The world is simultaneously more afraid of war and less willing to fight one. That paradox sits at the heart of the security and defence findings from the 2026 Democracy Perception Index — a survey of 94,146 people across 98 countries conducted between March 19 and April 21, as US and Israeli forces were active in Iran and the front lines in Ukraine entered their fourth year with no end in sight.

The overall picture is of publics that strongly prefer diplomacy and international law over military solutions, are broadly sceptical of American military presence in their territories, and are growing less personally willing to bear the costs of conflict — even as their governments spend on weapons at rates not seen since the Cold War.

Fear of attack: where it is rising and falling

Fear of foreign attack is highest in the countries directly affected by or adjacent to active conflict. Ukraine, Georgia and Lebanon record the highest levels of concern globally, all reflecting live or recent military threats. High fear also concentrates in parts of the Middle East, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The more striking findings concern where fear is rising fastest. The largest year-on-year increases in fear of foreign attack between 2025 and 2026 are in Lebanon, Iraq, the US, Russia and Kazakhstan. The rise in the US is notable: American concern about being attacked by a foreign country has increased significantly in a single year, a shift that analysts attribute to the Iran conflict and the experience of Iranian retaliatory strikes on US military bases across the Gulf region.

Russia's rising fear of attack is equally significant. Despite Putin's public posture of military dominance, Russian public fear of foreign attack has increased year-on-year — a finding consistent with internal polling showing declining confidence since the Ukraine war began and with the controversial European intelligence assessment that Putin has retreated to bunkers amid concerns about internal as well as external threats – a claim that has been contested by some.

By contrast, fear has eased most in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Ghana — countries where specific conflict dynamics or peace processes have reduced near-term perceived threat.

Perhaps counterintuitively, fear of foreign attack is notably low in the US, China and the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland and Norway. The US and China data reflects publics that do not yet feel the direct physical proximity of conflict at home, despite both countries being engaged in or adjacent to active military operations. The Nordic finding reflects both geographic security and high confidence in alliance membership — Sweden and Finland having recently joined Nato.

Russia versus Ukraine: the world's most polarised conflict

Of the five geopolitical conflicts the survey tested, Russia versus Ukraine is the most polarising. 55 of 98 countries agree more with Ukraine; 30 agree more with Russia; 13 are closely divided. On average, global agreement leans 12 points toward Ukraine.

The countries most aligned with Ukraine are Sweden, Norway, Finland, New Zealand and Denmark. The countries most aligned with Russia are Serbia, Algeria, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Bangladesh. The regional picture is clear: Europe agrees overwhelmingly with Ukraine, and the Americas also lean toward Kyiv. Asia-Pacific is split — Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea lean pro-Ukraine, while the Global South powerhouses of Indonesia, India, China and Pakistan lean toward Russia. MENA leans toward Russia.

The finding that more countries side with Russia than side with the US in the Iran conflict — 30 versus 28 — is one of the more striking individual data points in the report, illustrating how thoroughly the Iran war has reshuffled global alignments.

US versus Iran: Washington on the losing side

In the US-Iran conflict, 41 countries agree more with Iran, only 28 with the US, and 29 are roughly evenly divided. Global agreement leans 6 points toward Iran. The Americas agree more with the US; Europe is roughly even; Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia-Pacific and MENA all agree more with Iran.

The countries most aligned with the US are Israel, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Ukraine and Georgia. The countries most aligned with Iran are Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Bangladesh and Algeria. The finding that the US commands majority sympathy in fewer countries than Iran in its own conflict is without precedent in the survey's eight-year history and represents a dramatic reversal of America's post-Cold War position as the presumptive legitimate actor in any US military operation.

China versus Taiwan: the closest call

The Taiwan conflict produces the closest split of the five scenarios tested — 41 countries agree more with Taiwan, 38 with China, and 19 are roughly evenly divided. Global agreement leans just 5 points toward Taiwan. It is also the question with the highest share of "don't know" responses — 38% globally — reflecting uncertainty about a conflict that has not yet started.

