4mo ago

German security officials believe the Kremlin is laying the groundwork for a potential large-scale conventional war with NATO by the end of the decade

ukdefencejournal.org.uk

Germany warns Russia may be preparing attack on NATO

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.

120 comments

They burned through their Soviet stockpiles of artillery and tanks in 3 years fighting Ukraine, what makes anyone think they could fight NATO?
- Depends which side the US is on
  
  Bingo.
  And also depends on which side China is on. Their war production dwarfs even the US, and I find it difficult to believe that it will all be spent fighting the US and Taiwan.
  There is a very real possibility that these three countries gang up together and divide the world among themselves.
  
  US has a sizeable advantage in terms of sheer firepower but lacks the collective will to side with Russia in a conflict with NATO. To be clear, the Trump administration might try to side with Russia and the initial consequences of that would be very serious. But, long term, I think that would bring a swift end to the US' global dominance. Potentially even bringing us to the point of total collapse.
  That's just one American's perspective though.
- Their unlimited supplies of Russian delusions of superiority.
- they have the US on their side now
- Well China is ready to make bank
  
  China doesn't want to war between Europe and Russia.
  It would force Europe to rapidly develop military capability and when Europ inevitably won that war, it would still have a vast military and might be feeling a bit touchy about dictatorships. China likes the world as it is right now, they have a lot of long-term plans and Russia suddenly ceasing to exist would mess all those plans up.
  
  I don't think Russia has money either from all the sanctions. This all strikes me as extremely unlikely. They can't even get through Ukraine lol.
  But maybe they're just exaggerating to justify war spending just in case.
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.
  
  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 along', enough times, with enough conviction...
  Wouldn't have believed it myself until this year.
  
  famous last words.
  
  I hope you’re right.
Take out putin now and set the stage for a world at "peace" with humanity's eye back on a civilized future.
- Problem is the people waiting to take over from Putin. They're not at all nice.
  
  Take them out first so it looks like Putin is doing it.
  
  None of the candidates are nice and most are much, much worse. Don't recall the name, but one of them basically is ready to drop the h bombs and push us all straight into WWIII because reasons.
  If anyone takes out Putin, they'll have to take out the entire military top and government of Russia with it or we're all fucked
  
  Putin has made his country after his own image; deceptive, criminal, deceitful, isolated, and violent... so you're probably right there are no decent people to take up after he's gone.
Considering that Putin got his ass absolutely beat by a small country using second hand and surplus military hardware he'd have to be an absolute moron to pick a fight with NATO. Literally the only card he has to play is nukes and that's kind of an all or nothing sort of move. If nukes are off the table any concerted push by NATO is going to be mopping up in moscow within a few months.
That's also assuming the US doesn't get serious about it, but considering Putin's puppet in the Whitehouse there's a pretty good chance the US would quit NATO and so wouldn't factor in. Even without the US though Russia has demonstrated the rest of NATO is far more than sufficient to handle Russia.
- Poland + Ukraine is enough to practically destroy Russia.
  Honestly I really hope putin just croaks over and dies at this point, the old fuck has practically killed endless amounts of his own people just for land. He can't use the excuse of "Hur dur NATO is encroaching on my borders via Ukraine" because Finland is in NATO now thanks to his stupidity.
  He's gambling with WW3 with a high chance of losing it.
  And he can't keep America under his grasp forever, by the end of the decade trump could lose the election or get couped by anyone.
- Then again he's going on with cable cutting and other idiocies. I'm not sure some kind of stupid "test run" could be ordered by him, like attacking one of the Baltic countries or Finland.
  If the war stops BTW then his days are probably numbered so maybe he'll need some stupid war just to stay in power/alive.
- Redo the calculations with the USA fighting on Russia's side, and things start to look different.
  
  Trump doesn't have enough pull yet to make that happen, and it's unlikely he will anytime soon. He could manage to get the US to sit out the fight, but actively committing US forces to help Russia isn't going to happen.
  
  Trump seems to be consolidating to focus on Iran (and it's allies) and China. He's not going to fight Europe. If anything, he'll try to get them to help by threatening NATO membership or something.
Elsewhere on Lemmy today;
Russia has depleted its tank stocks: the industry is not covering combat losses
Both of these cannot be true.
- Well they can both be true, It just depends on Putin's mental state.
  There was a rumor going around that he is dying and he is basically just doing this to try and make a name for himself, he will rebuild the USSR and it will stand for a thousand years as him as its founding father, and all that rubbish. Of course it's impossible for that to happen, but if he's dying anyway why not try?
  
