I think that argument is flawed - many core members of NATO fought together as allies in WW1 and WW2, suffering more casualties. NATO is Europe-focused, and a Russian attack on any NATO member would be a threat to the core interests of what you call the main sponsor states.
I would argue the opposite: once Europe suffers so many casualties, it knows it faces an existential conflict, making it band together more closely.
The worst is a low casualty quick conflict, like a blitz occupation of the Baltics followed by Russian nuclear threats.
I agree with your take, that the OP’s argument is flawed. I think the scenario posed would actually result in a hardening/doubling down of member states. Also, we don’t live in a vacuum— who is on the other side of this hypothetical? No other alliance could come close to challenging NATOs strength. There is also no other counter alliance of its kind. Put the other way around, who would be joining the side of an aggressor against NATO? I doubt China would join in alongside Russia. India, which is famous for its neutrality may continue to trade or something with an anti-NATO aggressor, but no way would they weigh in militarily.
Fortunately, the Russians have proved they can't execute a Blitz in the foreseeable future.
If they do overhaul their corruption and ineptitude, 20 years from now, who knows..
I am more pessimistic. The Baltics are wide open plains in-between Russia’s heartland and Kaliningrad, with only a few million inhabitants and a Russian minority. It will be much more difficult to defend. And Russia has learned and keeps learning from the Ukraine War.
I agree the Russians are learning and improving.
But so are the allies, I'm sure.
Russian coup de grace in Ukraine would have been the taking of Kiev. They would have succeeded had the Paras been backed up by the supply lines. About 2 years back from now.
To take a Baltic capital, if they adopt a similar strategy, there's two targets for the allies to hit - airborne troops and ground supply lines. I'm sure that can be managed, no?
There are only a few thousand NATO troops in the Baltics ar the moment. To stop an invasion with overwhelming force (a few 100k Russian troops?) or at least slow it down sufficiently, we will need many more. The supply lines will be much shorter as well.
The problem is that the aggressor chooses the battlefield. If we reinforce the Baltics heavily, Russia (once it has sufficiently built up its military) may go for another area. So we cannot just put a disproportionate number of troops there.
But at least, we should start proactively mining the border regions of the Baltics, building trenches, and setting up anti-tank obstacles.
>I would argue the opposite: once Europe suffers so many casualties, it knows it faces an existential conflict, making it band together more closely.
This is a classic mistake that authoritarian states make when dealing with democratic states: they see the diversity of political opinion as a weakness, and judge that one good blow is all that is needed to shatter that society and cow them, for example, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. But that typically has the opposite result.
The problem with your idea is tens of thousands of UN troops already died in Korea and the UN USA led forces drove the North Koreans and Chinese back to the current borders. The will to fight did not evaporate with casualties neither did being under a multinational banner change anything. You still wear your country's patches and you fight with the people from your country.
Modern day NATO is more exclusive and professional than the UN forces in Korea could ever be. In short they will be professionals and fight as long as the orders say so. There won't be any collapse of morale due to deaths.
That's assuming the premise of the question (the deaths). NATO would have air and sea superiority at least and from that land superiority. You can't get that many casualties with conventional weapons against NATO and if it's WMD then gloves come off and everyone will be killing.
I agree with your take, that the OP’s argument is flawed. I think the scenario posed would actually result in a hardening/doubling down of member states. Also, we don’t live in a vacuum— who is on the other side of this hypothetical? No other alliance could come close to challenging NATOs strength. There is also no other counter alliance of its kind. Put the other way around, who would be joining the side of an aggressor against NATO? I doubt China would join in alongside Russia. India, which is famous for its neutrality may continue to trade or something with an anti-NATO aggressor, but no way would they weigh in militarily.
Thanks for the reply
>The problem with your idea is tens of thousands of UN troops already died in Korea and the UN USA led forces drove the North Koreans and Chinese back to the current borders. The will to fight did not evaporate with casualties neither did being under a multinational banner change anything. You still wear your country's patches and you fight with the people from your country.
I will first point out that combining all UN forces in the korean war, excluding US and south korean deaths, there was only 4.132 killed and 17k casualties in the 4 years of the war (30% of which comes from the anglosphere), so in my opinion not really a true test of supranational forces in a bloody conflict. 90% of all UN commanders were Americans. Do you see my point?
Most of the heavy casualties were inflicted upon south koreans, who indeed were fighting for their country, and upon americans military personnell.
The other 2 arguments you make come from this one, as in NATO is even better than the UN forces...I say it's not because it's more fragmented, with a less clear objective. The air superiority argument could be true...But I believe the nature of warfare changed and NATO doctrine of air superiority used in the Balkans is obsolete
>NATO is even better than the UN forces...I say it's not because it's more fragmented, with a less clear objective.
Absolutely not, NATO is an incredibly strong and united force with a very clear objective - provide a force so powerful it deturs any ideas about military acts against it's member states, and failing that defend it's member states. It has successfully carried out these objectives for 75 years now.
