zerg rush
To which the Estonian army will respond, “You’re a bunch of Russian soldiers”. Bang bang.
Ukraine had to pretend to believe the Russian story because it wasn’t strong enough enough to argue the point. Estonia, with NATO backing, doesn’t have to put up with any Russian shenanigans. Russians trying to infiltrate Narva would have about as much success if they were trying to sneak troops into Hesse or Yorkshire or Arizona.
This is what happens when you Fox News listeners start believing your own propaganda. You think Obama is a sniveling coward because Roger Ailes makes money selling ads telling you so. That doesn’t make it true. When you can’t understand your ideological opponents because you believe your own lies about them, how can you hope to fight against them?
Lots of people have thought the United States was a paper tiger that would fold like wet tissue paper at the first sign of trouble. OK, so after 10 years of occupation we got bored in Iraq and Afghanistan and left. After bombing the living crap out of both countries and shooting a whole hell of a lot of people. OK, maybe we’ll get bored with occupying Russia after we reduce it to rubble, and we’ll leave after a decade and some new warlord will take over and Russia will continue to be an anti-western shithole.
How is that a hopeful scenario for Mr. Putin?
Come on. That’s just a bunch of cheap shots.
Wait… are you seriously proposing that we might invade and occupy Russia if they annex part or all of Estonia? Seriously?
Wow, I googled zerg rush and Google has a little easter egg for that. I didn’t learn what it is, but I got to shoot a bunch of little 'o’s running around my screen.
Well that is definitely crazy as that’s exactly the sort of thing that might send off the nukes. However, supporting and recognizing an independent Chechnya wouldn’t be out of the picture.
I’d be willing for all of that, to prevent a 1935-1938 style round of nationalistic aggression which would lead to an all-out war anyway. The time to stand up to aggression is early, and it has to be a firm stance.
Otherwise…my family likely dies anyway. By opposing aggression, there is a better chance for real peace.
I’m just guessing Ukrainians wished they’d have kept their Soviet era nuclear weapons when they broke away. No one ever seems to invade nuclear armed countries, legitimately or otherwise.
Yes, sadly, I think that’s a lesson a lot of countries are thinking about. You can’t rely on promises. But if you’ve got a few nukes, the big guys will leave you alone.
I should point out in response to several posts–I don’t see where myself or really anyone has argued that Russia would defeat NATO in a war. That isn’t the point of what I’m saying. Russia could crush the Baltic Republics in a war, but the real point of it would be to test whether or not NATO would actually fight for the Baltics.
If Putin rolled into say, Latvia under some pretext (as he did in Crimea), especially using irregulars (who are actually of course trained Russian soldiers) the West would be in the position of deciding whether or not it was worth a war with Russia to reverse this action.
Could the West push Russia out of Latvia? Of course, NATO’s combined population, combined number of active duty military personnel and combined military spending makes that a certainty. NATO’s military spending is actually >50% of the world’s total.
But it wouldn’t be nothing to go to war with Russia over Latvia. It’d cost money, and most importantly it would probably result in a prolonged economic war with Russia. This would be disastrous for Russia, yes. But it would be really unpleasant for Western Europe as well, enough perhaps that persons like Merkel who seem to only care about Germany’s economic situation would be against NATO involvement. Without the backing of Western European states it’s unlikely Obama would act. In fact even with the backing of several Western European allies Obama was unwilling to bomb Syria, despite it having little likelihood of causing problems for us.
Yes, if Russia invaded Latvia, and we actually went to war over it, it would be a disaster for Putin. Probably the end of his Presidency, and certainly a grave economic crisis for Russia. However, the first response wouldn’t be a counterattack, but diplomacy. If we rattled the sabers hard enough, Putin would probably withdraw and his loss would solely be in lost face at home.
But we’d have to be willing to rattle the saber. In response to Putin’s second invasion of a sovereign state in the last 10 years we’ve done essentially nothing for fear of making the guy mad. We (and by we I mostly mean President Obama and his administration, although Bush responded tepidly to the South Ossetia War) have allowed an asymmetric situation to develop with Russia. We quiver in the face of repeated provocations while being afraid to act even in a reasonable way.
When some suggested arming Ukrainians with high tech anti-tank and anti-air systems, it was said we can’t do this, it would enrage Russia. But Russia had no problem arming Bashar al-Assad with anti-air weapons specifically intended to be used against our planes in any bombing campaign.
We have not developed any plan for defending the new NATO states from an attack by Russia, and have not war gamed it due to fear it would enrage Russia. Yet Russia carried out a massive war game operation in which it was simulating a war with exactly those countries, the end of the game simulated a nuclear strike on Poland.
We’ve shown Putin he can do certain things with no consequence, and we aren’t even willing to go tit-for-tat because of fear of him. This makes Putin think the West lacks resolve. I don’t believe Putin underestimates the West’s military, I’m sure he realizes NATO would roll him if it came to a war. But I think it’s reasonable to conclude Putin views us as unwilling to use that military on him, and he is a strong believer in the concept of “spheres” of power. He believes much of Eastern Europe to historically be part of Russia’s sphere of influence. American diplomats reject any talk of spheres of influence with Russia, but it’s core to how Russia’s leadership thinks. Putin feels especially strong in his sphere of influence, and probably is starting to wonder just how far he can go within that sphere.
