Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Trump was not the first US president to want/ask European NATO to meet their 2% commitment.

I think the real prospect of the US leaving NATO though would be a game changer. Trump gets back in which is 50/50 then NATO is finished.

Aid to Ukraine from a number of EU states is at a higher percentage of their GDP than it is from the USA. The USA for example has committed 0.32% of its GDP to support Ukraine while at the same time Estonia has committed over 4% of its GDP to Ukraine when its share of EU aid is included. Denmark another sensible contributor to the defense of Europe from putin's terrorist state has committed 8.4billion euro to military support for Ukraine. The published figures for support from European countries for Ukraine's fight against putin do not support your statement that Europe is not paying its way in defending the continent from terrorists. The best defense Europe has from putin's terrorists is supporting Ukraine and many European countries are now building up their military and related industries as putin has shown himself to be an empire building tyrant with no interest in the well being of the people of the russian federation or any one in Europe. An answer to putin's aggression is needed regardless of whether or not the USA can be relied on to play a role in Europe's defense and Europe is waking up to the challenge.

Trump's a moron or is being willfully ignorant. When the stakes are this high, I don't really care about the difference.

The U.S. has not headed up NATO for the last 70/80 years out of pure charity. The interest has always been the ability to project power overseas and to protect liberal democracy against the spread of competing ideologies. And when A5 was invoked, it was the US invoking it, and its NATO allies duly responded, as Radek Sikorsky recently reminded us all.

Trump doesn't care about Europe 'paying its way'. What's happening here is an ideological shift where about one half of the US electorate is backing a man who is not particularly interested in liberal democracy, and he is therefore no longer particularly interested in protecting an alliance to that end. Trump and his backers want the liberal democracies of Europe to fail, and the new foreign policy toward Europe is to weaken it - to carve it into two zones of control between the new alliance of the US and Russia. The first step of that is to remove the guarantee of military protection. The second step is to light fires at the foundation of the EU. Under this pincer movement, the liberal democracies of Europe cannot hold. The ones who do not fall to right-wing populism cannot fully defend themselves against Russian intimidation. Conventional war might be one thing, but there is no comeback to Putin saying to the holdouts that he can nuke them with no comeback.

That's the future if Trump gets back in power and is able to fully exert his foreign policy. The EU would likely attempt to respond to this by proposing centralised military structures, but the beauty of this for the right-wingers would be that it would possibly accelerate EU collapse as propaganda about this being EU overreach causes yet more populist backlash.

In reality, Americas investment is much lower than the headline figure they proclaim. They cost everything as if it were built new and not the 2nd hand/surplus stock/due to be decommissioned/end of life equipment that the vast majority of what's supplied actually is. The cluster munitions are a good example. They would have had to spend millions decommissioning these weapons plus all the headaches of where to dispose of the material. Instead, they got to ship them off to Ukraine, degrade Russia and save themselves all the cost and headaches in the process.

Even new stuff is propping up alot of jobs and boosting revenues of alot of influential American companies plus feeding tax back to the exchequer.

Europe is far more heavily invested financially not to mention bearing the cost of the refugees.

Interesting perspective from ex SAS Robin Horsfall, he does keynote speeches now and is obvious pro British but he does know war.

"Russia is losing this war.

Another Russian warship has been badly damaged by navy drones. Patrol ship, Sergey Kotov came under attack last night in the south of Crimea and was struck at least twice.

The powerful effects of sea going drones must be forcing naval commanders across the word to review the safety of their entire fleets. Ukraine has sunk more than 25% of the Black Sea Fleet without possessing a warship of their own. The powerful results obtained by marine drones has forced Russia to cease many operations in the Black Sea region. However, Russian ships are not safe even in Russian territory. The cruiser, Olenegorsky Gornyak was sunk the same way in the port of Novorossiysk last year.

Russia is helpless to defend its ships against these attacks. Their defensive guns cannot depress low enough to engage at close range and their radar cannot locate drones carrying up to 1000 pounds of explosive riding close to the surface with a profile that is often smaller than the surrounding waves.

