No Will to Fight

One of COTTonLINE’s favorite sources - David P. Goldman - is a long-time columnist for the Asia Times, where he channels Spengler. Today he writes about the NATO foot-dragging President Trump criticized while meeting with them in Brussels.

Goldman points out that a recent poll shows relatively few Europeans say they would be willing to fight for their country “under any circumstances.”

At the bottom of the rankings were the Netherlands and Germany, at 16% and 18% respectively; at the top was Poland, with 48%. Outside of European NATO, 56% of Russians, 66% of Israelis, 44% of Americans and 74% of Finns said they were willing to fight.

If you don’t plan to fight, you don’t need weapons, and it is no surprise that Germany, with its budget surplus, can’t bring itself to vote for urgently-need funds for its military. Germany’s armed forces are in disrepair.

There is a reasonably close correspondence between the willingness of the Europeans to fight for their nations and their willingness to have children. If you care so little for your country that you will not defend it, you are likely to be too absorbed in hedonistic distraction to bother with children. Conversely, if there are to be no future generations, who will lay down his life to fight for them?

And that is what is wrong with the EU model, it downplays the idea of nationalism and puts up nothing in its place about which to care passionately. It has done too well its job of forestalling nationalist wars in Western Europe, basically by devaluing nationalism for most people.

Gemans fought and died in great numbers for Germany. Brits did the same for Britain. Fighting and dying for the amorphous gray, bureaucratic EU? It’s not happening, people don’t identify with it. It doesn’t feel like their “home team.”