About half of the American military personnel believe that the United States will be drawn into a new big war next year, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
This was reported by Military Times.
The publication notes that according to its survey among US military personnel, the proportion of those who expect a new major armed conflict to arise in the near future has increased sharply compared to similar indicators in the 2017 survey.
According to a survey conducted by the newspaper, currently 46% of military personnel believe that the country’s armed forces will be forced to participate in a new big war in 2019. In a similar study in September 2017, only 5% of US citizens on active duty reported such alarming expectations for the near future. At the same time, 67% of military personnel called such a possibility unlikely in the foreseeable future. Now the share of these “skeptics” has decreased to 50%.
The publication refrains from analyzing the reasons for such a sharp increase in fears of war, but notes that it occurred against the background of repeated statements by US President Donald Trump about increasing the combat readiness of the country's armed forces in the face of an increasing military threat from hostile foreign states, as well as against the background of statements by Pentagon leaders about the need prepare for a conflict with “opponents of almost equal strength.” Among these, survey participants actually named Russia and China. Thus, Russia was identified as a serious threat to US national security by 71% of military personnel, and China by 69%. A year earlier, 53% and 45% of American military personnel, respectively, thought so.
Military respondents named terrorism in cyberspace as the main threat to the country's national security - 89%; in fourth and fifth place, after Russia and China, are Islamic terrorism within the country - 57% and non-Islamic domestic terrorism - 49%.
A total of 20 American military personnel took part in this anonymous survey, conducted by the newspaper from September 2 to October 829, 89% of them men.