Europe and the Rest of the World - A Military Analysis

[gaelic cowboy]

fine, as long as you are not referring to the difference in broad cultural acceptance of military action between Britain and the continent, which is what i was referring to, because otherwise we disagree very significantly.

I dont see it as clear cut as that, after all I bet certain states in US have different attitudes to the army too.

I think the difference is the political arena not on an individual scale, I mean lots of people marched against Iraq in the US and UK does that mean the people are soft mentally.

I dont buy this idea that certain people are bred for war, once you join you get trained and have to forget all your preconceptions blah blah cos whatever you think you know on joining the reality is they soon set you straight.

[al Roumi]

I did also think we had dealt with Vuk's fevered giberring musings on the decadence of Europe. To my mind, he basicaly thinks that only a staunchly militaristic society is strong enough to survive in the world as he sees it: i.e. one in which a perpetual state of "total war" exists, or where we are all two steps from tipping into one.

I think you should lay off the Fox news Vuk.

I could also organise a small collection round the forum, to finance the purchase of a club and bridge for you to act out your vocation.

[gaelic cowboy]

Anyway who says that people who are more martial are suitable for service today, your as likely to be taken on with an arts degree as having a black belt. If everyone in the army all looked at the world the same way there would be no innovation etc etc and eventually you would stagnate.

Our tiny army recruits officers from all disciplines from engineering to the arts basically in order that the army does not become trapped in a particular worldview.

[Furunculus]

I dont see it as clear cut as that, after all I bet certain states in US have different attitudes to the army too.
I think the difference is the political arena not on an individual scale, I mean lots of people marched against Iraq in the US and UK does that mean the people are soft mentally.

I dont buy this idea that certain people are bred for war, once you join you get trained and have to forget all your preconceptions blah blah cos whatever you think you know on joining the reality is they soon set you straight.

granted, but this is a representative democracy, just like the rest of western europe, so the political arena is ultimately the public arena.

nor would i buy the idea that people (individual) are bred for war, after all our military is tiny and largely invisible to society, and yet that society is composed of a people (collective) who have a cultural ambivalence to the use of military adventurism that obviously isn't considered tolerable on the continent.

[al Roumi]

[British] society is composed of a people (collective) who have a cultural ambivalence to the use of military adventurism that obviously isn't considered tolerable on the continent.

I think you have Tony Blair to thank for that. From a liberal/lefty stand point anyway, his arguments for interceding in Bosnia, then Sierra Leone are what set the scene for Afghanistan and then...Iraq. Don't you right wingers all salivate explosively when it comes to the notion of waging anyway?

[Furunculus]

I think you have Tony Blair to thank for that. From a liberal/lefty stand point anyway, his arguments for interceding in Bosnia, then Sierra Leone are what set the scene for Afghanistan and then...Iraq.

cart before horse, tony blair could get away with what he did BECAUSE british culture/society is as it is.

Don't you right wingers all salivate explosively when it comes to the notion of waging anyway?

as long as Britain chooses to be a security council member it has an obligation to enforce UN resolutions as part of a wider obligation to collective security. there are even legal norms such as R2P that encourage such activity.

[Fragony]

granted, but this is a representative democracy, just like the rest of western europe, so the political arena is ultimately the public arena.

nor would i buy the idea that people (individual) are bred for war, after all our military is tiny and largely invisible to society, and yet that society is composed of a people (collective) who have a cultural ambivalence to the use of military adventurism that obviously isn't considered tolerable on the continent.

Is that really so, we just don't talk about it on the mainland. France is much worse than the UK, is and will always remain the most brutal post WW2 Euro country.

[Furunculus]

Is that really so, we just don't talk about it on the mainland. France is much worse than the UK, is and will always remain the most brutal post WW2 Euro country.

our record is second to none:

http://www.britains-smallwars.com/main/index1.html

[Fragony]

our record is second to none:

http://www.britains-smallwars.com/main/index1.html

In the military sense perhaps, the French military seems to accept atrocity much more willingly as a fact of life. They don't care all that much as it's simply war,

[Strike For The South]

[SARCASM]American childern are hedonistic, narcassitic, and gluttonous

They are the fattest and stupidest in the south where the majority of Vuks Spartan/Ubermensch come from

I wish we had something as advanced as the meditrainian diet or the French love for high culture[/SARCASM]

I have read some ignorant and stupid things in my time but this may be the most ignorant and stupid of them all

Removed

[Centurion1]

i would argue that certain cultures are more apt to ways of war than others. and furthermore that certain individuals are superior for war. however, vuk is absolutely wrong to say that the western world (basically whose culture is the very essence of modern warfare) is incompetent in martial arts/

[Fragony]

I don't think it's ignorant, sense of duty can be both military and civilian no? Seems like a valid point to me on why a country can get the edge over another. Vuk does seem to forget the insanily bloody history of Europe which as others hinted at, is always just under the surface. A German will have zero problems here, a German trying to have a normal conversation on WW2 is bound to get into trouble though, we haven't healed yet

[Subotan]

Britain and Ireland are both island nations we have a fundamentally different way of viewing the world because every direction is "out there" never "over the border".

So we are not the same as mainland Europeans, no matter how many times you try to tell us we are.

Our national consciousness is different in many ways than the rest of Europe. For example, in the UK, The Second World War is a strangely positive memory, whereas on the continent the only connotation that that war has is sheer horror. But I still thing we're closer to the Europeans than Americans; in America, WWII is when the USA saved the world and rose to global pre-eminence, whereas we sacrificed our Empire to save Europe.

I did also think we had dealt with Vuk's fevered giberring musings on the decadence of Europe. To my mind, he basicaly thinks that only a staunchly militaristic society is strong enough to survive in the world as he sees it: i.e. one in which a perpetual state of "total war" exists, or where we are all two steps from tipping into one.

We have always been at war with Eastasia! War is peace! Peace is war!

Or, more poignantly:

"War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent."

for an example arabian culture is not good at modern western style warfare. a war doctrine which is undoubtedly best. the point that individuals can be better designed for war than others has a hell of a lot of relevance.

Culture is borderline irrelevant. We could turn this discussion into a very long and extremely boring thread about how the Arab nations had such and such a model tank rather than this model tank and how their logistics were blah blah blah, but that would be pointless. Give a man a gun, give him a few weeks training and a lifetime of nationalist myths and hate and he'll fight as long and as hard as someone who has lived in the mountains all his life fending off rival tribes with a Victorian rifle and a knife as long as your arm.

Besides, those same Arabs who are supposedly not good at modern warfare managed to keep the United States bogged down in Iraq longer than it took to take down Nazi Germany...

[Tellos Athenaios]

I think what Fragony means is that the French military (and the French prisons) has a certain reputation of ruthlessness.