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“The times of peace are over, the post-war era is over. We live in new times - in the pre-war era; for some of our brothers, this is no longer even the pre-war era, but the period of full-scale war in its most cruel version,” Tusk said.
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I wonder what everyone’s thoughts are on this. Personally I think Russia is spent and would need at least 5 years to train new troops, build new tanks, etc to the point of waging an effective war at any scale, let alone against NATO. Could easily be 10 with continued sanctions. By that time Putin could easily be dead and I see nothing structural that could lead to the next Russian President wanting to wage a war. Just have to wait out Putin with sanctions.
Putin’s waiting for the US Supreme Court to make good on what he paid for— finish reinstalling Trump so he can carry out his vision
Exactly this. The 4 Biden years were an unforeseen fluke that threw a bit of a wrench in the gears. But make no mistake, the goals remain unaltered.
Europe’s main worry is that the USA pulls out of NATO. Without the USA, NATO becomes a lot weaker and may have issues projecting power on Europe’s frontier for an extended period of time.
And as we’ve seen with Ukraine, Putin seems to have a decently firm grasp of Russia.
I always find this odd that people think that European Nato is weak and couldn’t take on Russia, especially when one of the poorest countries in Europe (Ukraine) fought them into a stalemate.
It doesn’t matter if Europe only NATO is weak or not. It would look weak. For better or worse the US is at least half it not more of NATO’s effective force. The loss would embolden Russia and friends.
Ukraine has also had significant support from NATO, both in materiel and in intelligence. A lot of that support came from the USA and a lot of the means to refill strategic reserves are mainly American owned and run.
A European only NATO has diminished command and control capabilities and defense industry.
You are right in that way, but Russia is now in war economy and that can’t stop quickly. They will gain weapons and troops and the ability to deploy them effectively. They won’t attack NATO directly, but they didn’t attack Ukraine directly either, at first. First they sent unmarked troops to stir troubles, then marked “to solve” the troubles. They are more than able to sustain paramilitary groups in various border areas for decades. No such activity will be enough to create an article 5 situation and all of it will degrade NATO and resolve of the members.
If Russia tries to deploy covert forces to destabilize any nato country I’m fairly sure that triggers article 5.
Only if NATO agrees it happened. Nations just have to find pretext or plausible deniability to avoid escalation – which they will when the alternative is inevitably nuclear escalation.
Russia is proving that the systems of NATO are highly vulnerable to a bad faith and cynical actor’s aggression. NATO needs to change to prove Russia wrong. And the USGOP, among others, are proving him highly right.
How? They will deny it, there will be no marks. It will start gradually. Likely NATO nations wont support article 5, really a nuclear war, if they think there are only some small border skirmishes on an unimportant border.
And that is it. This will bring divide and distrust into nato. That’s exactly what Russia wants. They don’t want to occupy Poland, they know that’s impossible.
Because it doesn’t matter if Russia admits it or not.
If "unknown“ saboteurs are doing things aligned with Russian interests in areas of Russian interest it won’t take long until western intelligence determines that Russia is sending military and covert ops into a nato country‘s territory. That is a clear act of aggression.
Simply denying that they are doing it isn’t worth shit behind the scenes.
That by itself not. But doing it slowly by creating arming and supporting paramilitary groups can absolutely work. No doubt. Getting rid of NATO is their primary goal. Our at least reducing effectiveness.
Poland would know.
I don’t think NATO members were ever at risk, especially now we know how ineffective the Russian military is in modern warfare
I think Putin wants the Baltics and hopes the other countries won’t go to war over them.
Yep they are exactly where he is going to start. It fixes the pesky problem of the Kaliningrad Oblast and improves Russian cold weather port access.
Worthless ports as not a single ship bound to russia will ever get through the Danish straits again if they invade the baltics.
So? As if that stopped Putin in the black sea
They saw in 2014 that the international community will just ignore a fucking invasion if they simply remove the insignia from their uniforms and pretend Russia has nothing to do with it. Phew, thank God this invasion happening in plain view is just some big misunderstanding and we don’t actually have to go help our ally defend themselves from unprovoked expansionist agression
Talk about conflict avoiding behavior.
Why stop at the Baltics?
Doesn’t matter when he threatens to nuke you if you fight back. He’s banking on using nuclear deterrence offensively, hoping that neither the UK nor France would really risk mutual destruction over some eastern European states. And the US is probably gonna elect Trump again and solidify their downfall.
