(The following article is a reposting from eleven years ago from the office of the War Resisters' International at the Peace Pentagon in London - Seems appropriate to raise the bar for counter-recruitment in the time of Trump.)
español -
17 Jun 2014 / Sahar Vardi and Dola Nicholas Oluoch / War Resisters' International - The images of war, armed conflict and organized violence worldwide can take different forms, but the one thing they almost always have in common are the young men and women filling the lines of military and paramilitary organizations.
In both countries that still have conscription, and countries with professional militaries, governments, education systems, the militaries themselves and even privet companies and organizations, are all actively promote militaristic values, both to fill the ranks of armed forces, and to legitimize the use of organized violence socially.
In conscript societies, even though conscription is enforced by law, there are still great efforts to militarize youth. In Israel for example, much of the effort is concentrated in schools. Soldiers going in and out of classrooms explaining about units and positions, teachers being measured according to the enlistment rate of their students, principals promoting their schools by showing-off the high rate of combat soldiers or officers that graduated from the schools, and ministers of education that out-right declare that preparation for military service is one of the goals of the education system. According to a survey done by WRI in 32 countries (both with conscript and professional militaries), in 18 of them there’s an official collaboration between the ministry of education and the military, and in the majority of countries with no mandatory service, the military does overt recruitment in schools. But militarization of youth doesn’t start and end within the walls of education systems.
While more and more countries in the world abolish conscription and move to a professional army there are plenty of other, more and less official ways to militarize youth without laws forcing conscription.
22 June 2025 / Edward Hasbrouck / 
