Europe preparing for war with Russia (Survival Lilly)

[C C]

PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT: McGyver? EDC and urban survival pack

---

SURVIVAL LILLY
https://youtu.be/AJTVN6xalYo

VIDEO INTRO: I have to say it's not looking good. So today I want to show you a couple of news articles about the war seeming to spread to other European nations as well.

So here, for example, there's a German article that says the times of peace and prosperity in Europe are over for now. The next article is about Sweden's minister of civil protection saying there could be war in Sweden. Everyone needs to prepare for the worst case such as a war with Russia.

[...] Now the Austrian Army is warning of war with Russia. The risk of a confrontation is really high, and we will see a higher probability of hybrid warfare in 2024. An Austrian military expert is saying that we are already in a hybrid war.

Next, Putin is saying that his country is prepared for a nuclear war from a military technical point of view. Russia is ready to use its sophisticated weapons if the existence of the Russian state is threatened.

Okay, now comes a new thing that I've read just a couple of days ago [...] In Germany, the federal education minister and the board of German teachers want to prepare young people in school for the event of war. They want to send in youth officers from the army...

It is not looking good!

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/AJTVN6xalYo

[Yazata]

I don't believe it.

Europe is scared by the prospect of Donald Trump winning the the 2024 US election and then in-effect telling Europe that they are on their own, while Russia is attacking Ukraine.

Of course Trump has no intention of doing that unless Europe forces him to. He did float the possibility of the US doing it in his first term, but only in the context of trying to pressure Europe into shouldering their fair share of the burden of the NATO alliance. The EU's combined GDP rivals the US, so why don't they contribute as much as the US to our joint defense? (The US currently contributes about 70% of the NATO budget.)

Right now, Europe (particularly the fat and happy Germans) have essentially outsourced their national defense to the United States at American expense. Far from making the US stronger, each new NATO member added simply obligates the US by treaty to go to war for yet another country.

So faced with the possibility (however remote) of the US saying "enough", the Europeans are trying to talk tough. But none of them has anything like the will to turn any of their countries into the kind of world military powers that they were before World War II. Especially if that means dialing back their welfare states and devoting the funds to building up their militaries. It's just not going to happen.

What's more, despite Ukraine, the Russian conventional military threat to Europe is exceedingly remote. We've all seen the extreme difficulty that Moscow has had defeating much smaller Ukraine. (We initially expected them to have it done in a week, but here we are in the third year with little progress to show.) Russia is taking large numbers of dead and wounded, and is expending huge stockpiles of arms and ammunition.

So does anyone in their right mind expect them to turn around and attack NATO, even NATO without the United States (which is unlikely to happen)? That would still mean fighting France, Britain, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Canada, and more, all at once. When they can't even deliver a knockout blow to Kyiv?

Bottom line, war talk in Europe is all just talk...

[stryder]

I don't believe it.

Europe is scared by the prospect of Donald Trump winning the the 2024 US election and then in-effect telling Europe that they are on their own, while Russia is attacking Ukraine.

Of course Trump has no intention of doing that unless Europe forces him to. He did float the possibility of the US doing it in his first term, but only in the context of trying to pressure Europe into shouldering their fair share of the burden of the NATO alliance. The EU's combined GDP rivals the US, so why don't they contribute as much as the US to our joint defense? (The US currently contributes about 70% of the NATO budget.)

Right now, Europe (particularly the fat and happy Germans) have essentially outsourced their national defense to the United States at American expense. Far from making the US stronger, each new NATO member added simply obligates the US by treaty to go to war for yet another country.

So faced with the possibility (however remote) of the US saying "enough", the Europeans are trying to talk tough. But none of them has anything like the will to turn any of their countries into the kind of world military powers that they were before World War II. Especially if that means dialing back their welfare states and devoting the funds to building up their militaries. It's just not going to happen.

What's more, despite Ukraine, the Russian conventional military threat to Europe is exceedingly remote. We've all seen the extreme difficulty that Moscow has had defeating much smaller Ukraine. (We initially expected them to have it done in a week, but here we are in the third year with little progress to show.) Russia is taking large numbers of dead and wounded, and is expending huge stockpiles of arms and ammunition.

So does anyone in their right mind expect them to turn around and attack NATO, even NATO without the United States (which is unlikely to happen)? That would still mean fighting France, Britain, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Canada, and more, all at once. When they can't even deliver a knockout blow to Kyiv?

Bottom line, war talk in Europe is all just talk...

I don't think it's so much that Europe is scared.

From my perspective I see Trump having initially gone after Hunter Biden to discredit his father, was hit with a brick wall when asking Ukraine for "juicy" information on what he was doing. When Trump didn't get the results he wanted from Ukraine, there is a high likelihood that he phoned* up Putin to ask him to look into the matter, reminding him that "Ukraine was once Russian, right?".

In that one brief instance in circa 2020, it likely brought about the undermining of Ukrainian telecommunication infrastructure (hacking) which was deeply seeded prior to the 2022 attack.

I'm actually surprised that Trump hasn't expounded that without his involvement in stirring shit up, there wouldn't be a number of new countries joining NATO and the amount countries are paying wouldn't be as high already. (Considering the Russian threat he unleashed) That of course would mean Trump would have to come to terms with costing up to 200,000 people their lives from his pettiness and need to deep dive against Biden as a rival.

Europe in that sense has woken up to the understanding that Trump is just outright bad. Bad for politics, bad for business and specifically bad for the Ukrainian people.

(* it should be noted that any Phonecalls as president to other countries leaders should be logged, unless otherwise purposely mishandled and deleted. So if there is evidence to suggest what I assume to be accurate, it should be found with those records)

[Syne]

What's more, despite Ukraine, the Russian conventional military threat to Europe is exceedingly remote. We've all seen the extreme difficulty that Moscow has had defeating much smaller Ukraine. (We initially expected them to have it done in a week, but here we are in the third year with little progress to show.) Russia is taking large numbers of dead and wounded, and is expending huge stockpiles of arms and ammunition.

So does anyone in their right mind expect them to turn around and attack NATO, even NATO without the United States (which is unlikely to happen)? That would still mean fighting France, Britain, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Canada, and more, all at once. When they can't even deliver a knockout blow to Kyiv?

Bottom line, war talk in Europe is all just talk...

Would Russia fight Europe the same way it's fighting Ukraine? Russia definitely wants that Ukraine territory, likely with infrastructure intact, if possible.
I doubt Russia has similar aims toward Europe. Does Europe, collectively, have air defenses to rival Russia? I don't know. But Germany wasn't trying to march troops/tanks into London during The Blitz. They were only interested in bombing it.