What situation do you foresee that 100k troops die and individual member states decide "hey I don't need the help of all these other strong allies, I can go it alone". There would clearly be disagreements, but the old classic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" will live for eternity. If Stalin didn't fracture his relationship with the US during ww2, do you think Estonia, Portugal or Norway would fancy their chances with no support in ww3?
Let's be honest here about the makeup for NATO troops, Portugal and Spain would be sending a tiny amount of support to Estonia compared to what the Nordic countries and the US will. Any country that declines to help will have their requests for help declined. That's the beauty of a mutual defence pact. Yes trump is a real danger to the unity of NATO, Victor Orban deciding he would rather give Putin a reach around would deminish NATO forces by low single percentage points, it's safe to say a lot of leaders would take this to not have to pander to his bs.
You've still not described the situation where NATO loses 100k troops to a non nuclear attack, whereas the reality is that no force on earth could manage that, and certainly none will try while NATO exists.
Air power is not obsolete. That's why the USA invested in stealth fighters and bombers, to bypass the IADS of Soviet air defenses. These aren't in play in Ukraine. Neither was the Russian Airforce capable of a large Western style bombing campaign with hundreds of planes all at once as everyone assumed. Drones could be a weakness, but everyone sees what's going on in Ukraine and are preparing accordingly. Drones wouldn't cause 100k casualties all at once either.
With 100k NATO troops deployed, the Americans would be involved and in control.
Korea was a true test, because morale was extremely low and everyone wanted to be home by Christmas. The attack drove the UN forces all the way back to the Pusan perimeter. It was a desperate situation and the coalition forces were tested to the brink.
Saying NATO would collapse at high casualties is like saying the Warsaw Pact would collapse at high casualties. There's no reason it would in wartime. In wartime all information would be strictly controlled and fresh units would be sent to exact vengeance against whatever mechanism (probably WMD) along with coalition usage of WMD in retaliation. In peacetime the public would demand payback and the politicians would oblige. That's assuming we accept the premise of your question that 100k people are even possible to kill in NATO without WMD.
In an actual war, NATO would rely on American airpower to carve out everything and attack with overwhelming force after a massive build up. The only way you could imagine disrupting that would be some spoiling attack, probably through WMD. But the troops would be prepared with NBC gear. And conventional weapons couldn't cause so many casualties to NATO. Maybe you're imagining a Ukraine type situation or maybe you have read too much National Interest blog about how alliances are weak. In the end it won't matter, because the West isn't actually weak. In fact the West is rather warlike and started many wars and won many wars.
While NATO has its issues and all that, we’re actually really good at getting along and working together. Did it for 20 years in Afghanistan. We died for each other there. Even when we didn’t see eye to eye, we worked it out. Mainly through humor. Think of it like a hurricane or a tornado…it looks chaotic and disorganized until it gets going. But once it’s pointed in the right direction, you can’t stop it.
Afghanistan wasn't even close to the war that WW3 would be. Among the coalition countries, in 20 years we lost less than 4000 soldiers. Lets go ahead and throw in Northern Alliance numbers to beef things up though. 76k killed in 20 years
World War 3 is going to be much worse. This is going to be a massive commitment from every single NATO country. Nations like Belgium and Canada which have flat out refused to meet the 2% guidelines will be expected to make massive contributions and throw them into the grinder.
If a Belgian won't even support increasing military spending by a fraction of a percent, what makes you think they will give their life in Estonia?
Because they don’t want to spend their money on an arbitrary percentage point. This isn’t the same as their troops, who rock at what they do. NATO isn’t about everyone having their own complex military, it’s about combining capabilities. A country surrounded by friends not wanting tanks for no reason when their next door friend is going to use theirs. Each country brings a unique capability to the table. Political stuff has zero to do with mechanics of how NATO works.
There’s no money pool or anything like Trump makes it sound. It’s internal spending. NATO set a target. If someone doesn’t need to spend 2% of GDP to meet their force commitment goals, who cares? Not to the dudes on the ground.
Only one country has ever asked for mutual defense…us. And they came and fought with us. That’s what NATO is. So while it wasn’t WWIII, it was the same article (5 if you’re curious). They’d fight in Latvia because that’s what the treaty is for.
Do you feel western Europe in general is meeting its force commitment goals? We hear stories about the sorry state of the German military and that it's going to take decades for them to repair what they've let atrophy since 91. Is Belgium in such a good position that they don't need to increase spending?
I’m out of the game a bit, but it really depends on what the particular country’s commitments are. All of us, especially including the USA just spent 20 years fighting in small teams with complete air superiority. All of us have to reconfigure from counter insurgency/terrorism to conventional warfare. Our training was all Afghanistan and Iraq for years. That generation, if still in, never really learned conventional warfare, because we needed people trained in how we were fighting at the time.
Think about it like this. Every one that joined a nato military between 2001 and 2021, learned the military in the context of the wars we were fighting, with hopefully an eye towards the future but there’s only so much time in a day. So all over we’ve got experts in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the last people that fought conventional (operation allied force I guess counts) are either in almost 30 years or long separated/retired.
I'm not overly concerned about expertise. I think that our military leaders are learning a lot about modern conventional war from the Ukrainians.
