this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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European leaders brace for their ‘five-minutes-to-midnight’ nightmare summit (www.politico.eu)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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While French President Emmanuel Macron has talked of the need for “an incredible awakening” and German Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz described Europe as being “five minutes to midnight,” the worry from those close to the discussion is that events are happening more quickly than they can cope with.

“The nightmare scenario is that the U.S. announces a deal soon that accepts most of Russia’s demands and then tells Ukraine and Europe to take it or leave it,” said Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

And they’re not only scared of the United States. They’re also wary of some of their own. While Thursday’s hastily arranged summit, just days after less formal gatherings in Paris and London, signals an intention to come up with solutions, diplomats are already bracing for a pro-Russia group of leaders led by Hungary’s Victor Orbán derailing the whole thing.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah it's true but they also always kinda sucked militarily. Today, they're struggling against Ukraine. Their peak was during cold war soviet era and even then, they got their ass handed to them by the Mujahideen, which is seen as the event that broke them up. In ww2 they struggled against Finland and just barely made it out of their fight with Germany still a country. Only because the nazis were too confident and got into a two front war. In ww1 the eastern front was basically Russia stacking up defeats. Before that they got their ass kicked by Japan. In Napoleonic times, France handed Russia several defeats, even with other countries helping it. In pre Napoleonic times, again, just Russian defeat after Russian defeat.

It's just a matter of fact that for as long as Russia has existed, they have always been a big unmaterialized threat. Even far back in the congress of Vienna in 1814 everyone was already assuming Russia was going to industrialize and how powerful Russia will become and in the end.... nothing.

I seriously don't think Europe needs even half of what the US has, even to face Russia. Nobody does, US military expenditure is ridiculous. I also think Russia is only still a country because no country in history ever wanted to occupy undeveloped tundra. Even the mongols only sorta occupied it by asking them for tribute and leaving them mostly alone.

Should Europe become complacent ? No, but seriously all Europe needs is a half decent unified army and a cooperating industral military complex for domestic use to go with it and i don't really think Russia will ever be that big of a threat.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

You're right, but what you're not quite mentioning is that most of these defeats came from Russia instigating the conflict (even well before the communist revolution). Ie. it performed small invasions in various Baltic states, sweden and finland in the Napoleonic eras and was a general nuisance at the borders.

Russias long time battle strategy of using its populace as cannon fodder, and seeing individuals as worthless workers for the state, is also the reason why it never amounts to actually realizing the huge threat outsiders think it is.

In potential they can amass every citizen in the working force for their military complex.
But if those same citizens are bereft of anything that inspires them the fighting spirit dwindles and force must be used to push them to fight which isn't a great thing for morale.

It showed in the Russian defeat against Napoleon, Napoleon took his inspired armies deep inside Russia, and all the Russians had as a strategy was just torch every town, city and granary in Napoleon's path, untill he got stuck in the freezing winter without supplies nor local inhabitants to aid his conquest. The same thing it did with its own people during the communist revolution, it torched villages and killed livestock of any single Russians against the regime change. World War 2 also saw this tactic being used, and in Ukraine we're seeing it again.

So the thing is, be it under the Tsar, the communist regime, or under Putins hybrid oligarchic communism, the cannon fodder doctrine never left the Russian way of thinking.

And this, in essence, also is why Russia is considered the antithesis and "the enemy" to the West's view of individualism.