Ryan Bridge: Should we be preparing to go to war?

An interesting article in the Herald yesterday about army training at Waiouru.  The troops are singing from the same song sheet as Winston and Judith in terms of how threatening the world is at the moment. Senior Army commanders were quoted saying the pressure on our defence force is greater than at any time in recent memory.  They’re getting billions of extra funding for equipment and kit and houses on base that aren’t mouldy, but in order for any of that to be useful, you need soldiers.  You need personnel.  In order to get personnel, you need people who understand the importance of the task at hand, and I just don’t think enough young people, people of my generation and younger, actually get it. Look no further than Germany, where they’re protesting over a requirement for men aged 45 and younger to inform the Government of their whereabouts if they leave the country for three months or more. It’s similar to a rule they had during the Cold War and is basically preparing for a time when they may need a return to conscription, compulsory service. Norway, Sweden, Türkiye, Denmark, and Finland (to name a few) already do this. The Korean pop band BTS just celebrated the end of their military service with a concert in Seoul. But overwhelmingly in the West there’s antipathy and/or ignorance of the threats our leaders tell us we're facing. It's like we don't quite believe there are any. How do you teach the wellness generation, the influencer youths, the zoomers, that in order to enjoy the comforts of liberal democracy, sometimes you have to fight for them? That you may have to make sacrifices.  We’ve not been to war. We’ve not experienced war. We don’t even want serious criminals going to boot camps, let alone us! There's a general feeling that wars are fought in faraway lands by somebody else, when evidence is mounting that one of these wars might one day soon be fought closer to home and the others might actually be us! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.