Rearmament Without Warriors? A Pointless Exercise In Impression Management
Until the West overcomes its addiction to post heroic values NATO's programme of rearmament will do little to provide their nations with genuine security
At international summits and on the media all the talk is about increased defence spending and rearmament. At the recent Hague summit, the NATO allies agreed to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP[i]. And yet all the publicity. about finally taking national defence and security seriously comes across as dishonest posturing. Why? Because the leaders of most the NATO member states are fully aware of the fact that their military forces are not ready for a serious fight. Worse still the population of western societies have embraced a post-heroic culture that regards the defence of their nation as not their concern. Young people have not been turnes off from embracing the values of patriotism, courage and duty and consequently many of them feel little responsibility for defending their nation.
On paper Germany ought to be a serious military power. It possesses the largest economy in Western Europe and has the resources necessary to rearm its military. Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Mertz stated that his government ‘will in the future provide all the financing the Bundeswehr needs to become the strongest conventional army in Europe’[ii]. In reality, all the talk about investing in a major programme of rearmament cannot obscure the fact that Germany is not ready to fight a war. Surveys indicate that the citizens of Germany do not want to leave their safe space to join the field of battle.
A survey conducted this month by the Forsa Institute indicated that only 17 percent of Germans said they would defend their country if attacked[iii]. According to Aylin Matlé, a fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, ‘younger people don’t really see the purpose of why they should put their lives at risk for Germany’[iv]. The German army -the Bundeswehr - is aging fast. It also continues to shrink because of an average 20,000 retirements a year. Such a high attrition rate raises the question of ‘what’s the point of investing billions in a programme of rearmament’?
As it happens Germany is not the only society that has become alienated from the demands of national security. Last year a Gallup survey of people in 45 countries asked how willing they were to fight for their country in case of war. Four of the five nations with the least committed fighters globally were in Europe, including Spain, Germany and notably Italy, where only 14 per cent of those surveyed said that they were ready to fight a foreign enemy[v].
Historically those most ready to fight a foreign foe came from the younger generations. Today, the situation has dramatically altered. Surveys conducted on both sides of the Atlantic highlight the reluctance of young people to fight for their country. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in 2022 in the United States found that only 55 per cent of the respondents stated that they would fight in the face of a foreign invasion. Two-thirds of those aged 50 to 64 said they’d remain, while those aged 18 to 34 were much more geared toward flight, with only 45 percent saying they’d stand and fight for their country[vi]. Surveys of Europeans indicate that their respondents are even more reluctant to take up arms in defence of their nations.
It is evident that the West in in the throes of a post-heroic zeitgeist where attitudes towards the military are underpinned by a mood of intellectual and moral disarmament. It is not the fault of the young that they have been afflicted with a safety-first risk averse sensibility. Many of them are no longer educated and socialized to embrace the values of patriotism, duty and sacrifice.
Duty, Honour, Country are central elements of the Warrior Ethos. Honour, in particular is a key value for the military. As Paul Robinson pointed out in Military Honour and the Conduct of War:
‘honour spurs men to fight in two ways: positively, through the desire to display virtue and win honour; and negatively, through a desire to avoid dishonour or shame.” Warriors expect to take risks and make sacrifices to accomplish the mission, protect their fellow warriors, and safeguard innocents’[vii].
The Western world in general and the Anglo-American world in particular has become risk- averse and its military has become casualty averse and estranged form honour and the ideal of sacrifice.
Not so long ago, the ideals of fighting for a cause and even risking death attracted millions of young people to their nation’s cause. Today, for many intellectuals, it is unthinkable that a significant section of society could find meaning in war. As Christopher Coker explained in his Waging War Without Warriors? wars have become detached from the values that influence everyday life. Western institutions of culture obsess about the value of safety and regard the willingness to sacrifice as a bizarre outdated ideal.
