[quotz]

The military and intelligence chiefs of all these countries will of course act this way, the other side of the answer for this question is "No worries, Russia's not a threat, we'll keep everything as is". Imagine if a military general from Poland or Finland answers this, he'll lose his job immediately. If I am a Polish citizen and the Polish military general says this, I will absolutely make sure that guy gets fired, I will protest on the streets because of this. It would be ridiculous for a military general to say that all is fine, except if he's waging war of course :D

That answer, that Russia's not a threat, goes against the whole NATO and The West's side of the argument, which is that Ukraine needs financial and military support from the US and EU. What's happening in Ukraine is a proxy war, that has been cooking since 2008 if not even sooner. Why would the citizens of EU and US fund Ukraine if Russia's not an existential threat to us? Why would we care? We certainly care more about Palestinians, since we see all these massacred people on instagram and twitter, but none of our money goes there. Theres very little civilian videos coming out of Ukraine regarding war crimes. So we need explanations of why we are sending money to Ukraine, just as we needed those for Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria etc. Bush and the admin lied about WMDs and chemical weapons, which we found out 15 years after, and yet the taxpayer money was washed out of the voter base, into the military industrial complex.

The west is funding Ukraine so that they weaken Russia and do a regime-change that is favorable to The West, not because Russia is an existential threat. Russia can't even occupy Ukraine, a country with the lowest GDP per capita in europe, with one of the highest corruption indexes, let alone imagine occupying parts of Europe, say Poland, or the Baltics. It makes zero sense. Even if they did occupy, they wont be able to do anything? I dont get it? Europe doesnt have any major natural resources? What will they do with all of us? Enslave us and sell us to african tribal leaders? Steal the gold? I seriously dont understand.

The West needed a leader that would break that cold-war-ish pointless loop of blaming Russia for everything, since Russia is not a threat anymore, but China is. But any western leader claiming that would've actually caused a political suicide for him, his career would be over, because we the citizens have been fed this propaganda of Russian threat for decades, and its hard to forget it.

What happened with Trump was that he had enough mojo and approval to actually sell the public this argument of Russia not being a threat, and he successfully changed course by 180 degrees, completely disbanding all of the previous decades of foreign policy that was aimed against Russia, because it was useless. He hasnt done many good things since he took office, but just this one makes up for all of them and will go down in history for it.

P.S. just to add, I come from a country in the Balkans, but've lived for a long time in the UK, and now I live in the US. Even my homecountry started preparing for war against Russia :D, most probably because we were "advised" by our "allies" from the EU. The threat from Russia we have is NIL, NADA, not even that, its in the negative range, its embarrassing.

[mopsi]

  > The military and intelligence chiefs of all these countries will of course act this way, the other side of the answer for this question is "No worries, Russia's not a threat, we'll keep everything as is". Imagine if a military general from Poland or Finland answers this, he'll lose his job immediately.

Why? The public and other government institutions would much prefer to hear that there is no threat from Russia, and that we do not need to pull productive members of society away from their work and studies to serve as conscripts. Finnish law requires all apartment buildings to provide proper shelters, which adds about 2% to construction costs. Don't you think real estate developers and buyers would be very glad to eliminate this expense? If Russia is not a threat, then this is just a waste of resources.

But your argument is a tough sell when major Russian exercises simulate naval and airborne landings into Finland and missile strikes against Finnish cities. Combined with extreme rhetoric from Russian state media, which regularly questions Finland's right to exist, accuses it of being a Russophobic Nazi state, and portrays it as a "dangerous breakaway" instead of a legitimate independent nation, there is little room to underestimate the seriousness of the threat. This is the same rhetoric Russia has used against Ukraine, and we can all see how far they are willing to take it. Many dismissed the rhetoric as empty posturing until missiles started raining down.

  >  Russia can't even occupy Ukraine, a country with the lowest GDP per capita in europe, with one of the highest corruption indexes, let alone imagine occupying parts of Europe, say Poland, or the Baltics.

GDP per capita doesn't fight.

Ukraine had vast Soviet stockpiles that had not been scrapped. For example, independent counting has recorded at least 1330 visually confirmed Ukrainian tank losses. Compare that with Germany, which has twice the population and is far wealthier: as of 2022, the entire German fleet consisted of only ~200 operational tanks.

How many other countries in Europe can afford to lose 1330 tanks and still keep fighting? Who even has 1330 operational tanks to begin with? No one. Even major countries like the UK and France have only 160 and 220 tanks, respectively. These small numbers are not enough to stop the kind of onslaught Ukraine is experiencing, which is why European military leaders are rightfully so concerned.

[quotz]

> Finnish law requires all apartment buildings to provide proper shelters, which adds about 2% to construction costs.

When was this law enacted?

> The public and other government institutions would much prefer to hear that there is no threat from Russia, and that we do not need to pull productive members of society away from their work and studies to serve as conscripts.

Sadly this is not how politics works. If the human race was a giant insectoid hive mind, we would have way better use of resources than we have now. There is a great essay called Meditations on Moloch [1], that explains what youre describing, especially about war. The military industrial complex is its own self propelling feedback loop industry. If no country had a ministry of defense, we would all be better off, but if one country does it, then every country has to have it, so all of this percentages of GDP are sunk into it, instead of going into healthcare or education.

