Hacker News Reader

Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

That's one of the rare moments where I feel that I can relate to my fellow countrymen - I'm German.

Why would you 'fight a war for your country'? Given the way this is phrased that doesn't seem to talk about fighting in defense of one's country (I'd like to see the stats for that as well) unless my English as a foreign language skills fail me?

View on HN

Exactly. Would I be willing to fight a war because a fascist superpower was killing millions of human beings in my country? Probably, yes. Would I risk my life to protect the Conservative Party and banking institutions? Less likely.

The second war (to protect the party and banking institutions) would be promoted like the first. Propaganda is a rather effective thing in wars.

That's why most people over here in Germany are so wary of the "fight for your country" premise: the first thing that comes to mind is "that's usually bullshit", not a mental image of pillaging hordes. In an actual resist or run situation, I think that those three "unwilling" nations would not fare too badly. People are quite invested in their countries, they just don't buy into the heroic narrative.

Would you be willing to be part of a pre-emptive attack against a much more prosperous neighbouring country with empire-building aspirations?

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. :)

Asking the first three questions of a German is some serious WW2 history trolling.

You forgot one: would you join in a war to protect people of your ethno-linguistic background who live in a country who are (you are told) under threat as second-class citizens? I believe that was the stated reason for invading Czechslovakia.

It's the same reasoning that Russia uses today, this isn't as much of an excuse as a pretty common cause through history.

Yes, exactly, and a very good reason to dismiss these as a valid reason for war.

Absolutely. Whether or not I'd risk my life would depend on a lot of things.

So we should have asked these questions, instead of the irrelevant one that was actually asked :/

Exactly. There is quite a bit of clarification needed for someone to fully answer the question and depending on how you define certain terms the responses, I would imagine, would quite different.

"Fight a War" : Front line with arms? Controlling a drone from thousands of miles away? Being a military medic, engineer, or strategist? Propaganda writer?

"country": Sovereign physical boarders? Extends to protecting assets/people overseas? Cyber footprint? The political party in charge? The constitution? The population?

by whom?: Invading foreign force? Internal civil uprising? Military coup? aliens? ;)

Yep, that's a very good synopsis )

> doesn't seem to talk about fighting in defense of one's country

I assumed it is in defence (and I guess everybody in my country would do the same - we have neither a possibility nor motivation to invade anybody, on the other hand Russian threat is widely accepted as a fact of live).

It should be specifed for comparable data.

I read it as non-specific - don't think it implies that your country would be the aggressor.

Most probably there's a big difference between fighting offensively or defensively. Would be really interesting to see 2 different questions.

And fighting 'defensively' also has a large range. Most recent wars involving western nations would probably be categorised (at least by them) as defensive whereas I would disagree. There's a huge difference between fighting because your country has been invaded (e.g. troops on the ground, trying to overthrow your government, killing civilians) and fighting because a country has dangerous weapons they could theoretically use to attack you at some future date (both arguable defensive, but only the first would I consider fighting in).

Yeah. I think the interesting split would be between defending your own soil vs. invading another country (for whatever reason).

The main place this survey gets cited is in discussing NATO obligations.

So I'd like to see someone ask about that explicitly: not defense of German borders, but defense of (for example) Estonia against a Russian invasion. Thoughts there?

I think the definition includes defence. Otherwise it would not be applicable in any foreseeable scenario to e.g. Finland.

Would you be willing to defend your country in the Hindukush mountains?

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'.

Pacifism is not always a tenable strategy for piece.

Finland has a population of 5M. Russia has 144M. Russia has been a wanton overbearing opportunist when it comes to foreign policy. Now, in this particular instance, which policy from Finlands part do you think leads more likelier to a future of non-invasion: a) cordial relationships and a standing army b) cordial relationships.

a) to be sure. But I am not advocating for a world without military, this would be an utopia, but not realistic (sadly). I just wanted to point out, that the word 'defense' can also be used to justify a war of aggression.

would you fight for the EU?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com