The worst-case scenario is now a possible one: European troops fighting off an invasion largely alone.
It’s by no means clear the Europeans would succeed. Romanian and other European officials at the exercise in Cincu, about 260 kilometers (162 miles) north of Bucharest by road, voiced concerns about how long it would take for NATO allies to make it to the front.
French four-star General Philippe de Montenon said he’s confident Europe could prevail, even without the US on side. “The direction of history is a progressive disengagement of the United States from the European continent,” he said.
Meanwhile USA is fully prepared to comfort Russia.
I had to read the title 3 times, because even for the second read through I read ‘NATO is preparing to comfort Russia’.
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It’s by no means clear the Europeans would succeed. Romanian and other European officials at the exercise in Cincu, about 260 kilometers (162 miles) north of Bucharest by road, voiced concerns about how long it would take for NATO allies to make it to the front.
Those two things are not synonymous.
Romanian military are concerned it would take allies time to get to the front (I.e. it would take time for NATO to mobilise in the event of an unanticipated invasion of Romania). However firstly that doesn’t mean victory wouldn’t be ultimately achieved (allied forces had a bad time of it during the first part of the second world war, but ultimately were victorious) and secondly it assumes that Russia would be able to rally its forces (what forces) and initiate a surprise invasion despite Europe heavily monitoring Russian military activity. Which all seems unlikely.
I’m also unclear about why 260 km is considered an insurmountable distance. In an emergency that distance could be covered in a couple of hours, (I’m assuming that liberation forces and not required to obey the speed limit) presumably everyone would be going the other way in any case.
The tanks and howitzers are not at Bucharest and they can’t drive 200 km/h.
Yeah because the Russians aren’t going to invade. They would have to amass troops along the border we’d have some time.
Thankfully Russia can’t afford to stretch themselves much more. I implore them to try something it shouldn’t take much to fuck them at this point.
Why are you so willing to be thrown to the trenches? How is militarism a good position?
Bro I’m not gonna be in any trenches, I’m going to be in the alleyways, the sewers, the steam tunnels. As in I’m going to go full French resistance on anyone who invades.
Bro I’m not gonna be in any trenches
Then you’ll be in jail. Disobeying your country’s military or dodging conscription gets you that.
Well someone doesn’t know anything about Canada.
How is getting bullied without fighting back a good position?
How about engaging in deescalation by not pushing for military escalation against our neighbor? How about entering commercial relations with neighboring countries instead of antagonizing them?
Me saying I’ll defend my home is not antagonizing anyone other than those that intend to invade.
This you?
I implore them to try something it shouldn’t take much to fuck them at this point.
Yup, because it’s fuckin true.
How’s that “defending your home and not antagonizing anyone”?
Already tried that. We hoped that by buying massive amounts of Russian oil and gas they would see that peace is worth a lot more than war.
But they decided war anyways. And suddenly we had to find a replacement for all that energy.
Already tried that. We hoped that by buying massive amounts of Russian oil and gas they would see that peace is worth a lot more than war
And Russia responded to that positively. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, there were even negotiations to make Russia enter the European Union. Those hopes for Russia were shattered when Europe and the US kept interfering in its sphere of influence (Georgia, Ukraine, etc) through colour revolutions and propaganda. The culminating point where Russia saw there was no possibility was when in 2014, the democratically elected president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovich was removed by a US-sponsored colour revolution (see Victoria Nuland’s leaked phonecalls), that’s actually what triggered the invasion of Crimea. It was Russia’s way of saying “I cannot win the soft-power competition against the US, so if my only way to maintain a sphere of influence is through military power, so be it”.
If you still don’t believe allowing for a Russian “sphere of influence” is an important geopolitical item if we want worldwide peace, imagine how USA people and their government would react to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru entering a military alliance with Russia and China and started to import military material from said countries and have Chinese and/or Russian military bases. Last time something similar happened with Cuba, the world was on the brink of nuclear war.
My brother in foreign affairs, Russia has been an aggressor of Ukraine it’s whole existence.
Ukraine signed an agreement which cited that it would give up nuclear warheads for protection by the USA against Russia.
That protection never happened. Crimea was taken. Chaos ensued on the borders. Then Russia struck their fucking capital.
