Nato’s top military commander said the alliance is ‘ready to fight tonight’ amid fears over Russia
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-fight-war-russia-uk-nato-poll-b3065856.html
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
If I recall Ukraine had a similar polling, but that all changed when the Invasion happened for real.
An important distinction is wars fought abroad of dubious necessity versus a war of self-defense fought at home to protect family, friends, and property from a foreign invader.
Maybe Germany will try again. But, this time America would be on the side of the Nazis. That would fucking suck.
The U.S. may be an unreliable ally at the moment, but Germany gets far more out of free trade with cooperative neighbors in the EU than it ever could out of war.
The benefits of EU membership (along with the international arbitration mechanisms that modern treaties provide) are probably Europe’s strongest defense against war between its members.
Yeah, but America doesn’t care about that. And the AFD are essentially just being funded by American Nazi billionaires like Elon Musk.
You’re not wrong. But the actions of any state aren’t always taken in the interest of the people of that state. It’s actually quite often the opposite. Do you think America invaded Iran for the interest of American people? Capitalist influence and interest are far more helpful when looking at what actions a state will or will not take.
The UK is at the forefront of fascism. Further ahead than the US, without the muscle, in truth.
You mean Lowe, winner of 2026’s world’s most uncarismatic man award?
Yes he’s a nasty piece of work but he basically just serves to split the right-wing vote. I wouldn’t consider him a major political threat. Have you seen his propaganda videos, he clearly doesn’t have a clue what it’s actually like for people in this country. It goes on about patriotism and religion, two things that no one in this country cares about.
this chain went through my thought processes while looking at this.
That makes perfect sense. From among all possible ways to “fight for your country”, your country actually being invaded is the most legitimate.
So of course being invaded is going to result in more war readiness and invading someone else is going to result in less war readiness than the poll that tries to answer both questions at the same time.
“Fighting for the UK” is statistically quite likely going to involve something evil like contributing to the genocide of Palestinians or massacring refugees at the border or invading Iran under false pretenses because the US asked them to, so being unwilling to “fight for the UK” makes sense.
From among all possible ways to “fight for your country”, your country actually being invaded is the
mostonly legitimate.Fixed that for you.
“Fighting for the UK” is statistically quite likely going to involve something evil like contributing to the genocide of Palestinians or massacring refugees at the border or invading Iran under false pretenses because the US asked them to, so being unwilling to “fight for the UK” makes sense.
Spot on.
Defensive alliances are legitimate. If Russia invaded Lithuania, it would be legitimate for EU and NATO member states to help Lithuania out.
Eh… Like America after Pearl Harbour, they weren’t being invaded but it’s hard to argue that wasn’t a legitimate fight.
The sovereign nation of Hawaii was violently overthrown by US colonists just 48 years before Pearl Harbor. Japanese intentions weren’t noble, but destroying US military engaging in the colonial occupation of Hawaii was based.
It’s hard to call any war by the US legitimate, even defensive ones, because they are defense of stolen land taken from people the US committed genocide on. Japan made no indication of targeting US civilians, they purely went for dismantling the colonial occupation forces.
US civilians were not under threat, the US colonial empire was.
US victory paved the way for US-backed fascist rule over tens of millions of people in South America, as well as US killing millions of innocent people directly or by proxy in the Americas, South-east Asia, and elsewhere, not to mention the exploitation and displacement of native Hawai’ians.
So no, I don’t think the US cause was particularly legitimate. And before you talk about killing nazis - the US specifically did not want to go to war to kill nazis. There was a lot of nazi sympathy in the US, and after the war the US would go on to rescue many nazis through operation paperclip as well as advocate for the return of fascists to positions of power in Germany and Japan. The US went to war because their colonial empire was under threat, and that is hardly a legitimate reason.
Have to say, I was not expecting a hot take of ‘US shouldn’t have entered the world wars’ today.
US killing millions of innocent people directly or by proxy in the <…> South-east Asia
Wow. As a SE Asian, yeah, fuck off with that bullshit. Fucking Japan committing atrocities on a scale comparable with the Holocaust, a fact the Western world largely forgets because it wasn’t white people being fucked, and your concern is American ‘colonialism’.
