Previewing our post draw down world?
NPR is reporting that with the increasing levels of escalation by Russia that countries in Europe are finding their military forces wanting.
Last month a Russian military aircraft flying in stealth nearly crashed into a commercial passenger plane taking off from Copenhagen. In April, Russian fighter jets carried out a simulated bombing raid on Stockholm. And nobody seems able to do anything about it.
Why you ask?
“The army has been reduced by 90 percent, from approximately half a million men to, today, 50,000 [troops] including the home guard, 25,000 if you just count the regulars,” he says.The story is similarly dramatic with the navy — which has been scaled back by some 80 percent — and the air force, which has slimmed down by 70 percent, according to Neretnieks.
The line that caught my eye and should be read over and over.
“Europe as a whole, of course, downsized their forces,” he says. “We tend to forget that things can change quicker than we thought.” “I’ve been in the armed forces since the early ’70s, and I’ve only experienced reductions,” he says.
Category: Defense cuts, Foreign Policy
Hey, their attitude is, “Why worry? The fucking Amis will protect us.”
Yep, Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men….How’s that working out again??
…Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men……
Actually, that is not what is really written, although it’s what everybody says.
“Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis”
“…and on earth, peace to men of goodwill” is the accurate translation from Latin. And … doesn’t that make sense?
Maybe they’re using Democrat logic…
If you don’t have a military force, then no country will use their military force against you.
I saw this coming. You all saw this coming. And THEY didn’t see this coming?
Why is anyone even a little bit surprised?
Ain’t it funny how all the continental Euros were openly and vocally hating America while simultaneously hiding behind Uncle Sam’s tanks from the Big Bad Bear next door? Yet they never seemed to consciously notice the Big Bad Bear while they bitched about everything America does everywhere. But now Uncle Sam’s tanks ain’t there no more, and the Big Bad Bear looks hungry, and they realize that they relied so much on Uncle Sam that they complacently neglected to maintain any tanks, guns, or bear traps of their own. What a surprise! Hope they like the taste of vodka and borscht!
The Russians have never been trustworthy since the day they sided with the Nazis to conquer Europe, when their co-conspirators turned against them becoming our ally was their only means of survival. The lesson Russia learned in WW2 was to make sure they were strong enough to do what they wanted, when they wanted, and without the necessity of allies. That was not the lesson Europe learned.
Veritas Omnia Vincit…Well said sir. In fact, I was counting on both hands and feet when I ran out of toes, the lessons European nations SHOULD have learned from WWII and the Cold War and failed to do so. They have not even come close and act like babes in the woods about their true state. Soon there will be stuff running in the streets of Paris again, tears mostly, just like WWII, but still running deep as Russia lays claim with an unstoppable war machine to a nation they choose. America is not now and will not then, be in no place to mount, launch and maintain a ground war in Europe capable of stopping them in the long haul. Russia, more than the Europeans and even our own “in denial” CINC and Pentagon know this as well. Short of tactical nukes in Europe and strategic nukes against Russian capitols, military facilities and infrastructure and we’ll never use nukes in Europe. Even the European nuclear powers, like France won’t use them. The mere thought on a nuclear exchange with Russia is still in the category of the MAD principal. Yes, Russia may be a financially strapped nation and have a poor, outdated nuclear offensive/defensive force from days of yesteryear, but…it only takes one in a hundred working as designed and on target, to ruin America and the world forever.
Gee … I’d go further and say the Russians have never been trustworthy since February 1917.
Russia’s just saber rattling again, its the only thing that heel Putin knows how to do. He overplayed his hand and now his economy’s in the shitter, and not just any shitter, but a stopped up, Soviet-age bowl filled with water that’s browner than those spots on Gorbachev’s head.
Putin can lash out as much as he wants to, and he can take his shirt off and wrestle with bears, he’s still an overcompensating birch and we’ll all be better off once Russia cones to their collective sense and dumps his sorry ass.
