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Stevenson’s army, February 12

Trump targets:

– NATO and foreign aid — and he has allies

– CISA and cyber

– Insufficiently loyal officials — they even have a Feb 19-20 “boot camp” 

– Ecuador wants to mimic El Salvador

– Academics say that’s the wrong way to go

NYT has a revealing article on Ukraine troop problems. I was struck by these facts:

The bill on mobilization has passed a first reading in Ukraine’s Parliament. It would lower the conscription age to 25 from 27 and stiffen penalties on draft dodgers.

Ukraine currently drafts men between the ages of 27 and 60. Under martial law, all men 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving the country, lest a decision be taken to draft them.

Men with three or more children are exempted, but men with three children or fewer who volunteered, or whose families expanded as they served, have not been permitted to leave the military.

Lowering the draft age, for example, would bring more lithe, healthy soldiers to the fight but would pose long-term risks for sustaining Ukraine’s population, given the country’s demographics.

As in most former Soviet states, Ukraine has a small generation of 20-year-olds because birthrates plummeted during the deep economic depression of the 1990s. Because of this demographic trough, there are now three times as many men in their 40s as in their 20s in Ukraine.

Drafting more men in their 20s, given the likely battle casualties, would risk reducing the number of births in this small generation of Ukrainians, resulting in declines of draft- and working-age men decades from now and endangering the country’s future security and economy.

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My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).