War Drums

One must pause to consider seriously what might transpire if Russia decides to go beyond even the Ukraine and invade a member of NATO … such as the Czech Republic, Poland, or perhaps Estonia.  The United States and the rest of the European NATO members (see: NATO Membership) are obliged by Article 5 of the NATO Alliance Treaty to respond in kind … see: NATO Article 5.  The question is would they or we? 

The combined standing European troops of the NATO countries number some five million … and including the United States, over six million.  This would be pitted against a well-trained, well equipped and brutal Russian Army of some 1.5 million.  Of course there is a major difference … these European NATO troops are composed of numerous social and gender experiments ill-equipped and ill-trained to shed blood for any cause let alone a serious tangle with the Russian bear … particularly if such a tussle is over a former SSR.

We have seen the reluctance of even the Ukrainian troops to respond to the recent Russian belligerency in the Crimea. Therefore I am just a bit dubious as to how these same Ukrainian troops might react to a full-scale Russian invasion of Western Ukraine.  And this zeitgeist may well be duplicated in other Eastern European countries which in fact are NATO members ... but which are not that far removed in time from the subservience they were forced to experience under the Soviet Union’s domination.  I hope I am wrong if such a situation transpires, but somehow I would not stake a lot of credence in the stalwartiness of such forces opposing such a Russian invasion.

Of course, I also do not have a lot of faith that President Barack “Another Red Line” Obama would also not go wobbly in such a situation. Let us not forget that, during the height of the Cold War, America’s major deterrent was atomic weaponry which we forswore to use to counteract a much more massive Soviet army if they were to invade Western Europe.  I am reasonably certain that this “mutually assured destruction” option is no longer an arrow in Obama’s quiver. If it were, I think he might have brought it up by now.

The consequences of a Russian invasion of one or more NATO members which were former SSRs and an inconsequential NATO response would not only begin to reassemble the Soviet Union …  it would also effectively kill NATO. This would be a disastrous legacy for Obama … not that I think he would take such a failing too much to heart.

This then is a dangerous game of chicken that Russian President Putin seems to be contemplating. But, if he is using his Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton/John Kerry interactions over the last five years as his measure of the resoluteness of the United States, I am afraid we may be in for some very bad times.