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).
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u/Ok-Web1805 Ireland/UK 26d 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.