Does Europe Yearn for Another General Bloodletting?

Napoleonic Wars, Crimean, Franco-Prussian, World War I, World War II. Has it been too long? Do the Europeans now long for the cathartic release of mass killing?

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once remarked that “mankind is doomed to vacillate eternally between boredom and distress.” Have Europe’s leaders grown bored with the long period of peace that has prevailed on most of their Continent since 1945? Do they long for the cathartic release of pent up aggression and negative feelings?

It’s a notable fact that pretty much every serious combat veteran of the Second World War is now gone, which means there is no living witness of the horror of a general war on the European Continent.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has started using Churchillian language since Trump sent Zelensky packing, as though there is a shred of evidence that Vladimir Putin aspires to make a move against Great Britain in the way Hitler did in 1940. I suspect that Starmer is now scheming to escalate hostilities between Russia and Great Britain in whatever way he can.

For three years now I have been posing the question: Why didn’t the Biden administration and its European lackeys at least TRY to work out a neutrality deal like the neutrality deal the Americans and English struck with Russia for Austria in 1955—a deal the Russians have honored ever since?

If Putin had agreed to Ukrainian neutrality and then subsequently violated it, the U.S. and England would have then had a clear casus belli. To this day, not a single member of the pro war faction has even tried to answer my question.

I sometimes wonder if it would be edifying for the Europeans and for many Americans to experience combat in the way the German soldier and writer, Ernst Jünger experienced it. During World War I, Jünger was wounded 14 times, including a .30 rifle shot through the chest.

In his book Storm of Steel, he described his war experience in a strangely detached way, observing and recording extreme acts of violence simultaneously inflicted on thousands of men. He observes the mass destruction and mutilation of young soldiers without passing any judgement. Humans periodically wage war, and he happens to be there to observe an exceptionally terrible one.

War as an aesthetic experience: “In a Thunderstorm of Steel”

In the following passage, Jünger describes how quickly he grew accustomed to the business of war.

During one stop on the way, a driver split his thumb in the course of crank-starting his lorry. The sight of the wound almost made me ill, I have always been sensitive to such things. I mention this because it seems virtually unaccountable as I witnessed such terrible mutilation in the course of the following days. It’s an example of the way in which one’s response to an experience is actually largely determined by its context.

It appears that Starmer et al. are now so determined to have their Churchillian moments that they will make a general European war with Russia inevitable, perhaps with the intention of forcing the Americans to get involved.

Many American and European citizens are apparently delighted to send billions of money and weapons to Ukraine and to let young Ukrainian men do the fighting. I wonder how many young American and European men would be willing to go to Ukraine to do the fighting themselves. In a detached, Jüngerian sort of way, I wonder if the experience would expand their consciousness and provide some sort of moral instruction or edification.

With so many apparently longing to teach the Russian devils a lesson, perhaps they should seriously consider joining the fight as volunteers for the Ukrainian army.