AND YOU WANT US TO FUCKING TRADE WITH RUSSIA, lol… Surely that will fix everything.
We trade with USA, aggressor of half of the world, and Europe itself participated in the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the bombing of Libya and Yugoslavia. Currently, the EU stance is to support the genocidal apartheid regime of Netanyahu. Why is Russian aggression worse and should be punished more than any other aggression?
Yeah, how about no escalation? No hybrid war tactics? No drones in foreign airspace? No threats to neighbouring countries?
Cool, I agree that all of those things should stop. How about we engage in actual negotiations with Russia instead of grinding down Ukrainian young men in trenches as a form of diplomacy?
Because appeaemt doesn’t work?
They’re not willing to engage in good faith. If they were they never would have started the “special operations” in the first place. Nor would they be asking to keep all of their gains in the war.
They were more than willing to engage in good faith from late 1990s to early 2010s, it’s the constant western meddling in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and other Russian sphere of influence countries, coupled with the expansion of NATO, that pushed Russia to isolation. Russia doesn’t have the economic or soft power to fight the US+EU in that field, so either US+EU accept Russia peacefully having its own sphere of influence, or Russia will naturally attempt to do so militarily.
The USA doesn’t need to militarily engage in Mexico because it already belongs to its sphere of influence, in Venezuela they don’t enjoy that so the natural response is to threaten with military invasion (as it’s doing now). It’s basic geopolitics.
it would really be something else if they fought them off successfully and the united states looked like pussies and assholes
They already do. US is currently the only country pushing for surrender (note, it’s not just Ukraine, peace plan forces stuff from US too, including industry help and money) while negotiating with terrorists. It will take a very long time for me to see US in the same light I used to. Imagine US surrendering to ISIS. Beyond humiliating.
it would really be something else if they fought them
No it wouldn’t be. Germany is suggesting forced conscription already, and so is France. I don’t want to see young men thrown into the meat grinder to satisfy the imperial wishes of either Europe or Russia
you raise a good point, and to be honest i haven’t figured out what the morally correct answer to this is.
In my opinion, the morally correct answer is to have a mild relation with Russia, consisting of trade and not much more. Europe would get access to a huge pool of resources to boost its industry, and stopping to antagonize our neighboring countries would help to drive down military tensions in the continent.
NATO was conceived as an anti-Soviet military pact, and any excuse for its usefulness expired after 1991. Now it’s just a military playground for US interests, keeping European money flowing to the Wunderwaffen of the USA Military Industrial Complex, and maintaining Yankee military bases in the continent.
so how do you respond to a violent invasion of a country like ukraine, which is made of people who don’t want to be part of russia
How did Europe respond to the genocide in Gaza? To the invasion of Iraq? To the blanket bombing of Vietnam, Laos and Korea? To the invasion of Afghanistan? To the coups in essentially all countries in Latin America? To the invasion attempt on Cuba?
Why should Europe exclusively react to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
that isn’t much of an answer. I still have no idea what your position is.
to answer your question though, I don’t think any of those invasions you listed are good things. I don’t think they had good outcomes, and I don’t like them
I equally condemn them, yes.
My position is: Russian government sucks, it’s a far right wing nationalist antidemocratic regime. Europe is just not really better or in a moral position to believe itself better than Russia. We have our own far right problems that we should locally take care of. If you ask me, a communist, I suggest having radical left wing organizations, strong unionization, and class struggle against the oligarchs and capitalists in Europe, and I would strongly encourage Russian citizens to do the same with their own government.
That said, I think that war is the least desirable outcome, possibly especially because I’m a young conscriptable male by demographics. My stance as a European is antimilitarism, I think Europe is as much an evil empire as Russia if not worse, and I don’t want state expenditure to be directed towards weapons and tanks, I want it to be directed to healthcare, education and pensions.
I believe that Russia assumes an aggressive militaristic stance with its neighboring countries that it considera its sphere of influence, because it doesnt have the soft power tools (propaganda, economics, intelligence, media control, cultural hegemony) that the west does, and it sees the west intruding in its sphere of influence (e.g. color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia). The only way the Russian oligarchy and capitalists have of maintaining its sphere of influence, given the lack of soft powers to do so in comparison with the west, is through military power.