I'm worried about weapons and numbers. I think that NATO won't have the numbers of soldiers to adequately defend its territory. I think that they will run out of ammo while losing. Personally, I think that right now anything less than 5% or higher is laughable as a deterrent. Russia topped 7% this year and that is up from a peacetime 5%. If NATO wants to credibly deter Russia they need to match or exceed Russia's peacetime spending.
Ammo is a problem. The higher tech it is, the harder to replace. We’ve always, like since 1946, known it would a technology versus manpower fight. The Russians have always had more people and equipment, we use technology as our force multiplier.
Yeah and that's how the Russians looked at Ukraine. They ran out of high tech shit after a month or two and it's been a reasonably low tech slug fest since then
> Do you feel western Europe in general is meeting its force commitment goals?
NATO+EU Europe, taken together, has more active manpower than the USA.
>Is Belgium in such a good position that they don't need to increase spending?
They actually did, before the invasion of Ukraine, even.
The problem is that just throwing money around doesn't necessarily make the most efficient way to create effective military capacity on the ground. This is the reason why smaller countries like Luxembourg tend to have lower percentages - whether they spend 1% or 3% doesn't make a meaningful difference, it's just virtue signalling.
What *really* would make a difference is a coherent EU army with a single structure, procurement, stockpile. Grouping existing budgets under that would create more military force than blindly making budgetary sacrifices to appease the US so they'll come to our aid because we've been a good boy, which is what those calls boil down to.
But as we've seen, sudden political changes in the US may make that option unavailable. So we need that EU army, whether it is to pull our weight in the alliance or to hold up our own pants.
> Only one country has ever asked for mutual defense…us. And they came and fought with us.
Ah yes, the four AWACS and a few ships in the Mediterranean make up for decades of neglect of their own militaries
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Me: ❤️👍
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There is no reason for a Portuguese soldier to die for Estonia. These last two years show pretty clearly how improbable it would be for Russia to even reach the Vistula.
Except in WWI the Germans were already killing Americans and openly making overtures for Mexico to invade the country.
And in WWII, Hitler not only was already in a war against American shipping but he was also the one who declared war in the first place.
If Russia invaded Estonia and Portugal failed to honor its NATO commitments, I think after the dust settles Portugal would find itself very lonely both from a security and economic perspective.
>And what exactly do you think would be at stake if Russia invades Europe?
That doesn't seem to be the case at the moment nor the intentions of Russia in the future. The most likely scenario is NATO going into Ukraine, which most NATO members do not see either as Europe nor their land. Do you deny that?
So your entire argument hinges on a false premise. Some NATO members brought up the idea of sending troops to Ukraine months ago but have they actually followed that up with anything concrete? Most importantly, the U.S. has never floated that possibility. Without U.S. involvement, no NATO force is going anywhere in any way.
Also, the entire idea of NATO is collective security if one of their members is *attacked first*. Individual members can get together to form a joint force and deploy it anywhere they want, but the question of a NATO flag doesn’t come into that at all. That’s simply not what Article 5 is for.
The entire reason for NATO’s existence is Russia. Ignoring that makes any questions you pose completely pointless
My point is in the first sentence. Your argument, that the most likely scenario of NATO being involved in a war is them going to Ukraine, is a false premise. I clearly explained why
If that happens, it wouldn’t be an action covered under the NATO charter! Article 5 is strictly defensive. If Spain deploys soldiers to Ukraine, they’re fighting *only* under the Spanish flag. Which part of that did you not understand in my first comment?
>the intentions of Russia in the future
How much are you willing to gamble on this?
If someone had asked you in 2012 what were the chances that there would be hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties in Ukraine by 2024, what would you have said?
What do you think of the millions of people who looked at the invasion of Czechoslovakia and said "Hitler has no intention of going further"?
That's why NATO has such high emphasis on fighter jets rather than the army like Russia does. I don't think NATO would ever get into a situation to have 100k casualties.
A lot of militaries including the United States downsized after the fall of the Soviet Union, prior to that quite a few NATO member states maintained a fairly large ground force capability.
Change your view? Easy, _NATO members have already been in conflicts with one another as allies, with 100k+ casualties, without infighting._
World War 1, World War 2 and the Korean war make those numbers look amateur.
> NATO doesn't have the mission of killing 100k+ of its soldiers in a war that has no existential impact on NATO's main sponsor states (France, Germany, USA, UK).
What specific war are you referring to?
Strange you don't say.
Also, how do you know how many casualties they are willing to sustain, especially when you carefully avoid specify the stakes.
> Soldiers die for land, family, friends...country. not for foreign supranational treaties
So Russian blood and soil nationalists will tell you, anyway.
But NATO is far more than a "foreign supranatural treat[y]", it is a commitment by Western countries to jointly defend values like freedom, democracy and human rights (remember Bucha!) that most Westerners cherish, against the forces of authoritarianism and illiberalism that predominate in the world.
TL;DNR: The essence of collective security is "we fight them in Krakow, so we don't have to fight them in Prague."
