A World Drifting Toward War? Gen Z Makes The Case Against The Draft

-OpEd-

BERLIN — A teenager stands in a school cafeteria. Across from him is a young woman in a U.S. Army uniform, and on the table between them are promotional items bearing the Army logo. It looks like a recruitment event. “Well, I hope you win,” the teenager says. “Aren’t you American?” the soldier replies, in a gentle voice, adding “so you’re on our side, right?” Turning away, he flashes a sheepish teenage grin and replies, his mind apparently already elsewhere: “Don’t involve me in this drama.”

The teenager calls himself Rein Beach on TikTok and usually talks about queerness and pop culture. His video with the soldier, which is only a few seconds long, has become a viral hit, with nearly 6 million people watching. I was one of them.

I actually saw it just after reading about a decision by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice: A Ukrainian man can be extradited to his homeland, even if he refuses military service and fears being drafted into the army. The court based its reasoning on German law, suggesting that if Germany were attacked in violation of international law, it might not be out of the question for Germans to be forced into service too. Even if Article 4 of Germany’s Basic Law says otherwise.

This, to be clear, is not an article about war: It’s about the draft. About what that does to young people, and about the possibility that “not my drama” might no longer be an option.

Logic of war

Conscientious objection is a clunky and outdated term. I was born in Berlin in the late 1990s. None of my friends ever use this term. We have to pause to remember what it even means. And in doing so, we’re met with snide laughter, people calling us weak. The nicer ones call us idealists. As if previous generations were just kidding when they said they’d leave us a world built on peace. As if the only real world is made of blood, dirt, steel and war, and any treaty is just a pause before the next inevitable blow.

The logic of war presents itself as being above ideology, as nature’s law: every man for himself, survival of the fittest. Anyone who proposes alternatives to it is treated like someone who wants the sun to rise in the west.

If the drama has a good reason, then you don’t get to sit this one out.

Even the laws meant to prevent war are full of that logic. The court ruling I mentioned, from January, basically said: if your country is fighting a righteous war, we won’t stop country officials from drafting you to fight — and therefore guarantee the right to conscientious objection. If the drama has a good reason, then you don’t get to sit this one out.

The court even writes that it’s “not unthinkable, even under German constitutional law, that conscripts in extraordinary circumstances could be prevented from refusing military service on grounds of conscience.” They say “overriding duties of loyalty” of the individual could ensure that they must waive their fundamental right to conscientious objection.

A master from Russia

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, defense has become a national desire. Calls for larger defense budgets, bigger arsenals, more troops: You can hear the fear in them. And that fear is real. It’s a genuine fear that everyone who wants to participate in the debate about this war must take into account. It must neither be downplayed nor carelessly fueled.

But sometimes there’s more than fear. Sometimes the war, which the Russians started and could end at any moment, seems to override something. “This current, clear line between good and evil lets Germans finally be ‘on the right side of history,‘” as Andreas Wirsching of the University of Munich wrote in Die Zeit shortly after the invasion.

He asks, in reference to Paul Celan’s poem “Deathfugue”: “Is death no longer a master from Germany? Has it finally moved on?” If you’ve been following the debate, you’ll notice how correct Wirsching’s analysis still is. The telltale word “again” creeps into headlines and speeches: We must become war-ready again. Germany must lead again. Again, but this time for the right reasons.

Shoot or flee?

Comparisons between Russia’s current president, Vladimir Putin, and Germany’s former dictator, Adolf Hitler, are now part of collective standard vocabulary. Critics of arms deliveries to Ukraine are accused of appeasement. NATO is the alliance of the good guys. Putin is leading a war of destruction. Monuments to Red Army soldiers who once liberated Europe are under fire, sometimes literally. Death has moved on. It is now a master from Russia.

It’s almost become its own genre these days. Public figures, usually men who consider themselves progressive, muse publicly about whether they’d fight for Germany, for Europe, for democracy — or all three.

Most of the time, the answer is yes. Like Campino, the lead singer of Die Toten Hosen. Or Economy Minister Robert Habeck. Or writer Artur Weigandt, who said in Die Zeit that he would shoot if necessary to defend freedom. But Weigandt also argues that everyone should have the right to flee. That is important. Because even if we don’t all see war the same way, we can still agree it should never be compulsory.

Inside a glass box

Sometimes I catch myself asking the question: Would you fight if Germany were attacked? I ask friends, coworkers —usually when the fun topics have run out and the wine has sunk in. Hardly anyone says yes without hesitation. A few say no. Most grimace like they’ve just done a hundred crunches and say something like: I don’t know, maybe, only if there’s really no other way.

