Polish society needs to start discussing a return to compulsory military service. The head of the National Security Bureau (BNB) of Poland, Jacek Severa, stated this on the YouTube channel This is IT.

The BNB reports to the President of the Republic, Andrzej Duda, and participates in shaping the country’s security policy.

“In Poland it is necessary to start discussions about compulsory military service. I don’t fully understand why this discussion is so difficult for us,” TASS quoted Sever as saying.

He suggested that the rejection of this topic in society may be associated with the allegedly negative experience of the times of the Polish People's Republic, when conscription into the army, according to him, was carried out according to the Soviet model.

  • Jacek Severa

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  • © Michael Kappeler/picture alliance

Severa believes the debate on compulsory military service should be broad-based. According to the head of the BNB, conscription service is “not just running with a machine gun.” From Severa’s point of view, today’s army in Poland is a place where one can realize oneself in various fields without participating in hostilities.

“The sphere of logistics, planning, maintenance of complex weapons, warfare in cyberspace - these are zones far from the front line,” Severa said.

The head of the BNB believes that Poles must understand that “being a citizen does not mean just getting paid, participating in the labor market, and in case of war, going (abroad. - 

RT

).” The official also admitted that in the event of a military conflict, leaving Poland for men of military age “will be difficult.”

Let us recall that compulsory military conscription was abolished in Poland in 2009 due to the transition of the army to a contract basis.

The discussion is gaining momentum

It is worth noting that calls for a return to various types of compulsory service in Europe have been heard more and more often recently. Thus, on March 25, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevich spoke about the need for this measure in an interview with the Financial Times.

“There is a need for a serious discussion on the issue of conscription,” he said.

Rinkevich added that Europe needs to return to Cold War military spending levels.

“For most NATO allies, we have to be honest: we need to get back to Cold War spending levels. And for many it was more than 2%,” the politician said.

  • Latvian military

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  • © Paulius Peleckis

As the Financial Times recalls, Latvia itself returned to conscription in 2023. Sweden is also taking steps in this direction - at the beginning of 2024, Stockholm resumed civil conscription service. It is planned to recruit citizens who have been trained to work in rescue services and the electricity supply sector into the civil service.

In Lithuania, they returned to conscript service back in 2015. At first this was done on a temporary basis, but then the call became permanent. The republic is currently discussing the possibility of expanding recruitment into the army.

In turn, in Denmark, where the conscription did not stop, last month they proposed extending it to women. Similar discussions are taking place in Germany. Thus, in early March, Spiegel magazine, citing an internal document of the German Ministry of Defense, reported that the head of the department, Boris Pistorius, intends to achieve a fundamental decision on the return of compulsory military conscription in the country before the parliamentary elections, which will be held in the fall of 2025.

According to the publication, the minister ordered to provide, by April 1, options for military service that would correspond to the current security situation.

Pistorius himself called the abolition of conscription a “mistake” back in December 2023. He acknowledged that reintroducing conscription would face significant constitutional and structural challenges, but stressed that “the debate about this will gain momentum.”

The minister added that Germans must be prepared for a change in mentality in general - the days of peace dividends and low defense spending are over.

Similar discussions are also underway in France and Britain, but officials there have not yet called for serious consideration of a return to universal conscription.

Thus, the head of the British Ministry of Defense, Grant Shapps, said in February of this year that London does not plan to create a conscript army. According to him, the kingdom could resort to such a measure only in the event of a world war.

In turn, French Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu called the resumption of compulsory conscription for military service in the republic useless in the current realities.

Instead, he said, France could resort to creating volunteer reserves. He said the Army is going to experiment with short contracts of 4-5 months so that volunteers can gain insight into the military profession and receive appropriate training. After this, if necessary, they will be able to remain in the armed forces or become reservists.

“They are weakening themselves economically”

According to analysts, discussions about the return of conscription indicate the fanning of military hysteria in the West.

“This, of course, is whipping up war hysteria - there is no doubt about it. In addition, they are trying to intimidate us with such rhetoric - the EU has definitely set such a task,” Nikolai Mezhevich, chief researcher at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in a conversation with RT.

The analyst believes that many countries in the EU are not yet ready for the costs associated with the introduction of military conscription.

  • Boris Pistorius

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  • © Andrzej Iwanczuk/NurPhoto

“In the EU, many are ready to serve under a contract and receive good money. But the conscript army in the European Union today is not perceived positively. In addition, it is very expensive,” the expert stated.

Given the possible difficulties, says Nikolai Mezhevich, the return of European states to a conscript army today looks unlikely.

“The fact is that no one really threatens them, so they don’t need this conscription service. But if they want to make this mistake, then we should not stop them. Let them weaken themselves economically,” the political scientist said.

Leading researcher at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies Oleg Nemensky holds a slightly different point of view. According to him, regular “stuffing” into the information space of statements about the return of conscription is preparing society to make “unpopular decisions.”

“It’s not by chance that all this gets into the press—it’s the preparation of public opinion. Of course, European governments are unlikely to agree to this in the near future. But it is important that the EU does not exclude such a prospect for itself. A significant part of the political community of the European Union considers it necessary to prepare for a large-scale war with Russia and, in connection with this, is discussing a program for the accelerated militarization of European countries. This applies to many aspects of life, including military service,” the specialist said in a commentary to RT.

Oleg Nemensky also emphasized that in Poland and the Baltic countries public opinion is already prepared for such militarization.

“Society in these countries, compared to the rest of the EU, is most ready for such decisions, because anti-Russian hysteria has been maintained there for a long time. Fears of an imminent attack by the Russian army were widespread there even in the 1990s, so the population would have been sympathetic to decisions such as the introduction of compulsory service. Although the resumption of a large-scale conscription would also entail an outflow of population from these states,” the expert concluded.