Although this is a major concern for Russia, NATO chiefs will be examining new ways of defending their own fleets in the light of this new development.

In the air, Russia has started to take dramatic losses in fighters and fighter bombers. This included 10 Su-34 fighter-bomber jets, two Su-35 jets and another Russian A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft. This equated to more than one billion dollars worth of irreplaceable aircraft.

Some pundits have suggested that Ukraine moved at least one Patriot air defence system away from city defence duties and placed it close to the front lines. Reports or rumours from Russia indicate that pilots are loathe to fly because they feel helpless in the face of these top level US weapons.

If Russia lose their air presence over Donbas and the Asov Sea their ground troops will find themselves at a serious disadvantage.

Despite some minor land advances in the east at a terrible cost, Russia is losing this war.

Because European militaries/nato moved on from artillery warfare, and into the skies.

Russias tanks are outdated against drones or modern anti tank systems. Their artillery is inaccurate. And the old game of quantity doesn't work so well anymore. Not least when theres a border that big. Europe on a war footing will vastly and easily outproduce Russia in everything. And thats whats happening.

Before this war I used to hear about how Russia would steamroll across Europe. Thats mostly died down now thankfully, as its hard to say something like that when theyre in another tab making zero progress after 2 years of slaughter. In a country of 40m with no navy and relatively low airpower.

Now its just the Baltics which will be steamrolled. A good deal more credible. But transnistria and Kaliningrad would be taken in return.

Although I doubt Baltic countries will be slow on mobilizing now, and they have German armor present there now.

Poland will begin receiving 500 himars, 300 abrams, and apaches within 2-3 years. So the clock is ticking, and Russia doesn't look likely to have its sht together for another front any time soon.

Has there been any analysis on the activity of the black sea fleet? Are most ships permanently docked or out and about? I'd imagine a fair few are posted around the Kerch bridge.

I can't see NATO fighting an artillery war with Russia. NATO air power is way too powerful and would destroy Russia from inside out.

All ports, pipelines and oil refineries would be destroyed. Bridges and railway lines destroyed. Russia would retaliate but not by sending meat waves into Poland.

Any NATO country bordering Russia knows exactly who they will be fighting and how. That's the main reason they have militaries - to fight Russia in case they invade again. If Russia invades, the reaction isn't going to be "this comes as a huge surprise, what should we do now?".

Which could happen IF trump gets full control of both houses this time around. And it would not surprise me if that happened TBH, the way the US is at the moment

The 2% or whatever it is is not actually meant to be hit. It is like any international target, the point is to increase spending in that area. There is nothing magic about the 2% number.

It also would not reduce US spending because they will want a double guarantee and still have the same resources allocated to Europe. Nato is also there for the US own interests and they will want to be able to defend that themselves if required.

All Trump has done is announce that if he pushes that Nato will crack. If Putin believes that other countries may follow the US's lead and not follow the Nato pact he will start to pick off smaller countries.

The current issue is not the size of European militaries which would trounce Russia's, the issue is that not enough of it is in Ukraine at the moment.

I absolutely agree they are in no condition now. An attack on the Baltic nations in February 2022 would have been different. All these countries have small standing armies, and had minimal NATO troops at the time. That was the point I was making. By the time NATO brought in reinforcements, they'd already have been over-run. And then you are looking at a fairly long war of degradation, with of course the Russians shooting back!

I watched a very interesting series on youtube about the possibility of a NATO war with Russia https://www.youtube.com/@flatcirclehistory/videos

Makes for an interesting watch.

The US warned Ukraine nearly 2 weeks prior to the Russian invasion. I'm sure that would have been plenty of time for Baltic countries to prepared and NATO to move assets around. More than likely in an overwhelming show of force to deter Russia invading Baltic countries.

The war games cover didn't seem to fool the American intelligence though.

Russia would need a larger force for the Baltics as by attacking Estonia, they are infact attacking NATO. So using a smaller force to attack Estonia (to fool American intelligence) and then having to use that same small force to repel NATO's response?

NATO don't even need boots on the ground in Baltic countries to cripple Russia.