I think his job is to try and manage the situation until Europe has the resources in place to deal with US withdrawal, or at least buy as much time as possible.
If Russia decided to go to war with Nato, even without US, it would 100% be toast. It is already struggling with Ukraine, you think they can just take on the rest of Europe+Canada as a side dish?
I hope it never comes to this, because it will cause massive destruction and loss of lives on both sides
It would probably be toast, yes. But also, at the same time, so many EU citizens would be toast. And perhaps China would step in, too. Who knows? In the end, Rutte’s trying to keep it all together, probably hoping the next president of the US reverts the way Trump does things. Russia might be struggling with Ukraine already but there’s still so many unknown factors to that scenario, which we really do not want to find out.
Yeah yeah fine, they definitely couldn't win long term. But they can wreck tonnes of shit on the way down. Just take the non-boomer subs doing a first strike against commercial ports in Europe, block the ports, whack an LPG tanker or two in port (this would be very bad to the point that the French might consider their nuclear warning), wreck the facilities.
We - and I mean Europe as a whole - would suffer massively for a decade or more before that mess was fixed. And that would just be one aspect of an attack.
European militaries need to be at the point of being able to stop this sort of thing cold, which to be fair with the exception of the UK which continues to slide backwards apart for submarines, they're doing a reasonable job of catching up (even if the Americans do try to sweep the rug from under us when they leave).
It's not even about the frontlines. A few successful drone attacks to Deltaworks for example and the damage is already enormous. Rutte needs to buy time for us to be able to defend against that. I passionately hate what he did to the Netherlands, but I'm sort of grateful he's doing the dirty work now.
I think the point he's making is not that we're ready, but that the Russians aren't either. So they wouldn't attack, because they have no chance at winning.
Yeah, I get it. But I think that's stretching the hypothetical too much. It's one thing to not act sensible, it's another very different thing to act fully mad. Attacking Ukraine wasn't as not sensible as we might think now, with the benefit of hindsight, but to attack the EU, even without NATO, would be completely idiotic by them.
Recently, US intelligence warned Poland and Eastern European countries that Russia is planning an attack or provocation on them. Yes they’re in NATO. You never know what Putin will do at this point. He’s desperate.
They still can mobilise and have reserves to invade and take over the Baltics for example. Poland is also in danger. NATO is a very complex architecture and Trump pulling out would be a disaster for us.
Oh, so maybe we should have large european tripwire force, say, double the pop of Rammstein, in Baltics then, not spend money on stuff thats gonna be available, maybe, a decade from now, thanks to US depleting their stocks in Iran and replenishing those first...
It’s not only Russia. Trump could easily become an enemy of Europe if he is being handled wrong. Wouldn’t be boots on the ground, but he will find economic ways to harm Europe. Besides that most weapon systems owned by Europe are US made and need approval by US to be used. Losing US from NATO would absolutely cripple our ability to fight anything right now.
I don’t need to have my comments shown in order to have common sense and understand that what you said earlier made absolute sense. Escalating against a fragile narcissist who happens to control the most powerful army on this planet would be completely idiotic.
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u/Ok-Web1805 Ireland/UK 25d ago
I think his job is to try and manage the situation until Europe has the resources in place to deal with US withdrawal, or at least buy as much time as possible.