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

How about a pre-emptive attack against a country where populist polls show overwhelming support for invading your country, even if its current administration is against the idea?

How about joining in to defend one neighbour against another, aggressor neighbour—one which you have no personal hatred of, and share much history with—because of treaty obligations?

Would you be willing to fight to defend your country (and your countrymen) if it was being invaded by a country that the UN said was in the right to attack you, because your nation was considered a dictatorship needing to be put down?

Would you support defending yourself in a civil war, to protect your own countrymen from your own countrymen, on political lines you don't care about?

There are a lot more shades of grey than just "a just war against absolute evil" and "a banal war against meaningless change of leadership." This distinction isn't doing its job until it makes you upset to think about it. :)

The definition of 'Defence' can be streched and bend in various ways. You can be sure, that in the end almost every casus belli is in 'defense' of 'your country' or 'your countrymen' or 'your values'.

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

And Russia. Japan was the first industrial country to win a war with Russia, so there's some history there as well as with the rest of the Pacific.

I think other explanations (including geographically induced ways of interpreting the question) are rather more likely.

The number you present for Finland is highly misleading, by the way. We have around 6 % of Swedish-speaking Finns but they almost all speak Finnish, have very deep roots in Finland and certainly identify as Finns just as much as the rest of us -- and definitely not as Swedes. Swedish is even the second official language. As for the rest, I'm sure most of the citizens growing up in an Estonian, Russian, Somali etc. speaking household identify as Finns, too.

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.

edit: a word

The trouble arises when there are no more safe places, or when you along with millions of other people are desperately trying to get to said safer place (note the refugees currently in limbo in Turkey and elsewhere)

Where would you go when Western Europe is invaded? New Zealand? North Africa? The former is hard to get to, and any trouble befalling Europe could spread to the latter.

With Pax Americana coming to an end I think a lot of people who've had the luxury of forgetting that power and force are a thing will be cruelly reminded of it. It's hard to maintain a liberal democratic utopia when your neighbor's tanks are rolling through.

What are countries anyway, most of them don't align with cultural or language barriers.

Fuck patriotism, fuck flags, fuck any tribalism that powerful people are using to get others to do what they want.

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 more like a part of mandatory schooling (I have lived through both kinds - I did it with conscription and now it's a professional career like any other). Trouble with the law, dropping out of school etc here now means you can't become a soldier, just like you can't be a cop.

Please enlighten us then. If you don't have data or personal experience to share, do you have anything of value to contribute?

Immigrants to nations have fought for their adopted homes with ferocity in the past. It make sense, really - this is somebody who liked (loved, even) the country so much that they worked hard to get there, as opposed to someone who happened to be born there and so is there by default.

Also, one complication to consider in your example of the American in Germany is that US citizens who join foreign militaries risk losing their US citizenship. Of course, for some people that's not a problem (there are a lot of accidental US citizens), but for others and their families it could pose an issue.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal-considerati...

In the Army there are three types of people: psychopaths, brainwashed patriots, and scared kids. You're describing the first two, and the second one will become the third as soon as bullets start flying.

The Soviet Union was indeed considerably larger than Russia had been since the 17th century.

Operative word: relatively. Still I see more than 18th century (although maybe severity of conflicts vary). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe#19...

The Soviet Union lost a total of 26.6 million people, or 13.8% of their 1939 population. Germany suffered tremendously as well of course, with 5.7 million dead, or 8.2% of their 1939 population [0].

This is obviously not a contest, and I'm sure we can all agree that the suffering was tremendous on all sides. However, when it comes to the perception of war in Russia, the fact that the brunt of the Allied war effort in terms of casualties was borne out by the Soviet Union during WW2 (a fact often little known or recognized in Western countries) is especially relevant.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

If red isn't clearly good or bad, then don't use it. Use light to dark shades of the same color or white to color, etc.

Defending your country is - as far as I'm concerned - a very specific case of fighting for your country.

Also - defending a country (a more or less random historical entity with potentially largely different political and ethical views even among residents) shouldn't be conflated with defending your home.

For me the former is abstract and quite artificial. The latter is literally the place where I live.

I expect the answers is highly correlated with "is the next war your country involved defending from an aggressor or being the aggressor?".

Of course, Indonesia isn't likely to invade - it has enough trouble keeping itself together; all the decent economic bits of Australia are on the far fringes of the continent; and the US Navy would finally get the chance to engage in a maritime war, so they'd be in like Flynn to help out.

But I don't think there's much of a correlation. People forget that migration was much easier administratively before WW1. Austria-Hungary was a multicultural state with a dozen languages whose residents could live anywhere within the borders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary#/media/File:Au...

Similarly the British Empire had free movement of people within it.

As for Germany, by the way, the explanation is kind of simple. Contrary to popular belief, the German border cannot be effectively closed, and once someone has seeked for asylum, this needs to be checked. At the same time, the Dublin II regulation is extremely unfair and unsolidaric, it was designed for a few refugees here and there, and insisting on it would have tumbled Greece even further into crisis and alienated Italy. More importantly, however, the German constitution would have made rejecting refugees impossible, as it guarantees the right to asylum to someone who comes from a country in which a war rages. Moreover, rejecting them would also have violated Article 18 of the EU constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the 1951 Refugee Convention. This is constitutional law and ratified international law, so Merkel thought something like "Blimey, what do I do now? Break all these laws and loose in front of the Supreme Court or European Court of Human Rights , or risk my career while standing in for those fancy human rights values I've always held speeches about?"

How would not going to war allow wealthy people to hold on to their wealth? That's a head scratcher, too.

And remind me, what are a lot of those immigrants fleeing from? Who was in favour of fucking up the already fucked up Middle East plenty more, for example? Who set the stage for ISIS? Wasn't it a nation riled up into a frenzy, with a "shared identity" pouring out every nook and cranny?

For instance for Germany (and maybe Austria?) major factor could be aversion to nationalism?

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