EUROPE NEWS JULY 19, 2010
German Hospitals Can Ill Afford End to Draft
Public-Service Providers That Rely on Conscientious Objectors' Work Say Scrapping Conscription Would Hurt Programs
By PATRICK MCGROARTY
BERLIN—A proposal in Germany to abolish compulsory military service is drawing major opposition from unlikely quarters—the thousands of hospitals and other public-service providers where most young German men end up fulfilling their draft duties.
Germany is one of the last European countries with a draft, which many of its neighbors have abandoned since the end of the Cold War. But amid pressure to cut defense spending and modernize Germany's armed forces, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has amplified a longstanding debate about military conscription by calling for it to be scrapped.
Mr. Guttenberg argues that conscripted troops are costly and of little use to the modern German military, or Bundeswehr, now focused on far-flung foreign missions to hot spots such as Afghanistan. The six-month stint that young German men are required to serve is too short for highly skilled military training, security analysts say. Conscripts also can't serve abroad, so many end up working in kitchens or at desk jobs.
Increasingly, though, conscription's main impact has little to do with military training at all. As attitudes toward mandatory service have changed over the decades, the draft's biggest beneficiaries have become Germany's hospitals, nursing homes and other social programs, where for the past 20 years more than half of draftees have opted to carry out alternative, nonmilitary service.
Abolishing the draft, they argue, would leave a large hole in Germany's public services. More than 150,000 men out of 226,000 deemed fit to serve in 2009 filed as conscientious objectors, slating them for civilian-servant jobs. Unlike in the U.S., those who seek conscientious-objector status in Germany are always approved.
"It would definitely be a loss," said Peer Köpf, an expert on personnel and operations at the German Hospital Association.
Losing the steady flow of civilian servants would be the latest blow to Germany's health-care system, beleaguered by the spiraling cost of caring for an aging population. Earlier this month, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government announced further increases in premiums and cuts in medical spending to help plug an €11 billion ($14 billion) deficit in the country's public health-insurance system next year.
Hospitals, clinics and nursing homes have come to depend on the labor of such civilian servants, though the law dictates that they only do "supplementary" work that doesn't endanger traditional jobs. There is no move to maintain mandatory service if the draft is abolished.
Ria Schulze Bockhurst, head of human resources for two hospitals and several nursing homes around Münster in western Germany, said the organization's nearly 50 civilian servants perform basic nursing tasks and run errands, work that would otherwise need to be taken over by better-compensated employees.
"It would certainly drive costs up even higher," said Ms. Schulze Bockhurst.
Robert Dilssner, 22 years old, who is fulfilling his conscription duties at a work program for the disabled in Berlin, says eliminating the draft would hurt social programs in more ways than one. A number of his friends have pursued careers in health care or social services "that they never would have been exposed to if it hadn't been for their civil service," he said.
He said he had never considered doing military service, instead. "I saw (civilian service) as a chance to learn something valuable in helping other people, to experience a new perspective," said Mr. Dilssner, who will resume his engineering studies once he finishes his service at the end of August.
Already, health-care providers and civilian-servant employers are scrambling to adapt to a law that took effect on July 1 shortening the length of conscripted service time to six months from nine. After training and vacation time, Mr. Köpf said, civilian servants will end up on the job at Germany's hospitals for just four months.
"Civilian servants frequently work with patients, and that definitely takes some getting used to," Mr. Köpf said. "With just six months, that won't really work anymore."
The truncated term of service isn't much more appealing to the military. Lars Klingbeil, a defense expert in Parliament for the opposition Social Democrats, dismissed it as a "six-month internship."
Aiming to cut roughly €1 billion a year from Germany's €31.1 billion military budget, Mr. Guttenberg wants to trim troop levels to 150,000 from the current 250,000, which would mean 40,000 fewer career and volunteer soldiers, who typically serve for at least two years, and seemingly no role for conscripts. Eliminating conscription, whose costs include housing, feeding and training soldiers, could save at least €400 million a year, defense ministry officials estimate.
Throughout the Cold War, compulsory military service was near universal in Europe. But Germany's draft, one of just five remaining among 28 countries in NATO, had its own particularpurpose. The Allies initially banned Germany from cultivating a military force after World War II, but as tensions between the Soviet Union and the West grew, that policy shifted. The Bundeswehr was established in 1955, along with 18 months of mandatory military service for men between 18 and 23 years of age.
The draft was seen as a practical way to draw soldiers from a population tired of war and to instill a sense of civic duty in young men from across society. It also sought to refurbish the image of a military tarnished by the Nazis. Dubbed by political leaders as "citizens in uniform," draftees who objected could perform civilian service instead.
For the next few decades, men like Wolfgang Koch, drafted in 1971, went into the Bundeswehr with a sense of pride or at least a shrug of their shoulders, a Cold War inclination that time defending their homeland was time well spent. That year, 27,657 young Germans filed as conscientious objectors. Just two of Mr. Koch's 60 classmates were among them.
"I wasn't such an enthusiastic soldier, but I did my service for my country," said Mr. Koch, now 58 years old and a retired teacher, who spent 15 months between high school and university drilling with a Leopard tank unit.
Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and the main adversary of Western European armies vanished. Since the mid-1990s, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and—as of this month—Sweden have scrapped conscription.
"The enemy is gone, Germany is unified, the Russians have left," said Hilmar Linnenkamp, an adviser at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin who has also held posts in the defense ministry since 1969. "The psychological legitimacy of doing military service is much weaker than the obvious legitimacy and the need for social services."
Write to Patrick McGroarty at
patrick.mcgroarty@dowjones.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...783076314.html
