But The POLITICO Poll also revealed limited willingness among the Western public to make sacrifices to pay for more military spending. While there is widespread support for increasing defense budgets in principle across the U.K., France, Germany and Canada, that support fell sharply when people learned it might mean taking on more government debt, cutting other services or raising taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur polling shows the growing concern about war does not give leaders license to spend heavily on defense,\u201d said Wride. \u201cIf anything, voters are now less willing to make the trade-offs needed to improve military security. So European leaders are left in a bind \u2014 unable to rely on the U.S., unable to use that as a reason to invest domestically, and under higher pressure to urgently solve this for a world where conflict feels closer than before.\u201d<\/p>\n
The findings, based on surveys of more than 2,000 voters in each country between Feb. 6 and Feb. 9, lay bare the challenge facing NATO leaders as they try to strengthen security at a time when public finances are tight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That struggle will shape discussions among politicians from across the world as they head to Germany for the annual Munich Security Conference starting Friday.<\/p>\n
With no sign of an imminent end to Russia\u2019s four-year all-out war against Ukraine, and the U.S. taking military action in Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Africa under President Donald Trump, many voters see a growing risk of global conflict.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pattern is particularly stark in the United Kingdom, where 43 percent believe a new world war is \u201clikely\u201d or \u201cvery likely\u201d to break out by 2031 \u2014 up from 30 percent in March 2025. Nearly half of Americans \u2014 46 percent \u2014 think a new world war is \u201clikely\u201d or \u201cvery likely\u201d by 2031 \u2014 up from 38 percent last year. Among the five countries, only people in Germany think on balance that a third global war is not likely in the next five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But The POLITICO Poll also revealed limited willingness among the Western public to make sacrifices to pay for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1213,748,943,1395,6178,2825,473,7057,32,393,36,1824,4884,774,2597,14791,2821,1144,8041,47,6646,332,712,811,1199,6500,1200,1201,16,657,15,49,8518,1764,771,335],"class_list":["post-760941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","category-united-kingdom","tag-americas","tag-britain","tag-canada","tag-china","tag-conflict","tag-debt","tag-defense","tag-defense-budgets","tag-donald-trump","tag-england","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-great-britain","tag-iran","tag-military","tag-munich-security-conference","tag-nato","tag-northern-ireland","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-poll","tag-public-funding","tag-russia","tag-scotland","tag-security","tag-services","tag-syria","tag-tax","tag-trade","tag-uk","tag-ukraine","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-venezuela","tag-wales","tag-war","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116061316499580962","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}