Why Sweden Brought Back the Draft
Seven years after abolishing mandatory military service, the country is now responding to “the security change in our neighborhood.”
In 2010, Sweden ended a 109-year-old national tradition by abolishing its military draft. At the time, the decision seemed like an obvious one; only 5,000 soldiers were being conscripted into the army—a 10-percent sliver of the mandatory enlistment in Sweden during the in Sweden’s paper of record at the time, effectively calling the move a belated acknowledgement of peacetime.