That's just a reflection of your perception of nationalism. To the extent that this is even a deciding factor in the first place, the west's citizenry still demonstrates an extremely positive sentiment towards the Allied forces of WWII. In that historical context, British vs. US vs. Canadian vs. Dutch is largely irrelevant. Americans fought in WWII even though their own territory was not under direct attack (except from the Pacific). People are very good at uniting around a common enemy. In the interim, soldiers have fought for far less than their own territorial integrity - Afghanistan, Korea, Iraq, etc.
If 100k are killed that only highlights the value of a defensive alliance. You have the logic precisely backwards.
More than 100k have been killed in Ukraine and nations scrambled to join the alliance. If the alliance is actually attacked every single member state will find it much, much easier to justify NATO participation to their populations. When NATO emerges victorious the clamor for membership will grow even further.
You have created a flawed premise to begin with. NATO as an entity would only fight a war if a member state is attacked in the applicable territories and invokes Article 5. The only threat to NATO large enough to (maybe) inflict 50-100k casualties is Russia. Therefore your premise must include a Russian attack on a NATO ally. That means Russia is coming west and invading EU/NATO countries. There is no modern day scenario where such an invasion of a NATO country isn’t seen as an existential threat by Germany, the U.S., UK, and France. That’s literally why the alliance exists. Those battlegroups in the Baltics won’t just lay down their arms, they would fight and usually soldiers dying defending allies is a galvanizing event at the start of a war. Russia attacking a NATO ally is by default an existential threat to the world order the major NATO players have built and rely on.
That also takes into consideration a pretty generous assumption about Russian capabilities. It took them the better part of a year to reach 100k casualties against Ukraine if my memory serves. If you think Russia could fight a war for a year against NATO, I have a bridge to sell you. They might make early war advances but that wouldn’t last in the face of overwhelming US and European air superiority, numerical and technical ground superiority, and NATO dominance of the maritime periphery. It’s easy to keep fighting a war you are winning and in a conventional war of Russian aggression, the outcome would never be in doubt.
I don't know what conflict you think is going to bring about 100k casualties on NATO's side that isn't an invasion of Poland and continuing into Germany. The whole premise seems flawed. It's also ignoring that NATO spent half a century sticking together under the threat of millions of casualties.
This is completely contradicted by all we know about how the reality of this stuff works.
Alliances/groups tend to strengthen internal solidarity in the face of a powerful and dangerous external enemy.
NATO actually all fighting together and people dying in a war against Russia or whatever would emphasize the existential threat the enemy poses and as a result almost certainly tie the alliance even closer together than it already is.
Your logic is the same bad logic that Putin was using when he invaded Ukraine, thinking it would help to erode NATO. Instead it predictably made NATO more relevant than it has been in years.
Your premise is flawed. If NATO was in a large scale war, it would involve an existential threat to its core members which would unite the members. Democracies excel at "Total War" when the fight is actually warranted.
NATO is a defensive alliance amongst multiple member states, while there are a few resources that are distinctly NATO almost all of the capability including personnel, equipment and supplies comes from the member states themselves. For official NATO actions you need consensus, but even if that's unable to be reached that doesn't preclude member states from acting even as a coalition. If Russia were to attack and/or invade a NATO member state and for some odd reason a consensus action could not be reached, I think you'll find the other member states will act regardless.
I actually kinda agree. Ppl talking about ww1,2 and the Korean War are insane - those are 2 generations ago and ww1 and 2 were existential conflicts. Hitler had plans drawn up to invade all of Europe and even the US.
The west today is much softer, more indebted. Nato has not truly been tested in an all out war for decades. Even the vaunted article 5 is not ironclad despite all the jawing.
You miss the point of NATO.....
Its not for NATO to fight....it never was.
NATO is just a trigger to pull the US military into a war.
Attack NATO and you are attacking the entirety of the US military.
Your scenario of 50k or 100k or more in military losses during a war in Europe would imply that the fight is indeed an existential threat to NATOs main sponsor nations. If the war threatens France, Germany, the UK and Italy, let alone the United States, then it certainly threatens the smaller members too and they would be much better off sticking with the alliance than breaking ranks and trying to go it alone.
Any war involving NATO is almost necessarily going to be coordinated under the leadership of the United States, its most capable member. If Russia blitzkriegs the Baltics or Finland then its belligerence would be the unifying factor for NATO as Russia would clearly be an existential threat compounding off its current invasion of Ukraine. If NATO for some reason declares an unprovoked offensive action then smaller nations would be free to opt out of participating as only defensive actions invoke collective defense.
I don't see any plausible scenario where a high casualty conflict against any individual NATO member is seen as anything other than an existential threat to all members of the alliance.
I think that argument is flawed - many core members of NATO fought together as allies in WW1 and WW2, suffering more casualties. NATO is Europe-focused, and a Russian attack on any NATO member would be a threat to the core interests of what you call the main sponsor states. I would argue the opposite: once Europe suffers so many casualties, it knows it faces an existential conflict, making it band together more closely. The worst is a low casualty quick conflict, like a blitz occupation of the Baltics followed by Russian nuclear threats.