I want to leave Russia alone with its sphere of influence, and have friendly relations with it and China, and not have war.
how do you suppose a mild relation with russia could be achieved in this scenario?
The way it was from the late 90s to the early 2010s: by allowing them to have their Russian sphere of influence (Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan…) the same way US ans Germany enjoy their own.
And if Ukraine doesn’t want to be a part of that, then fuck them I guess?
I wish you had the same level of concern for Mexicans, Venezuelans, Argentinians, Guatemalans, Cubans, Hondurans and Puertorricans. As a western citizen you should be primarily concerned with the consequences on the sphere of influence of your country.
Russia invaded a sovereign nation, they weren’t just minding their own fucking business
History began in 2022?
That is for the best. The US is a hostile power, and allowing it to embed enemy troops or sabotage NATO operations should not be permitted. Europe is better off without the traitorous Trump Regime.
It sucks that it has to be this way, but to deny the intent and nature of the current United States, is to invite disaster.
While it may make Nato less credible in terms of military assets and industrial capacity if the US were out, it would make Nato more defensible in moral terms if the whims of Donald Trump weren’t a cornerstone of the Alliance
Let the comments here be a friendly reminder to people that they should block and boycott the .ml instance
I missed the drama. This was the first Lemmy account I made. Is this server overrun with bots now?
So the .ml stands for Marxist Lenin… Just to get you started.
I love you got three angy downvotes for explaining this.
I’m sad there isn’t an appropriate gif of an “angry tankie” shaking his fist.
Most of them are bot accounts run from the Philippines anyway.
Not really, .ml stands for Mali domain. And just because someone believes in Marxist principle or communism isn’t a issue. Personally for me why I am wary of .ml domain is because often I do see people posting obvious Chinese and North Korean propoganda with shady source and wild claims and their refusal to accept criticism of China or other communist past and present regimes. Also they get really defensive and assume you are pro west or pro imperialism when you happen to criticize china for something and then their whole argument would be bashing the west when both are to fault.
The devs for Lemmy are Marxists and they setup lemmy.ml as the first lemmy instance. They chose .ml because for them it stands for Marxist-Leninist, despite what ICANN officially regards it as.
Also, like you point out, the instance pushes a lot of bizarre propaganda and dissent is often met with bans. From my observations, criticism of Russia or China can get you banned, presumably because these countries have a history of communism. Also, they even defend Putin and justify the invasion of Ukraine.
In my view, it’s one thing to be communist. It’s another to align yourself with the worst examples of it. Many communists distance themselves from the CCP and USSR, arguing that these were not real examples of communism. But, these folks in .ml seem to be defenders of it.
Many communists distance themselves from the CCP and USSR
Which is somewhat like being a nazi but distancing yourself from Nazi Germany.
How much can one bullet cost?
10 comments and the pro Russia bots are already here
Such is life currently: hyperbolic questions in ironic comments like " have you proof about Ruzz agression, because the West…" etc.
Smh, about the contrast between their potential to embrace a grand selfdeception and the arrogant stubbornness to look away from the invasive destruction and killings Shahed drones cause on a daily bases for more than a thousand days.
French four-star General Philippe de Montenon said he’s confident Europe could prevail, even without the US on side.
This is discussed too rarely. Does anybody know of a source that makes a reliable comparison?
Only the former head of the US forces in NATO, Ben Hodges , has oftentimes said similar lines afaik, like here :
Europe should “quit whining” about the threats it faces and “act like the superpower” that it is, according to a former senior US army officer.
Generally, he’s quite confident about Europe defending itself.
But does that come from genuine analysis of Europe’s capabilities or the desire to redeploy American forces from Europe to other theaters?
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Well, France has the second or third largest/most powerful individual Navy in the world, and Russia has severely diminished trained personnel, so unless China enters it would be a one sided massacre in Europe’s favor.
Probably why Russia has worked so hard on the south of Ukraine to secure the sea border even losing territory in the north.
The issue is when China enters, and whose side they will be on. Does Xi Jinpooh see more profit in helping his cabal of friendly dictators or would he just carve out a slice of the Russia Pie?
