Increase the effectiveness of both your country’s government and its military with this one surprising law!

Background:

Militaries generally have physical fitness requirements and a maximum age cutoff for enlistees.

The issue:

Unfortunately, in most countries, these standards completely exclude government officials from boots-on-the-ground participation in any military operations.

This is unfair to those officials: they performed the diplomatic and logistical preparation for war, yet are prevented from obtaining direct personal experience with its outcome.

Proposal:

The proposal is simple: a “high-ranking government official” waiver that would allow an individual to enlist in the military and serve in a combat area even if they would normally be disqualified (e.g. due to being “too old,” having flat feet, being unable to pass boot camp, etc.).

Since these not-meeting-standards individuals could be a liability as far as actual military effectiveness is concerned, there could be a few restrictions on these “high-ranking official” waivers:

  • The waivers would only be issued to top government officials.
  • Only a small number of waivers would be issued. A lottery could be instituted in order to select from the eligible candidates.
  • The tour of duty could be limited, perhaps to a year or less.
1-military-conscription-in-high-officials
Fig. 1: Although highly-ranked government officials are, on average, too old to be eligible for military positions in most countries, this special exemption would allow them to serve anyway.

This could have the following additional benefits as well:

  • Increases the ability of these officials to identify wasteful spending in geographical regions that would normally have minimal oversight due to their remoteness.
  • In countries with less stable governments, integration of civilian legislators with the armed forces might reduce the chance of a military coup. (Or possibly facilitate it, Julius Caesar style.)

PROS: Helps ensure synchronization between a country’s government and its associated military.

CONS: May be disruptive to lawmaking; unclear how international diplomacy would be impacted if a crucial high-ranking official could be suddenly whisked off to a foreign war.