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The anti-war syndrome
Peter Kopa, Prague, 5.8.2024
We summarize and comment on an article published exclusively in the German-language Neue Zuercher Zeitung, written by the American Edward Luttwak, military strategist, political scientist and historian. The original was published in the British magazine “Unherd”. His observation is that governments are increasingly reluctant to send their soldiers to war. He tells us that both the West and its traditional opponents are not really willing to wage war. A precedent for this trend can be seen in Bill Clinton’s decision to leave Somalia to its fate after 18 American soldiers were killed in a failed operation.
The big picture
Luttwak tells us that the European armed forces – from the lowest to the highest ranks – are primarily concerned with maintaining the illusion of a defense capability, while actual combat readiness is only rarely the case. This is the case, for example, of the still operational British armed forces, although their contingents are greatly reduced. The same is true of Russia and China. Years ago, Russia was engaged in a long war against Afghanistan and after nine years they gave up fighting it, in which 14,453 Russian soldiers lost their lives. In the Falklands war Britain lost 255 soldiers, which Thatcher felt very much writing letters to their families, every day, late into the night.
When Macron began to say that Europe had to send troops to Ukraine, NATO did not want to take this approach for granted, while the Italian Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs reacted to this proposal with great vehemence, saying that Italy would in no case send its troops to help Zelensky. Something similar happened on the occasion of the Huthi attacks in the Red Sea on ships bound for the Suez Canal. Only the USA and Great Britain have bombed their ammunition depots in Yemen. France has done nothing since its military base in Djibouti.
Edward Luttwak sees the cause of all this passivity in the current demographic situation, which for many years now has been decreasing in population, and therefore, in the USA, for example, the army is suffering from a shortage of personnel. Added to this is a change in mentality that sees war as meaningless. He mentions China with its 1.4 billion inhabitants and how the old one-child policy has aged the population by dint of many years of forced abortions. The positive side of all this Luttwak sees in the enormous reluctance of governments to send their people to war, because this means lowering their own economic productivity and facing the political cost of protests. It should be noted that wars sacrifice the flower of youth, where we find young people and parents. Instead, warnings and threats have prevailed, especially from Putin and Ji Jinping, which are becoming a kind of political cult or barking dogs that do not bite.
https://thinktanklatam.org/habra-guerra-en-europa/
Comments
Demographics is one factor, but not the only one. The loss of a sense of community is likely to play a major role. Society is becoming less cohesive because it is too heterogeneous. International organizations such as NATO, the EU or the UN present a relativistic and materialistic profile in their declarations, valuing the individual only as a statistic. This has contributed to the erosion of values such as homeland, religion, family and so many other principles, which have always been at the basis of the willingness to go to war. At the same time, the state is increasingly fiscally voracious and spies on and mistreats the individual through the use of digital technology. Outside the nuclear family – if one enjoys a family at all – people are scattered and too much preoccupied with the PC or the telephone. Very few people today are willing to risk their lives in senseless battles, far from their own country, for a political strategy that deep down gives rise to the suspicion that it is done for ignoble motives, such as the enrichment of a few at the price of blood.
The fact that a nuclear attack has never been launched since 1945 borders on a miracle, considering that there are several thousand nuclear bombs ready for use, not to mention the increasing number of countries with nuclear potential. It is only a matter of time before Iran, or another Islamic country, succeeds in adding the atomic bomb to its arsenal. Since everyone is well aware that their use would destroy the earth’s biosphere, because no one could be safe from radioactivity, common sense has prevailed so far that no one wants to turn our planet into a desert of ashes.