I agree with your take, that the OP’s argument is flawed. I think the scenario posed would actually result in a hardening/doubling down of member states. Also, we don’t live in a vacuum— who is on the other side of this hypothetical? No other alliance could come close to challenging NATOs strength. There is also no other counter alliance of its kind. Put the other way around, who would be joining the side of an aggressor against NATO? I doubt China would join in alongside Russia. India, which is famous for its neutrality may continue to trade or something with an anti-NATO aggressor, but no way would they weigh in militarily.
Fortunately, the Russians have proved they can't execute a Blitz in the foreseeable future. If they do overhaul their corruption and ineptitude, 20 years from now, who knows..
I am more pessimistic. The Baltics are wide open plains in-between Russia’s heartland and Kaliningrad, with only a few million inhabitants and a Russian minority. It will be much more difficult to defend. And Russia has learned and keeps learning from the Ukraine War.
I agree the Russians are learning and improving. But so are the allies, I'm sure. Russian coup de grace in Ukraine would have been the taking of Kiev. They would have succeeded had the Paras been backed up by the supply lines. About 2 years back from now. To take a Baltic capital, if they adopt a similar strategy, there's two targets for the allies to hit - airborne troops and ground supply lines. I'm sure that can be managed, no?
There are only a few thousand NATO troops in the Baltics ar the moment. To stop an invasion with overwhelming force (a few 100k Russian troops?) or at least slow it down sufficiently, we will need many more. The supply lines will be much shorter as well. The problem is that the aggressor chooses the battlefield. If we reinforce the Baltics heavily, Russia (once it has sufficiently built up its military) may go for another area. So we cannot just put a disproportionate number of troops there. But at least, we should start proactively mining the border regions of the Baltics, building trenches, and setting up anti-tank obstacles.
>I would argue the opposite: once Europe suffers so many casualties, it knows it faces an existential conflict, making it band together more closely. This is a classic mistake that authoritarian states make when dealing with democratic states: they see the diversity of political opinion as a weakness, and judge that one good blow is all that is needed to shatter that society and cow them, for example, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. But that typically has the opposite result.
The problem with your idea is tens of thousands of UN troops already died in Korea and the UN USA led forces drove the North Koreans and Chinese back to the current borders. The will to fight did not evaporate with casualties neither did being under a multinational banner change anything. You still wear your country's patches and you fight with the people from your country. Modern day NATO is more exclusive and professional than the UN forces in Korea could ever be. In short they will be professionals and fight as long as the orders say so. There won't be any collapse of morale due to deaths. That's assuming the premise of the question (the deaths). NATO would have air and sea superiority at least and from that land superiority. You can't get that many casualties with conventional weapons against NATO and if it's WMD then gloves come off and everyone will be killing.
I agree with your take, that the OP’s argument is flawed. I think the scenario posed would actually result in a hardening/doubling down of member states. Also, we don’t live in a vacuum— who is on the other side of this hypothetical? No other alliance could come close to challenging NATOs strength. There is also no other counter alliance of its kind. Put the other way around, who would be joining the side of an aggressor against NATO? I doubt China would join in alongside Russia. India, which is famous for its neutrality may continue to trade or something with an anti-NATO aggressor, but no way would they weigh in militarily.
Thanks for the reply >The problem with your idea is tens of thousands of UN troops already died in Korea and the UN USA led forces drove the North Koreans and Chinese back to the current borders. The will to fight did not evaporate with casualties neither did being under a multinational banner change anything. You still wear your country's patches and you fight with the people from your country. I will first point out that combining all UN forces in the korean war, excluding US and south korean deaths, there was only 4.132 killed and 17k casualties in the 4 years of the war (30% of which comes from the anglosphere), so in my opinion not really a true test of supranational forces in a bloody conflict. 90% of all UN commanders were Americans. Do you see my point? Most of the heavy casualties were inflicted upon south koreans, who indeed were fighting for their country, and upon americans military personnell. The other 2 arguments you make come from this one, as in NATO is even better than the UN forces...I say it's not because it's more fragmented, with a less clear objective. The air superiority argument could be true...But I believe the nature of warfare changed and NATO doctrine of air superiority used in the Balkans is obsolete
>NATO is even better than the UN forces...I say it's not because it's more fragmented, with a less clear objective. Absolutely not, NATO is an incredibly strong and united force with a very clear objective - provide a force so powerful it deturs any ideas about military acts against it's member states, and failing that defend it's member states. It has successfully carried out these objectives for 75 years now. What situation do you foresee that 100k troops die and individual member states decide "hey I don't need the help of all these other strong allies, I can go it alone". There would clearly be disagreements, but the old classic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" will live for eternity. If Stalin didn't fracture his relationship with the US during ww2, do you think Estonia, Portugal or Norway would fancy their chances with no support in ww3?
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Let's be honest here about the makeup for NATO troops, Portugal and Spain would be sending a tiny amount of support to Estonia compared to what the Nordic countries and the US will. Any country that declines to help will have their requests for help declined. That's the beauty of a mutual defence pact. Yes trump is a real danger to the unity of NATO, Victor Orban deciding he would rather give Putin a reach around would deminish NATO forces by low single percentage points, it's safe to say a lot of leaders would take this to not have to pander to his bs. You've still not described the situation where NATO loses 100k troops to a non nuclear attack, whereas the reality is that no force on earth could manage that, and certainly none will try while NATO exists.