Europe agrees more with Taiwan; MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa agree more with China; the Americas and Asia-Pacific each lean slightly toward Taiwan. The countries most aligned with Taiwan are Ukraine, Sweden, New Zealand, Japan and Finland. The countries most aligned with China are Pakistan, Algeria, Russia, Tunisia and Bangladesh.

The narrowness of the split — and the high "don't know" rate — suggests that global public opinion on Taiwan has not yet hardened in the way it has on Ukraine and Iran. Should a conflict begin, the survey's historical pattern suggests opinion would polarise sharply and quickly, as it did following Russia's 2022 invasion.

Defence spending: who supports it and who doesn't

Public opinion on defence spending is sharply divided — and the divisions do not follow the patterns that governments might assume. The strongest support for increased defence spending, even at the cost of higher taxes or reduced services, is in Ukraine, Sweden, South Korea, Norway and Denmark. The strongest opposition is in Puerto Rico, Italy, Brazil, Uruguay and El Salvador.

Within Europe, the report finds a clear geographic gradient. Nordic and eastern frontier countries — Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Ukraine and Poland — support higher defence spending. Southern European countries — Italy, Greece and Spain — and France are clearly opposed. The rest of Eastern Europe is divided.

The trend data adds further complexity. Support for higher defence spending has actually fallen since 2025 in Poland, Romania, Kyrgyzstan, Taiwan and Australia — countries that might be expected to feel most immediately exposed to the deteriorating security environment. It has risen most in Colombia, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Kuwait and Namibia.

Europe is increasingly caught between the need to boost security and its inability to pay for it thanks to the increasingly dysfunctional European economy. Cutting social spending at home to pay for a foreign war in Ukraine has fuelled a political backlash in many European countries that has seen several elections, the council’s election in the UK being the most recent, dominated by the rise of a “nationalistic right” that is eating away at the traditional parties hold on power.

On defence priorities, the survey finds that strengthening alliances remains the dominant public preference — the top answer in 80 of 98 countries — over military investment, nuclear deterrence or mandatory military service. Military investment was chosen as the top priority in only 18 countries, mostly in MENA and parts of Asia-Pacific, including China, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Support for alliances over unilateral military buildup has, however, slipped since 2025 — 83 countries chose alliances as their top priority in 2025 compared with 77 in 2026.

Willingness to fight: a sharp global decline

The most significant single trend in the security data is the collapse in willingness to personally fight for one's country. Globally, the share willing to fight has fallen from 53% in 2025 to 45% in 2026 — a decline of 8 percentage points in a single year.

The largest declines are in Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Libya and Zambia. By contrast, willingness has risen in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Moldova — countries where the security environment has directly intensified the sense of national threat.

In Europe the overall picture is stark. Only 37% of Europeans aged 18-55 say they would personally be willing to fight to defend their country — half the MENA regional average of 62%.

While Europeans may support increased defence spending, their willingness to actually fight in the trenches continues to fall. In France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, fewer than one in three say they would fight. Only 43% of Germans said they were willing to fight for their country, according to Gallup. The Nordic countries and Ukraine are the European exceptions, with higher shares willing to fight.

The report notes a pattern that will give strategic planners pause: willingness to fight is significantly higher in authoritarian countries (50%) than in democracies (41%) globally. Whether that reflects the higher coercive capacity of authoritarian states to produce favourable survey responses, or genuinely stronger collective mobilisation impulses, is a question the methodology alone cannot resolve.

As IntelliNews reported, that could be a problem if WWIII breaks out as the growing military cooperation between the CRINK countries – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea – poses a serious threat to the Western democracies; between them these four countries have half of the world’s men under arms in their standing arms and, as the Iran war has shown, are well equipped to meet a US-backed military challenge head-on.

What the data does make clear is that the publics of the world's established democracies — particularly in Western Europe — are simultaneously supporting higher defence spending in principle while showing declining personal willingness to participate in what that spending is designed to enable.