The darker the red, the greater the willingness to fight.
Only 44 percent of adult Americans are willing to tell pollsters they’d fight for their country.
The percentage is even less for some U.S. allies, such as Canada (30%), France (29%), the United Kingdom (27%), Italy (30%), Germany (18%) and Japan (11%).
In contrast, 71 percent of Chinese and 59 percent of Russians say they’d fight for their countries.
This is the result of a public opinion poll of more than 1,000 people in each of 64 countries in late 2014 by WIN / Gallup International. The complete results are below.
I’m not sure what to make of this. I think it partly depends on people mean by “fight for country”.
I think almost all Americans would be willing to fight to defend our nation from an invader. I think only a minority are willing to go to some foreign country to fight to increase U.S. geopolitical power.
The problem for us Americans is that someday U.S. power will begin to slip, and countries that now fear to go against the United States will become our enemies.
When that backlash comes, our nation will need the patriotism that our leaders now exploit and abuse.
More percentages of citizens who say they’d fight for their countries.
Note that the coverage of North Africa and the Middle East, and of the majority-Muslim countries does not include the current war zones.
Note also that the surveys included women as well as men. Some women who answered may have meant that they personally were not willing to serve in the military because they that was the role of men.
LINKS
WIN / Gallup International’s global survey shows three in five willing to fight for their country. Note that this is different from Gallup Inc. in New York City, which is what I usually think of as the Gallup Poll.
Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War For Their Country by Brilliant Maps.
Would You Fight? Some Notes on Recent Opinion Poll Evidence by Adam Tooze. [Added 11/19/2018]
Tags: Patriotism, Public opinion polls, Willingness to Fight
Phil Ebersole's Blog 
March 1, 2017 at 2:32 pm |
Yeah, this is probably true.
You can see it in these mamby pamby wus bag liberal “men”. They wont even stand up to Starbucks.
But you see, the 44% are the Strong Proud Tough and Titanium made Conservative Christian Bible Thumping Gun Clinging Deplorable Americans that will and are fighting for our country.
We will never stop. You liberals will never win.
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August 6, 2017 at 12:08 pm |
This is a 2015 article.
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August 6, 2017 at 2:13 pm |
The survey was done in late 2014.
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July 21, 2018 at 1:22 pm |
From a cultural point of view, the results of the survey are fascinating. One thing I wish folks would become more aware of is that there are MANY ways of supporting (and fighting) for one’s country. The idea that it can only be done with a deadly weapon in hand is ridiculous and ignores economically and socially successful countries around the world.
In many cases (the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a prime example) military interventions (fighting in the deadly sense) only harm a country’s political and economic standing, and therefore, hasten its decline. The estimated $3 trillion price tag of that war (financed solely on credit) and the damage done to American credibility globally will continue to haunt Americans for decades to come.
Thanks for posting these interesting findings!
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March 15, 2019 at 11:24 am |
I agree with you.
“I think almost all Americans would be willing to fight to defend our nation from an invader. I think only a minority are willing to go to some foreign country to fight to increase U.S. geopolitical power.”
Most Americans would fight to defend the country. But the last time the US fought a war of defense, as opposed to a war of aggression, was World War II. Few Americans are interested in sacrificing their lives to ensure that rich people can maintain their geopolitical power and corporations can maintain their trade relations and trade routes.
Being the subject of an empire generally is less inspiring for patriotism than being the citizen of a free country. The US over time has increasingly become an empire, although it was turning in that direction pretty early on. The US has also loss much of its social capital and political legitimacy around the world, not only among its own population. That is a dangerous position to be in, especially as Trump is eroding our alliances.
World War III might not be a good experience for the US with neither strong support from Americans or from allies. But those like Bush and now like Trump think we don’t need anyone else. America first means America in isolation. No empire lasted for long in isolation. Not that I’ll be sad when the American empire collapse, as I’m not a fan of imperialism.
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March 23, 2019 at 11:03 am |
This is not accurate. Pakistan is willing to fight for their country 94%. Wikipedia says that
.
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February 29, 2020 at 6:32 am |
Well! I think that Pakistan has more than 89% because who ever i have asked in my country that is Pakistan have said that they will even die for there country. And here in our army soldiers and recruits sign it with there blood that they wont hesitate
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May 31, 2020 at 8:07 pm |
I joined the National Guard in 1984. The US wasn’t in any major public wars at the time but there was the Soviet Bear staring at us and It seemed like some kind of war was a possibility. Who knows if a wrong move by someone might send Soviet tanks rolling over Europe?
So yeah, I WAS willing to fight for my country. I figured if they started calling up Guard units, it wouldn’t be for some 3rd world brushfire in the quest to keep the world safe for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It would likely be WWIII.
Almost all post-Vietnam Guard deployments were for natural disasters with – sadly – occasional riots. Even Desert Storm only took volunteers from us and that was after I left. My unit would never be used for crowd control but we did help fight some forest fires and maintained emergency communications up and down the state.
You have to have a military to deter war. Just because the government does Machiavellian things with the military doesn’t mean you can toss it aside. It may not need to be a big as we have now and what we have now may not be properly structured. It has to be big enough that if it is attacked it will cause unacceptable pain to the attacker.
If you have allies, you need to assist in their protection too. So, yeah, I’d say an invasion of Europe would be worth going to war for. I am pretty confident that if we weren’t willing to go to war to protect Europe, we’d have lost Europe possibly without a shot being fired.
Today I’m not so worried. However, since neither Russia nor China shows any sign of embracing liberal democracy or controlling their expansionist tendencies, I wouldn’t want to toss aside military superpower status just yet.
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August 31, 2020 at 4:20 pm |
Algeria is nr one without question the only country in africa who’s fight against french for independence
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