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Do American on The Motte feel that the country is generally in favour of breaking from its old European alliances? I am not sure I have got that sense when visiting but I've visited only fairly D-leaning areas in recent years.
From the British/European point of view, one has the sense from current reporting that a significant rebalancing is happening, one that I would characterise as going beyond wanting to reduce American spending on e.g. Ukraine, and towards decisively breaking with European countries out of gut dislike, and beginning instead to form either a US-Russian alliance of sympathies, or if not that, then at least a relationship with Russia that is rhetorically much friendlier than that with Europe. I think the fear is starting to take root in Europe that the US would effectively switch sides in return for Russia granting it mineral rights in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. This heel turn seems unlikely, but things are murky enough that it is worrying people.
I feel that this rebalancing is already working in a way towards achieving stated Trump goals – it certainly is succeeding in restoring Europe's appetite for military spending (underinvestment here is one thing Trump has been consistently right about but European leaders have buried their heads in the sand on, hoping he'd go away). But the current situation re Ukraine is also sending confusing signals, as it had previously seemed as though the US wanted Europe to step up and be part of a solution for Ukraine, whereas currently it seems they actively want to stop Europe from having a role in peace talks. The motive for this appears to be stopping Europe from asking terms of Russia that would delay a solution the US and Russia find jointly satisfactory, though perhaps there is more going on beneath the surface.
I did not have the impression that the American population generally has gone through this kind of Europe->Russia realignment in their hearts, Russians still being a regular foil for the good guys in movies (said movies coming from liberal-leaning Hollywood, sure). I have the impression that moving towards Russia is an aspect of foreign policy that Trump has not built domestic support for. But maybe this is wrong. Maybe the average American now thinks not only "Europe should contribute more to solve their own defence problems", but furthermore, "Europe should get its nose out of international affairs and attempt to help only when it's spoken to. We, Russia and China are in charge now."
I'm writing this without especially detailed knowledge of foreign policy, but I'm more interested here in the emotional calibration of ordinary Americans generally. What outcomes would they accept, what outcomes are they afraid of, who do they feel warm to and who not, and to what extent do they feel entirely insulated from global events, alliances and enmities?
Why is everyone so obsessed with military spending, especially as a % of GDP?
We constantly hear complaints that Europe isn't meeting its 2% defence spending targets. Or Trump wants them to reach 5%.
Defence spending is a basically meaningless number that has only a very tenuous relationship with capabilities, which actually matter. The Taliban did not outspend America in Afghanistan. North Korea could thrash Australia (our defence budget approaches 60-70% of North Korean GDP according to those who invent these numbers) in a war. They have ICBMs and H-bombs, we could barely reach them and couldn't do any damage. Russia has a smaller economy than Italy according to the GDP calculators. But in terms of capabilities...
What is it that Europe needs that they don't have? Ammunition? Then build ammunition factories. Shell factories should be cheap, this is WW2-era technology. Drones? Then build drone factories. Defence spending seems to usually translate into ludicrously expensive purchases of equipment from the United States, which is why the Americans want it constantly raised.
In reality Europe doesn't need any additional militarization. The European half of NATO has about 2 million troops, a population of about 600 million. If Russia is struggling to burn through Ukraine's male fighting age population, how are they supposed to cut down 20x more? How is Russia supposed to man a frontline from Turkey to Finland? How is Russia supposed to contest huge navies with submarines and aircraft carriers? How is Russia supposed to deal with large and powerful air forces, Eurofighters and F-35s? Why would Russia attack such a gigantic, powerful, nuclear-armed alliance?
The European half of NATO alone has the power to smash Russia's conventional forces and force them to fall back on nuclear weapons, where they Russia has a considerable superiority. No additional militarization is needed. There's plenty of room for defence cuts, unless Europe plans on helping the US fight China, nuclear war with Russia or further wrecking in the Middle East.
Talk of defence spending should be wound down and replaced by talk of what specific capabilities are needed to achieve specific objectives. Is it necessary to build fortifications in Lithuania? Do airbases need to be hardened against drones? Anything but 'lets throw billions of dollars in the general direction of these schlerotic military bureaucracies that consistently fail to deliver success'.
So Russia has around as nearly as many or more troops (if you count reservists) despite having less than a third of the population?
Have you read about the readiness problems that European countries, in particular Germany, are experiencing? (Also, note that in reality Russia's air force, which is not its strong suit, is larger than the German air force even if we are counting only modern Russian aircraft like the Su-30, Su-35, Su-34, Su-57 and counting German F-35s which haven't been delivered yet. The Russians also have strategic bombers, which no European military possesses. Removing American air power from the picture considerably curtails European capabilities.)
Anyway, I think it's very very clear from Ukraine that Europe needs more artillery production and more mine clearing capabilities. IMHO, while I haven't done the napkin math, the odds of Europe beating Russia on its own are actually not as high as you'd like if they can't sustain artillery production or clear minefields, including minefields that can be laid behind your own lines via rocket.
