A piece in De Andere Krant reports that a 3 April letter from State Secretary for Defence Derk Boswijk lays out an explicit “escalation ladder” by which the Dutch armed forces could move from voluntary recruitment toward progressively more compulsory steps. In that official letter, Boswijk says Defence is building a scalable force, expects roughly 122,000 personnel to be needed in the longer run, and describes a model that can move from voluntary questionnaires and conversations to mandatory survey completion, mandatory interviews, mandatory selection and medical screening, and ultimately compulsory call up.

Boswijk’s letter says the Defence survey is already “a first step,” because it helps create a service model with a gradually more compulsory character between peacetime and wartime, even while stressing that the aim is to remain voluntary for as long as possible. De Andere Krant frames that as the quiet construction of the administrative and legal machinery for selective conscription later on.

“A first step has already been taken, and that is the Defence survey. The survey is the instrument that can be used to accelerate the intended growth and therefore to scale up more quickly. Whether voluntary or mandatory, it allows Defence to build a service model with a gradually more compulsory character between peacetime and wartime.”

Read the entire piece in De Andere Krant.