The US could have helped Korea when they got invaded, or China when they got invaded, or south-east Asia when they got invaded, or Poland when they got invaded, or France when they got invaded. All of those would have meant the US entering WW2, and all of them would have been pretty righteous. (Though, to be consistent, it would have meant fighting Britain and France because of their colonial atrocities, as well as not committing atrocities within their own borders).
But instead the US was happy to let the fascists do their thing until the fascists attacked their colonial outpost.
yes yes US is a Colonial State with it’s entire history a never ending moment of crimes against humanity. This is not news to anyone nor one folks are going to dispute.
But despite all that the US and other Allied Powers where the unarguably lesser evil. Or do you think that a world where the Axis Powers won would have the spread of Socialism, The victory of Decolonization, Civil Rights Movement bringing about Universal Suffrage, The creation of Human Rights as an international Law, etc.
Japan attacking pearl harbor to free the oppressed people of hawaii is certainly a take.
Japanese intentions weren’t noble
?
Yeah replacing one colonial power with another colonial power isn’t “based”, it’s war and death. The only reason Imperial Japan didn’t target civilians is because they were too busy being shot to pieces by the US military.
If the IJN managed to seize control of Hawaii, the outcome would not have been some glorious people’s revolution where the natives managed to achieve self-determination. The outcome would have been the same as what happened to other regions that Imperial Japan conquered successfully: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre
Unless you mean “based” as in mass rape and murder of the natives. Based on your comment, that appears your preferred outcome.
You wouldn’t have to respond to the obvious if the American was even partially aware of their own imperialistic indoctrination, which is oh so subtle under exceptionalism /s
I dunno Ukraine’s press ganging of random men on the street to send them to die on the front lines doesn’t really scream to me like everyone was up for fighting.
Yup. Especially Russian-speaking Ukrainians who previously didn’t identify themselves much with Ukraine (the country, its culture and language) pivoted hard towards Ukrainian nationalism virtually over night (to the point of even stopping to speak Russian) the moment Russian tanks crossed the border.
While it’s practically impossible for Russia to invade the UK with troops, I would presume that missile and drone attacks (which, given the Russian modus operandi, would heavily focus on civilian targets from day one) would result in a dramatic shift in public opinion.
modus operanditactics*
FTFY (:
Even in full mobilization during wartime, you would usually expect 10% or less of the populace to be actively involved in fighting. Germany hit 30% during WWII but that was a major outlier.
In the world wars it took something like 5 workers working to field 1 soldier. They are participating too. Obviously that factor has been increasing with technology, and is even higher now, as you are saying.
In an actual World War 3 conflict the number of combatants you had would be irrelevant anyway. It would be a war fought with drones and nukes, that’d be very little human on human fighting.
The number of workers needed for every soldier is going to keep rising exponentially. They will still need people though, no matter what the llm models tell you.
And it’s not like tactics haven’t changed either, wars can now continue with a very low proportion of the population’s participation.
Even though it means less direct casualties to use robots, I suspect it will lead to problems when wars don’t need the public’s consent or participation to continue.
Makes sense, people are picking between food and utilities while the rich are going richer. People are getting arrested for opposing the evils of the world while being terrified of leaving their houses because actual crime is running rampant. Rascism, misogyny and otherisms are growing again.
It should be mentioned - particularly in the context of the topic of this article - that 41% of the so-called Independent is owned by this guy:
Let me know when half are willing to fight with the invaders. It won’t be long.
Okay so as suspected the question isn’t really the one that should have been asked.
Obviously I would prefer the government to use the military we already have to fight Russia. Especially considering that as far as I’m aware Russia barely even has a military at this point. So they shouldn’t need conscription.
However that’s not really the scenario that they should be asking about.
The question should have been, would you fight from your country in the scenario in which the military had been defeated and the nation occupied. In which case obviously the answer is yes.
Asking people if they would support a hypothetical conscription is stupid because the military have already stated they don’t want to ever do that again because conscripts are useless. So the question should be phrased accordingly. Otherwise it’s a pointless pole.
That number is too low, no one should be willing to die for oligarchs.
So half are willing?
That’s really not bad. That’s a lot of people.
