Croatia, Denmark and others are reintroducing mandatory service. The effectiveness of that service will depend on what happens at the assessment stage.
Conscription, for much of the post-Cold War period, was a relic. Something that countries maintained on paper, or that was associated with the kind of mass mobilisation that modern warfare had made obsolete. Highly trained professional forces, the consensus held, were more effective than large conscript armies. Small and good beat big and mediocre.
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shaken that consensus. Not because it proved conscription superior to professional forces, but because it demonstrated the inadequacy of small professional armies in sustained, large-scale, high-intensity conflict. Wars of attrition require depth. Depth requires numbers. Numbers require, at some point, mandatory service.
The policy response across NATO has been rapid. Croatia passed a law in October 2025 reinstating compulsory military service, the first EU member state to formally reintroduce it since the end of the Cold War era suspensions. Denmark announced an expansion of its existing conscription model to include women and an increase in the number of draftees. Latvia reinstated its draft in January 2024. Several other NATO members are reviewing their legal frameworks with conscription reintroduction as a live option.
The critical question is not whether countries will bring back conscription. Several already have, and more will follow. The critical question is what they will do with it. And the honest answer, looking at most of the frameworks now being put in place, is: not enough.
Conscription without selection is an administrative exercise. It produces headcount. What it does not automatically produce is a force of people matched to roles that suit their capabilities, motivated by work that plays to their strengths, and deployed in ways that maximise the return on the state's training investment.
The countries that have got this right, Finland, Norway, Sweden, share a common feature: their conscription systems are built around structured assessment. They evaluate cognitive profile, physical capacity, psychological resilience, technical aptitude, and leadership potential. They use that data to place people into roles rather than simply filling roles with whoever arrives. The outcomes, in terms of retention, unit performance and reserve readiness, are measurably better.
Conscription is returning to Europe. The question is whether governments will treat it as a numbers exercise or an opportunity to build genuine, structured, assessable capability at scale. CTZN exists to support the latter: providing the assessment and capability frameworks that convert conscription into combat-ready force.
Work with CTZN
If this piece is relevant to a challenge you are working on, we would welcome a conversation.
Start the Conversation
