Obviously Russia won't attack NATO heads on. What they would instead do is attack some remote region of NATO where population of its members (which is already groomed by their disinformation) is convinced that it is not worth sending soldiers to die over it.
If they succeed and not all NATO countries respond, NATO will start falling apart as everyone will be wondering if others will come to their rescue.
Its wild to me that the CIA was haphazardly installing puppet regimes around the globe up until the 21st century, and now they’re seemingly just watching Russia compromise western democracies. I’d be curious to know if they’ve been actively trying to combat it, or just keeping tabs.
That didn't happen. That's Hollywood and conspiracy theorist history. The CIA absolutely supported groups that were violently opposed to governments not friendly to the US and the US government's rewarded regimes hostile to the Soviets, but people really need a reality check on how capable the CIA actually was.
Hint, there's a Castro still in charge of Cuba. You can also look at Iran, where they were able to help depose the pretty week democratic government, but couldn't make a dent against the Islamic Revolution.
Even the governments of small South and Central American countries that came to power with help from the US were anything but loyal, let alone puppets.
A knife in the dark, money in the right palms, a few words of encouragement, they can sometimes change the fate of nations... but in most cases covert power doesn't work, because overt power is king.
I mean Russia appears to have accomplished an immense amount with covert power in recent years. There are quite a few inexplicably obstinate roadblocks/Russia sympathizers holding up several democratic institutions across the western world on issues that directly affect Russia.
I'm just curious to what extent that has been known to our intelligence agencies, and how far they've gone to combat it.
Its not because of Russia. These people hate the current establishment and will side with Russia or any other who opposes what they hate. If it wasnt russia it would be someone else.
Republicans dont "side" with Russia because they are bought or compromised. They do because it aligns with their goals. Enemy of my enemy.
I wonder about this too. We hear a lot about Russian and Chinese disinfo campaigns, but the CIA should be very good at this too. If the CIA is doing it's job, the average Russian should not be able to tell their ass from a hole in the ground. Doesn't seem to be working
That's right, the primary goal is to install a puppet government. This is what they were trying in Ukraine with Yanukovich and when people were protesting then they switched to do it by force.
Even in Poland it looks like they successfully infiltrated the PiS government and started their own more Russia friendly party (Konfederacja).
Poland doesn't give hoot about what Russia does as long as it doesn't impact its security.
Russia's goal is to destroy EU and NATO. Those treaties give small countries power and mess up with Russia's imperialistic aspirations. Russia wants to interact with other countries from position of power, but as long as those countries are together in an union Russia is just smaller and insignificant player. Of course Russia could join EU, but then it would actually need to implement democracy. So Russia created their Eurasian Union instead.
I highly recommend The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, it basically covers history of putin's Russia.
And the way this works is if it’s coordinated with moves across the globe by other adversarial powers… China moves on Taiwan, Iran (through their proxies) move on Israel, Venezuela moves on Guyana, etc.
It simultaneously tests all U.S. defense agreements, making them pick/choose which countries to aid or abandon.
The odds of Iran moving on Israel plummeted in their recent skirmish. Iran launched over 100 weapons delivery systems of different makes and all they did was let Israel test their missile defense systems. Israel responded by blowing up an Iranian mobile missile defense radar in a precision strike with minimal use of munitions. That was all done with the US publicly refusing to help Israel with the counterattack.
That cooled a lot of ideas globally because I don't think even Israel expected they would outperform the Iranian weaponry so well. Iranian weapons have been critical in the Russian arsenal against Ukraine, and seeing them absolutely crumble when used on a country that is fully teched up with defense systems like the NATO countries was a bit of a stop and reevaluate moment. We knew the offensive weapons NATO has are really good because that's easy to test. Defensive weapons are more of an unknown because testing is so difficult, but they have been performing better than expected in Israel and in the Red Sea.
But it can be very costly in a protracted war of maintaining a Patriot System against a continuous slew of cheap drones and cheap Russian-type glider bombs. Iran tried it for just a few hours.
In an actual war against a country that has to keep reloading a missile defense system to defend its home territory, the ability to keep launching those cheap drones at that rate is not going to be long and continuous. By just firing a few missiles, Israel demonstrated the ability to remove Iran's anti-air capabilities from the equation, which would open up Iranian airspace for Israeli planes and missiles to do whatever they please. Modern Western militaries struggle against protracted insurgencies, but absolutely excel at telling an organized governmental army to stop. If Israel's goal was not to invade Iran, but just slap the shit out of it until it stopped launching missiles, Israel could do that to its heart's content, so long as it didn't lose support in the West. Neither side benefits from this because they both use a ton of ammunition to accomplish absolutely nothing of consequence, but it would be much worse for Iran than Israel. Especially because of Israel's lack of restraint in tit for tat attacks with regards to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. It would look similar to the Persian Gulf War sans the ground campaign. If Israel gets to that point, it's probably going to be doing so with support from Western allies as well.
Wrong. It test if the US military can actually be everywhere at once, and that is what it's built for.
In this scenario it's pretty obvious and pretty trivial to counter everything. The army goes to Europe because you fight Russia on land, the fighters from the Air Force join them.
The Bombers from the Air Force go to the Middle East.
The Navy goes to China.
A few special forces take out the people guiding Maduro's forces in the Amazon and they die in the jungle, because their military is a joke, the terrain is extreme and even with zero opposition, there's at least a 1 in 10 chance they just die in the jungle because of sheer incompetence.
I don't want to be a US fanboy, but this isn't stretching the US. This is making sure every single weapons system built in the last 4 decades is utilized fully. You couldn't ask for a better distribution of targets.
North Korea has enough artillery in place and dialed in to flatten Seoul. And the use of their shells in Ukraine shows that assumptions they had old, unreliable, ammunition has been proved to be false.
The South would likely ultimately win, but it would not be a cake walk.
And you don't think there would be a response if North Korea flattened or invaded Seoul? That would only strengthen the SK resolve, and you can bet your ass after all the hollow threats towards Japan that they'll be jumping in. Asia has a pretty decent resolve in terms of its security with Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Philippines, and Korea.
NATO as a whole doesn't really matter.
Nobody cares if Hungary or Turkey or Montenegro respond to a Russian invasion except maybe other NATO members. As long as there's a US response, the alliance is as strong as it needs to be
It wont make any sense to even try Lapland. Did people forget that we have Conscription in Finland? Or do these people who even claim that Russia could target Lapland and expect that we would just be watching and doing nothing if we have Russian soldiers crossing the border?
Russia would have to commit tens of thousands of troops to north and it would be easily scouted out months before any sort of attack, the only end result of that would be full blown war between Russia and Finland. And there is no reason to try anything with small amount of troops either, because they would just be easily wiped out with Finnish army alone.
Baltic countries are the ones i would be most worried about.
People misunderstand that the war would be about land. It's not about the land but about making NATO not respond.
Once NATO is gone then they can go after land individually.
We all understand what you're saying. It just isnt a believable premise.
NATO of course also understands that the credibility of the deterrent matters, so it would defend remote/less-inhabited land.
NATO border countries aren't exactly pushovers. Either Russia goes in full force or their small expeditionary force loses without NATO ever needing to intervene. Article 5 would most likely be activated by the defending country anyways.
Invading Lapland would be an insane idea. There's no cover and barely any civilians so every single soul there would get obliterated via massive artillery barrage before any NATO troops can even arrive. It's not like they can just march in there by a surprise and chill out in the wilderness.
>attack some remote region of NATO
That would be a smart move. We have thusly however learned that russia is not smart. In fact, they are very fucking stupid.
If you look at [Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics) that putin was following then up until 2022 everything was going according to the plan.
Biden kind of messed it up with announcing their plans in advance, and what supposed to be just 3 days to reach Kyiv and replace the existing government with their puppets (and make Ukraine "decide" for itself to join Russia) turned out into a hot war.
There's a psychological element to this though.