I can’t see China wanting to get involved in the war. Wars are expensive, and the outcome is not guaranteed.
Besides China has improving relations with Europe, what is the point in risking that?
China is invading like 4 territories every day of the week and they attempted to covertly build a partially underground military citt in Beijing 10x the size of the US Pentagon, in addition to being the origin country of the vast majority of cyberattacks.
They vetoed the only Israel Palestine ceasefire agreement that the US would agree to last year and endorsed the bloodthirsty Trump admin, openly promoting him with their TikTok platform.
They bankroll North Korea and Iran.
If War incarnated on earth he would be taking notes from Pooh Bear.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, maybe War has incarnated, riding a RED horse.
Why would the navy be relevant? The war is about controlling the area that cannot be reached by ships.
Long range missiles and Fighter Jet deployments control modern warfare. The only way around it is a decentralized power structure bunkered down for infinite guerilla warfare, but Russia’s power structure is very much centralized.
Plus, if you can take the shores you can spread from there to cut off supply lines.
Nuclear submarine are part of the navy. So it’s an important asset, especially in the deterrence and strike game. We have good payload capabilities (all proportion garded) thanks to the navy. And projection force from our aircraft carrier is also a good asset.
If none of their ports work, I’d guess it would affect their war effort considerably. It also means stable supply lines by water and no worries about naval movements.
That’s not really how NATO works, but I can understand the sentiment of imagining the USA refusing to enact the articles upon a member being attacked.
I didn’t think it was the sort of thing that could be refused? Aren’t things like Article 5 basically a ride-or-die pact that obligates member nations to come to eachother’s defense? At least in my understanding, being a part of NATO at all legally requires each nation to consider an attack against any one of them as an attack on all of them. It specifically isn’t a “if you feel like it” rule, because that doesn’t have the scary MAD implications of Article 5.
Trump doesn’t seem like a ‘respect the law’ sort of guy.
Well I know this is getting well away from the point here, but Congress declares war, not the President.
Congress declares war, not the President.
Congress has already authorized the President to deploy military units at the president’s discretion, per the AUMF which renews biannually under the NDAA
If the US fails to honor NATO’s Article 5 then the rest of the world will worry the US won’t honor their defence packs.
Japan Taiwan Philippines South Korea
Nuclear proliferation will follow
Japan Taiwan Philippines South Korea
Are client states under the occupation of the US military. They aren’t worried the US might fall to act. They’re worried the US might act to remove their leaders and replace them with more pliant ones.
Nuclear proliferation will follow
Why would an occupied territory hosting US nuclear weapons build their own nuclear arsenal?
Why would the US allow them to do so?
This is such a bizarre outlook on reality. You watch Russian TV a lot?
Brother, this isn’t Pravda
Again, very bizzare take. There are people in literally every country that wants foreign influence or bases out, that proves nothing and that number of people is very minimal compared to people who want them. The locals in Okinawa are one such example as the military presence is disturbing and soldiers are not known for ethics. I’m in one of your so claimed “occupied states”, and everyone’s thankful for the alliance (literally no one calls it occupation except Russian people living here who hate everyone who tries to defend themselves from the next invasion).
Random, but did you know an alternate name for Russians where I live is “occupiers”? If you say “occupiers”, literally everyone knows that means Russians.
There are people in literally every country that wants foreign influence or bases out, that proves nothing
You don’t think an enormous population of foreign military resulting in high rates of unprosecuted sexual violence and organized crime demonstrates anything about the state of politics in the host country?
So you believe people in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines at the highest levels of power just… want this for their people? Or do you think they’re so beaten down they don’t believe in their own capacity for self-defense?
Random, but did you know an alternate name for Russians where I live is “occupiers”?
I mean, you keep coming back to Russians, as though you think they’re a different species.
I guess you’d call them, what? Orks?
Is the violent occupation of conquered territory only a problem for you when the occupying army is Slavic?
NATO/EU needs to start moving resources more into place. This will cause putin to have to move troops out of Ukraine to balance.
Even along the Ukrainian border, the Russian troops guarding the frontier are their least capable units full of troops typically serving their 1 year conscription. Putin knows that NATO lacks the capacity for a Sneak Attack. Unless Poland orders full mobilization, the Russians won’t move more than token forces to the border.
