European countries have not neglected anything. The current state of things is by design.

Europe used to be full of empires waging destructive wars all over the world. After two world wars, people had had enough. The predecessors of the EU were created to tame the former empires. To make them mutually dependent and act like ordinary countries. It worked, and Western Europe has enjoyed a lifetime of peace, which is unprecedented.

We Europeans are shitty people. If you tell us that it's ok to start acting like empires again and to send troops to fight wars far away from home, the world will have more than one Putin to worry about.

First of all, I suppose I need to say that I'm European, living in a country with a very tiny military force. I understand why Germany, in particular, does not want to be a strong military power anymore.

Britain and France seem less reluctant, probably taking some pride from standing up to Hitler in 1939, and this contributing to them seeing their armed forces primarily as defensive instruments. (Disregarding their long histories as colonial powers.)

Germany's latest experience with a large army was from a time it was used offensively, with catastrophic results for Germany. Nobody argues that Germany should build up that kind of force again.

But if peaceful countries are not able to protect themselves and each other from expansionist aggressors, seeing to annex territory, the world will most likely revert to something we've not really seen since the 19th century, just this time with nukes.

And with internal strife and polarization seeming to mostly pacify the US's ability to provide protection, combined with an increasingly powerful China flexing in East Asia, Europe may have to take some of the responsibility for maintaining the strength needed to guarantee peace.

Well, the German army was significantly downsized since the end of the Cold War and Reunification. Once Germany had thousands of modern tanks for example. Now we are down to fraction of that. We called it the Peace Dividend, not sure if it actually saved any money so.

The reason why the German Army was that big was the USSR and Warsaw pact. They were supposed to check any Soviet advance long enough, preferably before the Rhine, for the bulk of the US forces to show up after being shipped over the Atlantic. It would suck if that becomes necessary again, the high level of militarization during the Cold War was decidedly not a good thing.

During the cold war, the Soviet Union was the only threat. Present day Russia is merely the second most dangerous threat facing the free world. China is becoming a much more potent economic as well as military power.

This means that this time, Europe need to realize they have to be able to defend against an increasingly aggressive Russia _without_ significant US support, and may even have to have strength to spare to aid vs China. In other words, countries like Germany need to have military strength at least at the level they had during the cold war to do their part in providing safety and stability to Europe.

If this doesn't happen, I think Germany must expect that more and more countries in the area develops their own nukes, as that is the only alternative way to deter a power like Russia. How will Germany feel if Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Greece and Turkey suddenly all had their own nukes?

I guess the tricky thing about a military, as german history shows, is its cultural impact. Would the Nazi regime have been possible without Hindenburg? Would Hitler have become prominent without Ludendorf? Ludendorf and Hindenburg essentially created the stab-in-the-back idea. The outsize respect given to military figures, the allure of uniforms, the outsize rights and trust given to ex-soldiers - all these things made the nazis and their precursors very hard to push back on. When you think of organizations like the Freikorps, it's hard to avoid noticing the radicalizing effect of military service.

I would be more of a fan of a pan-EU force than a return to traditional national militaries.

I suppose there were plenty of cultural ties between the Imperial German Army and the rise of Hitler. But for Germany to still not possess a credible defence force due to those ties is hard to justify, especially if the US no longer can be relied upon.

Personally, I don't care much whether there is a pan-EU force or national militaries (tied together by both the EU and Nato) that fills this role, but I see it is a problem if Europe lacks the strength to properly defend countries such as the Ukraine. If Putin is, through military aggression, able to eventually gain full control of the Ukrain, I expect other "leaders" with similar dispositions will try similar actions in the future.

Well, I think part of the problem is that the kind of people that were in the german army after the war were Nazis in the literal sense, and the kind of people that prospered in the environment these Nazis created were Nazis in the contemporary sense. This is amply illustrated by the endless slew of scandals that come out of the Bundeswehr around this issue[0].

I imagine these days it's a little better, but it's still a bit of a magnet for the hard right in germany, for all the obvious reasons.

[0] https://ctc.usma.edu/the-insider-threat-far-right-extremism-...

PS: I think in general it's germany's ongoing far-right problem that makes nationalist-adjacent careers and institutions far less attractive to normal people, so it's sort of a vicious circle.

It's not necessarily a matter of Germany not wanting to have a larger military. They are still bound by an international treaty that limits their military might.

First of all, German military capacity can be at least doubled, maybe tripled within that treaty, and second, if other nato countries don't object, they can probably claim that treaty null and void after Russia violates Ukrainian independence.

> If you tell us that it's ok to start acting like empires

Ignoring the context of sending troops into war is a "shitty" move, as is characterising this kind of behaviour as being of "European people" - there have been lots of non-European empires, and colonial powers where administrated by European monarchs, not European democracies (i.e. the people).

Fighting an invading empire is not building one. These semantic games are a slippery-slope argument - structures such as NATO are pretty explicit means (in theory at least) to defending against aggression without endorsing aggression.

