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Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country

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Re: Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country

#31

Post by StreamBright »

retox wrote: post #24
simo7 wrote: post #15

I think a strong pattern here is: the more cultural/social homogeneity the more willingness to fight a war for your country. See Italy, Spain, Belgium for instance: people from different area of those countries really feel belonging to different cultures. Contrari to the Nordic & Easter European ones. In Germany is more of a historical thing instead.

You've touched on one theory of why European governments are seemingly so in favour of mass immigration; a people with no common identity are much less willing to go to war for it. The theory goes that this is favourable for the wealthy euros in power because it lets them hold on to their wealth.

Unfortunately it is never the people who start wars. Politicians do. If you want to decrease the chance of your country going into war it would be an easy fix to introduce laws that mandates pro-war politicians to submit their family members to service to fight at the front in case of a war.

Re: Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country

#32

Post by Normal_gaussian »

othello wrote: post #14

The surprising fact here is that this can mostly be explained pretty well as the lessons of WW2 still being vivid in the memory of many countries...except that Russia suffered by far the most of any countries on the Western front, and still a majority there would fight a war for their own country. The persistent glorification of Russia's role in WW2 (although historically justified) might have something to do with it…

From the article

Since World War Two, Europe has been relatively peaceful with major exceptions of the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s and various political suppressions during the Cold War. However, the 19th century was also a relatively peaceful time for Europe that ended with the start of World War I.

So no, the vividity of the world wars is popular but unconvincing.

Re: Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country

#33

Post by pavement »

lwansbrough wrote: post #8

I'd like to see North America, anyone know if this information is available?

In North America, you would need to resolve responses down to state/province to see anything meaningful. Between the three countries, it would be difficult to understand how percentages translate to the overall population.

Re: Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country

#34

Post by ajuc »

gabipurcaru wrote: post #6

the red and blue colors suggest that less is worse. Why would that be the case? It seems like it should ideally be the opposite, if anything

> Why would that be the case?

If free societies don't want to defend - they are conquered by the oppressed societies, and cease to be free.

And it's not like in modern Europe there are no wars (Russia-Ukraine for one example), or aggressive dictatorships (Russia, Turkey, less agressive but 100% dictatorship Belarus, and a few more dictatorships in making, all of them using nationalism as the building block).

Re: Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country

#37

Post by vacri »

This seems like one of those questions that definitely can't be studied with a survey. The context of 'fighting for your country' differs quite a lot; there's a major difference between fighting a defensive war against a brutal opponent and fighting an irrelevant war on the other side of the world.

Look at the US, and how many soldiers signed up to "fight for their country" in the invasion of Iraq, a country that never threatened the US. Compare that against how many would sign up if the US mainland was actually attacked.

Likewise, if Russia threw caution to the wind and started marching through Europe again, I'd be surprised if only 18% of Germans would fight to defend their country. But if Germany were to invade an Iraq-a-like, I'd be surprised if as many as 18% would.

Re: Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country

#38

Post by 0xbear »

Understandable. Germany has experienced crushing, humiliating defeat not once, but twice in a hundred years, and the second time it was abundandtly clear that they were on the wrong side of history. No wonder the fightin' spirit hasn't recovered.

That said, when certain substances start hitting the fan, no one will ask you whether you want to fight. Read some WW2 memoirs: the shit was so horrific that even hardened patriots had serious second thoughts from time to time. I mean, imagine living in a trench for five years and watching your buddies die one by one. People get PTSD in as little as 6 months in conditions far less gruesome. Now imagine 10 times as much time in conditions that are easily 10x worse. It sometimes worries me that kids these days know nothing whatsoever about this. Those who don't know history are liable to repeat it.

Re: Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country

#39

Post by draugadrotten »

capex wrote: post #25

Having spent 9 years in the military, I can say with some confidence that even soldiers are not willing to fight a war. War is evil. No one looks forward to it (except the generals). But when its thrust upon you, you rise up to the occasion and defend your motherland.

Some European countries, like Sweden, now have 25% of residents with a motherland which is not the country they live in. Would an Afhan boy living in Sweden fight for Sweden, or would he just take a flight back home to his real motherland? Would an American living in Germany fight for Germany, or take the next flight home? I think we all know the answer, and therefore large parts of the people living on European soil will not fight anymore. They would just leave.

Re: Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country

#40

Post by dom0 »

kartan wrote: post #16

It looks like the closer you are to a thread, the most willing are you to fight. Being close to Russian is a good indicator on how much you are willing to go to war. So I agree with other comments, probably people that feels threatened read the question as "I'm willing to protect my country from an outside attacker". While people in "safer" places read it as "I'm willing to go to war with another country for some str…

> It looks like the closer you are to a thread, the most willing are you to fight.

I don't think its that simple. The question is "willing to fight a war". German people have learned that when Germany goes to war it is usually not for the best of the country. On the other hand, Germany had "the threat" next door for 40+ years and the willingness to defend was very high. So I think when you ask Germans this question, they will consider the question as if it were "Are you willing to fight an attack war?", not "... to defend your country".

Finland is probably exactly the other way around.

It should also be considered that central Europe has been a very stable place for some time, so somewhat similar reasons will probably apply to other countries as well; wars are not fought in the home countries of central Europeans any more; wars are in the east or south, so when a European country today starts a war, it's difficult to not consider it an attack war along at least one dimension.

Needless to say, "the aggressor in an attack war is practically always the bad guy" has pretty much become kind of a European core tenet.

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