Thirty years after the end of mandatory conscription, Macron wants to reinstate military service. It will be a ten-month service, after which young people will have to serve in the operational reserve for five years and will be the first to be mobilized in the event of war.
This time, neither the government nor the army is talking about “social mixing.” A salary of €800 will obviously attract young people from the working classes first and foremost.
And no one pretends they will be taught a trade. The stated aim is to provide fresh recruits for the army at a time when the country is supposedly under threat. The announcement is clearly one step further in the march towards war.
For now, it’s a volunteer military service. But how long will that last? Some politicians and military leaders already regret that it isn’t mandatory and that these future soldiers cannot be sent on overseas operations.
In a very martial speech, Macron asked young people to be “ready to stand up for their country.” Unlike General Mandon, he did not add that they should be ready to die, but that’s the idea!
This appeal may inspire some to join the military. Plus it’s characteristic of the youth to be able to commit themselves out of generosity and idealism to a cause greater than themselves. And the idea of defending one's own is part of that.
But when statesmen speak of defending the homeland, they don’t mean defending the weak and helpless but rather the current unjust and unequal social order.
They keep repeating the word “homeland” over and over again. But what “homeland” are we talking about for workers when the rich have all the rights: the right to exploit the working class and keep it in poverty, the right to evade taxes and, very often, the law?
What homeland are we talking about when thousands of people are poorly housed or homeless while there are hundreds of thousands of vacant homes? When part of the population is subjected to discrimination and racism fueled by those very statesmen?
Thousands of young people, at risk in abusive families, are abandoned by the justice system and under-funded social services. Others, excluded from school at an early age fall into idleness and drug trafficking in neighborhoods ravaged by poverty, unemployment and lacking public services. Should they become soldiers to defend their so-called homeland that has done nothing for them except push them further into poverty?
Every day, the courage and self-sacrifice of Ukrainians are shown as an example of what it takes to defend one's homeland.
But what must Ukrainian soldiers – who have suffered and sacrificed nearly four years of their lives at war – think when they see Trump, the European powers and Putin divying up their country's riches? Or when their country, partly destroyed and indebted for generations, has become completely dependent on the West?
What do Ukrainian people, deprived of electricity and exposed to freezing cold, think when they discover that leaders close to Zelensky have embezzled huge sums from public energy companies severely impacted by Russian bombings?
As Anatole France wrote after the First World War, “you believe you’re dying for your country, but you’re dying for the profits of industrialists”!
There is no trust to be placed in leaders who spend their time attacking our living conditions, our rights to a job, healthcare and education. There is no trust to be placed in leaders who have fomented a multitude of wars to defend the interests of capitalists and their domination over countries and even continents.
Even today, the bellicose campaign against Russia – which is supposedly threatening France when its army hasn’t even reached Kiev ! – is nothing but propaganda, a pack of lies.
It is not by lining up behind bourgeois politicians, their state and their army that we can defend justice nor the rights of peoples and workers. Young people who want to fight for just causes must look in the opposite direction and commit themselves to revolutionary and internationalist ideas in order to overthrow the current social order and build a new world.
Nathalie Arthaud