Country of origin is a difficult criterion in today's world. Where you were born?

Where your
grandparents were from? There's no answer to that devoid of context, because peoples’ loyalties are
shaped by different factors. People differ in how much they assimilate and how much they preserve
their inherited culture and folkways, and those things are only loosely related to how they feel about
their new adopted country today, and even then if it comes to war then peoples’ feelings can change
quite abruptly. Norman Tebbit was criticised harshly for suggesting to use which side one supported in a
cricket match as a way of thinking about loyalty, but even though his test was seen as a harsh one,
modern war is quite different from cricket - just because someone cheers for their adopted country in
peacetime dies not mean they will feel the same in wartime, and the converse is probably also true.

Technology changes things too, because more recent immigrants have a choice to stay in touch with
relatives, friends, and developments in their original home country, and it wasn't like that till quite
recently.

When it comes to it, I think that if you love something and don't defend it when you could have done so,
you would not be viewed favourably by most people that have lived in the past or live today. The
Western view of things is shaped by our prosperity and the disaster of the European civil war of 1914–
48. (The war ended in 45, but things didn't really start to heal till after).

On the other hand, there's quite a range of action involved in war today, and most people living in the
West would take a few years to become effective on a battlefield, because they are not used to
discomfort.

It's an important question, because the experience of modernity has been that in the West on home
territory there are fewer conflicts but they are much bigger. And see Niall Ferguson’s work on rising
geopolitical instability. We take the current period of peace as given, but we have been surprised in the
past, and may be so again.