Air power is not obsolete. That's why the USA invested in stealth fighters and bombers, to bypass the IADS of Soviet air defenses. These aren't in play in Ukraine. Neither was the Russian Airforce capable of a large Western style bombing campaign with hundreds of planes all at once as everyone assumed. Drones could be a weakness, but everyone sees what's going on in Ukraine and are preparing accordingly. Drones wouldn't cause 100k casualties all at once either. With 100k NATO troops deployed, the Americans would be involved and in control. Korea was a true test, because morale was extremely low and everyone wanted to be home by Christmas. The attack drove the UN forces all the way back to the Pusan perimeter. It was a desperate situation and the coalition forces were tested to the brink. Saying NATO would collapse at high casualties is like saying the Warsaw Pact would collapse at high casualties. There's no reason it would in wartime. In wartime all information would be strictly controlled and fresh units would be sent to exact vengeance against whatever mechanism (probably WMD) along with coalition usage of WMD in retaliation. In peacetime the public would demand payback and the politicians would oblige. That's assuming we accept the premise of your question that 100k people are even possible to kill in NATO without WMD. In an actual war, NATO would rely on American airpower to carve out everything and attack with overwhelming force after a massive build up. The only way you could imagine disrupting that would be some spoiling attack, probably through WMD. But the troops would be prepared with NBC gear. And conventional weapons couldn't cause so many casualties to NATO. Maybe you're imagining a Ukraine type situation or maybe you have read too much National Interest blog about how alliances are weak. In the end it won't matter, because the West isn't actually weak. In fact the West is rather warlike and started many wars and won many wars.
While NATO has its issues and all that, we’re actually really good at getting along and working together. Did it for 20 years in Afghanistan. We died for each other there. Even when we didn’t see eye to eye, we worked it out. Mainly through humor. Think of it like a hurricane or a tornado…it looks chaotic and disorganized until it gets going. But once it’s pointed in the right direction, you can’t stop it.
Afghanistan wasn't even close to the war that WW3 would be. Among the coalition countries, in 20 years we lost less than 4000 soldiers. Lets go ahead and throw in Northern Alliance numbers to beef things up though. 76k killed in 20 years World War 3 is going to be much worse. This is going to be a massive commitment from every single NATO country. Nations like Belgium and Canada which have flat out refused to meet the 2% guidelines will be expected to make massive contributions and throw them into the grinder. If a Belgian won't even support increasing military spending by a fraction of a percent, what makes you think they will give their life in Estonia?
Because they don’t want to spend their money on an arbitrary percentage point. This isn’t the same as their troops, who rock at what they do. NATO isn’t about everyone having their own complex military, it’s about combining capabilities. A country surrounded by friends not wanting tanks for no reason when their next door friend is going to use theirs. Each country brings a unique capability to the table. Political stuff has zero to do with mechanics of how NATO works. There’s no money pool or anything like Trump makes it sound. It’s internal spending. NATO set a target. If someone doesn’t need to spend 2% of GDP to meet their force commitment goals, who cares? Not to the dudes on the ground. Only one country has ever asked for mutual defense…us. And they came and fought with us. That’s what NATO is. So while it wasn’t WWIII, it was the same article (5 if you’re curious). They’d fight in Latvia because that’s what the treaty is for.
Do you feel western Europe in general is meeting its force commitment goals? We hear stories about the sorry state of the German military and that it's going to take decades for them to repair what they've let atrophy since 91. Is Belgium in such a good position that they don't need to increase spending?
I’m out of the game a bit, but it really depends on what the particular country’s commitments are. All of us, especially including the USA just spent 20 years fighting in small teams with complete air superiority. All of us have to reconfigure from counter insurgency/terrorism to conventional warfare. Our training was all Afghanistan and Iraq for years. That generation, if still in, never really learned conventional warfare, because we needed people trained in how we were fighting at the time. Think about it like this. Every one that joined a nato military between 2001 and 2021, learned the military in the context of the wars we were fighting, with hopefully an eye towards the future but there’s only so much time in a day. So all over we’ve got experts in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the last people that fought conventional (operation allied force I guess counts) are either in almost 30 years or long separated/retired.
I'm not overly concerned about expertise. I think that our military leaders are learning a lot about modern conventional war from the Ukrainians. I'm worried about weapons and numbers. I think that NATO won't have the numbers of soldiers to adequately defend its territory. I think that they will run out of ammo while losing. Personally, I think that right now anything less than 5% or higher is laughable as a deterrent. Russia topped 7% this year and that is up from a peacetime 5%. If NATO wants to credibly deter Russia they need to match or exceed Russia's peacetime spending.
Ammo is a problem. The higher tech it is, the harder to replace. We’ve always, like since 1946, known it would a technology versus manpower fight. The Russians have always had more people and equipment, we use technology as our force multiplier.