Heroism has lost its moral status as a medium for inspiring the young. As Coker remarked, ‘we tend to deprive [heroes] of the fullness of their lives in order to support and sustain the smallness of our own’. Instead of glorifying heroism, the ethos of risk aversion has become institutionalised within society. It even influences the military. British Army commanders now must draw up risk assessments for every aspect of their soldiers’ training. General Sir Michael Rose, former head of the SAS, has spoken out about the destructive impact of the consequences of risk aversion and the ethos of safety for the morale of the military. He has denounced the ‘moral cowardice’ that has encouraged what he describes as the ‘most catastrophic collapse’ of military ethos in recent history’.[viii]
If anything, the decline of the warrior ethos is far more comprehensive within the U.S. military. One analyst believes that risk aversion has undermined the effectiveness of the US military. ‘As emphasis on risk avoidance filters down the chain of command, junior commanders and their soldiers become aware that low-risk behavior is expected and act accordingly’, he notes.[ix]
Unlike some institutions in society the military cannot survive without taking risks. However, the military values associated with the warrior ethos face a challenge from potent cultural influences that negate risk taking behaviour. Despite the many Hollywood action packed movies that celebrate heroism and bravery there is little cultural valuation for risk taking military behaviour. The military is not immune to the influence of safety-at-all-cost culture. Prevailing norms towards health and safety decry risk-taking behaviour. A culture that shows a low threshold towards losses in everyday life is unlikely to possess the capacity to celebrate risk-taking behaviour within military institutions. That is also one reason why the status and the authority of the military has declined.
The elites of society have distanced themselves from a warrior ethos and the military and their participation in this institution has significantly diminished. Even the mainstream of society has become estranged from military values. As two radical critics remark ‘the representative image of the U.S. soldier is no longer that of a John Wayne, and more important, the profiles of U.S. soldiers do not resemble the profiles of the U.S. citizenry’.[x] In Britain too fighting is a war is increasingly outsourced to private contractors, foreign mercenaries and the most economically disadvantaged section of society.
If the ruling elites of society have become so profoundly estranged from the warrior ethos is it any surprise that most people also take the view that the defence of their nation is not their business? In effect the moral disarmament of the west has deprived society of precisely those values that are necessary for the maintenance of national security.
So while the leaders of NATO nations raise a toast to their commitment to increase spending on arms their society remains morally disarmed.
Until they take the values of patriotism, courage and duty more seriously rearmament will not lead to a world of genuine security.
[i] https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/06/25/nato-allies-agree-to-boost-defense-spending-to-5-at-the-hague-summit/
[ii] https://apnews.com/article/germany-defense-spending-budget-nato-169e869922af3d349329ac1a921e634d
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/world/europe/germany-army-recruitment.html?smid=tw-share
[iv] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/world/europe/germany-army-recruitment.html?smid=tw-share
[v] https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/06/19/europe-wants-to-show-its-ready-for-war-would-anyone-show-up-to-fight
[vi] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-nato-young-soldiers-war-ukraine-draft-conscription-dday-fight-russia/
[vii] Cited in https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/preserving-the-warrior-ethos
[viii] ‘J’Accuse! Top General lambasts “moral cowardice” of government and military chiefs’, The Daily Mail; 12 April 2007.
[ix] Lacquement (2004) p.46.
[x] Hardt & Negri (2005) p.47.
War, fought by these western countries with the exception of Israel is done at a distance, not close up. Western countries don’t feel threatened even if they are. Even the last foray , whilst being a very brilliant exercise of might and power was done at a distance. Bombs are dropped, key installations are destroyed, even lives taken very cleverly. Drones are sent to fight both in the Middle East and Ukraine. Apart from the lack of patriotism, war will be fought as cyber attacks, taking down the communication and energy systems of countries. Sleeper cells consisting of middle eastern, African, perhaps Indian and Chinese will attack from within because we have been stupid enough to allow these cultures to come and live in our countries and haven’t insisted on them giving up their allegiances, clothing, customs and embracing judeo Christian virtues.
It is indeed strangeness to increase defence spending when the threats are mostly within. Most western countries don’t even see the “Palestinian “ supporting protest as a threat to their realms. They don’t see the climate nonsense as a threat to their well being. And they certainly didn’t see the COVID charades as an attack on the west. So increasing spending for what kinds of defence? I think they have to define the threat first.