So lemme see if I get this. All the while Europe was counting on America to come save them at any time, they decide to decimate their own forces. Yet they weren’t watching FOX news or paying attention as Obama was cutting our military to the bone. That about it? Except they now see Russia has plans to own Europe including…I mean, hell ESPECIALLY, NATO nations, they’re wringing their hands in WWI and WWII fear again and looking again, to the West for an answer.
Well they have been listening to special kids like Fallows and his serial novel in the Atlantic or other left leaning think tanks about we spend more than 1000 other nations on defense combined. So the Euros assume that we have this massive army at home ready to walk across the water.
I have to agree with Former 11B (hey, I’m a former 11B, too! 🙂 ) Putin likes to swing his dick and talk trash but we’re not going to see T-72s rolling down the Champs Elysees. We don’t fight wars like that anymore.
Sure, Putin will occupy a traditionally Russian area like the Crimea if he can get away with it but what the hell would he want with Western Europe?
Occupying a country is a PITA (we should know that by now) and Putin has enough trouble “occupying” the country that he’s currently president/PM/Czar of right now. He likes to swagger and strut but there’s no way the Russians have either the capability or the desire to launch a war of aggression against their non-Slavic neighbors. There’s nothing in it for them.
Well, Martinjmpr – that depends. Empires are based on the concept that one nation can conquer their neighbors, co-opt and/or siphon off their productive resources for the benefit of the conqueror, and thus become better off as a net result.
That model has actually worked quite well for a number of historical entities. Among them was a little entity called the Duchy of Muscovy, starting in about 1283. We know them better by their later name: the Russian Empire. One can argue that the Soviet Union’s Cold War attempts to domination of Eastern Europe and provide assistance to various other client states worldwide were nothing more than a continuation of the Russian Empire’s expansion.
IMO, Russia still bears watching. For the past 800+ years, Russia has been an expansive empire. I seriously doubt that the last 2 decades have substantially changed that part of Russia’s nature.
That we are drawing down, if the pattern holds true, means we’re just a short time away from when we’ll desperately need the military we no longer have and will have to, instead, go to war with the military we do have.
Why, that plan is far to clever to fail a fourth time.
(rolling my eyes like a slot machine)
The USA had a preview of Japan’s intentions in the late ’30’s as we watched Manchuria. We also saw a war beginning that involved our friends in Europe, but it was not a war we could get involved with because our people did not have the will to do so. We applied sanctions against Japan, and provided them a target rich area with our Pearl Harbor base. When Japan struck, our nation became polarized and formal entry into the global war was assured.
Today we see Russia’s intentions and they are not peaceful, as the Crimea mess clearly shows. We are watching another global enemy, Islam, making war on everyone but notably our European friends. Our people don’t want an all out global war so our government can not help with these fights to a greater degree without significant additional motivation. Now our military forces are being depleted, our weapons retired and our nuclear stockpile greatly reduced. Evidence of the growing weaknesses of our armed forces may be found in news stories every day while at the same time we continue sanctions against Russia, against which the Bear is reacting.
I smell a rat.
Your point needs to be taken one-step further. The Rooskies have always believed they will have to fight the US some day and they don’t have to go as far as the Japs did. One-third of the active duty Marine Corps is stationed on Okinawa. The USAF has several combat and support squadrons stationed on mainland Japan. The USN has a whole bunch of combat and combat support ships stationed in Jap ports.
Those are all in range of mainland Russian missiles and strike aircraft. They could launch a strike hoping to knock the US out of a war with little or no warning.
Europe’s current problem is the same one we are building up to. Other than a couple countries for a few years, they have basically been run by very liberal folks for the last seventy years. Much like Mom jeans, they were more interested in social programs than self defense, so gutted defense to pay for their mommy states. Now they are paying the price, and per the saying are doomed to repeat it, as it were.
My gut reaction is for them to go f**k themselves. Fifty years of not giving a shit does not make it our problem. Young Americans should not go die on European soil for ungrateful Europeans that ignored reality.
We, on the other hand, need o start worrying about China, and stop allowing our leaders to use them as a political fundraising source (Clintons).