Comment by mytailorisrich
15 hours ago
Why does the UK need an option available quickly?
I think it does not and this is just pandering to the US.
15 hours ago
Why does the UK need an option available quickly?
I think it does not and this is just pandering to the US.
The narrative is of a looming war with Russia, necessitating rapid rearmament.
My armchair strategist view doesn't extend as far as knowing if haste is advised or not. I'm curious why you think specifically there is no rush.
It's hard to take this "looming war" with Russia seriously when WWIII didn't happen during the USSR times when Russia was much stronger. It's hard to believe that Russia would want to start WWIII now when they didn't then and when they have shown that they were highly struggling in Ukraine (and they struggled in Chechnya, too).
Along the same line, during the Cold War Sweden was literally facing the Warsaw Pact and yet stayed out of NATO. Now it is surrounded with friends and needs to join NATO.
I am just old enough to remember the end of the Cold War and the fall of it all. To me it is very difficult to consider that the situation now is riskier than then.
A reasonable conclusion is that we are being led up the garden path...
Russia has a stockpile of nukes for defense because they are worried of invasion (history has shown this is warranted). But they know that the military might of the US and NATO would obliterate their conventional forces.
My theory is that there has always been push-back against an EU power-grab to full "statehood" and involvement in military matters, and that this is a pretext to "manufacture consent" in European public opinion.
Now, specifically for the UK, again I think this is largely pandering to the US to attract favours (tariffs, etc)
I think, sure, while Russia is fighting in Ukraine, they would really struggle to attack elsewhere.
But were they to win, which is not that hard to imagine, they would suddenly have a war-time economy and suddenly able to move troops to another border. Russia is always making threats, most recently Putin said at a Russian Economic Forum that "wherever a Russian soldier's boot stood, belongs to Russia".
As for fearing NATO... Russia was always good at salami tactics: take a slice and back off before backlash mounts. If they helped themselves to Estonia, say, over 48 hours, would the US, UK and France send nukes? Send much at all? Possibly not, and Putin knows it.
None of it pertains to the "when" question, but I can easily imagine circumstances where it happens.
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I don't think Finland and Sweden would have joined NATO if this were just a pan-European power grab. They want to be separate countries. They joined because they genuinely believe that Putin has his eye on them.
That would be insane, but Putin is taking his playbook from the Cold War "madman" theory. He wants you to be guessing, which scatters your attention and misdirects your forces.
The Soviet Union engaged in plenty of proxy wars with the West, but they always avoided engaging directly with Western Europe. Putin has upped the ante by attacking Ukraine, which the West considers an ally and was moving towards a formal alliance.
That puts the madman theory in play. He makes rhetorical feints at Scandinavia. He knows the West won't ignore them, because they don't know if he's kidding.
I concur that the UK is just sucking up to the US here. The US has become a very unreliable partner and Europe needs to find a way to mollify it while they figure out how they can deal with Putin's continuous needling by themselves.
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