In the wake of strategies already developed by France and Germany – and in a European context in which attention is growing on the need to strengthen defense capabilities for security reasons – Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has announced that he is working on a law that will reintroduce military service from 2026. But it will not be a “naja”, i.e. the classic compulsory service carried out until the end of 2004: the planned draft will be exclusively on a voluntary basis. The defense minister’s need was already known, given that he had declared that law 244 – which sets the limit for defense personnel at 170 thousand units – needed to be revised by increasing it by at least 10-15 thousand units. In particular, these new recruits should be educated about new warfare technologies, increasingly related to artificial intelligence.
Crosetto’s proposal comes from a specific need, namely that of preparing as best as possible in the face of possible emergency scenarios: this also means, according to the minister, creating an auxiliary state reserve that can support the Armed Forces in case of need. The reserve, however, as far as we can see so far, would not be on the front line, but as a support: it would be exclusively involved in “very serious cases”, to quote the minister’s words (wars, disasters and serious international crises).
To better understand the issue we interviewed the Friulian geopolitical analyst Andrea Gaspardo.
How would Crosetto’s project be structured?
Crosetto’s project should be taken with a pinch of salt: so far there are some rumours, but the official documentation should be seen. According to rumours, the intention would be to create an auxiliary reserve for the Armed Forces of around 10 thousand units.
This reserve would be aimed partly at young people, and partly also at older people who possess a series of technical requirements and skills that could be fundamental in the event of a crisis. In particular, we are talking about professionals, retired soldiers, former security guards and doctors, engineers, cybersecurity experts, etc.
Why are some European countries mobilizing in this regard, and how concrete is the threat of a diplomatic crisis that would aggravate the international context?
The reason why several European countries are talking about introducing conscription, creating large reserve forces or encouraging enlistment in armies, is because there is a now widespread perception that the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 served as a catalyst for the beginning of a new historical era in which the conditions of peace prevailing in Europe in recent decades are no longer valid. In anticipation of a possible return of conflicts, countries are putting their hands forward, discussing the opportunity to rearm and expand their armed forces.
Why aren’t the armed forces enough? Couldn’t the increase in military spending cover, at least in part, compulsory military service?
Right now, on the European continent, no country – outside of Russia and Ukraine – has armed forces numerically adequate to fight a large-scale, long-term war.
The experience in the field of the Russian-Ukrainian war has shown that despite the high technological growth that technological tools have seen, from the Cold War until today (think of drones, for example), the need remains, for countries fighting this type of war, to have numerically very large armed forces at their disposal.
To obtain the numbers it is necessary to use a mixture of incentives for voluntary enlistments and compulsory conscription: there are no other ways to obtain the desired level of personnel. There are some European countries that are moving more quickly in the phase of rearmament and expansion of their armed forces (Poland, Romania, Hungary), but other countries are not. On the European continent, therefore, the situation is patchy.
In addition to the number of soldiers itself, how could the Italian conscription system adapt to today’s geopolitical context, in terms of organisation, equipment and regulation?
Very difficult to answer this question. To respond, it is necessary for the political and military leadership to have a clear understanding of the crisis and hypothetical scenarios for the future use of our armed forces. Until this is clarified it is like discussing the sex of angels.
During the Cold War there was only one threat: the armies of the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies. The Italian armed forces therefore needed to train several hundred thousand men every year who were replaced every year by new waves of conscripts. Furthermore, being an era of flourishing demographics – with a total fertility rate above 2 children per woman – the country could afford to have a large army of conscripts at its disposal, which it would now struggle to deploy, because now there are not enough young people. The new youth classes are significantly fewer than those of the past, so even the reinstatement of conscription in an indiscriminate manner for all would not fully fill the lack of soldiers.
In addition to reinstating compulsory military service, the government should also invent tools to allow our country to fish in the basin between adult men aged between 30 and 60, exactly as the Russians and Ukrainians are doing.
Without prejudice to the fact that it would then be necessary to understand the hypothetical employment scenarios, to solve the problem of the lack of personnel, in addition to restoring the draft, we must focus on incentives for the enlistment of mature personnel (provided that their physique allows it).
We must not end up believing that technological evolution protects us from the need for natural persons: we cannot make up for the lack of soldiers, for war we need arms, and lots of them.
Have the hypotheses of a common European rearmament finally faded after the enthusiasm of recent months?
Hard to say. Already when we talked about European rearmament it was specified that each country would then adopt the strategies it deemed necessary to complete it. Rearmament will take place, but doing it in random order certainly does not help in the formulation of a coherent common European strategy.
