers to enlist during a time of economic boom? You'd get the rabble as you got in the seventies and eighties when cartoons was made to replace instruction manuals because your average trooper was a bad reader! And drugs still a problem.

When you enter a war requirements of troops may change drastically which wouldn't have been cared for during peace time thus effecting the army send abroad to be an AVF newly raised? Any better than a conscript army - I doubt it.
If anything Germany have shown us what good NCOs can to with a conscipt army.

US AVF winning the Iraq and Afghanistan? AFAIK there have been quite some debate on the shipping off of ANG units - AVF???
Quick google - ANG bears the burden of Iraq engagement.
 
With all the controversies about Sikhs with helmets/turbans, women in forward infantry, armour, and submarine positions today, surely one of those programs will be affected? Particularly if someone uses the Human Rights Commission to address it.
 
With all the controversies about Sikhs with helmets/turbans, women in forward infantry, armour, and submarine positions today, surely one of those programs will be affected? Particularly if someone uses the Human Rights Commission to address it.

How many Western countries have ever conscripted women and where's a large Sikh population that could make this an issue in the US?

As far as I can see niether AA or EE are going to be affected by continuing conscription in the USA or Canada, and as has been pointed out all of the mainland European countries, (except Luxembourg), kept the draft until several years after the Soviet Union went out of business.

If the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand all retained National Service during the 60's, 70's and 80's their armies would chug along exactly as they did before they dropped the idea in OTL, it will not produce some sort of conservative paradise where Affirmitive Action is strangled at birth, because there is little to no convergence between serving in the military and the perceived problems AA was designed to deal with.
 
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