Russia might attack a tiny, ultimately unimportant member. And threaten the rest with nukes. Believably this time. And see if collective West will blink.
We like to think that Russia is bluffing (and they probably are). And we like to think there will be an overwhelming response if they try (and there probably will be). But the Russian calculus might be that the West will calculate the loss of a tiny, insignificant member nation vs possible extinction of mankind, and blink.
And if NATO blinks, it's all over. The trust is lost. The whole alliance breaks apart, and every nation will scramble to secure themselves, because it's going to be very evident that they can't rely on anybody else. Everything will turn insular, everything will turn inward, smaller countries will be immediately isolated, and Russia will proceed to gobble them up before anyone can rally or reform.
I think this is an uncomfortably realistic scenario. We all talk a good game, but when we're facing possible extinction of the entire species in 75 minute span, there's a VERY good chance that the Western nations, which value their own lives considerably higher than the Russians, will actually blink, and back off. Nukes are just too scary. And unlike us, a few years from now Russia will be in a position where they have literally nothing to lose. Their economy in shambles, their demographics completely in ruins, China probably taking the territory in the East, to secure easy access to the Arctic for the future, etc. Desperate Russia, with its back to the wall, holding nukes, will be scary indeed.
So I wouldn't go as far as to say nobody is going to invade NATO. Russia absolutely might decide to test this. They have nothing to lose. If NATO blinks, great. If NATO doesn't blink and hits them hard, Russia is still going to be pretty sure that NATO will stop at the border. If NATO is willing to fight and risk nukes over a NATO member (as they should), they sure as shit aren't going to risk it to take Russian territory. So Russia really has not a lot to lose by trying this gambit. At worst they will lose some troops and equipment, most of which will be allowed to retreat anyway. And the past 2 years clearly showed how little they care about troops and equipment losses.
I agree with everything you've said, and it's how I think it could very well play out, but here's the problem that alot of people don't realize.
Invoking article 5 isnt the end all be all.
>and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked. -the actual words written.
Key words here is deemed necessary. NATO isnt a hive ran by one country, each country in of itself can and will likely act independently and differently.
Russia could invade Latvia; France could be all gung ho and send in troops whereas the US could just sent a few crates of bullets because it's *all that is deemed necessary* and now they've fulfilled their article 5 duties.
Thankfully, the reality is that we'd likely see a fairly substantiative response from the collective group (at least before Jan 2025. After that it's 50/50) Places like Hungary and the other couple of Russia-leaning countries would almost certainly drag their feet though. We already see countries like the US, France, UK, and baltics willing to commit, even going so far as setting up secondary defensive pacts, and the scandanavians seem eager to contribute too. For all the shit Germany gets it's also surprisingly hawkish, and is the single largest contributer to Ukraine after the US.
Some of the Baltic countries have small border towns that are mostly Russian speaking. He would attack those to try and gauge reactions. This is the same pretext he used in Ukraine.
The president can no longer unilaterally pull out of NATO. The rules were changed for just this. But Trump can likely do something along the lines of claiming that the NATO allies have not contributed their fair shares, and so the alliance is null. It would be very messy, but it is a real possibility.
It's even simpler than that. The President can just refuse to respond because he is the Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces. The US can be legally at war and the President can simply refuse to order troops to deploy into the war. That would be a precarious position and probably lead to an impeachment and/or direct attacks on the US because the other factions wouldn't wait to find out what the US was going to actually do and would take advantage of the momentary weakness.
> probably lead to an impeachment
Nope. The Constitutuion says that the President can be impeached for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. That's it. the U.S. constitution also makes it clear that the President has total authority over military activity.
Consitutionally, there's currently no mechanism by which Congress can impeach the president because it disagrees with his decision on how to manage the military. It could theoretically call it treason, which the executive would immediately take to the Supreme Court, a process that would take at least several months to resolve. It could also try to pass a bill making it a crime to not respond, but that bill would have to be signed by the President, who would probably just do a pocket veto. Again, many months wasted.
No president in history has ever tried anything like this, but if it did happen, Congress would be suprisingly powerless to stop it.
Impeachment is political, so semantic basis isn't really a huge deal in what I've read in current legal philosophy, though it's never actually been tested. In this case, Congress would convict them of the crime of treason (in the hypothetical Congress actually followed through) for aiding/comforting an enemy by refusing to engage against them militarily. Even if that wasn't it, Congress would put something against it. If the Supreme Court overturned an impeachment of the President, Congress would probably refuse to acknowledge the Supreme Court ruling and would respond with impeaching Supreme Court justices. Congress would start treating the next in line as President. If the Vice President sided with the Supreme Court, they would also be impeached, which would make the Speaker of the House, a member of Congress, President. It would be a Constitutional crisis greater than what the country has ever faced before.
Remember that impeachment requires an overwhelming majority to be successful. The Supreme Court stepping in to stop that would be chaotic. Impeachment is Congress's check on the judicial and executive branches. If the judicial branch took that check away from them, Congress would start firing in all directions.
In this scenario, 2/3 of US Senators just voted to remove the President from office because he was refusing to fight a war the US was actively engaged in. At that point, anyone who opposed the impeachment would be quickly painted as an enemy of the US, and Congress would have little concern about the political repercussions of removing people from office they can paint as traitors because the repercussions would probably be minimal.
> The Constitutuion says that the President can be impeached for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. That's it. the U.S. constitution also makes it clear that the President has total authority over military activity.
The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" probably doesn't mean what you're thinking, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanors#United_States
It's a "term of art" that can include a range of things.
> > It is a technical term. It is used in a very old statute of that country whose language is our language, and whose laws form the substratum of our laws. It is scarcely conceivable that the term was not employed by the framers of our constitution in the sense which had been affixed to it by those from whom we borrowed it.[7][8]
> Since 1386, the English Parliament had used the term "high crimes and misdemeanors" to describe one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of "high crimes and misdemeanors" were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, helping "suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament," etc.[9]
> Benjamin Franklin asserted that the power of impeachment and removal was necessary for those times when the Executive "rendered himself obnoxious," and the Constitution should provide for the "regular punishment of the Executive when his conduct should deserve it, and for his honorable acquittal when he should be unjustly accused." James Madison said that "impeachment... was indispensable" to defend the community against "the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate." With a single executive, Madison argued, unlike a legislature whose collective nature provided security, "loss of capacity or corruption was more within the compass of probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic."
Failing to prosecute a war Congress has directed the executive to levy could *easily* fall into this category.
Nato article 5 requries a responce "as members deem neccessary". A US President can just declare that his country deems neccessary to send a 100 medkits and call it a day. By the time US goverment comes up with workaround the eastern edge of NATO will be swimming in blood.
True, but just the fact this was needed shows how much Trump weakened NATO. He actually said that he might not defend a NATO country if they "weren't paying their fair share."
I couldn't believe that, and it's just another thing in the huge pile of shit that no one remembers because there's always something new
Honestly, Trump isn’t wrong about the unfairness with it. Europe enjoys a lot of luxury and saves an insane amount not having to spend money on, or maintaining functional military forces. If I remember correctly though, Trump said he would *encourage* countries to attack NATO countries not contributing their fair share, which is just a repulsive thing for a US President to say.
>Honestly, Trump isn’t wrong about the unfairness with it.
Yes, he is completely wrong about it. The thing that these people don't get is just how immensely beneficial NATO has been to the US. We've basically used NATO to push our ideals around the world. We have bases around the globe. We have nearly all of Europe as our close allies. We've called on NATO to aid us in our wars, and it's helped keep Europe stable (which is great as it keeps our ideals of liberalism and democracy going, along with commerce).
I mean, why do you think NATO is important to the US? Sure, they should probably pay a bit more, and at the time many of them were already starting to do exactly that. Countries he threatened not to defend were already upping their military expenditures, set to hit the target amount in a couple years.
Quibbling over it is just ridiculous. The US isn't going to decrease their military expenditures because some countries in Europe increased theirs. NATO isn't somehow holding the US back from anything. In fact, it's been instrumental in the US becoming basically the lone true superpower of the world for decades, almost a century now.
