Russia - threadbanned users in OP

The question of whether there is a duty of the individual to fight for the State has been debated by philosophers and ethicists for some time. Suffice it to say that there is no set answer to the question, so let's say we'll go with 'individual right to choose' for the sake of it. Not that most people are thrilled about getting shot at in the first place, mind, I haven't met many who are, but 'not wanting to fight' is a slightly different question to 'duty to fight'.

There is far more to the question, though, than picking up a rifle and going to the front. Even the US makes such accommodations: I had a medic refused to carry a rifle (Part of his job is the protection of wounded). We found him a spot in a base hospital, and I got a different medic. And of course there are cases like Desmond Doss. There are a slew of things which Ukraine needs to get done in order to survive the war other than just fight or even go near the front lines, from stringing power lines knocked down by Russian strikes to water delivery to civilians in areas with outages. Whether the Ukrainian government is taking such factors into consideration, I'm not sure, but even working in a western Ukrainian farm would be helpful. And the country's not yet at a point that regular work has ceased: My civilian employer still has a large development studio for video games operating in Kyiv: The economy still needs to function in addition to the war being fought. Indeed, the economy needs to function for the war to be fought: The Ukrainians say that they have more theoretical domestic capacity to build weapons than they are using simply because they haven't the government revenue from taxes to spend on it. Refugees living in other countries are not contributing to that economic base.

There is also the note that whilst there can certainly be debate in third countries about ejecting those who are avoiding the fighting and sending them back to Ukraine, and I think most people would say that is not a course of action to go with, it's also worth noting that there was no requirement to accept them in the first place, and that was a choice which could have been made differently. I'm not sure if any nations set up any basic screening. "Are you a family with children?" "Is your home within 100km of the front line or in occupied territory? If you're a military aged male, are you the only child of the family?" That sort of thing. If a nation is hosting refugees from, say, Lviv right now, the question should be "why?" Or did all the nations just fill up their refugee quotas on a first come-first served basis?

Unlike the case of, say, Canada providing refuge for Americans avoiding the Vietnam War draft, there are very direct consequences to the outcome of the fight in Ukraine for European nations hosting refugees, and ultimately a nation needs to act in its own self-interest. The West is spending billions of dollars and Euro keeping Ukraine in the fight: Obviously it is perceived as being in European, American and a large part of Pacific Oceanic interests to have Ukraine exist as an independent country, or at least prevent Russia from being a successfully expansionist country either for its own sake or as an example for other nations. Why are we doing this at the same time as we are enabling the denial from the Ukrainians of one of the most critical resources that they have in order to achieve this: Their own personnel? The sooner that the Russians are defeated, the sooner the global economy can get back to normal, the sooner all the refugees currently being hosted can go home, and the sooner we can get back to spending money on things we want domestically instead, right?

There is no long line of people in the West lining up for various different reasons, but there is also a reason why Macron openly observed that having Western troops in Ukraine should not be ruled out. If the Ukrainians are not capable of doing so, then we'll have to do it. Honestly, there's a bit of real-politik involved. We had no problems going to help Kuwait, but Iraq didn't have strategic nuclear missiles. So, the overall safest course of action for the world as a whole is that Ukraine manages it with only its own manpower. By denying Ukraine that manpower, we are increasing the risk to our own nations both in terms of the human capital we are going to expend if they fail, the dollars/euros we are going to expend doing it, and possible larger risk of greater destruction over more places than we otherwise might have had to do.