Is the EU capable if fending off Russia?

spank_inferno

In a non-nuclear, no 3rd party scenario?

What with the Ruskies sabre rattling of late I wondered, could Russia beat the combined EU in a conventional war.

At first I assumed Russia would walk it.

However, looking at the numbers, money & modernity the 2 sides would stack up similarly in sheer numbers, with the EU far ahead in modernity.

After a bit of Wikki reading I was surprised how weak Russia is now compared to the USA.

It would be a close call.
If the EU had an effective command & control structure, I think it would send the Russians packing.

Opinions?

OS119

big fat fact number one - Russia spends less than 1/7th of what the US spends on defence capability, yet has similarly large numbers on its books. it spends rather less than France, Germany and the UK...

the Russian military is no longer the big bad Red Army that would be in Paris in 10 days asking who'd won the air war, it is now a gigantic feeding programme for the concripted with a crust of decent kit on a sea of broken, untrained crap.

the truth is that the three largest EU/European NATO military powers combined could crushingly defeat Russia in a conventional war, if you lob the airpower of Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Norway in as well you're talking about the Vikings versus the Death Star...

Boskowski

I imagine the strength of the Red Army was always overhyped to a large degree. It suited both us and them. We - as in 'we, the West - could justify all our military spending which is really what its all about and they, well, they had a very strong army. On paper anyway.

Think about it. Wouldn't it have been a great opportunity to slash our military spending after the iron curtain came down and turn our western world into this great heaven of wealth and prosperity? Thankfully we discovered the 'war on terror' which allows us to continue spending trillions on defence and intelligence contracts.

OS119

Boskowski wrote: »

I imagine the strength of the Red Army was always overhyped to a large degree. It suited both us and them. We - as in 'we, the West - could justify all our military spending which is really what its all about and they, well, they had a very strong army. On paper anyway.

Think about it. Wouldn't it have been a great opportunity to slash our military spending after the iron curtain came down and turn our western world into this great heaven of wealth and prosperity? Thankfully we discovered the 'war on terror' which allows us to continue spending trillions on defence and intelligence contracts.

actually, the strength of the Red Army was hyped by the Red Army to the Red Army, and by the Red Army to the Soviet Ministry of Defence and the Politburo. they were strong, but they never communicated their problems/failures to each other let alone the body politic - and because our intelligence broadly came from intercepted communications and human intelligence sources within Soviet civil society rather than the Soviet military, they didn't know, and so we didn't know.

we didn't know, for example, that their jet engines had a lifetime of about 1/10th the lifetime of a western jet engine, we didn't know that the quality control on barrel/breech manufacture was so faulty that 1 in 20 Warsaw Pact artillery peices would explode after less than 100 rounds fired, we didn't know that they skimped on the amount of cement they used in concrete to the extent that Soviet nuclear missile silos leaked - and what happens when you put a space rocket in silo full of water?

some of this stuff we did know - but we never really knew if we were being fed a line...

Oink

Ok, the Russians might not be able to manage a sweeping victory. But don't discount the importance of saving face for the likes of Putin, Assad etc.. Can you imagine Putin admitting defeat?

If that war happens, whoever is left between Moscow and the Atlantic coast certainly won't be bragging about winning the war.

AllthingsCP

Oink wrote: »

Ok, the Russians might not be able to manage a sweeping victory. But don't discount the importance of saving face for the likes of Putin, Assad etc.. Can you imagine Putin admitting defeat?

If that war happens, whoever is left between Moscow and the Atlantic coast certainly won't be bragging about winning the war.

Lets all hope it never happens, Wouldn be Iraq or Afgan, Be a bloody mess for all involed. Russian Military might be outdated but im sure they would make the opposeing side suffer like they have done throughout history. And its Europe that will burn.

Caveat_

It certainly would be a war with no winner.

A quick search throws up some estimates of army sizes. Russians over 2m but that includes reserves. Over 700K are pros. They also have conscription so every male citizen would know how to handle a weapon.

The European army is over 1.5 million.With obviously a much more varied equipment and hardware list.

I think a European army would destroy the Russians.

Taxburden carrier

Caveat_ wrote: »

It certainly would be a war with no winner.

A quick search throws up some estimates of army sizes. Russians over 2m but that includes reserves. Over 700K are pros. They also have conscription so every male citizen would know how to handle a weapon.

The European army is over 1.5 million.With obviously a much more varied equipment and hardware list.

I think a European army would destroy the Russians.

What about all the Russians already here?

BoJack Horseman

Interesting concept.

In truth, there is no NATO without the USA.

European countries, for the most part, have been decommissioning their militaries for the past couple of decades.

Could Russia defeat Europe in a conventional war?

Absolutely they could.

Their single command & single purpose would have them at the Elbe before Europe decided on the dinner menu at their conference to respond.

neilled

Boskowski wrote: »

I imagine the strength of the Red Army was always overhyped to a large degree. It suited both us and them. We - as in 'we, the West - could justify all our military spending which is really what its all about and they, well, they had a very strong army. On paper anyway.

Think about it. Wouldn't it have been a great opportunity to slash our military spending after the iron curtain came down and turn our western world into this great heaven of wealth and prosperity? Thankfully we discovered the 'war on terror' which allows us to continue spending trillions on defence and intelligence contracts.

