cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/59867996
German media outlets Süddeutsche Zeitung, WDR, and NDR also cite the report, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears intent on testing NATO’s Article 5 guarantees. The alliance’s mutual defence clause obliges member states to come to one another’s aid if attacked. The assessment suggests Putin may seek to challenge how seriously that commitment would be honoured.
So I just looked into the numbers quickly and am probably off by a bit
NATO has 3.2m active military personnel and 2.2m in reserve
Russia has 1.5m active and 2m reserve
BUT, American forces make up 1.3m of NATOs active and 800k reserve
If I were to randomly combine the American army with Russia rather than NATO for no particular reason,
NATO would have 1.9m active 1.4m reserve and the Axis-sorry I mean Russia and America would have 2.8m active 2.8m reserve…
Maybe this is a suicidal plan, Putin is going to die and wants to take the world with him. From what we know about him, he is megalomaniacal and sadistic enough to want something like this.
He must also be counting on the United States being out of NATO by then, maybe Trump will even send some soldiers to help his Russian allies.
It has nothing to do with wanting to actually fight NATO. The idea is to manufacture a carefully crafted situation where Article 5 is triggered, but due to internal disagreement and individual risk, it is not fully honored.
Needless to say, any such move would be very risky.
And Trump’s United States will be one of those not to honour Article 5, if they are still part of NATO at that time.
Just based on Trump’s previous administration I’m confident that if he actually tried to do that it would cause serious arguments between the military and the executive branch. The military already decided to pretty much ignore him when he was going on in his last term about nuclear weapons, fortunately it never came up.
The number of personnel won’t really matter here past a threshold. Looking at Ukraine Russian war it’s clear most of the fighting will be done with suicide drones, ones that can be produced en mass by any country more or less.
There’s no way the US military would side with Russia, even if ordered to.
Would you say they’re at the top of that slippery slope, or part way down it already?
Maybe today’s top brass wouldn’t, but there are probably enough JD Vance types among the MAGA lovin’ grunts to promote, to structure an army that’ll take Trump at his word. If he says Europe were the enemy all long, enough times, with enough conviction…
Wouldn’t have believed it myself until this year.
George W. Bush convinced Americans that France was an enemy for a while, and his supporters lapped it up. Today Trump has large chunks of his cult believing that Canada is an enemy. There’s apparently no limit to the absurdities and poison people will swallow if their beloved cult leader tells them to.
Big difference from renaming French fries to actual boots-on-the-ground fighting.
famous last words.
I hope you’re right.