A Gallup poll in 2024 revealed that around a third of Europeans would be unwilling to fight if their own country were attacked. My own country, Italy, was at the bottom of the pack, with a whopping 78% saying they would refuse.
These figures reveal several things at once. Worryingly, they show the growing strength of far-right and far-left forces [and anyone rational who doesn’t want a suicidal war with a superpower with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal] openly sympathetic to Russia and susceptible to its propaganda demonising Europe’s rearmament.
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One way to toughen up populations is to put boots on the ground in Ukraine. For months, a European coalition of the willing has drawn up plans to deploy a “reassurance force” to Ukraine after a ceasefire. These discussions have not led anywhere because a truce is not in sight. Their aim was mainly political: to show European solidarity with Ukraine and encourage American engagement. But Ukraine is under no illusions about the fact that deploying a few thousand European soldiers far from the front line in a hypothetical post-ceasefire scenario would make no difference to its defence.
A European reassurance force would, then, do little for Ukraine. But deploying it now, before a hypothetical ceasefire, could benefit Europe, encouraging citizens to develop a mindset that would better prepare them for war. Yes, it would put European soldiers in harm’s way—any such move would infuriate the Kremlin—but the continent is already in a hybrid conflict, even if many refuse to recognise it. Were European soldiers to be stationed in Ukraine, it would bring reality closer to home [i.e. it would bring bodies in coffins home]. And perhaps a fraction of Ukraine’s courage, humility and creativity [and psychosis and hatred and acceptance of forced conscription and totalitarian dictatorship] could infect other European societies. European troops would not be put in harm’s way out of sheer generosity, but to help prepare for war—
These people are clinically insane.
The Ukrainians have been trying to drag Europe into this since day 1. I still remember how many people signed up for those “foreign legion” mercenary groups just to get a crack at the Russians. Now how many of those were directly being funded by NATO?