Who will fight in our next wars? Or rather, who will fight in our place in our next wars? This question, which has hung over our heads for a long time, but was ignored, postponed, repressed, has become nagging since Donald Trump's betrayal. For there can be no doubt about it: The 47th president of the United States of America is a traitor to his friends, his allies and, above all, to the secular values of his nation.
Every day now, we debate the need for a "common European defense," increased investment to finance our military spending, and even the possibility of deploying our soldiers along the bloody border between Ukraine and Russia. We're discussing the obstacles preventing Europe from achieving autonomy, if not an impossible independence, in its military defense against possible and future aggressions, which are, alas, increasingly likely (and already underway). These obstacles are numerous, enormous and diverse: They are military-industrial, economic, technological, strategic and, above all, political.
However necessary this debate may be, it still ignores Europe's main shortcoming when it comes to the possibility of autonomously waging a defensive war: the absence of warriors. As the recent Ukrainian (and Middle Eastern) massacres have tragically shown, wars, including the most technologically advanced ones, need warriors. We Western Europeans don't have any. We're not warriors, not anymore.
I'm not just referring to the shortage of operational soldiers, serious though this is: Defending the Ukrainian border would require the deployment of 200,000 soldiers. Yet the European Union would only be able to provide 60,000 in three rotations of 20,000. I'm referring to the lack of combativeness of these peoples, pacified for eight decades, demographically aged, and deeply gentrified. To wage war, even a purely defensive war, you need the right weapons, but also – and this is a stubborn, intractable, terrible need – competent young men (and women) ready and willing to use them. In other words, men determined to kill and die.
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