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Anything in international treaties is only as legally binding as the enforcement measures behind them. As a small country, no international treaties are ever le
by MagnumOpus 5y ago
Anything in international treaties is only as legally binding as the enforcement measures behind them. As a small country, no international treaties are ever legally binding. After all, what could the government-in-exile of Latvia do after a Russian invasion if the US president or UK PM decided after a focus group session that going to war with Russia over the Baltics is not a vote winner?
- bingohbangoh 5y agoNATO troops being actively stationed in the Baltics is a little different. Ukraine doesn’t have anything that I’m aware of.
- jacquesm 5y ago20K troops or thereabouts. No tanks, no planes, just some artillery.
- qwytw 5y agoThat's irrelevant, their purpose is to act as a deterrent. By invading Russia would also directly attack American, British, German, Canadian etc. soldiers which not something their governments can just ignore. Anyway it's not the 1930's, considering the current political and economical environment there is absolutely no rational reason for Russia to invade the Baltic states (unlike eastern Ukraine or Crimea). What would they gain by doing that, 5 million people none of whom want to be a part of Russia and a shitload more sanctions (assuming if it does not escalate into a full-scale war with the west which is again something Russia has nothing to gain from).
- jacquesm 5y agoLast I heard the Americans had left. Is there something I have missed?
- qwytw 5y agoTrue, currently Americans seems to be only stationed in Poland (while Germans are mainly in Lithuania, Canadians in Latvia and the UK in Estonia) but I don't see how that fundamentally changes anything.
- bingohbangoh 5y agoI was just in Kaunas and ran into American soldiers -- or what I thought were American soldiers? We chatted and they implied this.
- jacquesm 5y agoI know there are some Canadians stationed in that region.
- qwytw 5y agoI'm not really sure, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Enhanced_Forward_Presence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Enhanced_Forward_Presence they don't have a permanent presence there, but I assume there should still be some fluctuating number of American soldiers in Lithuania due to some temporary reasons of the time.
- wayoutthere 5y agoArmored ground vehicles in a frontline role are largely worthless against a modern military; it’s too easy to take them out with drone-fired missiles or kamikaze drones. NATO doesn’t need to position planes in the Baltics when they’re within range of its air bases in Germany (airbases should be well behind the front lines anyway).
- varjag 5y agoPeople often have no appreciation of scale. Russia has more armor than NATO has Javelins and loitering munitions.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wayoutthere 5y agoMost of which are pushing 50 years old. Russia has a lot of military assets, and has developed some advanced capabilities, but has not been able to field them in any meaningful quantity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The same story is true with their air superiority / denial capabilities. They have advanced weapons, but not enough of them to go toe-to-toe with NATO and the bulk of their military is obsolete Soviet-era hardware.
- varjag 5y agoMost of NATO equipment is not exactly sparkling new either, am not sure what that proves. Does it not count if the battletank that runs you over is from 1980s?
- jacquesm 5y agoYes, but they run just fine. Russia can field massive amounts of heavy materials, far more than any other Western European country, and they have plenty of mobile launchers and other annoying hardware that can throw a spanner in the works for a fairly large surface area, and the number of airplanes they can field is quite impressive. It may not be the latest and the greatest, but it's not as if F35s are thick on the ground (or in the skies) in Europe either (less than 100 in total, most for training purposes). I really would not see this put to the test, not only because of the potential outcome but because such an exchange has the potential to spiral out of control really fast.
- afarrell 5y ago20K troops are people's sons and daughters. Those are real people with personal stories that can credibly threaten to move votes and enlistments.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoBeing the US politician responsible for using those sons and daughters as human shields is something that could backfire spectacularly. It's not a given that the US can dump soldiers into any conflict and then use their deaths as a tool for support. It's possible, and I suspect quite likely, that the politicians will bear the brunt of the damage from creating the situation where those sons and daughters were killed.
- ridiculous_leke 5y agoIt's not just about votes. Modern wars can be endless as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Russia is not foolish enough to do a full scale invasion. They will just send in proxies. No nation wants to commit resources to such wars.
- underscore_ku 5y agorussia's economy is smaller than Italy's, Russia can't afford long wars. in 10 years Poland alone would be able to take on Russia.
- kingcharles 5y agoPeople never realize how broke Russia really is because Russia plays such a good marketing game.
- ghostwriter 5y agoSome other people also never realise that "broke on paper" means nothing when you are an energy-independent state with arms and a nuclear capacity to protect its territory.
- Bayart 5y agoRussia's development and production costs for military hardware is also much smaller than any Western nation's. They get much more for their money in that respect.
- undergrowth54 5y agoThey could publicly shame the US, UK, and France about abandoning an ally without putting up a fight. This humiliation would threaten 1. Those nations' ability to sell military hardware to the leaders of resource-rich nations. 2. Those nations' politicians ability to avoid a governing coalition between the radical far right and newly-angry moderate conservatives.