Fairly predictable move. But what would it mean and what would it look like?
Lots of people say “No way. He can’t, they’d lose badly even to just some the European NATO countries”.
Yes. Probably correct. But winning a fight against NATO wouldn’t be the point. Concluding Trump’s final act of splitting the U.S. and NATO is the goal.
It’s not a good move for him to make. But he has made thousands of stupid moves so far and isn’t finished. It’s a mistake to assume your enemy thinks like you do - or even logically. His world is far, far differnet from the average rational thinker in the west. He’s in a war for his very life and legacy. We just want this stupid war to end and Ukraine to survive. Different stakes.
NATO’s eastern flank of Poland, Finland, maybe even Romania might decide - FUCK IT. Game on - and decide that it’s preferable to lend their air assets for an active defense umbrella over Ukraine, seize shadow fleet ships, sink some Baltic Fleet ships and maybe even put more assets into Ukraine. If a war is inevitable, better to fight it in the neighbor’s yard than your own. And maybe a swift, decisive ass kicking keeps Putin where he is.
But again - an attack on the Baltics or Poland is the sideshow. The objective is to get their stooge Trump to refuse to honor NATO Article 5, in theory splintering the mutual defense bedrock of the alliance’s biggest partner. And it’s VERY likely to happen VERY soon - because Trump is about to get smashed in the mid-terms and is as healthy as a 20 year old diabetic house cat besides. His last effective order from Putin was always going to be to keep NATO distracted and the U.S. out of a final conflict.
Seems crazy right? Yeah, if you’re trying to win a war and preserve the lives of your soldiers. But what makes you think Putin cares about that? From his spiteful, homicidal point of view - watching the U.S. convulse because it’s corrupted leader refused to support NATO allies attacked by the Russians is a pretty good prize. The Russian propaganda machine will make several meals out of it, and probably use it as a pretext to wind down the war, calling it a victory. Its not that far fetced. You keep what you have in Ukraine for now, and say you’ve destroyed NATO. Russians have never had much trouble swallowing a big lie that reinforced their chauvanistic view of the world. Hell - they STILL think they’re the only country that beat Germany.
The good news is - this is all very obvious. Putin and Trump are not smarter than Macron, Merz, Burnham, Tusk, Meloni et al. The EU will have some plans for whatever TrumPutin syndicate decide to do. Whether you think it will be enough or not is what’s at stake. The best idea I’ve seen is that for any attack on NATO, the first thing you do is seize a percentage of the $300B of frozen assets and give it directly to Ukraine. Then see how the Russians react.
But - what the hell do I know? Thanks for attending my Ted talk. Your thoughts please.
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Russia’s only possible path to victory goes through the Bundestag and the Elysée Palace.
Honestly I think if Putin where to invade both parties would be changing their tune just like how South East Ukraine did.
Someone should show Putin the
doorwindow. That’s might thought on the matter.Sometimes I think EU should just declare they’ll conquer Russia West of the Ural when Putin goes over the line. Then the issue of course becomes where they draw the line, but everytime Putin comes near the line, more stuff for invation ought to appear near the border with Russia.
First, the EU is not a military organization, but a political, economic and financial union. It will be very hard to get them to jointly attack any other country in the world; such a case is not described in the EU charter anyway. Secondly, in this case, that is actually a good thing, because invading Russia would be a terrible mistake, as the country is far too large, Napoleon and Hitler tried, remember? Next, Russia is especially trying its hand at hybrid warfare, and it looks as if western nations are waking up to this, and thinking about how to counter it - probably through… hybrid warfare. Finally, the EU has the overhand in funds, and financial tools have not been used completely, there’s still a lot of leeway to really hurt Russia.
sure, invading russia has never gone poorly before.
How about we start with seizing portions of their frozen petro dollars first before we go marching on Moscow.
Well thought, this has to end somehow.
One typo though :far fetcedfar fetched