NATO won’t attack, but putin is paranoid. I doubt he’d be able to ignore a buildup of NATO troops on his doorstep. And NATO needs to deploy hordes of drones and drone defenses as practice anyway.
Why do we fucking still Need to use military confrontation for everything?
Fr in this modern world with phones, internet and much more, why do we have to confront by sending young people in a year grinder?
I am ashamed of my species
Well because no amount of “phones internet and much more” is going to stop a foreign invading soldier with a gun from taking your shit and killing you, would be the very short answer.
Apperently yall havent got this isnt a realistic thing but a call on how war isnt that good you know?
UH OH - you did a ‘leftism’ in the warmongering liberal instance. you get sentenced to several downvotes and a brainwashed accusation!
Warmongering in this case being defined as discussing the possibility of another nation state attacking them.
the situation in ukraine did not happen in a vacuum. there are reasons why russia decided to invade.
there is no logical explaination why russia would want to attack NATO and trigger article 5.
but hey as long as the fear exists we can watch line go up in rheinmetall, saab & dassault stocks so the capital of a stagnating empire can save itself.
What a wild thing to say about supporting a sovereign nation in defending its borders.
“Preparing to confront Russia” (post title) is not supporting any nation in defending its borders.
Oh, and if you read even for 2 seconds past the headline what does it say? Does it say “The worst-case scenario is now a possible one: European troops fighting off an invasion largely alone”? Does that sound like nations defending their borders or not like nations defending their borders?
Surely western propaganda frames it as a defensive war. So does Russian propaganda, you know? In Russia, all media talk of the “Special Military Operation” as a defensive push to protect Russian ethnics from genocide in Eastern Ukraine. Do I believe this? Not one bit. Do I believe that Europe’s mliotaries, traditionally used to invade the entirety of Africa and carry out colonial exploitation, or to invade middle eastern nations for their oil, are only good boys trying to defend ourselves from an evil third country? Absolutely fucking not. Europe is also a rabid militaristic dog. Half of Europe is about to elect fascists into government, and the last thing I want to see are fascists with military power in my country and the neighboring ones.
Is there any credible material proof that Russia is preparing for an invasion of Europe???
They are just barely capable of winning a slow war of attrition against Ukraine, how can you make a credible argument they could achieve any war aims against all of Europe?
You can’t even argue they can take one country at a time, the entire border is riddled with NATO tripwire troops, guaranteeing the direct involvement of each major European military from the get-go.
Is this just fearmongering to drum up support for more military Keynesianism?
They already have invaded Europe. For the second time in the last decade.
Fyi, Ukraine is in Europe.
Fuck USA for abandoning it’s allies, the whole world is realising they cannot be trusted.
The EU is doing the right thing by arming up.
They have invaded Ukraine, a country that is not in NATO nor in the EU, this article is talking about a war with all the European member states of NATO. I think my wording was clear.
And considering rearmament, do you know what the security dilemma is, and what that means for the security of everyone in Europe?
Ukraine is still in Europe no matter how you spin it. Russia has also invaded NATO aligned airspace, cut infrastructure lines in the ocean, likely blew up a critical fuel pipeline, continues aggressive cyber warfare, bombed a railway in Poland, and pays for bots and misinformation campaigns and supports right wing fascism in the US and EU. They rattle their nuclear sabre constantly and have also had illegal incursions across borders like Finland… Tell us again how Russia isn’t a nascent threat to all Europeans after invading a sovereign country twice, downing passenger jets and sending proxy ships for covert unconventional warfare? The EU is under attack already and at least Poland is awake to it.
Russia is still in Europe no matter how you spin it.
Not accoridng to them. They rightfully consider themselves Euroasian, and a growing number of Europeans see them that way too.
So, it’s still in Europe. What’s your point, other then division? Stop with this us/them shit, stop supporting warmongering narratives. Geography is not interested in this bullshit and you shouldn’t be, either.
Russia is currently attacking a sovereign state, murdering civilians and abducting children. Defense against that is hardly warmongering. Europe did not push for it to be us/them, it was Russians who made themselves the morally corrupt ‘them’ by killing people in Europe.