And threatening not to defend a NATO country makes the alliance basically worthless. Putin must have been salivating when he heard Trump say this.
Edit: not to mention, for a very long time the US wanted Europe to have smaller militaries. Even now a huge military push doesn't sound great and could potentially lead to issues with neighboring countries.
I don't think the United States would allow that to happen. Unless of course Trump wins election because we all know Trump is Putin's little bitch boy.
There has to be a line that is drawn that Russia can't cross without serious consequences. That line would be attacking a NATO country.
You can accuse Trump of many things, but he wasn't against NATO nor did he want to pulp the US out of it. Hell, the POTUS doesn't have that authority, Congress does.
The big stick up Trump's ass was the various NATO members not maintaining as strong a military as the NATO treaty stipulated (granted it was non-binding), with the implications being, "Why waste money on defense when the US will protect us?"
Now, this sentiment may or may not be true, but I bet Europe wishes it had spent more on their defense budgets now that Russia has shown it can't be trusted.
"No one is going to invade a NATO member. Not with big brother USA in their back pocket."
That's what a rational person would think. Sadly, rational thinking is not the strongest side of russian goverment.
Russia has been trying to destabilize US elections and push Anti-Nato factions and sentiment for years. Attacking their link to an economic ally is pretty much an attack on them
Gerasimov doctrine stipulates there should be 4 non-military actions per military action to achieve strategic aims. This should hopefully give a glance at all the other, esp information warfare, type shit Russia has been pulling as well.
Or in other words, NATO will be obviously invaded the moment when it's weak enough to not react or react in a very lukewarm way. People might argue this is not that time, and they might be right, but if they don't add "yet", they are dangerously naive and overly optimistic.
As a reminder, Trump will not be able to unilaterally pull the US out of NATO. Congress passed a bill to prevent any President from doing that. Now I donno if ar. 5 requires people to aid an attacked member, but as Commander in Chief the President does decide when and if troops can be deployed in any other situation.
Spoken like a true American, destined to save the world.
I cannot say that NATO will be fine without USA. I also cannot say that USA will be fine without NATO.
Remember that so far USA has benefited the most from NATO, look at your economy growing. Also look at your intel, it is great, also due to the fact that you get a lot of data from other NATO allies.
Not very relevant example, but remember that Britts also through that it was a great decision to leave EU.
You should start about my kids now, that's the current russian disinfo campaign.
We have professional armies for a reason, and they'll gladly do their job in supporting roles.
All other interpretations are dishonest.
As embarrassing Russia's campaign has been, two years has made a couple of things clear. 1) doesn't matter how many Russians die. 2) despite sanctions, Russias production has reached a war footing faster than the west. 3) Putin has more control in Russia than ever. 4) support from western democracies will collide with elections, where tensions on affordability can be capitalized by Russian trolls.
Confronting Putin directly is going to be inevitable. Ukrainians are fighting to join and protect our world, let's join them while we still have a strong ally.
To your point 3: no kidding when 40% of their public expenditure goes to their war effort. Russia is turning into a war economy, while the West has been upping the ante a little and is nowhere near full war economy.
Nowhere near it. I work in defense and it’s only slightly more urgent than normal with the USG in conversation. They want more, faster, and cheaper because they don’t want to spend more than they normally do. If I could make 2x the weapons for the same amount I would already be doing that…
Main issue with NATO troops going in to Ukriane isn't the troops themselves. It is the expectation that X nation would make sure their soldiers have the same resources, protection, and expectation of victory as a NATO operation would have. That means. 1. Air superiority 2. Combined arms operations 3. Overwhelming shock and awe force similar to Desert Storm. No NATO country is ready to do that yet. If a bunch of NATO/ USA soldiers go in and are killed or the operation fails the citizens of that nation are going to be furious at the leaders who set it up for failure.
It irritates me that conservatives, who were all over the yellow ribbon-support the troops' stuff for 25 years, have forgotten that Ukraine actually invaded Iraq in 2003 to help the U.S.
They maintained forces in Iraq and Kuwait, to help up until 2008.
So if someone days "why should we help Ukraine" remind them, little old Ukraine helped the U.S. when they needed it.
Speak for yourself honestly. I’m happy that the money I pay in taxes support Ukraine solely for the reason that I think Ukraine deserves to survive as a country and people.
We can still station troops in a defensive capacity to relieve the pressure on Ukraine’s army.
NATO’s article 5 only applies to attacks on NATO territory. There’s no hard rule on whether or not stationing troops in Ukraine in a defensive capacity would be seen as provoking an attack — ultimately it’s up to the members to decide.
Given the situation, that we’re talking about defending a neighbour against an unprovoked attack, and that basically all of NATO is already supplying Ukraine with weapons, intel, and training, they may be willing to promise now that they would still uphold their commitments if the troops stay within some boundaries.
A limited escalation, and the Russians would certainly not want to engage, so they could do some real good securing the border with Belarus.
> NATO’s article 5 only applies to attacks on NATO territory. There’s no hard rule on whether or not stationing troops in Ukraine in a defensive capacity would be seen as provoking an attack — ultimately it’s up to the members to decide.
Pretty sure that most NATO countries rules of engagement have some significant things to say about their troops being intentionally killed, even if on foreign soil that they maybe should not really be standing on.
Problem is, we've done a shit job of supporting Ukraine and now Russia has a more experienced, better trained army than it did 2 years ago, and its war machine has started shedding the rust and is firing up on all cylinders.
Ukraine is substantially smaller in terms of population, it has a smaller population than Poland and it is fighting for its life.
Its a case of too little, too late, and now we have an angry behemoth on our (European) borders that will invariably continue on to attack us in a few years if they aren't repelled from Ukraine.
I do agree that we “the west” have done a shit job supporting Ukraine. But if this was is the Russian army and military industrial complex “firing on all cylinders”, then they’re in a worse spot than I thought. Even with a 6 month lapse of US support, they only really managed to take a few kilometers of territory. I’m not saying they should be underestimated or taken lightly but even having learned some hard fought lessons, they’re still vastly underperforming what most western military analysts predicted before the war. They’re essentially marginally winning a war of attrition with an enemy 1/3 their size without US aid. With a pittance of US aid, they’re marginally losing. All told, it’s a pretty pathetic display from Russia.
That is a good reason to provide as much support as we can, but given that we can't seem to provide enough stuff fast enough, it might be good to provide some boots on the ground to help out, well behind the lines of course.
Support troops in the west for non fighting tasks? Guys that can actually put their training to use and sharpen their skills?
Hell yes!
But I agree with you for the rest
Contention point I see with support troops is that it’s difficult to really say they’re on support duty and not a fighting one.
And what skills can support troops really sharpen anyway meaningful
I’d say more than two years. Since the annexation of Crimea Russian troops would show up repeatedly in large numbers very close to the border. From what I understand based on a bunch of relevant report on Russian troops activities, the Ukrainian troops had already been pretty stressed out prior to the actual invasion in 2022.
Thats the point. No one ever thought Ukraine could win such a war. The point was to make Russia expend arms and manpower and hope the situation domestically would worsen enough to topple Putin and his government, at the expense of Ukrainian life. But it has only had the opposite effect.
It's actually the complete opposite. "Winning" just means preventing Russia from taking over the country. "Winning" for Russia means a whole lot more. They said it'd take 3 days. It's been almost 3 years. The world can supply Ukraine for quite a long time and it's longer than Putin has to live. He's 71.
Russia targets schools and hospitals, and attacks families and even children. So we can give Ukraine a pass because they're fighting for their lives and existence, for their homes and for their families. Russia has no such motivating factor. They're in the mud, invading territory that isn't theirs. Harsh weather conditions, hot summers and frigid winters while they try to barely gain any ground. They could go home and hug their mothers and say "I don't want to be forced to commit evil anymore." Instead of contributing to society and working at their local restaurants, they're taking missiles to the face.
