cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/59867996

German media outlets Süddeutsche Zeitung, WDR, and NDR also cite the report, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears intent on testing NATO’s Article 5 guarantees. The alliance’s mutual defence clause obliges member states to come to one another’s aid if attacked. The assessment suggests Putin may seek to challenge how seriously that commitment would be honoured.

  • atthecoast@feddit.nl
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    4 days ago

    They burned through their Soviet stockpiles of artillery and tanks in 3 years fighting Ukraine, what makes anyone think they could fight NATO?

      • alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 days ago

        Bingo.

        And also depends on which side China is on. Their war production dwarfs even the US, and I find it difficult to believe that it will all be spent fighting the US and Taiwan.

        There is a very real possibility that these three countries gang up together and divide the world among themselves.

        • Hubi@feddit.org
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          3 days ago

          At this point it seems much more likely that the US sides with Russia than China. The EU is their largest trading partner, they’d never risk losing that market.

            • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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              3 days ago

              The problem is China is right there, and a lot of parts of Russia used to have Chinese names.

              Mostly, Siberia is literally infinite resources, the kind of thing China desperately needs.

            • Hubi@feddit.org
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              3 days ago

              Russia has alienated China already by being an unstable and unpredictable mess of a country.

        • hairyfeet@lemmy.ml
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          3 days ago

          Why would either need to side with Russia? They only have 140m people, a untrustworthy and soon to be unstable government. If you’re aim is to carve up territory then you don’t give a potential long term adversary access to half a billion people.

          • floofloof@lemmy.caOP
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            3 days ago

            Alliances aren’t forever. Hitler and Stalin made an agreement not to fight each other, which worked to the benefit of both for a while, and the Trump admin and Putin are more closely aligned ideologically than those two ever were. Alliances can be made for expedience and short-term gain, even with a potential long-term adversary.

            • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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              2 days ago

              The only thing worse than having Russia as an enemy is having them as an ally.

              They’re a catastrophe in nation form, the best thing we can do is push them as close to China as possible and watch them shoot themselves in the dick.

              That’s why Trump is such a nightmare, he’s showing them our dicks.

      • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        US has a sizeable advantage in terms of sheer firepower but lacks the collective will to side with Russia in a conflict with NATO. To be clear, the Trump administration might try to side with Russia and the initial consequences of that would be very serious. But, long term, I think that would bring a swift end to the US’ global dominance. Potentially even bringing us to the point of total collapse.

        That’s just one American’s perspective though.

        • RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com
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          3 days ago

          As an European, could you please collapse before siding with Russia over us? That would be great, thanks.

          Alternatively, and much preferred, just kick the whole Trump administration into the ocean, hold your own Nuremberg trials and start refreshed into the future. K thx bye.

          • Azal@pawb.social
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            3 days ago

            I really would love the kicking the Trump admin in the ocean, but living in a red state that is cheering for this, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

            Collapse, that’s far more likely and will look rather middle east 2.0. Our biggest states money wise are on the west coast and more politically aligned with Canada than anyone, and our east coast is more European minded. There’s a reason in the US a constant whining is “Coastal elites” so the political fight is going to go after them, especially if they resist any wars for expansion which is going to be the case. If things get bad enough, they potentially would secede which would lead to another civil war, which was caused by the last batch of secessionists.

            The thing is, the people who are aligned with this administration are the ones that still support the southern secession, now if the Republicans didn’t have double standards they’d have no standards at all so I don’t expect them to take the will of blue states breaking off as “See, we were right all along” and instead go for an attack instead.

            The trouble with… all of that… and why I say it’ll look like the middle east is when that goes down, we’re going to lose our nice dividing “red/blue Republican/Democrat left/right” divisions… which normally would be great, except it’s going to be all sorts of ideological areas in active combat. Those that have fully shoved the current administrations rhetoric down their throat will be pro-expansionisitic. They’re actually a pretty tiny minority, I’m surrounded by Trump voters at work and when I tell them about the “51st state” or annexation of Greenland rhetoric they’re horrified. Partially because the draft has always been in our mind and now they’re considering their kids going to war with a former ally… these guys mock Canada, but invading has never been in the thought process in our lives to the point that most people forget the war of 1812 happened.

