US, China, who else are you calling a superpower? Cause Russia is not a superpower.

It does not really change my argument, if you exclude Russia from the group. It was about possible alignment options Europe now has.

However, any power able to incinerate large parts of the planet is a bit more than a regional power, in my eyes.

FWIW, given everything else that we've seen from Russia in this undeclared(!) war, I'm moderately confident the Russian nukes and delivery mechanisms are sub-par.

(Typing "sub" reminded me of the Kursk nuclear submarine that sank itself…)

It needs only a few to launch successfully to engulf Europe in flames. So, even with subpar equipment, out of all of the 1700+ launch vehicles a few will still launch.

Kinda.

Some of the P(weapon failure) is constant: from what I hear, a certain fraction of Soviet and US systems (and presumably everyone else's) just don't work.

If that was all it was, then you would be correct.

But: some failures come with age, and require ongoing maintenance to retain function. For example, I expect all the tritium has decayed, and also that in many cases the money that was supposed to get spent replacing the tritium was instead spent on a fancy yacht or a football team or a seat in the UK's House of Lords etc.

And I don't know how good modern anti-missile weapons are, but I would expect them to have improved; conversely, despite Russia's talk about new hypersonic missiles, what they've shown hasn't been very impressive, and they've even used up some of their old nuclear-capable missiles while attacking Ukraine.

You are hopefully right but this is not a bet you ever want to have to make.

Quite.

I'm happy to be relaxed about this, but only because I have no power — 90% chance some attempted hot war is actually all duds is great for me personally, 10% chance everything burns is unacceptably high for someone running a country.

There is only one superpower - the US.

Russia and China are regional powers and can't project military power very far, excluding nukes. To do that you need a credible blue water navy. China is close though, and definitely projecting its economic strength.

Europe (lets just say EU + UK) could be a superpower. However they lack political unity. And still want big daddy US to do the heavy lifting.

There are two. Russia is not a super power.

Putin has nukes, apart from that Russia is a pretty irrelevant country.

More like this: Two super powers, and a terror nukes nation.

It does not really change my argument, if you exclude Russia from the group. It was about possible alignment options Europe now has.

However, any power able to incinerate large parts of the planet is a bit more than a regional power, in my eyes.

When Putin can't take back Kursk, it seems odd to call Russia a super power.

But yes, agree with you about China.

Putin wants people to think Russia is a super power, when it's instead a corrupted inefficient mafia state. Look at research or startups coming from there (not much) or it's economy - the country is not interesting any longer (Putin has damaged it that much). Except for Putin attacking Ukraine, and his nukes and troll farms.

If Pakistan starts threatening other countries with nuclear war, and tries to invade a neighbor but mostly fails, is it then suddenly a super power?

Maybe "terror power" could be a new word

I wish the EU agreed with you. That would surely mean they would not want to go on a 800 billion Euro spend of my taxpayer money to deter an "irrelevant country".

Fundamentally, it's not just about Russia. It's about not being carved up by the US and China.

And you think a 1T EUR will move the needle significantly to maybe deter this?

If it's sustained, then yes. Again, it's mostly important to be less tempting than other areas if we're headed back to a world of great powers and spheres of influence.

We never left such world, it's just that the USA was the only great power for a few decades.

China is a economic superpower but not a military one, at least not yet. Their blue water navy is not credible.

Yes, that's why the U.S. wants to control Arctic trade routes from China to Europe.

The Ukraine war was "successful" in destroying the possibility of railways between the EU and China.

The EU, ever the good vassal, now ramps up the rhetoric against Russia which is exactly what Hegseth wanted in the open.

The EU is still playing the U.S. deep state script and it is very likely that all the Trump pressure and insults are carefully planned political theater.

If the above conjectures are wrong and Trump is serious about peace with Russia, then the EU needs to pivot quickly to China and at least maintain reasonable diplomatic relations with Russia.

> The EU is still playing the U.S. deep state script and it is very likely that all the Trump pressure and insults are carefully planned political theater.

I find that becoming exceedingly unlikely. Trust has been destroyed, there is no easy recovery from that.

So many odd things have been occurring in the past month that I don't know what to believe any longer.

First, ex-neocon Rubio admitted on the Megyn Kelly show that the world is now multi-polar. Even if he believes that, why would he say so unless it's for show.

Then there is Lindsey Graham. In 2016 he gave warlike speeches to the Azov Batallion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ4e1A-LZEA

In 2025 he throws Zelensky under the bus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18oqMGLWcRA

Graham and probably Rubio are still neocons. Trump must be really powerful to keep all this under control.

Then there is the U.S. arms lobby, which is uncannily quiet even though they'll lose a ton of business when NATO becomes irrelevant. Then there are no reactions to Polish nuclear ambitions, which is weird unless the whole thing is scripted.

So there are two theories. Either Trump is carving up the world or he is acting.

Elon Musk threatens to spend millions against any republican who deviates from Trump’s policies. Without that threat, the republicans would speak up against this assault on American interest and values. I wonder more if Elon has been compromised than Trump. Or if Russia threaten to trigger the Kessler syndrome, destroying all of Elon’s aspirations of getting off this rock (I’m still skeptical if he’s telling the truth about that), and instructed him to stop the war.