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The European half of NATO has a lot of weapons, a lot of troops, a lot of everything except tactical nukes. They spend far more than Russia on their military. There is no reason to feel threatened when you are very well armed at all levels short of nuclear war.
Someone can not be a threat in normal circumstances, yet be dangerous if antagonized. This is not a contradiction.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, it signals that the West is ready to support any anti-Russian country next to Russia. If you're worried about little green men in Estonia, why not base troops in Estonia? Or maybe you could encourage the Baltics to be more tolerant to its Russian-speaking minority? I would've thought expelling people who didn't have sufficient grasp of Latvian is a rather odd approach for an EU embracing multiculturalism and 3rd world immigration: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russians-take-language-test-avoid-expulsion-latvia-2023-05-08/
If Russia didn't want russophones in neighboring countries expelled, they should stop using the existence of Russian speaking people in other countries as a casus belli.
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‘X is no threat’ implies ‘regardless of X”s feelings’. Relying on the goodwill of russia for security is no security at all.
Sure, russia would get crushed, but overwhelming material inferiority didn’t prevent the japanese from declaring war. I could listen to you all day telling me how ironclad nato's alliance and how outclassed russia’s army is. Therefore I'm sure you realize ukrainian victory is inevitable, the only question is how long russia can hold on. The loser determines when the war ends.
Irrelevant point-scoring. We’ll do as we please, and if putin thinks otherwise, he should get used to the taste of our metal.
You do understand that the militaries of NATO are different to those of Ukraine, right? That they have equipment they're unwilling or incapable of transferring, like F-35s, Eurofighters, AWACs planes? That the numbers and training of forces under Ukrainian command and NATO command are wildly different?
There are distinctions here that you are not grasping. Russia's conventional forces are weaker than NATO's. Russia's tactical nuclear forces are stronger than NATO's. Russia's strategic nuclear forces are roughly on par, perhaps somewhat weaker than NATO's. NATO is not Ukraine, though there are certain connections. These facts are important if you want to understand the conflict in context. Upthread, people are calling Mearsheimer a crackpot but his depth and breadth of understanding is far beyond a lot of what I'm seeing in this thread.
We were comparing budgets to ascertain the likelihood of victory. Supplying an amount far greater than russia's military budget is no problem for nato. The capabilities ukraine are already getting are superior to those of russian armaments.
Mearsheimer believes europe has no agency, he writes for a purely american audience. In his view, Ukraine, poland, and the rest of europe are just chips to be exchanged to hopefully recreate the cold war. Even in purely power-realists terms, he didn’t get the memo that the russian federation is far weaker than the soviet union and the EU, and therefore incapable of maintaining the USSR’s sphere of influence. You’ll understand why a european doesn’t find his perspective helpful or convincing.
Yes and no - some parts of ISR, ATGMs are superior. Tanks like the 2A6 are roughly on-par with Russia, other weapons were obsolete decades ago like Leopard 1s. Furthermore, budgets are not the primary decisive factor in wartime, as our adventures in Afghanistan can attest.
This is a mischaracterization of what he's saying. Mearsheimer said that the Russians probably weren't strong enough to occupy Ukraine but that it was a core strategic interest to prevent Ukraine joining NATO so Putin would do whatever it takes to prevent it. Even if Russia does not have the power to conquer Ukraine, they do have the power to destroy it.
Mearsheimer has been consistently right about many important topics years in advance: the Iraq War being a disaster, US-China competition intensifying. Ignoring Mearsheimer is precisely how Europe and the US got into this mess, which has left everyone poorer and less safe. It's like watching a blind man running around, crashing into things, scorning the sighted watchers (Kennan and Mearsheimer) who warn him about electrical cables and walls.
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf
That's blackmail and we must refuse. If they destroy ukraine, it's on them.
The EU is sensitive to potential threats near their home territory, that's why Ukraine will continue to be supported.
Equating of the world's sole superpower with some second rate regional power.
This is my favourite of the realist switcheroos. Ukraine is supposed to forget right and wrong, and yield to russian might. However, where the relationship between russia and the west is concerned, the same ten-to-one might differential is moot and russia has been unfairly wronged etc.
So, as the russians themselves said to the ukrainians, we don't have to listen to them, we have superior might. We'll do what we can, and russians will suffer what they must.
You seem to think that Russia is a second-rate power. They can demolish Western civilization in an afternoon. That is what their nuclear forces are designed to do. On the highest and most important level, Russia and the Western world are peers.
There is no 'suffer what they must' between peers, only suffering.
If you're right about the West being 10 times stronger, why didn't we go ahead with a no fly zone, send in ground troops? It'd be a cakewalk! Plus there's a lot of oil to liberate! But you know that's not true, you know perfectly well why we can't do that.
The real switcheroo is not Mearsheimer's 'great powers act in predictable ways, so it is not desirable to threaten a declining power in ways that will result in it lashing out' but your 'Russia is so weak that we can do whatever we like and never pay any consequences for our actions - but let's stay far away from the action and let other people do the fighting'.
Anyone can get the power to nuke the world: certainly the big european countries (germany, britain, france, italy) , who each have a gdp greater than russia, could. Yielding to the empty threats of this oversized Kim Jong Un will only make the world less safe.
Who is suffering more at the moment, us or russia?
Is it because doing the fighting ourselves would be mildly inconvenient? Much more comfortable to sit back, write a few checks, and empty old warehouses, while the flower of the (already demographically scarce) russian youth meets its muddy end.
Yes, correct. We're so much stronger, that we don't need to fight. The west's not even at 1% while russia is in full-on war mode, and we're winning. At the zenith of roman power, the legions didn't even need to show up. A minor client king's forces and fear of the legions was enough to contain any hostile tribe.
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