A new “Unstatistik des Monats” analysis from the RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research criticises widely cited projections suggesting that Germany will be unable to reach its Bundeswehr personnel targets without reintroducing conscription. According to the authors, the NZZ’s conclusion that conscription will become “nearly unavoidable” by the end of the 2020s rests on a highly questionable extrapolation from a single year’s personnel increase.

Alternative calculation method they undertake suggest that Germany could actually achieve sought military expansion at the current growth rate. The underlying Bundeswehr statistics are not false; rather, one selectively chosen number was turned into an apparently deterministic forecast and then used to support the politically consequential claim that conscription has no realistic alternative.

Read the entire piece in Informationsdienst Wissenschaft.