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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

#101

Post by contingencies »

rmetzler wrote: post #41
draugadrotten wrote: post #27

Is the question "Will you fight a war for your Country?" even valid in today's Europe, with open borders and mass immigration of millions of non-citizens. Why would a German fight for the social construct "Germany", when his neighbour was given asylum on grounds of escaping military duty in his homeland?

As a German pacifist I feel like Germany is partly responsible for refugees fleeing wars as long as German companies sell weapons and whole plants for weapon fabrication.

Seconded by another German (though I've never lived there).

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

#102

Post by gkya »

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.

> the more cultural/social homogeneity the more willingness to fight a war for your country.

I guess the correlation is inverse, i.e. the more patriotic a people the less the diversities.

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

#104

Post by arethuza »

EugeneAZ wrote: post #66
StreamBright wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SMS Direct Democracy with the right of citizens to secede. And professional military, of course, like in the USA. You make war much rarer thereby.

Does having a professional military leads to fewer wars - the UK has had a preference for professional military for centuries and it didn't stop us invading a significant proportion of the world!

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

#105

Post by thinkfurther »

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…

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

The most close to the threat is being the threat, so I'm not disagreeing.

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

#106

Post by simo7 »

gkya wrote: post #102
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.

> the more cultural/social homogeneity the more willingness to fight a war for your country. I guess the correlation is inverse, i.e. the more patriotic a people the less the diversities.

Well correlation has not direction of causality, but I get your point.

Although not sure why you see it that way, seems easier to explain the other way around to me.

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

#107

Post by JPLeRouzic »

taway_1212 wrote: post #97
JPLeRouzic wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, I do not disput it. My point was about the countries as a whole, including civilians and by including the displaced people. And I did include them because you pointed at the amputation of territories, which is something that happened nearly 70 years after the WWII, so I felt I could talk about what happened in the ten years after the WWII. You know this point about displaced people strikes me because I a…

> Many years later I learned that the Allied discourse of "the good and the bad people" was an heavy (re) writing of history. I agree that that was heavily the case on the Eastern front (with the Allies doing heavy cover-ups for USSR genocides so that they are not associated with a "bad guy"), but how did that happen on the Western front?

That is what I point out in my previous replies. You can look also at:

* US (Roosevelt) planned for nearly destruction of after war Germany, fortunately Hoover stopped that policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_plans_for_German_indust...

* Living with 1200 calories per day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_in_occupied_Germany

* Another strange behavior is that Allied forces imposed to De Gaulle to "whitewash" its troops before entering Paris. I suppose it was a only trick to make it impossible for French troops to enter in Paris without having to refuse bluntly, but that shows that the demand of "having only white soldiers" was considered to be perfectly normal and acceptable by UK and US forces.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7984436.stm

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

#108

Post by dejv »

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.

Not really true: Czech republic have one of the most homogenous population in the world (95%, 97% if you count Slovaks which we used to share the country with) and still the the score is just 23%.

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

#109

Post by kofejnik »

bambax wrote: post #88
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…

Germany is closer to Russia than France, and yet less "willing" to go to war. Japan with 11% is really amazing, and yet it's near real threats with China and North Korea. It would seem, countries who remember what war is actually like, would rather not fight; that would explain the results of Japan, Germany, France, Spain, the UK. The only exception is Russia, who suffered immensely during WW2 and yet would apparentl…

Russian TV has operated in patriotic imperial brainwashing mode for the past 15 years (and their culture in general - for the last 300 years), so no surprise here.

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

#110

Post by dddw »

darklajid wrote: post #5

That's one of the rare moments where I feel that I can relate to my fellow countrymen - I'm German. Why would you 'fight a war for your country'? Given the way this is phrased that doesn't seem to talk about fighting in defense of one's country (I'd like to see the stats for that as well) unless my English as a foreign language skills fail me?

would you fight for the EU?
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