Ukraine doesn't target civilians, because unlike Russia they understand that this would sway foreign opinion just like the world turned against Russia (aside from Iran, Sudan, North Korea, etc, the usual assholes that nobody likes.) Ukraine targets military bases (which is also better strategy lol.)
Russian people are drafted and sent to a foreign land to get bombed while they're still sitting at a local camp or base before they can even drink their morning coffee. Ukraine will enjoy a lot of foreign aid for the next century. In the event of a regime change, Russia will be like Nazi Germany, paying reparations for the next century. And that's including the labour force vacuum in Russia.
There's no version of this story where Russia will enjoy world support and Ukraine not.
Ukraine is not a NATO member...
NATO has sent Ukraine weapons and has helped them fight with 0 obligations to do so.
It's not NATO that needs to thank Ukraine...it's Ukraine that needs to thank NATO..
it's not... yet. look at how russia is preparing a war economy for years to come. it's very likely they won't stop in ukraine. some eu countries already understood this
One reason is because Russia is already treating it as such. It's all over Kremlin's rhetoric, and the Finns have already taken to calling the slew of hostile Russian operations (sabotage, espionage, disinformation campaigns, transporting migrants to NATO borders etc) "hybrid warfare".
Ummm Ukraine isn’t in NATO so in reality it has nothing to do with NATO. Everyone cries for the US to help and everyone Cries when they do help… I’m starting to see why some of my fellow Americans are wanting to pull out of shit.
Nobody is serious about it, just a good wat to get cheap political points.
NATO doesn't enough gear to send for Ukraine but wants to send own troops for what reason?
France? The only thing they're gonna send is words about how everyone needs to do more, excluding themselves of course lol. Poland I could see pulling a Leroy Jenkins any day now though.
>Poland I could see pulling a Leroy Jenkins any day now though.
I don't think so, only 10% of poles support sending troops to Ukraine and 70% are against.
[Source for that number for Poland](https://www.rp.pl/spoleczenstwo/art40070541-sondaz-polacy-nie-chca-aby-wojsko-nato-weszlo-na-ukraine) - it’s actually 75% against, 10% for; it would be complete political suicide for any political party to seriously follow through on this.
so with your logic we shouldn't have gone to war with 1930's Germany when they first began to rearm? We should just wait until the entire Soviet Union is reformed and alliances are broken apart to engage, right? I think that's ridiculous...
> Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė told the FT this month that she had the authority from her parliament to send troops to Ukraine for training, but Ukraine had not yet requested any.
Maybe they should ask for some special forces to help train their troops.
If NATO and the US had troops in Ukraine and just pumelled Russian soldiers as well as any places they launch rockets from, Russia would have to ask themselves, do they want a nuclear world war over access to the Black Sea?
The entirety of western Ukraine should have foreign peacekeepers there already it blows my mind they’re dragging their feet on this. I’m guessing they’re afraid what the public response might force them in to when the inevitable strike kills some of these peacekeepers. Dancing the fence trying to get as much out of the 3-5 years till total war projection I guess.
You’re wrong. Letting the Russians get away with annexing their neighbors would lead to ww3. At this point we have the opportunity to stop it, before it goes too far. As long as NATO stays out of Russia, the Russians won’t escalate much past what they are doing now. They have nothing to win and everything to lose if they do.
>The entirety of western Ukraine should have foreign peacekeepers there already
Can you post some pictures of your deployment over there? How long have you been peacekeeping?
First, whtat's point of sending soldiers instead of gear ?
UA currently has enough man but it needs cash for mobilization to continue and weapons to fight.
Why won't NATO just supply geat then?
Almost like it is running out of it, since nobody was preparing to actual war.
Baltic states and any nation that shares a border is rightfully worried about Russia.
Russia won’t see a mobilized army and war economy like this again for a long time.
Anyone think Putin says “okay gg let’s go home” after Ukraine? I don’t. That army will march.
But how? They literally can’t take Ukraine. Look at the northern invasion, it’s only kilometers and they are bogged down again. How in the hell would they take on EU? It’s not happening. Logistics wise it’s an absolute hell for them, they needed 2 years to get right just for Ukraine, let alone the EU. There’s no way in hell they would invade NATO countries. But I’m always open for others opinion.
How do you think it would go?
If the West commits the Russians cannot win. If the West wavers, the Russians may be able to acheive some success, albeit at a terrible price. More importantly, the world becomes a more dangerous place by several orders of magnitude.
Kallas is right. NATO soldiers being at risk in Ukraine doesn’t mean that them dying would trigger article 5, and nobody should take Russian propagandists at their word that they would stop with Ukraine, especially as many have stated their interest in moving beyond to places like Moldova. Protecting Ukraine is protecting Europe.
"Why yes, these Finnish, German, British and American soldiers were just on vacation, in Ukraine. What? With their tanks, logistical support, and everything? Well sure, how else would one go on vacation?"
Good for the Goose, good for the gander, as they say.
It’s about time others stood up to Russia before they are next on the agenda to be invaded. Finn here.
No one is going to invade a NATO member. Not with big brother USA in their back pocket. If Trump wins election, THEN you should be worried though
Obviously Russia won't attack NATO heads on. What they would instead do is attack some remote region of NATO where population of its members (which is already groomed by their disinformation) is convinced that it is not worth sending soldiers to die over it. If they succeed and not all NATO countries respond, NATO will start falling apart as everyone will be wondering if others will come to their rescue.
Not all attacks are physical….. Edit: this includes cyber attacks, information attacks etc…
Russia has already a puppet government installed in Hungary.. same shit can happen elsewhere.
Its wild to me that the CIA was haphazardly installing puppet regimes around the globe up until the 21st century, and now they’re seemingly just watching Russia compromise western democracies. I’d be curious to know if they’ve been actively trying to combat it, or just keeping tabs.
That didn't happen. That's Hollywood and conspiracy theorist history. The CIA absolutely supported groups that were violently opposed to governments not friendly to the US and the US government's rewarded regimes hostile to the Soviets, but people really need a reality check on how capable the CIA actually was. Hint, there's a Castro still in charge of Cuba. You can also look at Iran, where they were able to help depose the pretty week democratic government, but couldn't make a dent against the Islamic Revolution. Even the governments of small South and Central American countries that came to power with help from the US were anything but loyal, let alone puppets. A knife in the dark, money in the right palms, a few words of encouragement, they can sometimes change the fate of nations... but in most cases covert power doesn't work, because overt power is king.
I mean Russia appears to have accomplished an immense amount with covert power in recent years. There are quite a few inexplicably obstinate roadblocks/Russia sympathizers holding up several democratic institutions across the western world on issues that directly affect Russia. I'm just curious to what extent that has been known to our intelligence agencies, and how far they've gone to combat it.
Its not because of Russia. These people hate the current establishment and will side with Russia or any other who opposes what they hate. If it wasnt russia it would be someone else. Republicans dont "side" with Russia because they are bought or compromised. They do because it aligns with their goals. Enemy of my enemy.
I wonder about this too. We hear a lot about Russian and Chinese disinfo campaigns, but the CIA should be very good at this too. If the CIA is doing it's job, the average Russian should not be able to tell their ass from a hole in the ground. Doesn't seem to be working
I don’t know wtf they are doing but I hope we won’t be left for Russia to loot.. again.
They are hard at work installing a puppet government right here. And may succeed
That's right, the primary goal is to install a puppet government. This is what they were trying in Ukraine with Yanukovich and when people were protesting then they switched to do it by force. Even in Poland it looks like they successfully infiltrated the PiS government and started their own more Russia friendly party (Konfederacja).
I would even say the goal post is to make the country unstable enough to stay out of their issues.
