Ukraine vs Russia III

Are you really going to start this over again?
You are intentionally not addressing

This isn’t a question of “relying on the US too much.” It isn’t about paying 1% of GDP to NATO vs 2%, or maybe a bit more. It’s completely different. Completely. Different.


Completely.

Now, you can go figure out yourself why that is. I’m not going to do your homework for you.

Or, which is what I’m sure you will do instead, you can double down and continue displaying your blithe ignorance by conflating the two things.

 

While @Potowmack is clutching his pearls over the Big Mean Liberal...

The entire bedrock of modern global stability has rested for 70 years on the fact that Europe -- where 24% of global wealth is divided among several powerful competitors rather than concentrated in a single dominant power (North America, South America, Asia, Oceania) -- is not overwhelmed by large militaries capable of waging large land conflicts.

It's the ENTIRE point of NATO. The ENTIRE point of the European Union. The ENTIRE purpose of the United Nations.

Anyone who knows ANYTHING about the World War 2 settlement and the postwar order knows that the worst, absolute worst thing you could do would be to encourage European nations to rebuild their militaries.

The idea that the United States would voluntarily abandon this order in order to combat a relatively weak China -- which is facing nearly-irreversible demographic and economic decline -- is stupid. It's really just stupid.

I live in Europe. I do not want my country to have a large army. I do not want the French, the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians, hell, even the Czechs, to have a large army. I want the American army to safeguard the continent from itself.

But because I've opened a single history book in my life, I guess I'll be the Rude Big Mean Liberal.

#justfukcingread

 

What’s the downside to Europeans having a more robust ability to defend themselves against Russia or other threats? From an American perspective, it’s certainly in our interest for Europeans to be more self-sufficient when it comes to defense.

 

They will kill each other. And we will have to step in again.

Is that simple enough for you?

 

Oh, please, like some pencil-necked dork in Wales or wherever is anything more than a source of amusement for me.

Well, you may want the US to keep protecting Europe, but that’s not something American taxpayers are all that jazzed about. Your position is just bizarre- “How dare you expect Europeans to have a military capability in par with their economic capacity?”

We’re going to want to keep seeing good faith efforts by our European allies to more robustly deal with military threats. The Poles are a good example of this.

 

That’s nonsense. This isn’t 1914 or 1939. The threats to the EU are external.

 

I nailed it. Yay me.

 

You guys are delusional and stuck in the last century.

 

What they don't get is that this Pax Americana makes America rich. The dollar is the engine of all those goods flowing everywhere, which makes dollars a valuable and powerful commodity. We can literally tell banks all over the world what to do because they need to deal with dollars and we say how dollars can be used.

If you are familiar with military matters then you know what "defeat in detail" means, right? It means a weaker force can defeat a stronger force by splitting the stronger force up and then attacking the even smaller bits of the strong force one at a time. That's what Russia is doing by splitting America from Europe. And they are just going to keep splitting Europe until they get bits they can control or crush.

 

Always. Every single time.

If the United States leaves Europe, the Polish army has absolutely every incentive to liberate Belarus. How do you think that's going to go down with Russia?

No, it's actually not. Basic arithmetic will get you there. Adjusted for inflation, the US cost of its European involvement in World War 2 was approximately $1 trillion -- I'm merely dividing the total cost equally by theater of war (Europe, Africa, Pacific, Asia). The annual cost of US deployments in Europe are $4 billion. It would take the United States 250 years for its annual NATO deployments to exceed the cost of a single intervention in a European war.

You're effectively saying you don't agree with math.

 

That's nonsense.

I know a great deal about this subject and the academic debates surrounding it - and the idea that Western European powers will naturally go back to 1914-style arms races and armed conflicts if left to their own devices seems utterly absurd. Mearsheimer should have been a laughingstock when he made that type of prediction in 1990, and he should be even more of a laughingstock now.

 

The frequently-bombed-by-Russia Russian city of Belgorod was one again bombed by Russia. This time a Shaheed drone went off course (?) and struck an apartment complex with devastating effect.


https://nitter.poast.org/bayraktar_1love/status/1855927966326231287#m

 

They don't need to go back to 1914-style arms races, and it won't happen overnight. But eventually, be it in a decade or a generation, two European powers will get mad at each other and start a war. It could be Greece and Turkey fighting over irredentism. It could be another Balkan war. It could be the collapse of Belarus after Lukashenko dies and a struggle by Baltic states, Poland, and Ukraine to choose the successor state. Anyone who believes they know a great deal about the subject knows that Europe is always a powder keg. So you'd know that these rivalries didn't disappear.

 

The last two days have seen ferocious attacks by Russia on the east side of the Kursk salient using a large number of heavy armored vehicles. Looks like Russia got a bloody nose for their efforts. Dozens of vehicles and something like 300 troops are no more.

 

It's true that Europe as a whole is hardly immune to armed conflict, although the past decades in Western Europe have been peaceful and stable even in comparison to the late 20th century - something like the the Northern Irish conflict or the Turkish invasion of Cyprus would be pretty out of the ordinary in modern Western Europe. And the idea of a hypothetical war between the Baltics, Poland and Ukraine about about who holds power in some future Belarus seems pretty silly.

But regardless, those real or imaginary conflicts you talk about have little in common with the kind of multipolar security competition among European powers that prevailed before WWI. One thing that made Europe dangerous in 1914 was that the regional conflicts over sovereignty and identity were linked to ongoing militarized power struggles among great powers and their rival alliances. That's why small-scale violence by Serbian nationalists in Bosnia could rapidly turn into massive-scale slaughter of German, French, British and Russian soldiers in completely separate parts of the continent.

What's the modern scenario where some regional European conflict leads to hundreds of thousands of French and German soldiers fighting each other in Belgium? There isn't such a scenario , and there will never be one, barring some sort of Mad Max apocalypse. The idea that "Europe is always a powder keg" and potentially on the brink of interstate war is not some kind of universal informed consensus - I don't think it's even a particularly mainstream view.

 

"Major European War" doesn't mean 1914, and it doesn't mean France and Germany fighting each other.

You're employing the same logic as "Trump isn't gassing millions of his political enemies, so he's not an authoritarian."

Stop putting words in my mouth and read the words actually written on the paper.

 

"To keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down."
Lord Ismay, First Nato Sec Gen on Nato's purpose

 

While I do understand the general point you are making…I remain a bit skeptical that a country that has been fought to a 2 year stalemate, with massive losses in both military and human resources, while facing only a fraction of the current military capabilities that Western Europe alone possesses could somehow regroup and escalate that conflict beyond its current theater to take on a united coalition with what…close to ten times the population and even larger multiple of GDP advantage in my lifetime…or multiple lifetimes. As i wrote that I am cognizant of the heavy lifting “United” is doing. But Russia is nothing more than a nuclear armed Mexico.

The biggest problem I see is I’m not sure that we’re gonna live with an isolationist America vis a vis Europe …but rather one that is Russia’s geopolitical ally and Western Europe’s geopolitical enemy.

 

The only way Russia rearms itself to be threatening to Poland and the Baltics in our lifetimes is if they learn how to use magic.

 

If the Europeans think the US is likely to pull out of NATO, then that’s even more reason for them to beef up their militaries.

The ideal situation, for Europeans and Americans, is a NATO that with more robust military capabilities. Which means the Europeans have to ramp up their capabilities.

 

You’re such a limited thinker. Your poor students.

For some reason, you seem to believe that stronger European military capabilities will lead to the US abandoning NATO. Try to think s little bit harder about this. I know you can do it!