A couple of observations:
1. The level of discourse has gotten worse as the number of commenters has risen. Sadly.
2. Russia is not Germany, and Putin not Hitler. Putin wants his thug network intact, and expanded to pay them. But has no real ideology or world-ruling agenda, merely Capone-styled thuggery scaled up.
3. There is no real effective military force in Europe save a few divisions of US troops, and the rather limited effectiveness of Russian troops. Unilateral disarmament means even Russia can be effective in intimidating Europe.
4. NATO is a dead institution ala the Holy Roman Empire: it consists of the US forces and the fig leaf of what Michael Yon (in referring to Afghanistan) called “the Special Forces Olympics.” Europeans outside of Russia have no real military force whatsoever, outside of the UK and French nuclear forces, of questionable efficiency and number. Even if NATO wanted to, it lacks the means outside the US to respond in military fashion to threats to Poland and the Baltics and other nations excluding nuclear forces.
5. Most of Western Europe’s elites have no real will, and are in direct conflict with that of the populist demands of their people. Coupled with fiscal crises of mounting welfare demands and crashing revenues due to depopulation of the productive part of the populations (natives) and influx of welfare-seeking Muslims from elsewhere.
6. The USSR crashed when the Politburo could no longer pay the money needed to keep troops and local proxies in power (due to crashing oil prices). That lesson was well learnt by Putin who aims to keep oil high so his thugs get paid.
7. If Georgia was removed from reality, fundamental conflicts between Putin’s need to keep oil prices high and the West/China’s to keep them low would mean lots of conflict with Russia.
8. Putin’s big play is help arm Iran with nukes and point them at the US, while intimidating Eastern Europeans; Eastern European elites know they’ll lose power and economic opportunity (along with their people) as a satrapy of Russia so will arm up, without US forces, using nukes which are the EQUALIZER of military prowess. See: Iran, Pakistan.
I fully expect the logic of military spending, and the effectiveness of nukes to encourage rapid nuclear proliferation in Eastern Europe as a survival mechanism. If nukes keep Pakistan and Iran immune from a US response, they will keep Poland and Ukraine and the Baltics and other nations immune from a Russian one.
Thus Supercargo, the alternative is not hugs and puppies to a US led protective umbrella over Eastern Europe. It is everyone on the Continent nuking up very, very quickly. Which given threats by Pakistan and Iran to Western Europe over things like cartoons, was going to happen anyway absent a US protective umbrella. Without the US it will happen very rapidly, within a few years.