Yeah they prolly won't. But if the US is sending all its effort to the Pacific, the alliance is much less gigantic, much less powerful, much less nuclear-armed.
I tend to agree with this, tbqh. From my armchair: in specific capabilities, Europe needs to actually have the capacity to produce millions of artillery shells per year, to clear tens of thousands of mines at a minimum, and they need lots of anti-drone capabilities that actually work, they probably need lots of drones/loitering munitions. I don't see any real evidence of this. (They need the artillery shells because artillery is the prime killer on the battlefield and being at a fire disadvantage means they will lose like the Ukrainians are losing; they need the ability to clear thousands of mines because the Russians have millions of mines and if they don't have robust mine clearing capabilities they will not be able to reclaim lost territory; they need anti-drone capabilities to defend their ability to meaningfully maneuver and drones to prevent Russian maneuver formations.)
I am also skeptical about their ability to sustain a prolonged air-to-ground air campaign due to a lack of munitions and inability to defeat Russian counter-PGM surface-to-air missiles, which can target anti-radiation missiles like the HARM. I am likewise skeptical about their ability to defeat Russian cruise and ballistic missiles due to a lack of surface-to-air missiles – e.g. Germany has only 7 Patriot batteries as per Wikipedia – which, if you assume 4 launchers with 8 missiles per, means they can optimistically defend against about 200 missiles before running dry and needing to be reloaded; Russia has supposedly launched mass attacks consisting of about 300 missiles and drones at one time against Ukraine. (They need to be able to defeat Russian SAMS to use aircraft offensively at all, and in particular the Eurofighter, which is not stealthy – which as an aside I think is still largely using a mechanically scanned array, and should for that reason thought of as inferior to modern Flanker variants. They need air-to-ground munitions to make multirole aircraft relevant, they need to be able to defeat Russian cruise missile raids to protect air bases, electrical generation, command posts, etc. I think the reason they need all of this is fairly clear.)
If we're positing a US pull-out of NATO, they need tactical nuclear weapons as well. (They need this because it's unlikely that France or England will be happy about using their strategic arsenal to retaliate if the Russians use a few low-yield tactical nuclear weapons on air bases, ships, entrenched troops, etc.)
Look, I think that Russia is afraid of NATO for a reason, and I don't think it's good to exaggerate their capabilities or overlook their weaknesses. But on the other hand, I don't think now is a time for NATO triumphalism for a reason. Here's the truth about the Russian military right now:
I think Europe should on paper be able to deter Russia successfully. But when it comes to the US out of NATO, or US tied up in the Pacific, I think there's a reason that Europeans are nervous. I do not believe they are ready to defend themselves alone against Russia if Russia wins in Ukraine. This does not imply that Russia has the appetite to attack even an EU-only NATO, or that Russia would defeat the EU. It just means that Europe's security situation, if the US substantially leaves NATO, becomes substantially more precarious because they will be roughly at parity* with Russia instead of having overmatch.
*just going off of troop numbers here, I'm sure I could do some napkin math to see how that stacks up in equipment.
Damn, I did not realise they were only now adding AESA radars on those things, I thought they were half decent! Were they cribbing notes from Indian military procurement? Or did the Indians learn how to design aircraft from Europe and apply those lessons on the Tejas? The Rafales at least have AESA.
Yes tactical nukes are one field where I think there's a real case for further development. Poland's conventional forces won't be much good if Russia starts vaporizing them and demanding unconditional surrender, trusting that France and Britain won't risk their own infrastructure.
But it seems unlikely that either party would take such risks. Does Russia really want to subjugate some extremely unruly and recently irradiated Poles? Why would they so greatly desire to conquer the tiny Baltic states? There are potential strategic gains but huge risks.
And Europe's population is so high that they can afford to buy time with hundreds of thousands, millions of lives in low tech, defensive trench warfare. They might have readiness problems, they might have shortages of this and that. But they're so big that they have the time and space to fix this stuff and fight a long war. Russia does not have the blitzkrieg capabilities to reach the European industrial core before they can militarize. Bombing Ukraine is one thing but Russian PGM production surely isn't sufficient to bomb out the combined military industry of Europe.
I think that’s a scenario that Europe needs to think about hard given that a lot of old Soviet war plans (like Seven Days to the Rhine) explicitly call for massive nuclear strikes on peripheral NATO countries while avoiding nuclear strikes on Britain and France to give them an out. As for your irradiated Polish clay point, there are pretty good strategic reasons to seize the Baltic States and Poland, that’s what gets them the Sulwaki Gap choke point, probably Russia’s most logical post-GDR defensive barrier against NATO.
Regarding your last point, most Western European countries might have serious internal stability problems calling up huge conscript armies, given the religious and ethnic demographic makeup of the military aged males they would be arming.
Conscripting the fighting aged males from a poorly assimilated minority and throwing them into the meatgrinder is a solution to a problem, not a cause of social instability per se.
Until they decide they would rather not get frog-marched off to die in a trench in Ukraine and decide that Tiocfaidh ár lá might in fact refer to today.
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