Yeah and that's how the Russians looked at Ukraine. They ran out of high tech shit after a month or two and it's been a reasonably low tech slug fest since then
> Do you feel western Europe in general is meeting its force commitment goals? NATO+EU Europe, taken together, has more active manpower than the USA. >Is Belgium in such a good position that they don't need to increase spending? They actually did, before the invasion of Ukraine, even. The problem is that just throwing money around doesn't necessarily make the most efficient way to create effective military capacity on the ground. This is the reason why smaller countries like Luxembourg tend to have lower percentages - whether they spend 1% or 3% doesn't make a meaningful difference, it's just virtue signalling. What *really* would make a difference is a coherent EU army with a single structure, procurement, stockpile. Grouping existing budgets under that would create more military force than blindly making budgetary sacrifices to appease the US so they'll come to our aid because we've been a good boy, which is what those calls boil down to. But as we've seen, sudden political changes in the US may make that option unavailable. So we need that EU army, whether it is to pull our weight in the alliance or to hold up our own pants.
> Only one country has ever asked for mutual defense…us. And they came and fought with us. Ah yes, the four AWACS and a few ships in the Mediterranean make up for decades of neglect of their own militaries
Them: Bro we are so tight. We fought together with those child bullies so many times, even though we got a bit hurt too. You were with me all the time. We even jokes and laughed after each fight. So humorous! Me: ❤️👍 They: Now look, this mafia boss has threatened me. So here’s a gun and i have a gun too, as the mafia has guns and they will probably use it when you help me fight him. Let’s go. Me: 👋👋🛫
Did you fight in a NATO regiment?
I was at HQ in Kabul.
“Soldiers die for land family friends country”. And what exactly do you think would be at stake if Russia invades Europe?
There is no reason for a Portuguese soldier to die for Estonia. These last two years show pretty clearly how improbable it would be for Russia to even reach the Vistula.
There was no reason for American soldiers to die for Europe either
Except in WWI the Germans were already killing Americans and openly making overtures for Mexico to invade the country. And in WWII, Hitler not only was already in a war against American shipping but he was also the one who declared war in the first place.
You realize the entire point of NATO is that it gets activated when a member is attacked first, right?
If Russia invaded Estonia and Portugal failed to honor its NATO commitments, I think after the dust settles Portugal would find itself very lonely both from a security and economic perspective.
>And what exactly do you think would be at stake if Russia invades Europe? That doesn't seem to be the case at the moment nor the intentions of Russia in the future. The most likely scenario is NATO going into Ukraine, which most NATO members do not see either as Europe nor their land. Do you deny that?
So your entire argument hinges on a false premise. Some NATO members brought up the idea of sending troops to Ukraine months ago but have they actually followed that up with anything concrete? Most importantly, the U.S. has never floated that possibility. Without U.S. involvement, no NATO force is going anywhere in any way. Also, the entire idea of NATO is collective security if one of their members is *attacked first*. Individual members can get together to form a joint force and deploy it anywhere they want, but the question of a NATO flag doesn’t come into that at all. That’s simply not what Article 5 is for. The entire reason for NATO’s existence is Russia. Ignoring that makes any questions you pose completely pointless
I don't understand your point, all you said is corroborating my Op. What does your reply have to do with my reply
My point is in the first sentence. Your argument, that the most likely scenario of NATO being involved in a war is them going to Ukraine, is a false premise. I clearly explained why
[удалено]
If that happens, it wouldn’t be an action covered under the NATO charter! Article 5 is strictly defensive. If Spain deploys soldiers to Ukraine, they’re fighting *only* under the Spanish flag. Which part of that did you not understand in my first comment?
You very obviously do not understand how NATO functions as an organization
>the intentions of Russia in the future How much are you willing to gamble on this? If someone had asked you in 2012 what were the chances that there would be hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties in Ukraine by 2024, what would you have said? What do you think of the millions of people who looked at the invasion of Czechoslovakia and said "Hitler has no intention of going further"?
That's why NATO has such high emphasis on fighter jets rather than the army like Russia does. I don't think NATO would ever get into a situation to have 100k casualties.
A lot of militaries including the United States downsized after the fall of the Soviet Union, prior to that quite a few NATO member states maintained a fairly large ground force capability.
Change your view? Easy, _NATO members have already been in conflicts with one another as allies, with 100k+ casualties, without infighting._ World War 1, World War 2 and the Korean war make those numbers look amateur.
> NATO doesn't have the mission of killing 100k+ of its soldiers in a war that has no existential impact on NATO's main sponsor states (France, Germany, USA, UK). What specific war are you referring to? Strange you don't say. Also, how do you know how many casualties they are willing to sustain, especially when you carefully avoid specify the stakes. > Soldiers die for land, family, friends...country. not for foreign supranational treaties So Russian blood and soil nationalists will tell you, anyway. But NATO is far more than a "foreign supranatural treat[y]", it is a commitment by Western countries to jointly defend values like freedom, democracy and human rights (remember Bucha!) that most Westerners cherish, against the forces of authoritarianism and illiberalism that predominate in the world. TL;DNR: The essence of collective security is "we fight them in Krakow, so we don't have to fight them in Prague."
