[surgical_fire]

"Crazy Ivan" can not even wage a respectable war against one of its former puppet states. As tragic as it is for the Ukrainians, let's not overestimate the capabilities of Russia to be a true menace to the rest of Europe.

[justrealist]

I hate to break it to you, but Ukraine, even before the outbreak of full-scale war, had significantly higher effective military capacity than Germany.

Ukraine has been at war since 2014 and has hundreds of thousands of experienced reserves. Germany has an air force that can barely fly, and a few dozen tanks that mostly don't work.

They are nominally NATO, but it's only on paper and as a staging ground for other NATO countries — German armed forces are almost entirely deadweight.

[azmodeus]

Not sure if you are aware how small most European countries are:

Norway 5.4 Sweden 10.4 Denmark 5.8 Finland 5.5

Estonia 1.3 Lithuania 2.8 Latvia 1.8

Some numbers in millions vs

Ukraine 43.79 Russia 143.4

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Not sure if you are aware how small most European countries are

The thing is, are you aware that most European countries are also aware of this? What do you think that they have done in response? Some kind of "unity" maybe ?

There's good reason why the EU is regarded as powerful, when Denmark isn't. There's good reason why Estonia joined, and Ukraine would like to.

It's not just small countries banding together though. Poland, 38m people was also keen to join.

[surgical_fire]

Yeah, this takes a different figure when you consider the EU block as a whole, instead of measuring member states in isolation.

Every member state has a binding agreement of mutual protection.

[lesuorac]

If the EU is a mutal-defense agreement why are all these EU members trying to also join NATO?

[dragonwriter]

> If the EU is a mutal-defense agreement why are all these EU members trying to also join NATO?

Because mutual defense agreements and other joint security agreements aren’t mutually exclusive, and NATO has an integrated military command and more nuclear powers as members.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Parent says "Every member state has a binding agreement of mutual protection" Emphasis added.

This is not the same as "the EU is a mutal-defense agreement". The EU is a lot of things.

I just googled "eu mutual defence" and got authoritative links such as https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/mutual-d...

IDK, could you have googled that?

[surgical_fire]

Are they all trying to join NATO?

Or some of them are willing to join NATO, for their own geopolitical reasons?

And the mutual-defense agreement is not a question of "if". It is a binding agreement. It's a fact.

[lesuorac]

I don't think Finland has high confidence that the binding agreement will save them.

If you look at the polling for if Finland should join Nato there is a huge spike after 2022 [1]. Even Sweden which has a buffer between it and Russia also had a increase in polls [2]. Not that anybody does this poll, but you won't see a spike in if say Canada should join the EU. The point being, these countries do not trust that the EU will protect them.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland%E2%80%93NATO_relations...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden%E2%80%93NATO_relations#...

[jstarfish]

Such agreements only force-project the illusion of a larger, unified entity as opposition to anybody who might act against them. It is a deterrent at best.

It has yet to be witnessed what hilarity ensues when any of them simply refuse to answer the call.