Would Europeans fight, if it came to that?

European leaders understand that conflict is closer than ever—hence the sharp rise in defence budgets, as showcased at NATO’s recent summit in Ankara. Spending is not increasing because European armies are planning to fight Russia in Ukraine: Europeans are now the main military backers of Kyiv, but such support is a small fraction of their total military spending. Nor are Europeans spending simply because Donald Trump has demanded it. They are doing so because they consider a kinetic war in Europe beyond Ukraine to be increasingly plausible. This explains why spending is proportionally higher in eastern and northern Europe, including Germany, than in southern and western European countries farther from the front line.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, European leaders have often expressed awe at Ukrainian resilience. But there is something else behind Europeans’ amazement: fear that they may not show the same resolve. This is not because of some inherent courage in Ukrainians which Europeans lack. It boils down to the fundamentally different predicaments, physically and psychologically, of nations in war and peace. Can the spirit needed to deter war be summoned in Europe without fully entering one?

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Spending on defence is one thing, fighting is another. A Gallup poll in 2024 revealed that around a third of Europeans would be unwilling to fight if their own country were attacked. My own country, Italy, was at the bottom of the pack, with a whopping 78% saying they would refuse.

These figures reveal several things at once. Worryingly, they show the growing strength of far-right and far-left forces openly sympathetic to Russia and susceptible to its propaganda demonising Europe’s rearmament. The figures may, though, also indicate that surveyed Europeans simply don’t believe war is coming their way. Indeed, the number of Europeans ready to defend their country is much higher in northern and eastern European states closer to Ukraine, especially those that are in neither the European Union nor NATO, and thus presumably feel more vulnerable.

Geography, then, plays a crucial role. But so do politics, institutions and the media. It is hardly surprising that Estonians are more willing to fight than Italians, if tens of thousands of Estonian volunteers regularly train for a potential attack from its vastly larger next-door neighbour, while Italians are drugged with TV talk shows—heavily infiltrated by pro-Russia propagandists—which deride European attempts to bolster societal resilience. When Sauli Niinisto, a former Finnish president, penned an EU report on preparedness, the public response in countries like mine ranged from indifference to scorn. If institutions, politics and the media don’t take the possibility of war seriously, little wonder that citizens don’t either, rejecting calls for conscription or cuts to social spending for the sake of defence. If war is not seen as plausible, military spending is easily portrayed as a mere ploy to enrich the defence-industrial complex at citizens’ expense.

But the plausibility of war is exactly the point. During a recent meeting, a former high-ranking Ukrainian official put it bluntly: „We’re not superhuman, we’re just at war.” In war, cognition and emotion become geared towards survival. Sacrifices are made, bravery wins out over exhaustion and creativity is unleashed. Without war, the bright minds behind Ukraine’s myriad recent military innovations would probably have trodden the same path as most of the continent’s promising young professionals, forging careers that were rewarding but unremarkable. Because of war, they were spurred to make technological advances that will go down in history. So yes, today Europeans express their reluctance to fight, but they are probably indicating more their abhorrence of war than their cowardly indifference to it.

Which leads to what may be the key point about deterrence: Europeans are less likely to have to fight if they are prepared to do so physically and psychologically. It is that preparedness that can make deterrence against Russia work. But it is precisely the absence of war that reduces preparedness and deterrence. So can societal resilience be substantially hardened in peacetime?

One way to toughen up populations is to put boots on the ground in Ukraine. For months, a European coalition of the willing has drawn up plans to deploy a „reassurance force” to Ukraine after a ceasefire. These discussions have not led anywhere because a truce is not in sight. Their aim was mainly political: to show European solidarity with Ukraine and encourage American engagement. But Ukraine is under no illusions about the fact that deploying a few thousand European soldiers far from the front line in a hypothetical post-ceasefire scenario would make no difference to its defence. As for Mr Trump, by now few if any Europeans believe he can be kept steadily on side, despite his unexpectedly warm words in Ankara.

A European reassurance force would, then, do little for Ukraine. But deploying it now, before a hypothetical ceasefire, could benefit Europe, encouraging citizens to develop a mindset that would better prepare them for war. Yes, it would put European soldiers in harm’s way—any such move would infuriate the Kremlin—but the continent is already in a hybrid conflict, even if many refuse to recognise it. Were European soldiers to be stationed in Ukraine, it would bring reality closer to home. And perhaps a fraction of Ukraine’s courage, humility and creativity could infect other European societies. European troops would not be put in harm’s way out of sheer generosity, but to help prepare for war—and prevent it from spilling into the rest of the continent.

Nathalie Tocci is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Europe, and a senior fellow at Bocconi University’s Institute for European Policymaking.

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