Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Europe desperately needs to confront reality.
The UK has less than 25 working main battle tanks and more admirals than working ships. Yet their politicians are talking about confronting Russia without the US.
It'll take at least a decade of intense reindustrialization and rearmament to field proper defensive armies.
They need to get started now. Putin is actually a moderate in Russia who just wants to bring territories that are majority ethnic Russian in Russia proper.
Putin is 72 and there's a very real chance that he'll be replaced with an actual hardliner when he dies.
The German delegation laughed at Trump in 2018 when he tried to warn them about dependence on Russian energy. Now he's decided that a harsh wakeup call from him is better than letting them be caught off guard in the future.
An actual Russian agent would just tell Europe not to worry and let them be at the mercy of the next Russian leader.
This part is dubious at best.
They openly demanded to get entire Ukraine as colony/satellite/feudal state/sphere of influence and succeeded with Belarus. See also Syria (this one almost entirely failed by now).
Putin is not limiting itself to "bring territories that are majority ethnic Russian in Russia proper". And if he would succeed with Ukrainian invasion scope will again become wider.
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