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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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I don't understand why people are so keen to forget that Korea and Vietnam were both very much in the atomic age. I can understand people in the 50s thinking nukes would be the end of war, but we're surely free of such illusions? At best they're the end of world wars. Maybe.

Being generous you could place the end of mandatory military service and the West's choice to rely on professionals in the 60s, which is less than a century ago and did not result in an end of conscription laws being on the books. If it reverted it wouldn't be the first time something like that happens.

I wouldn't exactly take it for gospel that you'll never be handed a rifle, not when you can lawfully be handed one right now on a whim of "national security".

Korea and Vietnam were not wars of national defense for the US, USSR, and China. My point is that nukes are probably sufficient to deter other powers from launching major attacks on your own territory, not that they are sufficient to put an end to all forms of war.

Also, I phrased my comment poorly. I was not trying to say that NATO does not or will not use conscription. Clearly, some NATO members already use conscription right now. I was trying to say that NATO, insofar as it actually is a defensive alliance, does not actually need to use conscription. But to some extent it uses conscription anyway.

That said, maybe I'm wrong. I do not think that NATO would abandon, say, Finland or Poland to a Russian invasion out of fear of nuclear war - since this would mean the end of NATO as a viable alliance. But certainly a country would prefer to be able to fight off an invasion in the first place, rather than just relying on waiting for a NATO counterattack to liberate it at some point later.