Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

brilliantmaps.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 265 posts

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

#141

Post by arethuza »

alkonaut wrote: post #112
keganunderwood wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how this is possible outside of science fiction but I wonder how popular military service would be on a historical timeline, all else being equal but the variables being we turn on or off a livable basic income and free of cost health care (like medicare) for all. Would people still be eager to join the US military?

The military as a refuge for those who would otherwise have a hard time finding work/education/healthcare etc is probably a US phenomenon - and the US military probably would be less attractive if more progressive politics meant better conditions for all. In countries with pro armies outside the US I believe it's more like any other job such as a policeman. In countries with conscription it's not even a job, it's mor…

"it's more like any other job such as a policeman"

I don't know what its like now but in the 80s/90s the people I knew who were in the UK forces were either from very posh backgrounds if they were officers (particularly Guards regiments in the army) or from pretty humble backgrounds for other ranks.

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

#142

Post by toxik »

dom0 wrote: post #40
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,…

Right, these percentages show essentially the marginalized likelihood of the question's interpretation and its response. That is to say, it is the weighted sum of the probability of wanting to fight an aggressive/defensive war, weighted by the probability of that interpretation.

What I found interesting is that Sweden, which has had peace for over 200 years, has a really high percentage.

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

#144

Post by hjrnunes »

hjrnunes wrote: post #20
ddnb wrote: post #3

Belgian here, as a resident of one of the bottom 3 countries I have to say I thought about this question myself a few times in the past. Even though I would never join the army to fight wars, should an occupation come I would do everything in my power to resist and sabotage. So to this question I would have to answer 'no' even though that doesn't mean I'd give up on my country.

So you wouldn't risk your life but you would risk your family's, friend's and colleagues instead?

To clarify - sabotage implies real risks to everyone around you, because it's hard to find the saboteur and it normally entices collective punishment.

I find it difficult to understand why one wouldn't want to join a fighting force to "fight wars", but would be happy in operating clandestinely.

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

#145

Post by markvdb »

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…

> The persistent glorification of Russia's role in WW2 (although historically justified)

Nazi Germany lost WWII largely because of the USSR indeed. That does not justify glorification of the USSR. It justifies celebrating liberation from nazism only.

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

#146

Post by aqsalose »

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…

Finland participated in the WW2, moreover, also on the side that lost the war.

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

#147

Post by nielsole »

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…

You might think of Latvia as a counter argument (41%) but keep in mind that the threat is Russia and only 62% of the population is Latvian. It would be nice to know if they narrowed down what "their" country is (Russia or Latvia). Just because you live in a country doesn't mean you identify with it as "your" country. Assuming that Russians all said no (assuming Latvia was meant) this makes 66% of the Latvians willing to go to war. This is far closer in line with other countries in close proximity to Russia.

For comparison: Ukraine has 77% Ukrainians Finland has 89% Fins

I couldn't find ethnic information by age group or how the question was exactly posed and who exactly was interviewed. Depending on each factor the results of this study might be heavily skewed for Latvia.

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

#148

Post by vilmosi »

youngtaff wrote: post #143

Poor choice of colours in that map… Red generally == bad, and in this map lower percentage == red, there for a lower percentage willing to fight is bad?

This. I was super confused for a second because Germany was dark red.

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

#149

Post by TeMPOraL »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #117
kbody wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most probably there's a big difference between fighting offensively or defensively. Would be really interesting to see 2 different questions.

And fighting 'defensively' also has a large range. Most recent wars involving western nations would probably be categorised (at least by them) as defensive whereas I would disagree. There's a huge difference between fighting because your country has been invaded (e.g. troops on the ground, trying to overthrow your government, killing civilians) and fighting because a country has dangerous weapons they could theoretic…

Yeah. I think the interesting split would be between defending your own soil vs. invading another country (for whatever reason).

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

#150

Post by maze-le »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #113
majewsky wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More data: https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/ I would not want to draw a firm conclusion from this, though. It says that "in Europe the second half of the 20th century was extraordinarily peaceful", but that particular graph only counts wars between nations, not civil wars, guerilla wars and terrorism. There's a lot of data in that page, though, so I can't really compress it into a HN comment.

Thanks, there is quite a bit of info with great visualizations. It seems 1751-1800 was a relative minimum of years of wars.

Well, the wars in this time may be fewer by number, but not by impact. In this time period, the first truly global conflict was fought. The "Seven Years' War" (1756–1763) was a war between european colonial powers over maritime and colonial hegemony. Some historians call it the "true first world war", because battles took place on all colonial and native frontiers of the participating parties.

This was truly a change of paradigm, regarding the scale of conflicts, not unlike the real first world war.

Also, the two wars that really changed the world (on a ideological level) took place in this time: The American war of independence and the French revolution.

Post reply on HN