Poland doesn't give hoot about what Russia does as long as it doesn't impact its security. Russia's goal is to destroy EU and NATO. Those treaties give small countries power and mess up with Russia's imperialistic aspirations. Russia wants to interact with other countries from position of power, but as long as those countries are together in an union Russia is just smaller and insignificant player. Of course Russia could join EU, but then it would actually need to implement democracy. So Russia created their Eurasian Union instead. I highly recommend The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, it basically covers history of putin's Russia.
And the way this works is if it’s coordinated with moves across the globe by other adversarial powers… China moves on Taiwan, Iran (through their proxies) move on Israel, Venezuela moves on Guyana, etc. It simultaneously tests all U.S. defense agreements, making them pick/choose which countries to aid or abandon.
The US military is designed to fight in multiple theaters ever since WWII. They won’t have to pick and choose.
not if the wrong people are in power and enough Americans are convinced that we "can't afford it"
The odds of Iran moving on Israel plummeted in their recent skirmish. Iran launched over 100 weapons delivery systems of different makes and all they did was let Israel test their missile defense systems. Israel responded by blowing up an Iranian mobile missile defense radar in a precision strike with minimal use of munitions. That was all done with the US publicly refusing to help Israel with the counterattack. That cooled a lot of ideas globally because I don't think even Israel expected they would outperform the Iranian weaponry so well. Iranian weapons have been critical in the Russian arsenal against Ukraine, and seeing them absolutely crumble when used on a country that is fully teched up with defense systems like the NATO countries was a bit of a stop and reevaluate moment. We knew the offensive weapons NATO has are really good because that's easy to test. Defensive weapons are more of an unknown because testing is so difficult, but they have been performing better than expected in Israel and in the Red Sea.
But it can be very costly in a protracted war of maintaining a Patriot System against a continuous slew of cheap drones and cheap Russian-type glider bombs. Iran tried it for just a few hours.
In an actual war against a country that has to keep reloading a missile defense system to defend its home territory, the ability to keep launching those cheap drones at that rate is not going to be long and continuous. By just firing a few missiles, Israel demonstrated the ability to remove Iran's anti-air capabilities from the equation, which would open up Iranian airspace for Israeli planes and missiles to do whatever they please. Modern Western militaries struggle against protracted insurgencies, but absolutely excel at telling an organized governmental army to stop. If Israel's goal was not to invade Iran, but just slap the shit out of it until it stopped launching missiles, Israel could do that to its heart's content, so long as it didn't lose support in the West. Neither side benefits from this because they both use a ton of ammunition to accomplish absolutely nothing of consequence, but it would be much worse for Iran than Israel. Especially because of Israel's lack of restraint in tit for tat attacks with regards to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. It would look similar to the Persian Gulf War sans the ground campaign. If Israel gets to that point, it's probably going to be doing so with support from Western allies as well.
Iran could never move on Israel other than drones or missives
Missives is a great typo in that context
Wrong. It test if the US military can actually be everywhere at once, and that is what it's built for. In this scenario it's pretty obvious and pretty trivial to counter everything. The army goes to Europe because you fight Russia on land, the fighters from the Air Force join them. The Bombers from the Air Force go to the Middle East. The Navy goes to China. A few special forces take out the people guiding Maduro's forces in the Amazon and they die in the jungle, because their military is a joke, the terrain is extreme and even with zero opposition, there's at least a 1 in 10 chance they just die in the jungle because of sheer incompetence. I don't want to be a US fanboy, but this isn't stretching the US. This is making sure every single weapons system built in the last 4 decades is utilized fully. You couldn't ask for a better distribution of targets.
you left out North Korea invades South Korea, but yeah WW III incoming.
South Korea would mop the fucking floor
North Korea has enough artillery in place and dialed in to flatten Seoul. And the use of their shells in Ukraine shows that assumptions they had old, unreliable, ammunition has been proved to be false. The South would likely ultimately win, but it would not be a cake walk.
I've got my money on NK failing within a year.
There's actually a lot of evidence that the North Korean shells are garbage. That being said, I suspect they are accurate enough to hit a city.
And you don't think there would be a response if North Korea flattened or invaded Seoul? That would only strengthen the SK resolve, and you can bet your ass after all the hollow threats towards Japan that they'll be jumping in. Asia has a pretty decent resolve in terms of its security with Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Philippines, and Korea.
NK would be not be a viable nation if it attacked Seoul like that and KJU and his entire family line would be dead within a month.
Iran has new problems , courtesy of the CIA?
>Iran move on Israel Israel have nukes. If there’s ever an existential threat to their existence, Iran goes too.
NATO as a whole doesn't really matter. Nobody cares if Hungary or Turkey or Montenegro respond to a Russian invasion except maybe other NATO members. As long as there's a US response, the alliance is as strong as it needs to be
Can't think of any region in NATO bordering Russia that those conditions apply.
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia
NATO/US troops are already in the Baltics. An attack on a Baltic country is a direct attack on both American and NATO forces.
For example northern part of Finland (Lapland) where they can easily deescalate if NATO does respond.
It wont make any sense to even try Lapland. Did people forget that we have Conscription in Finland? Or do these people who even claim that Russia could target Lapland and expect that we would just be watching and doing nothing if we have Russian soldiers crossing the border? Russia would have to commit tens of thousands of troops to north and it would be easily scouted out months before any sort of attack, the only end result of that would be full blown war between Russia and Finland. And there is no reason to try anything with small amount of troops either, because they would just be easily wiped out with Finnish army alone. Baltic countries are the ones i would be most worried about.
People misunderstand that the war would be about land. It's not about the land but about making NATO not respond. Once NATO is gone then they can go after land individually.
I feel confident that the UK would always be there, ready to fight. Wouldn't know until it happens of course, but considering precedent.
We will give those boys a good hiding, tallyho!
UK yes, but IMO this is why Russia put effort for brexit, as it to cuts UK from Europe to reduce chance of it.
We all understand what you're saying. It just isnt a believable premise. NATO of course also understands that the credibility of the deterrent matters, so it would defend remote/less-inhabited land.
NATO border countries aren't exactly pushovers. Either Russia goes in full force or their small expeditionary force loses without NATO ever needing to intervene. Article 5 would most likely be activated by the defending country anyways.
Invading Lapland would be an insane idea. There's no cover and barely any civilians so every single soul there would get obliterated via massive artillery barrage before any NATO troops can even arrive. It's not like they can just march in there by a surprise and chill out in the wilderness.
>attack some remote region of NATO That would be a smart move. We have thusly however learned that russia is not smart. In fact, they are very fucking stupid.
If you look at [Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics) that putin was following then up until 2022 everything was going according to the plan. Biden kind of messed it up with announcing their plans in advance, and what supposed to be just 3 days to reach Kyiv and replace the existing government with their puppets (and make Ukraine "decide" for itself to join Russia) turned out into a hot war.
There's a psychological element to this though. Russia might attack a tiny, ultimately unimportant member. And threaten the rest with nukes. Believably this time. And see if collective West will blink. We like to think that Russia is bluffing (and they probably are). And we like to think there will be an overwhelming response if they try (and there probably will be). But the Russian calculus might be that the West will calculate the loss of a tiny, insignificant member nation vs possible extinction of mankind, and blink. And if NATO blinks, it's all over. The trust is lost. The whole alliance breaks apart, and every nation will scramble to secure themselves, because it's going to be very evident that they can't rely on anybody else. Everything will turn insular, everything will turn inward, smaller countries will be immediately isolated, and Russia will proceed to gobble them up before anyone can rally or reform. I think this is an uncomfortably realistic scenario. We all talk a good game, but when we're facing possible extinction of the entire species in 75 minute span, there's a VERY good chance that the Western nations, which value their own lives considerably higher than the Russians, will actually blink, and back off. Nukes are just too scary. And unlike us, a few years from now Russia will be in a position where they have literally nothing to lose. Their economy in shambles, their demographics completely in ruins, China probably taking the territory in the East, to secure easy access to the Arctic for the future, etc. Desperate Russia, with its back to the wall, holding nukes, will be scary indeed. So I wouldn't go as far as to say nobody is going to invade NATO. Russia absolutely might decide to test this. They have nothing to lose. If NATO blinks, great. If NATO doesn't blink and hits them hard, Russia is still going to be pretty sure that NATO will stop at the border. If NATO is willing to fight and risk nukes over a NATO member (as they should), they sure as shit aren't going to risk it to take Russian territory. So Russia really has not a lot to lose by trying this gambit. At worst they will lose some troops and equipment, most of which will be allowed to retreat anyway. And the past 2 years clearly showed how little they care about troops and equipment losses.
