...wait until people get tired and cold and things get expensive and nato will very quickly fall apart. If my country offered training i would take it - I'm about a 16hr drive from the actual front lines. Thats really close...meanwhile soccer players are still on €5k+ a week, us footballers still on their millions. I fear the russians will win this as apathy and 'hardships' continue - the vast majority of people i talk to really don't give a fuck - especially when you go through russias brutal invasions. "But the Americans did just as bad" is a common reply: yes, i agree but now the war is coming this way...and a lot of people don't quite get the implications on their lives. We're all too darn comfortable at the moment.
> ...wait until people get tired and cold and things get expensive and nato will very quickly fall apart
This is not far from truth, and not far from actually happening. Politicians (especially german) prioretizing ukraine over their own countries, possibility of actually UK destroying the nordstreams, people getting cold and unable to afford adequate heating, industries (already) closing down, a lot of protests (already happening) and mainsteam politicians pretty much playing the same record (saying the same thing)...
what do they/we (europeans) expect to happen? If the mainstream left and right are doing the same, the only way to change the current situation is to find an "alternative"... back in the '30s, for germans, it was that austrian painter dude, and we all know how that ended, both for ze germans and for the rest of europe... (and me, living in a nearby slavic country, really don't want history to repeat itself).
I'm not suggesting that NATO will always exist. I am just saying if Putin was going to attack a country he likely wouldn't go after a country that has the most powerful military alliance backing it. There are other countries that don't have that sort of backing. I don't think Putin believed the west would support Ukraine which is why he chose it.
I firmly believe that, had Ukraine collapsed within days of the invasion as Russia expected, they’d be in a NATO country by now. I think Putin expected NATO to turn out to be a paper tiger when it came to the Baltics, at least.
Given the reports that Trump planned to drop out of NATO in his second term, and given the ongoing tensions within Europe, it’s not unreasonable to think Russia could get away with gradual encroachment.
Looking back at the beginning of war, had Ukraine fell in days… I don’t see West actively trying to stop Russia in Baltics and Poland. Russians would have had super high morale while West would have been in 100% panic mode trying to keep business as usual going. Tiny annoyances in the middle be damned.
