[heroiccocoa]

I don't agree with your comment. Unpreparedness is one thing, but you paint a picture of weakness and reliance. Why are there no Dutch F-35s or French warships in Ukraine? Where are the British special forces? Let alone the non-NATO countries of Switzerland Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, Malta, and Sweden. Some NATO members have huge militaries, albeit with many NATO commitments, i.e. not even close to being utilized to their full potential. Others like Ireland have enough resources to fund those of close allies. Think of all those taxes paid over decades into defense. Together we could have stealth bombers in Moscow within minutes and helicopters and troops soon after. Wagner could have done it by themselves had they had the self-confidence. But no one is doing anything at all, simply because Putin has threatened to nuke us all.

[diordiderot]

Incredibly out of touch comment.

Dutch have contributed massively relative to gdp. The British special forces trained Ukraines special forces after the war started. Sweden is in NATO. And you can't bomb a nuclear state.

[heroiccocoa]

The NL have contributed massively. I never meant that they didn't, I was selecting some powerful, random countries with still untapped resources to counter your comment that implied weakness. It was not at all my intention to diminish their contributions (consider that I didn't even mention those of Poland and the Baltics; even though I hate using GDP for this, but that is another discussion...): Again, my point was that, relative to what I imagine Europe's real military might is, it has not even really gotten started compared to what we could be doing, if only we weren't so scared of nukes. Just think of how we could have annihilated the soft target that was the disorganized 64 km Kyiv convoy, back in 2022. A quick search yielded that we have 1703 fighter jets in the EU-28, let alone the large warships, and who knows how many other assets. If we declared war (I'm not a lawyer, but it would easy to prove casus belli, and have jus ad bellum, given Russia's literal aggression and genocide). We could be attacking them along their entire (gigantic) border all the way to the east that they couldn't possibly hope to defend being so spread out. It would look totally different than the "weak" image we are projecting now because we aren't at war.

Sweden is not yet in NATO. They are on the verge of it, with Orban signing approval today, but Hungary has not yet formally submitted their instrument of ratification. Details matter when correcting people.

[Etherlord87]

Well, the nuclear threat is no small threat. It's possibly humanity-ending. Specifically the nuclear winter.

It's amazing and I attribute it largely to American intelligence, how much russia was damaged with "only" a 10s advance on the Doomsday Clock (we're at 23:58:30 now).

[heroiccocoa]

Absolutely. But it is responsible for our weak response, not our weak/undprepared militaries.