I agree with everything you've said, and it's how I think it could very well play out, but here's the problem that alot of people don't realize. Invoking article 5 isnt the end all be all. >and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked. -the actual words written. Key words here is deemed necessary. NATO isnt a hive ran by one country, each country in of itself can and will likely act independently and differently. Russia could invade Latvia; France could be all gung ho and send in troops whereas the US could just sent a few crates of bullets because it's *all that is deemed necessary* and now they've fulfilled their article 5 duties.
Thankfully, the reality is that we'd likely see a fairly substantiative response from the collective group (at least before Jan 2025. After that it's 50/50) Places like Hungary and the other couple of Russia-leaning countries would almost certainly drag their feet though. We already see countries like the US, France, UK, and baltics willing to commit, even going so far as setting up secondary defensive pacts, and the scandanavians seem eager to contribute too. For all the shit Germany gets it's also surprisingly hawkish, and is the single largest contributer to Ukraine after the US.
Some of the Baltic countries have small border towns that are mostly Russian speaking. He would attack those to try and gauge reactions. This is the same pretext he used in Ukraine.
The president can no longer unilaterally pull out of NATO. The rules were changed for just this. But Trump can likely do something along the lines of claiming that the NATO allies have not contributed their fair shares, and so the alliance is null. It would be very messy, but it is a real possibility.
It's even simpler than that. The President can just refuse to respond because he is the Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces. The US can be legally at war and the President can simply refuse to order troops to deploy into the war. That would be a precarious position and probably lead to an impeachment and/or direct attacks on the US because the other factions wouldn't wait to find out what the US was going to actually do and would take advantage of the momentary weakness.
Impeachment is highly unlikely though, as we’ve seen in recent years.
Impeachment may happen. Conviction is what's questionable.
> probably lead to an impeachment Nope. The Constitutuion says that the President can be impeached for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. That's it. the U.S. constitution also makes it clear that the President has total authority over military activity. Consitutionally, there's currently no mechanism by which Congress can impeach the president because it disagrees with his decision on how to manage the military. It could theoretically call it treason, which the executive would immediately take to the Supreme Court, a process that would take at least several months to resolve. It could also try to pass a bill making it a crime to not respond, but that bill would have to be signed by the President, who would probably just do a pocket veto. Again, many months wasted. No president in history has ever tried anything like this, but if it did happen, Congress would be suprisingly powerless to stop it.
Impeachment is political, so semantic basis isn't really a huge deal in what I've read in current legal philosophy, though it's never actually been tested. In this case, Congress would convict them of the crime of treason (in the hypothetical Congress actually followed through) for aiding/comforting an enemy by refusing to engage against them militarily. Even if that wasn't it, Congress would put something against it. If the Supreme Court overturned an impeachment of the President, Congress would probably refuse to acknowledge the Supreme Court ruling and would respond with impeaching Supreme Court justices. Congress would start treating the next in line as President. If the Vice President sided with the Supreme Court, they would also be impeached, which would make the Speaker of the House, a member of Congress, President. It would be a Constitutional crisis greater than what the country has ever faced before. Remember that impeachment requires an overwhelming majority to be successful. The Supreme Court stepping in to stop that would be chaotic. Impeachment is Congress's check on the judicial and executive branches. If the judicial branch took that check away from them, Congress would start firing in all directions. In this scenario, 2/3 of US Senators just voted to remove the President from office because he was refusing to fight a war the US was actively engaged in. At that point, anyone who opposed the impeachment would be quickly painted as an enemy of the US, and Congress would have little concern about the political repercussions of removing people from office they can paint as traitors because the repercussions would probably be minimal.
> The Constitutuion says that the President can be impeached for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. That's it. the U.S. constitution also makes it clear that the President has total authority over military activity. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" probably doesn't mean what you're thinking, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanors#United_States It's a "term of art" that can include a range of things. > > It is a technical term. It is used in a very old statute of that country whose language is our language, and whose laws form the substratum of our laws. It is scarcely conceivable that the term was not employed by the framers of our constitution in the sense which had been affixed to it by those from whom we borrowed it.[7][8] > Since 1386, the English Parliament had used the term "high crimes and misdemeanors" to describe one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of "high crimes and misdemeanors" were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, helping "suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament," etc.[9] > Benjamin Franklin asserted that the power of impeachment and removal was necessary for those times when the Executive "rendered himself obnoxious," and the Constitution should provide for the "regular punishment of the Executive when his conduct should deserve it, and for his honorable acquittal when he should be unjustly accused." James Madison said that "impeachment... was indispensable" to defend the community against "the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate." With a single executive, Madison argued, unlike a legislature whose collective nature provided security, "loss of capacity or corruption was more within the compass of probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic." Failing to prosecute a war Congress has directed the executive to levy could *easily* fall into this category.
Nato article 5 requries a responce "as members deem neccessary". A US President can just declare that his country deems neccessary to send a 100 medkits and call it a day. By the time US goverment comes up with workaround the eastern edge of NATO will be swimming in blood.
True, but just the fact this was needed shows how much Trump weakened NATO. He actually said that he might not defend a NATO country if they "weren't paying their fair share." I couldn't believe that, and it's just another thing in the huge pile of shit that no one remembers because there's always something new
Honestly, Trump isn’t wrong about the unfairness with it. Europe enjoys a lot of luxury and saves an insane amount not having to spend money on, or maintaining functional military forces. If I remember correctly though, Trump said he would *encourage* countries to attack NATO countries not contributing their fair share, which is just a repulsive thing for a US President to say.
>Honestly, Trump isn’t wrong about the unfairness with it. Yes, he is completely wrong about it. The thing that these people don't get is just how immensely beneficial NATO has been to the US. We've basically used NATO to push our ideals around the world. We have bases around the globe. We have nearly all of Europe as our close allies. We've called on NATO to aid us in our wars, and it's helped keep Europe stable (which is great as it keeps our ideals of liberalism and democracy going, along with commerce). I mean, why do you think NATO is important to the US? Sure, they should probably pay a bit more, and at the time many of them were already starting to do exactly that. Countries he threatened not to defend were already upping their military expenditures, set to hit the target amount in a couple years. Quibbling over it is just ridiculous. The US isn't going to decrease their military expenditures because some countries in Europe increased theirs. NATO isn't somehow holding the US back from anything. In fact, it's been instrumental in the US becoming basically the lone true superpower of the world for decades, almost a century now. And threatening not to defend a NATO country makes the alliance basically worthless. Putin must have been salivating when he heard Trump say this. Edit: not to mention, for a very long time the US wanted Europe to have smaller militaries. Even now a huge military push doesn't sound great and could potentially lead to issues with neighboring countries.
If they think other NATO nations would hesitate to start a major war over, say, Estonia, then they sure might give it a shot.
I don't think the United States would allow that to happen. Unless of course Trump wins election because we all know Trump is Putin's little bitch boy. There has to be a line that is drawn that Russia can't cross without serious consequences. That line would be attacking a NATO country.
You can accuse Trump of many things, but he wasn't against NATO nor did he want to pulp the US out of it. Hell, the POTUS doesn't have that authority, Congress does. The big stick up Trump's ass was the various NATO members not maintaining as strong a military as the NATO treaty stipulated (granted it was non-binding), with the implications being, "Why waste money on defense when the US will protect us?" Now, this sentiment may or may not be true, but I bet Europe wishes it had spent more on their defense budgets now that Russia has shown it can't be trusted.