  He has definitely made a name for himself. Can we just tell him it's positive and let him die so that the rest of the world can move on?
- Hmm who do we know that will sell anything that isn't tied down and currently controls the US government and is buddy buddy with Putin? No, not Satan, but you are close!
- Soon to be seen on the battlefield: Reinforced, armored attack-Ladas, with turrets mounted on the roof.
Taking how successful Russia was on the battlefield of Ukraine, I'm going to go ahead and say "try us"
I know that Europe is a bit behind on military spending but that is rapidly changing and in the meantime Russia lost nearly a million soldiers on the frontline. That alone is enough to cripple the nation for the next two decades.
It's hard to see how Russia is going to do anything of that. The only "strength" it currently has is misinformation which works well for the US right now but that will have its limits soon enough
- Nuclear exchange. Yeah it's possible they nukes were maintained about as well as their tanks. It's also possible that we're entirely fucked.
  
  It's not just whether or not the missiles were maintained, they probably weren't, but due to the amount of corruption it's also possible they are lacking critical components that Russia thinks they still have.
  Every bad guy in every movie gets his nuclear material from some corrupt Russian military official. Maybe it's true.
  
  And so are they, Europe has nukes too and don't think that the US and China will just sot back and relax
  If anyone sends nukes, wete ALL dead and those that survive will wish they were.
With what? I read yesterday they were not able to keep up with the losses from just fighting the ukraine.
- American tanks :(
  
  I wish I wasn't so sure you were right.
  
  At least nato will know all the weaknesses.
10yrs? That long? Is Putin really that healthy? He looks like he has Cushing’s.
- End of the decade is 31-12-2029, which is about 4.7 years away, not 10.
  10 years would be "within/in/over a decade".
for what?
- King of the Ash Pile is a cool title
Honestly, I believe Europe needs to go on the offensive, we need a single unified offensive against Moscow with the intent of crippling the KGB and arresting Putin. They are both too dangerous to be left to their own devices.
- The KGB hasn't existed since 1991.
  
  Officially.
  
  Oh it does exist just not officially. Someone has to help everyone fall after windows
Germany has to pump out these messages because they live so far from the critical border. It's easy to not understand the risk.
- Germany is still so uncertain of the risk that they still use Russian gas even 4 years after saying they were going to stop.
Me too, I believe that. Anyone with half a brain believes that.
Honest question. If Russia nuked Krakow, would America retaliate with nukes? Would France? England?
I don't think so. It's not even clear nato would declare conventional war.
Mutually assured destruction only works for countries with nukes. Am alliance is no real deterance.
- You are being downvoted but you are asking a very legitimate question.
  If Russia nuked a NATO country, what would really happen ?
  Would the US respond ? It's extremely uncertain, especially with the recent election of space Karen and cheetos.
  Would France or the UK respond ? It's a big question and a big discussion is happening currently in Europe.
  France nuclear doctrine states that their nuclear arsenal will be used of France's "vital interests" are at stake. Is Europe part of France's vital interest ?
- France will because it's article 42 of the EU.
  
  I hear you, and hope that is true.
- What did Kraków do to you :( Leave my city alone.
  
  Sorry my friend, I dont mean to pick on your beautiful city. I could have picked any euro country.
  I know it was a controversial point, but I'm not sure that an international law is enough evidence to spur people to do the right thing anymore
Bunch of rag outlets fearmongering. No way Russia will attack NATO which has nukes.
- Hey, some years ago we said the same about Russia invading Ukraine. Maybe Russia's actions aren't directed by logic.
  
  Maybe Russia’s actions aren’t directed by logic.
  They are, just not the kind of logic that considers human lives valuable.
- If Russia knows the USA won't respond, and may even help, this may work differently. It would take a lot to get any NATO country to fire a nuke, especially if they didn't have US support, and Russia knows this.
- Lol, imagine thinking the USA and Russia would be on opposite sides when we have multiple Russian assets in the White House. And in Congress. And probably in the supreme court.
  
  France has nukes too.
  One day Russia is flat broke and losing the war.
  The next they are preparing to invade Europe with their epic weapons stockpile
My opinion is if they have any proof of this just declare article 5 now and attack them before they are prepared.
Waiting for Putin strikes me as stupid just get organised and crush them as brutally as possible.
- Article 5 states that an armed attack against one member will be treated as an attack against all members.
  There has been no armed attack against a member state.
  
  Correct, they would have to use the infrastructure attacks
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Baltic_Sea_submarine_cable_disruptions
  They can’t use article 5 preemptively
  
  A planned attack is still an attack. Waiting is stupid we should hit them with everything now if there's proof.
  If I see a local nutter known for stabbing people staring at me with a knife and bragging about he's going to stab me later I'm stabbing him first to protect myself. Same thing imo.
- Yeah, Europe ain't ready either.

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