Manifesto CoreForeign Policy and Defense
Foreign Policy Doctrine
Strategic independence rather than imperial ambition, guided by prudence, legitimate national interest and a strong presumption against unnecessary war.
Policy catalogueForeign Policy and Defense
Agreed PolicyMilitary Service and National Preparedness
A strong volunteer military, trained reserves and a physically capable population are preferred to routine universal peacetime conscription.
Position
Military service is honourable and necessary for defence, but ordinary armed forces should principally be composed of people who freely choose to serve.
Policy
- Maintain professional and volunteer armed forces capable of credible territorial defence.
- Encourage service through serious training, social respect and appropriate conditions rather than routine coercion.
- Maintain a trained reserve and voluntary reserve training.
- Do not use universal peacetime conscription as the ordinary model.
- Permit temporary compulsory national-defence service in an extreme defensive emergency threatening national survival where genuinely necessary.
- Provide appropriate civilian national service for genuine conscientious objectors.
- Keep armed forces subject to moral and legal limits and reject manifestly unlawful orders.
- Strengthen school physical education with serious progressive fitness, swimming, first aid, navigation, outdoor competence and age-appropriate civil-defence skills, with reasonable medical and disability accommodations.
Implementation note
Implementation note
Catholic social teaching recognizes legitimate national defence while also recognizing conscientious objection and moral limits on the conduct of armed forces.
Manifesto basis
Search terms
- conscription
- military service
- national service
- reserves
- physical fitness
- schools
- civil defence
- conscientious objection
- draft
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Related positions
- DerivedForeign Policy and Defense
NATO
Restore Europe is sceptical of permanent dependence on NATO and favours greater national and European strategic independence.
- Manifesto CoreEducation, Culture and Public Life
Purpose of Education
Education should transmit civilization before attempting to transform it, with serious study of Christianity, history, classical civilization, the sciences and the arts.
- Manifesto CoreEconomy, Property, Finance and Work
Work
Work has dignity but is not the purpose of human existence. Economic progress should increase security, leisure and command over one's own life.
Every question in this catalogue carries a position. Entries marked Derived follow the direction of the manifesto without their implementation being fixed, and several name the legal or treaty change they would require. Positions are revised as the movement decides; the version and date above say which text you are reading.