I'm not sure what your talking about, unless your talking about wholescale disbandment of armed forces across the continent.

The thing about armed forces is that they have a skillset that is hard to rebuild once its gone. The debacle that has been the Iraqi army and their chaotic retreat from ISIS is an example of what happens when you completely disband a military and then rapidly retry and build from zero.

Western Europe slashed its defence spending quite drastically in the aftermath of the cold war and the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Our neighbours in the UK went through a painful process known as "options for change" in which alot of famous units were disbanded or amalgamated and many soldiers demobilised. Similarly many european military projects were scraped or the quantities scaled back drastically. In some cases, they only continued because of the cost of not going ahead with the schemes, both politically and economically.

long range shooter

OS119 wrote: »

big fat fact number one - Russia spends less than 1/7th of what the US spends on defence capability, yet has similarly large numbers on its books. it spends rather less than France, Germany and the UK...

the Russian military is no longer the big bad Red Army that would be in Paris in 10 days asking who'd won the air war, it is now a gigantic feeding programme for the concripted with a crust of decent kit on a sea of broken, untrained crap.

the truth is that the three largest EU/European NATO military powers combined could crushingly defeat Russia in a conventional war, if you lob the airpower of Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Norway in as well you're talking about the Vikings versus the Death Star...

Dont for get they have to go trough Finland too,before they come to Scandinavia,and they have a history together.

BoJack Horseman

long range shooter wrote: »

Dont for get they have to go trough Finland too,before they come to Scandinavia,and they have a history together.

In modern war, Finland has zero capability to resist Russia.

Like all European countries, its fat, complacent & almost completely demilitarised.

long range shooter

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

In modern war, Finland has zero capability to resist Russia.

Like all European countries, its fat, complacent & almost completely demilitarised.

No country in Europe has capability to resist Russia alone,but most europen countries have good neighbours.
Fnland didnt win the winter war alone either,lots of volunteers from European countries fought for Finland.
Scandinavia and Finland are allready having joined military excersises togeher.

Manach

Directing addressing the OP's, it depends.
Looking at through a historian's lens. On the one hand, the Russians have taken massive loses to achieve their objectives (as per WWI) and have shown near genius in logistical and intelligence operations (as per Napoloeonic wars), Thus if this was a long struggle, then the EU would have issues persuading an apolitical population to accept the struggle.

On the other hand, the EU is a democratic and reasonably uncorrupt political entity made up of many of the major world powers. So both the technologies and the unity of purpose would outstrip that of Russia. So if a lightening campaign was conducted which showed the Kremlin to be feeble (ie as per the Russia-Japan War of 1905) then this would favour the Europeans.

clear thinking

Yes is the answer, the EU would hockey Russia. Russia is expanding its special forces to about 30,000 but apart form that there is not much to worry about (Nukes aside per premise). That 30,000 might be just about good enough to take the baltics but that's it.

The rest of the army is not great as evidenced by their inability to mount any exercises in the Caucases since the last push of about 3 miles into east Ukraine and the distraction creating / cover up naval drill that has resulted in a submarine being on fire in port.

DavidRamsay99

This map gives a rough picture of the military strengths of Eastern NATO countries if a ground war kicked off.



The Baltic countries would be the obvious target of a Russian advance due to the absence of armor or air forces with Kaliningrad in the path of a NATO counterattack.
Belarus and Ukraine would act as buffers if Poland and Romanian were to launch a pincer movement on the Russian center. If NATO were to stick to the defense their center, Hungary and Slovakia are vulnerable. Turkey would probably desert the NATO alliance and remain neutral.
Ultimately Russian forces would be spread too thinly to fight on all fronts and its regular forces would be bled white before reserves could be called up.

Putin isn't an idiot.
If a shooting war broke out his forces would make probably gains in the opening phase of the conflict but would be overextended and annihilated once NATO mobilized in response.
If Putin tried a Crimea style take over in the Baltic countries and was forced to withdraw his forces his regime would fall.

All that Putin wants is a Russian Crimea and a corridor through Ukraine to the Black Sea. He has more or less achieved that and he's make no more advances.

BoJack Horseman

Its really only in naval power that Europe has both a quantity & quality edge over Russia.

A near 2 decade run of disarmament has left Europe pretty weak elsewhere.

highpitcheric

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/93421030#Comment_93421030

Very untrue.

Even back in 2014 Finland was more than capable of fending off Russia, and still is.

Finland has horrible terrain for any invader, a fractured land full of 100s of lakes and forested islands - bridges everywhere in the south, temperatures are at times way below zero, snow gets deep.

Finland also employs a huge national bunker strategy, with over 50,000 (50k) nuclear resistant bunkers, and has hundreds of kms of deep reinforced tunnel system. Stocked for months, air filtered etc. They can accommodate, feed, water, etc, over 4 million people.

On top of this is a huge conscription force in the 900,000 (900k) range, and a smaller professional force (~20k iirc). They have huge artillery resources (on par with larger European countries). They are armed up the ass, and have a history of slapping Russia around. God only knows what they have hidden.