Oh shut up, that's just excuse some countries tell themselves to save on the army. UK and France fought several wars as EU members and only disarmed after cold war ended.

I think the combined might of Europe is actually quite significant. The problem is getting them to actually DO something.

In terms of number of personell, the "large" countries in the EU, such as Germany, France and Poland have about 200k each. Russia has 3 million, when including reserves.

And while the Russian forces are actively trained as one force, European armies would have significant difficulties operating together and would lack shared leadership. Also, while some of the European forces are highly proficient, others are more at the level of militias, really only useful for defending their homelands, if that.

Without heavy US involvement, I would expect Russia to dominate a confrontation with EU forces in the early stages, by focusing on the forces of one country at a time. This is particularily true if the confrontation happens in terrain such as that of the Ukraine or Poland, where the flat land gives attacking armored forces an advantage.

With moderate US involvement, this changes a bit. Lets say the US sent an expeditionary force of 100k people, maybe half of which were fighting forces, then NATO would _perhaps_ be a match for Russia, but would probably not be superior, espeically in terms of infantry, armor and artillery.

Realistically, a defence of Nato with current forces needs to be done in depth, forcing Russia to attack into central Germany and/or the Carpathian mountains. Eventually, Russia would lose such a conflict due to massive economic inferiority, but this kind of conflict is not something European countries are willing to go into over just the Ukraine.

You're completely ignoring the economic angle. War is costly, especially for an aggressor, and Russia simply doesn't have the economy required to sustain a major offensive war, especially one far from his border.

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not claiming that Russia would enter an all-out-war with EU countries (at least those in Nato). What I'm saying is that in a geographically limited conflict in the area of Belorussia, eastern Poland and the Ukraine, Russia would start with an upper hand. It would be hard for EU countries to gather enough force to stop the attack on the Ukraine, and if they tried, they would suffer bigger losses than Russia.

And after the fall of the Ukraine, I think there is no way public opinion in the EU would support continuing a war aimed at freeing them.

On the other hand, if the EU did have the strength to outmatch Russia even on Ukrainian soil, and mobilized that force as Russia mobilized for attack, I think the attack would never have come.

In other words, I think this attack comes as a result of EU countries being too weak to be able to deter Russia, while the US is currently suffering too much internal conflict to really care.

It’s not quite the same but certainly reminds one of the ww2 moves hitler made as he took one strategic territory after another, and by the time the rest were ready to fight they had already ceded much important ground

i don’t think it’s so dire here. i think putin simply realized US wouldn’t move troops or retaliate with force, weighed them political or resource gains from attacking and decided it was worth it.

In hindsight perhaps the right move was for US to station a time peacekeeping force in ukraine to make the calculus of attacking more expensive, yet i’m too ignorant of the subject to understand.

> Similarly, had NATO deployed 500k soldiers fully armed with modern weaponry in Poland, Lithuania and Rumania as Putin was building up his forces, and added a warning that Ukraine would be granted instant membership to NATO if he didn't pull back from the border, he probably would have pulled back from the border.

Had NATO forces been deployed in Ukraine four months ago, nobody would be making any nuclear threats today, veiled or otherwise.

In fact, there wouldn't have been an invasion to begin with. I am about 100% positive that Russian intelligence knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were picking a fight they could easily win. I am almost 100% positive that western intelligence knew that too, which is why its response was a bunch of bullshit about sanctions.

Four months ago Europe was still deeply enthralled with covid mania and not interested in pretty much anything else.

NATO forces don't deploy in a foreign country. That's not how it works.

Could Ukraine not have invited them? It's their sovereign right.

But that's irrelevant to the point I was making. You don't stop an invasion by sitting in a neighbouring country, and then staging a counterattack long after the target is overrun. You either stop it at the border, or not at all. Whatever complaints Russia would have raised over Ukraine inviting a NATO deployment, it would have them five times over were NATO to participate in the conflict after it started.

Practically speaking, Russia would have probably backed down. Practically speaking, the reason NATO did not exercise this option is because it doesn't want to fight a war over a non-member.

Tell that the Afghans. NATO could have easily deployed there, or just EU forces. I think people in charge still had hopes to avoid an escalation. And to not get their own troops into the firing line immediately. Deploying troops to Ukraine also limits your options, because it means full, and preemptive, commitment to war. At place and time where the opponent had much more time to properly prepare.

Nato members have deployed in plenty of foreign countries since 1949. Had Nato countries had the strength and will, they would have been able to provide plenty of deterence against the aggression we are seeing today, even if the situation isn't strictly covered by the Nato treaty.

> Otherwise, I fear the result of today's events will be a massive level of nuclear proliferation.

That's a given after 2014 (let's remember Ukraine gave up its nukes in 1994 in exchange for security and territorial integrity guarantees of USA, UK and Russia).