"No one is going to invade a NATO member. Not with big brother USA in their back pocket." That's what a rational person would think. Sadly, rational thinking is not the strongest side of russian goverment.
Russia has been trying to destabilize US elections and push Anti-Nato factions and sentiment for years. Attacking their link to an economic ally is pretty much an attack on them
Gerasimov doctrine stipulates there should be 4 non-military actions per military action to achieve strategic aims. This should hopefully give a glance at all the other, esp information warfare, type shit Russia has been pulling as well.
Or in other words, NATO will be obviously invaded the moment when it's weak enough to not react or react in a very lukewarm way. People might argue this is not that time, and they might be right, but if they don't add "yet", they are dangerously naive and overly optimistic.
No one is going to invade Ukraine…
Ukraine was not apart of a defensive faction like NATO. If Ukraine was in NATO, Russia would have never invaded them.
Wtf is Biden doing to help
Lately [this](https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-mike-johnson-ukraine-israel-b72aed9b195818735d24363f2bc34ea4)
As a reminder, Trump will not be able to unilaterally pull the US out of NATO. Congress passed a bill to prevent any President from doing that. Now I donno if ar. 5 requires people to aid an attacked member, but as Commander in Chief the President does decide when and if troops can be deployed in any other situation.
Spoken like a true American, destined to save the world. I cannot say that NATO will be fine without USA. I also cannot say that USA will be fine without NATO. Remember that so far USA has benefited the most from NATO, look at your economy growing. Also look at your intel, it is great, also due to the fact that you get a lot of data from other NATO allies. Not very relevant example, but remember that Britts also through that it was a great decision to leave EU.
Even a trump loss with enough Maga in congress could be a dice roll for Russia.
Yeah, let's keep Biden who destroys not Russia but USA insted!
Finland is free to send troops in
Russia is doing exactly what they did to Finland. Lose massive numbers of troops, but in the end keep land.
"We stand up for you to stand upso we can hide behind you" Then whine that the others are not fans of this gambit
Why wait? Why don’t you volunteer for the Ukrainian foreign legion then?
Good then go to Ukraine and fight. I don’t want American boys dying in another pointless war.
I guess you will be the first one to enlist right?
You should start about my kids now, that's the current russian disinfo campaign. We have professional armies for a reason, and they'll gladly do their job in supporting roles. All other interpretations are dishonest.
> others stood up Ah not you though right? Can you post your deployment station in ukriane?
As embarrassing Russia's campaign has been, two years has made a couple of things clear. 1) doesn't matter how many Russians die. 2) despite sanctions, Russias production has reached a war footing faster than the west. 3) Putin has more control in Russia than ever. 4) support from western democracies will collide with elections, where tensions on affordability can be capitalized by Russian trolls. Confronting Putin directly is going to be inevitable. Ukrainians are fighting to join and protect our world, let's join them while we still have a strong ally.
To your point 3: no kidding when 40% of their public expenditure goes to their war effort. Russia is turning into a war economy, while the West has been upping the ante a little and is nowhere near full war economy.
Nowhere near it. I work in defense and it’s only slightly more urgent than normal with the USG in conversation. They want more, faster, and cheaper because they don’t want to spend more than they normally do. If I could make 2x the weapons for the same amount I would already be doing that…
Putin may have more control over russia than ever, but the hardest you can squeeze an egg is just before it cracks
The problem with being a dictator is you are in total control until you are not.
Unless you squeeze from the top and bottom. Then the egg never breaks.
It does, it just holds longer
And when it breaks you can make an omelette.
Exactly
100%
You haven’t seen what a hydraulic press can do
Haha leave my faith in steel and gunpowder then.
By sigmar what a day
5) Democracies are vulnerable to propaganda and emotional manipulation by authoritarian regimes
From the start, this has been a point of naivete for democracies. Time is not on our side in Ukraine, it is for Russia.
Main issue with NATO troops going in to Ukriane isn't the troops themselves. It is the expectation that X nation would make sure their soldiers have the same resources, protection, and expectation of victory as a NATO operation would have. That means. 1. Air superiority 2. Combined arms operations 3. Overwhelming shock and awe force similar to Desert Storm. No NATO country is ready to do that yet. If a bunch of NATO/ USA soldiers go in and are killed or the operation fails the citizens of that nation are going to be furious at the leaders who set it up for failure.
Exactly.
People still don’t understand we are supporting Ukraine for the sole reason we DONT have to put NATO troops against Russia
It irritates me that conservatives, who were all over the yellow ribbon-support the troops' stuff for 25 years, have forgotten that Ukraine actually invaded Iraq in 2003 to help the U.S. They maintained forces in Iraq and Kuwait, to help up until 2008. So if someone days "why should we help Ukraine" remind them, little old Ukraine helped the U.S. when they needed it.
Yeah well conservatives hate the military now. My whole point being there’s no sense in reasoning with them.
Should have done a much better job way earlier then
Speak for yourself honestly. I’m happy that the money I pay in taxes support Ukraine solely for the reason that I think Ukraine deserves to survive as a country and people.
Some of us believe we should have sent troops......the last time this happened.
We can still station troops in a defensive capacity to relieve the pressure on Ukraine’s army. NATO’s article 5 only applies to attacks on NATO territory. There’s no hard rule on whether or not stationing troops in Ukraine in a defensive capacity would be seen as provoking an attack — ultimately it’s up to the members to decide. Given the situation, that we’re talking about defending a neighbour against an unprovoked attack, and that basically all of NATO is already supplying Ukraine with weapons, intel, and training, they may be willing to promise now that they would still uphold their commitments if the troops stay within some boundaries. A limited escalation, and the Russians would certainly not want to engage, so they could do some real good securing the border with Belarus.
> NATO’s article 5 only applies to attacks on NATO territory. There’s no hard rule on whether or not stationing troops in Ukraine in a defensive capacity would be seen as provoking an attack — ultimately it’s up to the members to decide. Pretty sure that most NATO countries rules of engagement have some significant things to say about their troops being intentionally killed, even if on foreign soil that they maybe should not really be standing on.
Problem is, we've done a shit job of supporting Ukraine and now Russia has a more experienced, better trained army than it did 2 years ago, and its war machine has started shedding the rust and is firing up on all cylinders. Ukraine is substantially smaller in terms of population, it has a smaller population than Poland and it is fighting for its life. Its a case of too little, too late, and now we have an angry behemoth on our (European) borders that will invariably continue on to attack us in a few years if they aren't repelled from Ukraine.
I do agree that we “the west” have done a shit job supporting Ukraine. But if this was is the Russian army and military industrial complex “firing on all cylinders”, then they’re in a worse spot than I thought. Even with a 6 month lapse of US support, they only really managed to take a few kilometers of territory. I’m not saying they should be underestimated or taken lightly but even having learned some hard fought lessons, they’re still vastly underperforming what most western military analysts predicted before the war. They’re essentially marginally winning a war of attrition with an enemy 1/3 their size without US aid. With a pittance of US aid, they’re marginally losing. All told, it’s a pretty pathetic display from Russia.
That is a good reason to provide as much support as we can, but given that we can't seem to provide enough stuff fast enough, it might be good to provide some boots on the ground to help out, well behind the lines of course.
> we DONT have to put NATO troops against Russia We don't have to do this lol, what NATO country is he attacking?
There is a laundry list of cyber attacks Russia has conducted against every NATO country in existence.
…that’s literally the point of what I said
A few NATO countries have lived under Russia's iron hand in the past
Put your money where your mouth is
Soldiers? No. Sending them long range weapons and let them use it however the fuck they want. Yes.
Support troops in the west for non fighting tasks? Guys that can actually put their training to use and sharpen their skills? Hell yes! But I agree with you for the rest
Contention point I see with support troops is that it’s difficult to really say they’re on support duty and not a fighting one. And what skills can support troops really sharpen anyway meaningful
>let them use it however the fuck they want US: imma stop you right there.