            But the largest church in the United States is the Catholic church, which until the last decade has really seemed to have been politically out of it, but now it’s been putting pressure on Rome to the point the Pope has called it out. I’ve been waiting to see if we’d end up with a US Anti-Pope. The trouble is, the MUCH MORE politically powerful church is the second biggest single church in the US, AND the biggest of the current religion in the US, Protestantism, headed up by the Southern Baptist Church. The Southern Baptists were created pre-Civil War literally over the purposes of slavery, and while they have shut up about slavery they keep their southern roots and having grown up down there… they’ve been ready to go to war for years against the “Mary Worshipers” and “Jesus killers” (Catholics and Jews) to turn the country into the “Rightful Christian country it should be.” So now we potentially might be getting a nice religious civil war going down, we’ve got waiting in the wings the Mormons, they’re an odd bunch, very insular. One of their tenants is to be prepared for the end times and build communities together, effectively it’s a religion of doomsday preppers. They’re by far a smaller group, but far less infighting and as I say, are prepared for “The Collapse”. And the biggest concentration of them is in Salt Lake City, Utah… where the great salt lake is drying up and the dirt under it is toxic and being blown over the city. But that’s fine… their holy land where they expect Jesus to descend is just East of Kansas City in Missouri… where the reason they’re not really there in force is because Missouri literally had a law to legalize hunting Mormons in the 1800s, so surely no bitterness there. The Southern Baptists is biggest concentrated from Florida to Texas, the Catholics have the biggest gathering in Chicago so that nice North/South thing will come up again, now with a potential holy crusade in the middle from a third group.

            OKAY, so we’ve got the religious fights I’ve been hearing rumblings my entire life going, but religion is taking a back seat, lets see what else we have happening. The South wants to bring back Jim Crow against the blacks, but surely that’d be localized, the South has never attempted to pressure states to do what they want to do (see the Fugitive Slave Acts to see how dripping with sarcasm that is.) Frankly the South has been ready to restart its Civil War for the past 160 years, and I’ve been saying the Trump administration is them winning it, so you’ll have a racial war going down in the same time, and if you look up the Tulsa Race Riots, you’ll see the US really knows how to go all out on a race war.

            Now just political ideology wars. Sure, as I said, only the most hard core MAGAts want to go to war with other countries, but this country has been spending the last 20 years splitting the political ideologies from each other to a point I have no idea how we can come together. I have had to keep my mouth shut politically in jobs because I’m always outnumbered and retaliation can happen. Because of such I get to hear such wonderful things about how they believe Democrats are pedophiles and believe the Pizzagate thing. Now of course I think Republicans are unforgiveable fascists… but holy fuck it’s not like I don’t have a massive pile of evidence on that one, but that shows even the bias of I have no idea how I can ever trust one again. For the most part, the left is in the cities and the right is in the country. So of course the right wingers keep saying “Fine, we can cut off cities out of food” but dont’ realize the numbers of people and guns do outnumber in the cities, and when people start starving they will invade. It won’t save the cities, people will die if that goes down as people in this situation tend to not think in the long term and will destroy instead of trying to grow… and but the country folk won’t make it through any better… yet seem perfectly willing to think they can try.

            And finally, the one that’s more theoretical as I only have some historic perspective to work off of, but I’ve heard no rumblings about it, however movements seem to show it. Company towns. We did have some history of towns owned entirely by companies, where you were paid in company scrip and the company owns your home. I grew up in the hometown of WalMart, and I’ve made “jokes” about the Walmart military being the security, but Arkansas has weak gun laws, walmart has a massive security operation, has made it a point that if you want to do business with them you have to move to their home area and has made sure to clear out any competition. There are surrounding towns that papers are finding that the Walton family ends up owning 75%+ due to shell corporations to buy up the land of the towns. Amazon has been trying to take over towns with their distribution centers, running anything out and running on low taxes but they’re really decentralized, and President Musk has outright stated wanting to bring back company towns. Now, there aren’t many willing to fight and die for a company here. Left and Right, most people hate these major corporations (but not enough hate to stop giving them money and power), but thinking about Bentonville, if things go down like I’m predicting above, you’ll have these very powerful companies that have consolidated land and people and has enough money to effectively buy a military… well security becomes a “militia” to protect the stability of the town, now people can get on board with that. Once the militia has stabilized the area around where it’s not in danger from the fighting… now what? People belong to that company. And then while the others are fighting, they can expand. We may see a rise of feudalism within the US.