But the court finds it “not inconceivable” that one day there will be no other way. We’re all in our 20s, healthy, able-bodied — not uninteresting for military deployment.

When I picture the men close to me wearing olive-green uniforms, it feels like I’m having a nightmare from inside a glass box. Because the thought of losing one of them is beyond my comprehension, my consciousness drifts into lighter questions. Would their personalities change? Would they still make me laugh until I cry? Would the musician still write songs? Would the handball player still show up to practice? Would they still argue about soccer? Argue at all?

When I found silverfish in our apartment last fall, I bought poison traps. My partner made me return them and order more humane ones instead. Could anyone really force him to shoot another human being? Would he still be himself afterward?

Si vis pacem, para pacem

When I talk about these fears, people try to calm me by saying the arms buildup is meant to prevent all this. It’s called deterrence: Si vis pacem, para bellum — if you want peace, prepare for war. But maybe we should try something else. Maybe if we want peace, we should prepare for peace.

This isn’t some wild new idea. You could even call it the forgotten core of postwar Germany’s identity. Last year, on Liberation Day, lawyer and columnist Heribert Prantl described the German Basic Law as a “guide to peacemaking.” In a column in Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, he wrote: “The will to serve world peace was enshrined in the preamble as a guiding principle. But unlike the rule of law or the welfare state, it was never developed. It remained dormant. Politicians neglected it, and the Constitutional Court looked the other way.”

And with that, they neglected the legacy of the wartime generation.

Was it all for nothing?

In June 1945, the United Nations released a short documentary about its founding conference. It’s a grainy black-and-white film, the image, a bit shaky. Men in suits sit around big tables. Women click away on typewriters. Occasionally, American flags flutter into the frame. It’s San Francisco. A graphic explains the structure: the General Assembly, Security Council and International Court of Justice. Then the vote: “We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.” Applause.

The speaker concludes: “This Charter shows the way.” Then all the flags rise together. “But whether the world moves in that direction depends ultimately on the vigilance and sovereign will of the peoples of the world.”

What peace order is the West talking about, exactly?

It makes no sense that the very idea of a global peace framework, something built to safeguard all nations, should fall apart the moment one country invades another. That would mean the idea had failed long before Feb. 24, 2022.

Many of the world’s 194 countries are still at war, or have been. Many have survived invasions and atrocities, some already long forgotten. And when they look at our debates today, some shake their heads and ask: What peace order is the West talking about, exactly? From the perspective of Mali, Yemen, Congo, Afghanistan, Vietnam or Burkina Faso, this so-called breach of a rules-based order feels like a Western fiction.

The truth is, the goal of peace is worth clinging to precisely because we keep failing at it. That’s why we must keep working toward a peaceful international community, even though it is neither peaceful nor much of a community right now. Giving up on the idea just because it hasn’t been realized yet: That is truly fatal naivety.

I have no war to win

There are countless ideas about how to share the world peacefully. But lately I feel like I can’t say any of them out loud without being mocked. A society where teachers teach dialogue, where intellectuals write about peace, where science, art and business serve the public good? Where neighbors know each other, and because of that, the idea of picking up weapons becomes more and more absurd with each generation? Laughable, apparently. A failure. After all, it didn’t stop Russia from invading Ukraine.

But I’d like to ask: Was it all for nothing? And I’d like to answer: It didn’t stop the Iraq War either. But you kept going. I remember. I was a child then, but I was there. I learned peace from you, in daycare, in school, at university. You taught me to listen, to hold multiple truths at once, to tolerate what I don’t understand. You taught me that every person is a human being. We believed that together, once.

Our responsibility to work for peace didn’t vanish the day Putin sent in the tanks.

I’m certain Putin has no will for peace, he never had one. But I see no reason why I should give mine up. Our responsibility to work for peace didn’t vanish the day he sent in the tanks. I want to see peace efforts. And — this part has gone out of fashion — it is those in power who bear the brunt of this responsibility. I’m not shirking responsibility. I’m just putting it in the right place: If they fail to stop war, we’re the ones left to fight it.

When French President Emmanuel Macron talks about sending troops to Ukraine, he knows he won’t be going.

I want my nightmare of seeing friends in uniform to remain a nightmare. I don’t have a war to win. I don’t want leaders playing coy about whether we might be sent into one, or the courts deciding it’s “not unthinkable.” I don’t want us to be attacked. But I also don’t want the fear of being sent to die to be the only thing that keeps that from happening.

The peoples of the world once made a promise: to protect future generations from the scourge of war. My generation believed them. We let go of war. We became soft because we were told the hard times were over. We learned peace. I don’t want our children to have to start all over again.