The Militant - February 7, 2011 -- Germany plans for more ‘boots on foreign soil’

Vol. 75/No. 5 February 7, 2011

Germany plans for more
‘boots on foreign soil’

BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
After more than 50 years, the German government is ending compulsory military service. Like the armed forces in the United States and other imperialist countries, the German army is being transformed into a smaller, more efficient professional fighting force.

In early January the last batch of some 12,000 draftees were called up for their obligatory six-month stint in the military. From now on those joining Germany’s army will be volunteers, with conscription ending entirely July 1.

The government’s plan is to reduce the size of the armed forces from about 240,000 soldiers, mostly stationed within the country, to a professional army of 185,000 that’s more adept at conducting special operations abroad. The German defense ministry projects 7,000 to 15,000 volunteers will sign up each year, compared with what has been about 28,500 draftees. Volunteers will commit to a longer period of time in the military, ranging from 12 to 23 months.

The decision to end conscription comes as the number of those drafted over the past decade has declined, and the length of conscription reduced. Potential recruits rejected for health reasons have skyrocketed, with almost 43 percent turned away in 2009, according to Spiegel online. The German government will still collect names of citizens of military age in case the draft is restarted.

“The young recruits are of little use to the modern German military, which focuses on NATO and United Nations operations overseas,” wrote Spiegel.

Germany’s military was reorganized after its defeat in World War II. Compulsory conscription was written into the country’s constitution. The reconstructed imperialist army was organized on the premise that there would be “no German boots on foreign soil.” But all this has changed with German troops increasingly intervening abroad—particularly in the NATO-led operation in the Balkans in the 1990s and in Afghanistan today.

“We can’t say, as we did before, that nobody wants German boots on their territory,” Hellmut Koenigshaus, defense commissioner of the German parliament, told BBC. Just supplying money as was done in the past is not enough, he argued.

Operating under U.S. and UN command, the German government currently has the third-largest military force in Afghanistan. Its nearly 4,900 troops are stationed primarily in the northern part of the country. Government ministers on January 12 endorsed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s call for extending the mission for at least the next year.

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