Listening to podcasts this morning and an interesting and concerning thought. I consider Putin has demonstrated the limitations of Russian military and thus would never attack a NATO country as if he's struggling in Ukraine, taking on the NATO "Collective defence" would be a non-starter.
War is not their first weapon, they start with trying to divide and conquer, in Ukraine it started in 2014 (the most visible example of his proxy war the actual conflict was earlier)
But worrying thought is Trump and if Trump starts weakening NATO of suggesting he'd not honour the Collective defence, then Putin might take the opportunity to attack a Baltic country is see which NATO members would actually honour their obligations. Maybe an initial small attack to test the response before deciding about further territory grabs.
Not suggesting I think it would happen, just maybe the risks are now higher than I'd previously thought.
Ian
It's more of an idea than an actual threat because even without the US it's not like the Russians will be in Berlin tommorow, but if europe with a NATO force with really want to they can be in Moscow maybe not tommorow but fairly quickly.
Do we need to worry about that? He's already using prisoners and North Koreans as cannon fodder. Surely the real worry is Nuclear escalation.
that is actually an big unknown Nuclear weapons are very expensive to maintain, it might just be that Russia's military threat of Nuclear weapons is the fact they
claim to have them and have them ready. If they would actually be able to successfully launch one is questionable.
