After a seven-year hiatus, Sweden is reintroducing military conscription, the BBC confirmed last week. The New Nationalist (TNN) applauds Sweden’s personnel-focused defense strategy aimed at ensuring domestic security and national sovereignty.
Conscription, more commonly known as a draft in the U.S., means the government will enlist citizens for compulsory military duty. Sweden will order 13,000 men and women born in 1999 to undergo a military assessment starting Jan. 1. Among them, authorities will choose 4,000 conscripts, who will train and serve for nine to 12 months.
The move is part of a broader military defense strategy that addresses the “deteriorating security situation in Europe, particularly in light of the Russian aggression against Ukraine,” a document called “Sweden’s Defense Policy 2016 to 2020” states.
While its short-term priority focuses on personnel and training, its second and longer-term goal is to expand civil defense weaponry and better equip its Home Guard. To this end, Sweden will increase defense spending by 10 billion SEK. To fund training, it will reallocate 1.3 billion SEK from international missions, the policy states.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., Donald Trump is seeking what he calls a “historic” increase in defense spending but, as Reuters points out, the math is a bit fuzzy:
A White House budget official, who outlined the plan on a conference call with reporters, said the administration would propose “increasing defense by $54 billion or 10 percent.” That represents the magnitude of the increase over budget caps Congress put in place in 2011.
But Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, said the plan would bring the Pentagon’s budget to $603 billion in total, just 3 percent more than the $584 billion the agency spent in the most recent fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, 2016.
The rise would be slightly higher than the country’s current 2.5 percent rate of inflation.
The Obama administration reallocated federal funds from the military to social welfare programs. Trump’s administration plans to reallocate federal funds to the military from federal agencies, such as the State Department and Environmental Protection. However, equally — if not more — important is how the funds will be spent. The U.S. already has the world’s largest stockpile of weapons, so it seems a generous share of devoted resources should go toward building up America’s might with muscle (soldiers) rather than just modernizing its massive arsenal.
Further proof of this is illustrated on Youtube. Check out “Hell March” videos of countries such China and Russia and notice the focus on troop strength and discipline. Then try to find a similar video for the United States (good luck). This Veterans Day parade was a sad display, as was the this “Trump Hell March” from Inauguration Day that makes it look like our army consists of a handful of generals, a marching band and ragtag troops in uniforms not updated since the Revolutionary War. Why would anyone take us seriously? Nearly every other U.S. “Hell March” video is nothing more than a display of weapons and operations by special units — which might even be private army contractors nowadays. Sure, weapons are fine for defense — but keep in mind that during Obama’s reign, we peddled our weapons and technology all over the world.
Trump has said previously he would expand the Army to 540,000 active-duty troops from its current 480,000, increase the Marine Corps to 36 battalions from 23 – or as many as 10,000 more Marines – boost the Navy to 350 ships and submarines from 276, and raise the number of Air Force tactical aircraft to 1,200 from 1,100.
While we applaud Trump’s commitment to devote some resources toward personnel, the increase is a modest one — especially considering the cuts to military staff levels during the Obama administration.
Interestingly, though Obama reduced the size of America’s ready troops, cuts to spending on military service members did not decline.
NPR: “By nearly every measure of force structure — the number of brigades, aircraft, ships and subs, Marine battalions, and end strength, [today’s force] is smaller than when the [post-9/11] buildup began,” wrote budget expert Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Yet this smaller force consumes a budget more than 50 percent larger in real terms than before 9/11. The military is spending more on a smaller force.”
How could this be, one might wonder. The answer is simple: Too many high ranking officers and too few grunts.
Historically, top-heavy military appears to be strategically inadvisable.
Taking this into consideration and witnessing on a daily basis increasing levels of cultural rot, this New Nationalist concludes that Swedish-style conscription of nine to 12 months might be a wise choice for the U.S. Not only would it build up our base of battle-ready grunts, it could affect a multitude of positive cultural outcomes.
For example, it could help to teach a population of young adults battling obesity and drug dependency some discipline and good habits. It could help subsidize the expensive cost of education. It would pull the narcissistic Selfie Generation off of Facebook for five minutes and teach them there’s more to life than a close-up image of their ass. Perhaps some of these recruits could also be taught to guard our borders and protect our communities rather than destroy them — and each other in the process through mindless identity politics. It could give kids without a job a little income and training. And it could toughen up all those fucking snowflakes. Win-win all around.
Best of all, it turns out that people in the military tend to be a bit more nationalistic than your common globalist libtard, according to an interesting dissertation on the subject. By “nationalist,” it means true nationalist — not to be confused with patriotism. Here’s the encouraging conclusion of this PhD student’s research, which involved surveys of both combat and non-combat military soldiers:
In terms of views on nationalism at the individual level, respondents made very clear the distinction between country and government and where their loyalties lie. All respondents reported feeling loyal to the country – that is, the citizens of the U.S. and the beliefs, values, and ideals the country was founded on. Many, though not all, respondents noted their distaste for the government – seeing it as external to what the country stands for, and made up of corrupt leaders and politicians.
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