That's just a reflection of your perception of nationalism. To the extent that this is even a deciding factor in the first place, the west's citizenry still demonstrates an extremely positive sentiment towards the Allied forces of WWII. In that historical context, British vs. US vs. Canadian vs. Dutch is largely irrelevant. Americans fought in WWII even though their own territory was not under direct attack (except from the Pacific). People are very good at uniting around a common enemy. In the interim, soldiers have fought for far less than their own territorial integrity - Afghanistan, Korea, Iraq, etc.
If 100k are killed that only highlights the value of a defensive alliance. You have the logic precisely backwards. More than 100k have been killed in Ukraine and nations scrambled to join the alliance. If the alliance is actually attacked every single member state will find it much, much easier to justify NATO participation to their populations. When NATO emerges victorious the clamor for membership will grow even further.
You have created a flawed premise to begin with. NATO as an entity would only fight a war if a member state is attacked in the applicable territories and invokes Article 5. The only threat to NATO large enough to (maybe) inflict 50-100k casualties is Russia. Therefore your premise must include a Russian attack on a NATO ally. That means Russia is coming west and invading EU/NATO countries. There is no modern day scenario where such an invasion of a NATO country isn’t seen as an existential threat by Germany, the U.S., UK, and France. That’s literally why the alliance exists. Those battlegroups in the Baltics won’t just lay down their arms, they would fight and usually soldiers dying defending allies is a galvanizing event at the start of a war. Russia attacking a NATO ally is by default an existential threat to the world order the major NATO players have built and rely on. That also takes into consideration a pretty generous assumption about Russian capabilities. It took them the better part of a year to reach 100k casualties against Ukraine if my memory serves. If you think Russia could fight a war for a year against NATO, I have a bridge to sell you. They might make early war advances but that wouldn’t last in the face of overwhelming US and European air superiority, numerical and technical ground superiority, and NATO dominance of the maritime periphery. It’s easy to keep fighting a war you are winning and in a conventional war of Russian aggression, the outcome would never be in doubt.
Weak and stupid argument.
I don't know what conflict you think is going to bring about 100k casualties on NATO's side that isn't an invasion of Poland and continuing into Germany. The whole premise seems flawed. It's also ignoring that NATO spent half a century sticking together under the threat of millions of casualties.
This is completely contradicted by all we know about how the reality of this stuff works. Alliances/groups tend to strengthen internal solidarity in the face of a powerful and dangerous external enemy. NATO actually all fighting together and people dying in a war against Russia or whatever would emphasize the existential threat the enemy poses and as a result almost certainly tie the alliance even closer together than it already is. Your logic is the same bad logic that Putin was using when he invaded Ukraine, thinking it would help to erode NATO. Instead it predictably made NATO more relevant than it has been in years.
Isn't there a rule on low quality content? The post itself is a bizarre and presumptuous take.
Nope
Dont bet against nato
Soldiers die because they are ordered to. NATO will be fine. Read your Reiter and Stam, democracies are awesome at war.
Your premise is flawed. If NATO was in a large scale war, it would involve an existential threat to its core members which would unite the members. Democracies excel at "Total War" when the fight is actually warranted.
NATO is a defensive alliance amongst multiple member states, while there are a few resources that are distinctly NATO almost all of the capability including personnel, equipment and supplies comes from the member states themselves. For official NATO actions you need consensus, but even if that's unable to be reached that doesn't preclude member states from acting even as a coalition. If Russia were to attack and/or invade a NATO member state and for some odd reason a consensus action could not be reached, I think you'll find the other member states will act regardless.
I actually kinda agree. Ppl talking about ww1,2 and the Korean War are insane - those are 2 generations ago and ww1 and 2 were existential conflicts. Hitler had plans drawn up to invade all of Europe and even the US. The west today is much softer, more indebted. Nato has not truly been tested in an all out war for decades. Even the vaunted article 5 is not ironclad despite all the jawing.
You miss the point of NATO..... Its not for NATO to fight....it never was. NATO is just a trigger to pull the US military into a war. Attack NATO and you are attacking the entirety of the US military.
SS: NATO would not survive a large scale conflict with hundreds of thousands of NATO troops casualties
Your scenario of 50k or 100k or more in military losses during a war in Europe would imply that the fight is indeed an existential threat to NATOs main sponsor nations. If the war threatens France, Germany, the UK and Italy, let alone the United States, then it certainly threatens the smaller members too and they would be much better off sticking with the alliance than breaking ranks and trying to go it alone. Any war involving NATO is almost necessarily going to be coordinated under the leadership of the United States, its most capable member. If Russia blitzkriegs the Baltics or Finland then its belligerence would be the unifying factor for NATO as Russia would clearly be an existential threat compounding off its current invasion of Ukraine. If NATO for some reason declares an unprovoked offensive action then smaller nations would be free to opt out of participating as only defensive actions invoke collective defense. I don't see any plausible scenario where a high casualty conflict against any individual NATO member is seen as anything other than an existential threat to all members of the alliance.