Fighting for your country
Today in the newspaper there was a report saying that two out of three UK people would not be prepared to fight for the United Kingdom. This was in some way surprising but if you look at it maybe not.
Firstly we should understand there is a difference between defending your country and fighting for it. I would believe that the majority of people would be prepared to defend their country if it was attacked and their families and loved ones were at threat as we see in Europe currently and I believe we all support Ukraine in this.
However fighting for your country outside of your own country is another matter, the world is now different in so many ways, we no longer trust our leaders, politicians, monarchy, business leaders who have all been shown in some ways to be untrustworthy, not all but generally we do not trust them and we would have doubts about fighting in other countries for political reasons that to us make no sense.
Recent wars have not been seen as worthwhile and many of peoples loved ones have been destroyed either physically or mentally, heroes to us but difficult to understand for some why they were there and so it is understandable why people question whether they would want to repeat this, its not about bravery or fear its about belief in these actions.
Politically the world is increasingly being led by authoritarian leaders meaning even our allies are seen as not really true allies as they are only looking after their own interests and not who we would want to fight for or with.
Also the war machine is changing, the use of social media influencing, spy in the sky satellites, drones etc. means that computers and machines are doing a lot of what troops would normally do, so some would see that being in a battlefield is not necessary in the future and technology will continue to make fighting a more machine based activity.
If the UK government wants people to be more supportive of fighting for the country then the leaders have to first convince the people that they can be trusted, a big ask in modern politics.