WerteInitiative e.V. – jüdisch-deutsche Positionen promotes the values-based safeguarding of the free democratic basic order (Freiheitlich-Demokratische Grundordnung, FDGO). For us as Jews, too, the FDGO is the non-negotiable basis of how society lives together.
Defending a free and democratic society has many facets. Defence against external threats requires a well-trained, well-equipped Bundeswehr that acts in an ethically and morally sound manner. Defence from within rests on a strong awareness of values and on cohesion within society. From values, the legislature must create laws, and the judiciary and the executive must implement them responsibly.
Against this background, we take a positive view of the idea that young people – men and women alike – should devote a phase of their lives to the service of society on a mandatory basis. Whether military service or community service (alternative service), its introduction would have to form part of a larger package. Ideally, community service could also apply to residents without German citizenship.
Elio Adler, Chairman of the WerteInitiative, comments: “For the Bundeswehr it would be important to renovate itself wherever there are problems with right-wing extremist tendencies, for example. Whether military or alternative service, those called up should receive a subject such as ‘European civics’ in order to counteract all tendencies hostile to the FDGO. This should convey an appealing mixture of history, ethics, social studies, religious studies, a culture of debate, politics and so on. The values of the FDGO should be experienced there directly as relevant to everyday life.”
Reintroducing conscription, with a low-threshold option of performing alternative service, would have two further advantages alongside the obvious one of enlarging the Bundeswehr: on the one hand it would attract potential fixed-term and career soldiers as well as applicants for the emergency services, and on the other it would foster a European-German sense of identity.
On the accusation that this amounts to state-prescribed ideological instruction, Adler says: “NO society can hold together without a culture that binds it. At Land level this is meant to happen at school. At federal level, the state could use this phase in a young person’s life to communicate how living together is actually intended to work. There is nothing negative about that; it serves a peaceful future in Germany, Europe and the world.”
