In Europe’s new rush to rearm, the Italian government has also decided to cross a line that, until yesterday, seemed untouchable. Defence Minister Guido Crosetto has announced that he will present a bill to reintroduce a form of military service in Italy. The idea is of an initially voluntary model, meant to create a reserve of trained citizens who can be called up in case of crisis. But beyond the technical details, the real point is another: the boundary between civil society and military logic has been breached.
For almost twenty years that line had remained clear. With the suspension of compulsory conscription in 2005, the implicit message was simple: the State would have a professional army, but it would no longer systematically knock on the door of eighteen-year-olds. The defence of the homeland remained written in the Constitution, but it no longer passed through mass conscription.
Today the picture is changing. We are not yet seeing the return of compulsory conscription, but a direct relationship between young people and the uniform is being designed once again. It is no longer just a question of Defence budgets, NATO summits, missions abroad or percentages of GDP to be allocated to armaments. It is something that enters concretely into people’s lives: into study plans, work, family decisions.
This is the political and symbolic leap that matters. As long as people spoke of the “militarisation of society”, many could dismiss the expression as rhetorical excess: after all, there was no mass recruitment, no general call to arms. Today, with the idea of bringing young people back into the barracks, even if only on a voluntary basis, that militarisation stops being an abstract word. It becomes a possible experience, a path offered, encouraged, perhaps rewarded.
The government insists on the voluntary nature of the project. This is not an irrelevant detail, but it is not enough to be reassuring. In politics, words matter only up to a point. What really counts are the structures that are put in place. If the State creates a stable legal framework for the military training of thousands of young people, if it builds pathways, incentives, forms of recognition, that option becomes part of the landscape. It is no longer an exception; it becomes normality.
And normality, over time, can change its meaning. What is presented today as the choice of a few may, under the pressure of international crises or new patriotic rhetoric, turn into a kind of moral duty, if not a legal one. It is easy to imagine media campaigns in which “those who truly care about the country” are urged to do their service, and those who back out are viewed with suspicion.
There is another point, which in Italy we know well and which no one can pretend to forget. In the past, the conscription system was often deeply clientelistic. Having the right connections allowed the sons of the rich and powerful to avoid operational service and end up in “comfortable” units, in offices, in posts far from any real hardship. Those who were best protected were taken care of; the others went wherever there was a need, whether that meant the toughest barracks or the least desirable duties.
If conscription is brought back today, even in the form of a voluntary reserve, the question is inevitable: will it be different this time or not? Now that Europe is openly talking about “war at the gates”, will the children of politicians, managers, and even generals themselves do real service, with shifts, training, sacrifices? Or will we see yet another repetition of the script in which the real risks always fall on the same shoulders? A system that asks young people to prepare for war but systematically protects the children of the elite from the concrete consequences of that choice is a system that is born already delegitimised.
And then there is the most uncomfortable question, the one that almost no one wants to say out loud: is Italian society ready? Are young Italians ready? In recent decades a very clear message has been conveyed, explicitly or implicitly: study, travel, look for a job, get by as best you can in a precarious labour market, but war does not concern you directly. Now that same generation, often squeezed between impossible rents, low wages and constant uncertainty, is being asked to add to the list the willingness to put on a uniform and perhaps die in battle.
For an entire generation, conscription has been something their fathers and grandfathers talked about. Conflict, in common perception, was something distant, happening elsewhere, often filtered through talk shows and social media. The idea of personally having to wear a uniform was not part of the future imagined by the majority of young people.
The novelty lies precisely here: the government is reopening a door that was thought to be closed. It does so in the name of security, the need to “prepare for the worst”, and responsibility towards allies. But every time the boundary between civilian and military spheres is shifted, the price is not only economic. It is cultural, human, symbolic. It means telling a generation: war is not just a distant event; it is a scenario for which you, personally, may be called on to prepare.
The debate will inevitably be presented as technical. There will be discussions about the length of service, allowances, compatibility with university and work, the safeguards provided. All of this is important, of course. But if we stop at this level, we lose sight of the heart of the matter.
The heart of the matter is that the State is once again claiming something deeper than the mere payment of taxes and respect for the law. It is once again asking for, even if only potentially, time from people’s lives, physical availability, acceptance of a discipline and a hierarchy that, by definition, are not up for debate. It is putting back on the table the idea that citizenship may once again include training to kill and the risk of being killed.
One may be for or against it. One may think it is a necessary step in an increasingly unstable world, or a serious mistake that brings Europe even closer to a pre-war climate. But one thing is certain: that boundary which for years separated the daily lives of young Italians from the military world is no longer where we thought it was.
Once a boundary has been crossed, it ceases to be a limit and becomes a precedent. If today the idea of bringing young people back into the barracks, even just “for a few months and on a voluntary basis”, returns to public debate, tomorrow it will be easier to take a further step. The ground has been prepared.
For this reason, the government’s decision does not concern only those directly affected, not only those who are eighteen or will soon be. It concerns the very image Italy has of itself and its future. A country that gets used to the presence of war as a concrete possibility is a different country from one that, although part of military alliances, still sees peace as a practical horizon, not just a formula in official speeches.
From today, the militarisation of Italian society is no longer just a phrase suited to conferences. It is a process that enters people’s life stories, their paths, the choices of those who are beginning to build a future. And once this change of perspective has taken place, it is very difficult to reverse. A boundary that has been crossed is no longer a boundary. It is a new normality from which, whether we like it or not, we will have to start when we discuss what kind of society we want to become.