            I realize this is all tin foil hattery, but this is a perspective of someone in the middle of it watching some of my tin foil hat predictions coming true and listening to what people are willing to yell about. This would probably be “entertaining” as in watching a train crash entertaining for all of you across the world, if it weren’t for the part I never mentioned… the US military. Their ideologies are as split as the US… so all of the above will be trying to scoop up the military. Even companies have been some of the biggest hiring of former military for security, both digital and physical. Again, probably not so bad if we weren’t bristling with nukes and at least a couple of these groups I mentioned in fighting are outright doomsday cults.

            Thoughts from someone who lives in a state where the general populace, police and political leaders all are in agreement with the current administration and the nearest bastion that isn’t completely surrounded is over 500 miles away. I’d say send help but if we get to that point, I’ll be in the ground before yall get here.

            • RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com
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              3 days ago

              Let me just start with: holy fuck, that’s a lot of text.

              I hope you’re paranoid and everything will be fine, but I fear you’re not, and at least part of that will become reality. I would send thoughts and prayers, but I’m an atheist, and thoughts and prayers is what got you in that situation.

              Good luck, and I mean that. I’m glad not to be in your situation.

              • Azal@pawb.social
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                3 days ago

                I appreciate it. I really wish I weren’t in my situation either and if I had the means I’d be getting me and my parents the fuck out of here. But stuck with it and just trying to figure out the best way to help those that will be in more danger than I. I’ve got at least the luck of looking like the people that are taking over (the downside is that’s why I can discuss the way I do, I get to hear it from them because they look at me and think “Oh he’ll be on our side.”) but I know I will never be safe.

                When you say part of it will be reality, that’s the point I’m really going down. Even with the wall of text, it still looks neat and tidy how the battle lines will be drawn, and the US has a bad habit of thinking like that, all our wars have been pretty “This side vs This side” even back to our civil war. But what will be coming is a war where the sides will be best expressed as a “gagglefuck of people.” Hopefully when blood is spilled there may get some sense and we figure out how to pull out of the nosedive, but to have hope would make me an optimist.

                At least I did laugh about the thoughts and prayers, and appreciate you not sending any more. Thanks to the Republicans after every shooting we have so many that we’re swimming in them.

            • wewbull@feddit.uk
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              3 days ago

              First… I’m not reading all that, but are you aware that there are 2 congressional districts up for re-election this week to replace members who accepted cabinet positions (e.g. Mike Waltz). They were +20 red districts, both of them. Now they are competitive. Trump has also withdrawn his appointee for UN ambassador because of fears they would lose her seat (also a very secure Red win previously).

              It’s not November anymore, and there’s been a torrent of things to change people’s minds in the meantime.

          • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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            3 days ago

            Alternatively, and much preferred, just kick the whole Trump administration into the ocean, hold your own Nuremberg trials and start refreshed into the future. K thx bye.

            I like the way you think.

          • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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            3 days ago

            Don’t worry, we would.

            The south would demand we side with the champions of (white) Christian culture.

            The coasts would finally have enough and we’d continue the civil war we should have finished 160 years ago.

            • finder@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              Reconstruction ending the way it did was a national tragedy.

              Second times the charm as they say. . .

              • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                I’m honestly ready for Civil War 2. Let the south rise again so I can kick some fascist ass. It’s what they’ve always fantasized about anyway.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        2 days ago

        China doesn’t want to war between Europe and Russia.

        It would force Europe to rapidly develop military capability and when Europ inevitably won that war, it would still have a vast military and might be feeling a bit touchy about dictatorships. China likes the world as it is right now, they have a lot of long-term plans and Russia suddenly ceasing to exist would mess all those plans up.

      • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        I don’t think Russia has money either from all the sanctions. This all strikes me as extremely unlikely. They can’t even get through Ukraine lol.

        But maybe they’re just exaggerating to justify war spending just in case.