That leads me to think it would actually be reasonable for Putin to test us with one of the new NATO members.
Problem is, if Germany doesn’t want to go to war despite the Baltics invoking Article 5, NATO is a dead letter.
At that point, I’d actually recommend creating a new alliance of the former Warsaw Pact nations excluding Western Europe, and drive the Russians out of the Baltics. And renounce all previous treaties signed with NATO nations that did not join us. If they won’t keep their most sacred promise, why should we ever trust them again?
What I am trying to say is that your analysis rests on estimating the cost of a war with Russia very highly, and underestimating the costs of dumping NATO (thats what it amounts to) to an extreme degree.
NATOs original purpose is collective security from Russia. Everyone knows it. And if Russia doesn’t stop in the Crimea, and doesn’t stop in the Ukraine, no-one is going to expect them to stop in the Baltics.
NATO and article 5 is the guarantee for national survival for the NATO members that border Russia. From Norway to Turkey. And the line of countries behind them knows full well Russia won’t stop at their border.
You seem to think messing with that is somehow going to seem less costly than wasting Russia. Its not. Not by a very long shot.
Not going to war over the Baltics is going to cost a lot more than going to war over them, and every politican knows that.
The quetion is, does Putin know that? He certainly did in his days in Germany, but he may have surronded himself with enough yes-men to think that has changed.
No. What “everyone knows” is that NATOs original purpose was collective security from Soviet Union. Current country of Russia, although it would like to be and pretends to be the power that Soviet Union was, isn’t.
No, they would probably want Poland, Slovakia etc. But I would say Russia is no danger to Germany or France or Norway or Turkey. And those countries know it and count on it. You know that story about how you don’t have to outrun the bear, right?
Heh, no. In the west “Soviet Union” and “Russia” was used interchangably. When we were on manuvers near the Russian/Soviet border, the orders and instructions carefully avoided giving the enemy a name, but everyone just said Russia. There was little awareness of a distinction between the two.
The bears hunger can be satisfied. Europes experience with invaders is that they can’t be satisfied. They may stop for a couple of year to digest the latest conquest, but then you’re back in the same position except youære a few countries short.
In your analogy, a party of well-armed campers won’t run til the bear gets the slowest, then hang around till the bear grows hungry again and repeat. They’ll just shoot the bear.
Also, saying we count on Russia not being a danger is about as wrong as you can get.
It’s not the question of semantics. It’s the question of what state NATO was formed to defend against. Russia today is not in any way as relatively powerful as Soviet Union was then.
I just don’t think Europeans think that way. They are in a full appeasement mode, and have been for a while. West Europeans - France, Germany, Spain… The Eastern Europeans know the bear too well but they are not well equipped to deal with him.
Also worth considering is the cost of intervening on behalf of Ukraine, when Ukraine isn’t a NATO member: a free-rider problem. If you can get the benefits of membership without the costs or obligations, why join? That’s not a wise message to send about your military alliance.
I quite agree there. I apologize if I was unclear, but my point was that in the minds of Europeans, NATO was created as a mutural defense against Russia/Soviet Union. And in the minds of Europeans, there was and still is very little difference. The Russians are percieved as exactly the same personality as the Soviet Union. Less power but just as threatening attitude.
I have no idea how you formed that impression. There is a branch of winter sports called biathlon. We generally do well in it, and we do so to send a message to the Russians. During my time in the army, practice of the sport was considered part of the service and if you were at the level where you competed you had as much time of for practice as you wanted. Thats just one thing.
Many of the countries you refer to still practice conscription, with a majority of males spending a year or so in the army. And everyone knows why. Norway recently extended the draft to cover men and women. Its not due to worries about Sweden.
And Russia won’t let countries go into appeasement mode. They seem constitutionally unable not to try to bully neighbouring countries. Norwegian fighters had to meet Russian planes 71 times in 2012. Thats 3 times every 2 weeks. This is why Norway is impatient for the delivery of those 52 F-35s on order.
Sweden and Finland is looking again at NATO membership. Sweden refers to Russias practice bombing run against Sweden during easter 2013. Top of every newspaper in Sweden then.
Saying that “those countries are in no danger from Rusiia and know it” is about as wrong as it can get. Russia simply seems constitutionally unable to stop bullying its neighbours, seeing every interaction through a lens of military power.
This could have been said about the USSR too. And NATO solidarity was probably what protected the rest of Europe.
So if NATO is ‘solid’ (in Russia’s view), Russia will not attack a NATO country. I think that the President and the rest of NATO are doing as much as they can to project solidarity, as they should. A war of NATO vs Russia on non-Russian soil would not be much of a contest. Russia knows this.
Eastern European neighbors - yes. France/Germany/Spain/UK - no.
Norway, Sweden and Finland are hardly eastern Europeans. Or Denmark. France tends to be pretty hardass about military responses. The UK on its own cound give Russia a serious fight. Germany has admittedly downgraded its military vastly. But no western country knows what Russia is capable of quite as well as Germany. We shall see what happens after this wakeup call. Germanys military potential is significantly greater than Russias.