The Russian bear is growling again. From the Baltics to the Black Sea, Europe’s nerves are taut and Germany, long content in its post-war pacifist cocoon, is once more facing the cold wind of geopolitics. Friedrich Merz and his center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) have sensed the shift and seized upon it, calling for a massive expansion of the Bundeswehr from its current 182,000 service members to 260,000. The proposal has ignited debate not because Germany wants to strengthen its army, few now argue against that, but because of the way Merz wants to do it... through a lottery.
It’s a plan both audacious and oddly old-fashioned, as if pulled from a dusty chapter of history. Rather than reinstating traditional conscription, Merz wants to fill the ranks by chance; drawing names like numbers in a national raffle, only the “winners” would be drafted into military service.
One can almost hear the sharp intake of breath from both the young and the old. For the younger generation, raised in an era of Erasmus exchanges and climate marches, the idea of being pulled into uniform feels alien, even absurd. For the older generations—those who remember West Germany’s conscription or, more hauntingly, the spectre of what military duty once meant in the 20th century, this lottery has the ring of déjà vu.
And yet, beneath the shock and the symbolism, there lies an uncomfortable truth: Germany’s army is no longer fit for purpose. Equipment shortages, outdated technology, bureaucratic tangles, year after year, reports pile up like the rusting hardware they describe. The Bundeswehr has become a force more symbolic than strategic, a paper tiger under the NATO banner. Even Defence Minister Boris Pistorius admits the situation is dire. In that sense, Merz’s call to rebuild isn’t wrong. But it’s the method that turns heads and stomachs.
A lottery draft sounds democratic on the surface. Everyone has the same odds, everyone shares the burden. It avoids the controversies of a mandatory draft that would force every young man or woman into service regardless of aptitude or conviction. Yet there’s something deeply unsettling about reducing the question of national defence to the spin of a wheel. Citizenship becomes a game of luck, and duty a matter of chance.
What’s more, a lottery draft assumes that randomness is fairness. But is it? Those drawn might come from any background, students, apprentices, single parents, young professionals, people suddenly told to drop their lives for an indefinite “service to the nation.” And while Merz may envision a modern, flexible Bundeswehr, this form of selection risks reproducing the same inequities that conscription once carried. The privileged will always find ways to sidestep service—through health exemptions, educational deferments, or simply influence. The unlucky, often from less connected circles, will shoulder the load.
There’s a deeper irony here. Germany, the country that swore “Nie wieder” (“Never again”) to militarism after the horrors of two world wars, now debates not whether to expand its army, but how best to staff it. That shift speaks volumes about Europe’s changing security climate. Putin’s war in Ukraine has upended decades of comfortable assumptions about peace and diplomacy. The age of disarmament idealism is over. The tanks are rolling again on the continent, and every European capital is scrambling to respond.
Still, Germany’s relationship with its army is uniquely fraught. Unlike France or Britain, whose military traditions survived the 20th century intact, Germany’s identity as a military power was shattered and rebuilt only under NATO supervision. Service in the Bundeswehr has long been regarded with ambivalence, necessary, perhaps, but not something to be proud of. The idea of soldiers marching again under the German flag makes many uneasy, and rightly so.
Merz’s lottery proposal touches that raw nerve. It feels both too casual and too symbolic, a bureaucratic attempt to reconcile guilt with necessity. “If everyone might serve, then no one is truly forced,” the thinking seems to go. But defence policy cannot be built on psychological compromises. The question isn’t who might serve, it’s what Germany wants its army to be.
If the goal is deterrence and readiness, the answer lies not in randomness but in reform. Professional soldiers, better pay, modern equipment, and clear purpose. A voluntary force that attracts through pride and professionalism, not through obligation disguised as chance. In short, a Bundeswehr that people choose to join, not one they win their way into.
Besides, what message does a lottery draft send to young Germans? That defence is a chore best assigned by luck? That national duty is a matter of statistical probability? Such an approach trivializes what should be a sober commitment. Military service, especially in a democracy, isn’t something that happens to citizens; it’s something citizens decide to do, out of conviction or responsibility.
And yet, one must admit, Merz is tapping into a wider unease. The feeling that Germany is unprepared, that Europe is vulnerable, that the world is entering a darker chapter. His plan may be flawed, but his instincts are right: the Bundeswehr must be rebuilt. The question is whether Germany can do so without betraying the values it has spent decades cultivating, peace, restraint, and democracy grounded in choice.
To rebuild the army is not to rebuild the past. It’s to redefine what defence means in a modern, democratic Germany. A nation that leads by example, not by force. If Merz truly wants to make the Bundeswehr fit for service, he should start by restoring faith in its purpose, not by drawing names from a hat.
In the end, the real challenge for Germany is not how to conscript, but how to convince. How to make young people see defence not as a burden of fate but as part of their shared future. For a nation that has long tried to forget its wars, that may be the hardest battle of all.
The Russian bear may growl at Europe’s borders, but Germany must answer with clarity, not chance. Defence cannot be a lottery. It must be a choice, one that defines who the nation wants to be when history calls again.
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