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The future of war: Mercenaries or robots?

2024-04-12 22:34:58Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA BLOOMBERG
The future of war: Mercenaries or robots?
The future of war: Mercenaries or robots?

By Howard Chua-Eoan – Bloomberg

Even European countries far from Ukraine and Russia are becoming aware of the very real possibility of a war on the continent. A conflict that could force governments to conscript their citizens en masse to fight.

The debate over military service reignited when Kiev recently lowered the age of compulsory military service from 27 to 25. For countries that are closer to ongoing battles, military recruitment is of greater importance.

Analyst Lionel Loren says: “Denmark has widened the age group of recruitment for women, and even increased its duration. Norway is also following the same example. NATO's newest member, Sweden, brought it back in 2018."

However, he adds: "No one under the age of 45 in France has been forced to wear army uniforms or receive a weapon, including current President Emmanuel Macron." "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," wrote the Roman poet Horace, who died in 8 BC.

She will say: "It is a sweet and proper act to die for the motherland!".

But the horrors of the first two world wars hardly fool anyone in Britain, France, Germany and elsewhere. Likewise, Loren highlights two challenges: "One is demographic, in a continent where the average age is about 42 years old and where birth rates are declining."

Another, he says, is the lack of lure from military service, even when there's no war on the horizon. “Armies are trying to recruit young people into a career that seems to have more limitations than benefits and incentives. Then think about the secrecy of assignments, the lack of social media and the time spent away from home," he adds.

I wonder if Europe might have to return to a model from its medieval and Renaissance past: the mercenary armies that fought across the continent, whose leaders sometimes even founded great dynasties. The British hired Hessians from Germany to oppose the American Revolution.

The Pope's Swiss Guard was of mercenary origin. No, you might say, because the United Nations prohibits mercenary activity. It is true, but despite this they have existed and continue to exist. For this we take as an example the American company "Blackwater" in Iraq. Only now they call themselves private military contractors. They are more than bodyguards. Of course, among them is the Wagner Group, which advanced and expanded greatly, rebelled and was defeated in Russia. If the citizen is no longer willing to die for the country, the necessity can override even international laws.

Or maybe the time of robots has come? Drones are already part of the war between Ukraine and Russia. Will we see armies of androids like in the famous movie "Star Wars"? Polish visionary novelist Stanislaw Lem - who died in 2008 - described the outline of a book he imagined would be published in the future (2105 to be precise) entitled "Weapon Systems of the 21st Century".

It depicted an upside-down evolution where the ultimate weapon might not be bombs or missiles or even android soldiers. Rather, it will be billions of micro-worlds, behaving like ants, bees, or hive insects, spread throughout and acting as a whole to defeat enemies.

These "insects," as he called them, could even combine to explode apocalyptically if each carried a molecule or two of nuclear material. This is the kind of great, overwhelming army that we should really fear.


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