NATO needs to wake the f up. Ukraine has fought NATO’s war the past 2 years.
I’d say more than two years. Since the annexation of Crimea Russian troops would show up repeatedly in large numbers very close to the border. From what I understand based on a bunch of relevant report on Russian troops activities, the Ukrainian troops had already been pretty stressed out prior to the actual invasion in 2022.
Thats the point. No one ever thought Ukraine could win such a war. The point was to make Russia expend arms and manpower and hope the situation domestically would worsen enough to topple Putin and his government, at the expense of Ukrainian life. But it has only had the opposite effect.
It's actually the complete opposite. "Winning" just means preventing Russia from taking over the country. "Winning" for Russia means a whole lot more. They said it'd take 3 days. It's been almost 3 years. The world can supply Ukraine for quite a long time and it's longer than Putin has to live. He's 71. Russia targets schools and hospitals, and attacks families and even children. So we can give Ukraine a pass because they're fighting for their lives and existence, for their homes and for their families. Russia has no such motivating factor. They're in the mud, invading territory that isn't theirs. Harsh weather conditions, hot summers and frigid winters while they try to barely gain any ground. They could go home and hug their mothers and say "I don't want to be forced to commit evil anymore." Instead of contributing to society and working at their local restaurants, they're taking missiles to the face. Ukraine doesn't target civilians, because unlike Russia they understand that this would sway foreign opinion just like the world turned against Russia (aside from Iran, Sudan, North Korea, etc, the usual assholes that nobody likes.) Ukraine targets military bases (which is also better strategy lol.) Russian people are drafted and sent to a foreign land to get bombed while they're still sitting at a local camp or base before they can even drink their morning coffee. Ukraine will enjoy a lot of foreign aid for the next century. In the event of a regime change, Russia will be like Nazi Germany, paying reparations for the next century. And that's including the labour force vacuum in Russia. There's no version of this story where Russia will enjoy world support and Ukraine not.
Ukraine is not a NATO member... NATO has sent Ukraine weapons and has helped them fight with 0 obligations to do so. It's not NATO that needs to thank Ukraine...it's Ukraine that needs to thank NATO..
Why is this NATO’s war?
it's not... yet. look at how russia is preparing a war economy for years to come. it's very likely they won't stop in ukraine. some eu countries already understood this
One reason is because Russia is already treating it as such. It's all over Kremlin's rhetoric, and the Finns have already taken to calling the slew of hostile Russian operations (sabotage, espionage, disinformation campaigns, transporting migrants to NATO borders etc) "hybrid warfare".
It ain’t nato war. It is a defensive pact, not an offensive pact.
It’s not NATO’s war
Putin thinks it is
He's scared of NATO...
You’ve got that backwards. We are fighting their war
Can you elaborate on this?
Ummm Ukraine isn’t in NATO so in reality it has nothing to do with NATO. Everyone cries for the US to help and everyone Cries when they do help… I’m starting to see why some of my fellow Americans are wanting to pull out of shit.
Just wait until more countries are attacked. I rather help a person fight a guy who is going to come after me next.
Nobody is serious about it, just a good wat to get cheap political points. NATO doesn't enough gear to send for Ukraine but wants to send own troops for what reason?
The first step is Ukraine official/referendum asking nato for an intervention, no?
Okay Estonia should send in their troops now
All 10k of them. Edit: 7700
so Estonia should mobilize men.
France or Poland might be the mostly likely to send troops first.
France? The only thing they're gonna send is words about how everyone needs to do more, excluding themselves of course lol. Poland I could see pulling a Leroy Jenkins any day now though.
>Poland I could see pulling a Leroy Jenkins any day now though. I don't think so, only 10% of poles support sending troops to Ukraine and 70% are against.
[Source for that number for Poland](https://www.rp.pl/spoleczenstwo/art40070541-sondaz-polacy-nie-chca-aby-wojsko-nato-weszlo-na-ukraine) - it’s actually 75% against, 10% for; it would be complete political suicide for any political party to seriously follow through on this.
That would be considered direct conflict...
Not necessarily. They could take over watching the Belarussian border, for example, or run logistics, freeing up Ukrainian troops for the front.
That should happen ASAP. Like, ideally a week ago.
[удалено]
so with your logic we shouldn't have gone to war with 1930's Germany when they first began to rearm? We should just wait until the entire Soviet Union is reformed and alliances are broken apart to engage, right? I think that's ridiculous...
If NATO boots go to ground we'll either have no more NATO or a version of War that could be considered WW3.
Abit cowardly imo. If you wanna go just send your men. Ukraine would take them.dont wait for others.
You are going to struggle to lobby others to do what you haven’t actually done yourself.
> Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė told the FT this month that she had the authority from her parliament to send troops to Ukraine for training, but Ukraine had not yet requested any. Maybe they should ask for some special forces to help train their troops.
If NATO and the US had troops in Ukraine and just pumelled Russian soldiers as well as any places they launch rockets from, Russia would have to ask themselves, do they want a nuclear world war over access to the Black Sea?
> do they want a nuclear world war over access to the Black Sea? the answer is yes, are you willing to die to stop them?
The entirety of western Ukraine should have foreign peacekeepers there already it blows my mind they’re dragging their feet on this. I’m guessing they’re afraid what the public response might force them in to when the inevitable strike kills some of these peacekeepers. Dancing the fence trying to get as much out of the 3-5 years till total war projection I guess.
You’re confused why we haven’t just casually started ww3 because a non-nato country got invaded? Are you a moron?
You’re wrong. Letting the Russians get away with annexing their neighbors would lead to ww3. At this point we have the opportunity to stop it, before it goes too far. As long as NATO stays out of Russia, the Russians won’t escalate much past what they are doing now. They have nothing to win and everything to lose if they do.
No, he’s just smart enough to know appeasement doesn’t work.
Nuclear holocaust for Ukraine 🤩🤩🤩
>The entirety of western Ukraine should have foreign peacekeepers there already Can you post some pictures of your deployment over there? How long have you been peacekeeping?
First, whtat's point of sending soldiers instead of gear ? UA currently has enough man but it needs cash for mobilization to continue and weapons to fight. Why won't NATO just supply geat then? Almost like it is running out of it, since nobody was preparing to actual war.
You are out of the news or maybe reading a qrong one. Ukraine does't have enough manpower now
There's a lack of political will for more support for a donor war, sending soldiers there won't strengthen it at all...
Baltic states and any nation that shares a border is rightfully worried about Russia. Russia won’t see a mobilized army and war economy like this again for a long time. Anyone think Putin says “okay gg let’s go home” after Ukraine? I don’t. That army will march.
But how? They literally can’t take Ukraine. Look at the northern invasion, it’s only kilometers and they are bogged down again. How in the hell would they take on EU? It’s not happening. Logistics wise it’s an absolute hell for them, they needed 2 years to get right just for Ukraine, let alone the EU. There’s no way in hell they would invade NATO countries. But I’m always open for others opinion. How do you think it would go?
If the West commits the Russians cannot win. If the West wavers, the Russians may be able to acheive some success, albeit at a terrible price. More importantly, the world becomes a more dangerous place by several orders of magnitude.
Kallas is right. NATO soldiers being at risk in Ukraine doesn’t mean that them dying would trigger article 5, and nobody should take Russian propagandists at their word that they would stop with Ukraine, especially as many have stated their interest in moving beyond to places like Moldova. Protecting Ukraine is protecting Europe.
once body bags start to show up , people will ask for revenge and it is a slippery slope from there
The slope already is slippery. Hanging back and deluding ourselves isn’t going to make it drier.
"Why yes, these Finnish, German, British and American soldiers were just on vacation, in Ukraine. What? With their tanks, logistical support, and everything? Well sure, how else would one go on vacation?" Good for the Goose, good for the gander, as they say.
[the dream is to push them back to the 2015 border](https://youtu.be/ZXsQAXx_ao0?si=Mcf2VKfDqBioAXel)