Lithuania is in the news. The country has decided to restore compulsory military service for young men as tensions in Ukraine continue to worry the government. Starting in September, some three-thousand men aged between nineteen and twenty-seven will be enlisted. They will serve for nine months. The national service will be reinstated for five years only. And so on. A number of other countries in the region must be planning similar moves. A military conscription wave is in the air. Eastern Europe is the region to watch. Once a cordon sanitaire, always a cordon sanitaire. As far as the countries of former Yugoslavia are concerned, it will take only a few years before they, too, join the wave. Besides, too many young men are out of jobs in the Balkans. Many of them are now looking for jobs abroad, which only adds to the misery. Three birds with one stone, no less.