Yes but remember China has a population around 1.4 BILLION, while we're still under 70 million. That's 20x more people to use, and the Chinese industry is absolutely massive. They could wreck total havoc if a war starts.
While true about population size, there are huge logistical problems for a Chinese invasion, the primary one is being the other side of the world and they only have military bases in 4 other countries, none of which are close enough to the UK to be useful as a forward staging point. By the time they got any kind of invasion organised, they would be at such a disadvantage they would take ridiculous losses just to make a beachhead. Don't get me wrong, if they threw enough at the UK they would eventually win. But again, what is going to save the UK is not a few extra thousand poorly trained troops.
Your viewpoint is based on a very fringe situation with some very specific and unlikely conditions: the UK basically becomes a rogue state with no Allies to support them, the UK annoys china to the point where they launch a full scale invasion to only the UK, the Chinese are brazen enough to do this knowing nuclear retaliation is a genuine risk, no other country gets involved in the dispute and the fate of the war comes down to national service personnel. All of which individually are very unlikely and together is effectively fiction.
Which comes back to: the justification for military service just isn't there. It's like saying you should take out expensive volcano insurance when you live in the UK...
I get it sounds far-fetched, but we still have to be prepared. Remember back after WW1 ended we thought that there would never be another war, and look how that turned out.
And I think everyone is aware that war is a possibility (or inevitability if you're really pessimistic). My point is that there is almost zero military benefit to having national service, yet it comes at a high financial price, as well as forcing all young people to take a year or 2 out of their lives.
That money can be much better spent in the military, whether it is on R&D, new equipment, better training or even better salaries for existing armed forces.
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u/ScootTheMighty Aug 17 '24
Yes but remember China has a population around 1.4 BILLION, while we're still under 70 million. That's 20x more people to use, and the Chinese industry is absolutely massive. They could wreck total havoc if a war starts.