Since WW2, or even before maybe WW1, the rules of war and occupation have changed. Its not possible anymore for one country to just occupy another, mainly because more territory doesnt mean more economic growth or gain, and mainly because its impossible to rule over another peoples in the modern age, as opposed to in the past. The modern occupation consists of the occupying country having some kind of same-ethnicity but minority faction inside the occupied country, and trying to use that situation to create a breakaway state (which the occupied country wouldnt want of course) so it would create a pretense for war, or use that faction to influence politics for the whole country. The other modern occupation method is to influence the politics of the country by either heavily financially supporting a given faction, or heavily arming that faction (in a paramilitary way). Both of these methods provide political backsupport for the occupying country, in order for better economic deals and geopolitical positioning. But the main goal for the game of modern occupation and warfare is better economic deals.

What politicians and governments state in public is quite different than what actions they enact. Russia's politicians have to look strong. By stating those things about Finland, they hope to say "we hold Finland by the balls" because there is a Russian minority there, and because sometime ago parts of Finland was Russian territory, so they can sell those arguments to the public for a necessary invasion if needed. So they want to tell Finland to not escalate this further by putting nukes on the border, since that would result in war, and to keep being a buffer zone. But in all reality there's 0% chance of Russia invading Finland unprovoked, mainly because we western europeans consider Finland to be part of us, part of the EU, unlike Ukraine which we consider to be a part of the Russian sphere of influence. In all reality, if Russia invades Finland, that would be the biggest blunder for Russian politics because in a matter of seconds NATO would occupy Moscow.

> the entire German fleet consisted of only ~200 operational tanks

Germany was demilitarized until a few years ago, as part of post WW2 rules. They're not the example you're thinking of. In addition, tanks are not important for european warfare anymore, because most of the warfare NATO was waging was overseas. Most of the combat strategy has changed to involve combat aircraft and rockets, which NATO excels at.

[1]https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On-Moloch

[mopsi]

  > When was this law enacted?

Many decades ago. Finland now serves as a blueprint for civil defense. Estonia and Latvia have begun to introduce similar provisions, and Norway announced restoration of theirs that were abolished in 1998.

Shelters are only a small fraction of the overall picture. Swedish experts, for example, are discussing developing their own nuclear weapons to increase deterrence against Russia: https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/sweden-nuclear...

  >  Its not possible anymore for one country to just occupy another, mainly because more territory doesnt mean more economic growth or gain, and mainly because its impossible to rule over another peoples in the modern age, as opposed to in the past. 

The USSR was perfectly willing to trade economic development for imperialism. The methods they used to keep the Eastern Bloc under control are also well known. Are you not aware of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the Prague spring of 1968, the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and other key events? Driving a tank over dissenters or ordering soldiers to beat their skulls open with sapper shovels is a surprisingly effective way of crushing opposition. That remains true in 2025, as we can see on the news.

  > In all reality, if Russia invades Finland, that would be the biggest blunder for Russian politics because in a matter of seconds NATO would occupy Moscow.

The same was said about Ukraine, and yet here we are, about to enter the fifth year of the war.

I see no reason to believe that an attack on other European countries besides Ukraine would lead to a much different reaction. Revelations about the Biden administration have shown that Biden knowingly limited Ukraine's capabilities precisely when the Kharkiv offensive was achieving its greatest successes because he got scared by Russian threats to retaliate with nuclear weapons. What makes Finland or Latvia or Poland so exceptional that it would suddenly make allies stop fearing Russian nukes?

  > But in all reality there's 0% chance of Russia invading Finland unprovoked, mainly because we western europeans consider Finland to be part of us, part of the EU, unlike Ukraine which we consider to be a part of the Russian sphere of influence

This is just your bias talking. Finns are proper Europeans for you, while Ukrainians are some half-slaves of Russia. For Putin's generation, the us-versus-them border runs considerably further west from yours, somewhere along the furthest extent of imperial Russia and the USSR and its satellites. The Russian viewpoint is very well summarized in the 1997 "Foundations of Geopolitics" by hardcore Russian Nazi Alexander Dugin and much of what he wrote there has been put into action since the book was published: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#In_...

  > Germany was demilitarized until a few years ago, as part of post WW2 rules.

Not true at all. West Germany had 5000 tanks in the 1980s. As a general rule, European countries have lost about 80-90% of the equipment and manpower that they had during the Cold War.

  > In addition, tanks are not important for european warfare anymore, because most of the warfare NATO was waging was overseas. Most of the combat strategy has changed to involve combat aircraft and rockets, which NATO excels at.

Other areas are just as lacking. Germany has only about 30 operational fighter jets, artillery rounds for only a few days at the intensity seen in the war in Ukraine, and so on. Germany has a scandal about the poor state of the Bundeswehr every time its inspector-general issues a report.

**

With outlandish ideas about "Moscow being occupied within seconds", it seems like you're living in another era of the distant past. It is a luxury that defense and intelligence chiefs cannot afford, which is why your assessments diverge from theirs. By focusing on economics, you clearly fail to recognize that Russians are driven by an entirely different set of factors. By overestimating European military strength, you severely underestimate how far a broader Russian attack could penetrate.

[quotz]

I am sorry but I am withdrawing from this debate any further. You're not refuting my points.