Ed West doesn’t think many Europeans would, if the prospect of military action between Russia and the West was actualized, be willing to fight for the EU. I suspect it would be a moot point because the US would end up providing the lion’s share of the ‘Allied’ forces, but his sentiment seems about right.

Like the Bolsheviks who found the proletariat unwilling to fight for the brotherhood of industrial workers but eager to take up arms on behalf of mother Russia, the Brussels bureaucrats, to the extent that they could convince anyone to go to war, would probably have to do so by way of encouraging individual member countries to sell the conflict as threatening to the well-being of each said individual nation itself rather than to the polyglot organization they’re all members to.

Between 2005-2008, the WVS dichotomously queried respondents on whether or not they’d be willing to fight for their countries if, unfortunately, war became unavoidable. The percentages of participating EU countries (italicized) who said they would be, as well as the percentages for Russia and a few other select countries outside the Old Continent:

Three generations later, losing WWII still puts a damper on the warrior spirit.

The heart and soul of the European Union (figuratively, of course, as that particular body is soulless)–France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain–show relatively little enthusiasm for fighting for their own countries, let alone the EU.

They may not be militaristic, but the old vikings don’t look like self-hating ethno-masochists.

Fewer than two-thirds of Americans say they’d answer the call of duty. I wonder if the Navy becoming a floating brothel and the elevation of diversity as the military’s highest value have anything to do with that. Iraq and Afghanistan probably haven’t helped much, either. What a pity.