To those who'd say a bigger U.S. war budget would have stopped Putin...this sobering fact:

[thucythucy]

194. Oh I agree, at present European conventional forces desperately need our support.

But you seem to think this situation should continue indefinitely, simply because we can't "sell" the Europeans on the idea that they should take the lead in their own defense.

"Giant empires" more often than not were a drain on military capability, not an advantage. Ask the French what kind of "advantage" their empire in Africa and southeast Asia gave them against Germany in 1940.

In terms of potential available man (and woman) power and GDP, NATO nations--even minus the US and Canada--are superior to the Russian Federation. Technologically they also have the edge. If the militaries of the leading NATO powers are deficient today, it's only because we've been footing the bill, carrying the load, for seventy years. The ONLY way the Europeans will step up is if we begin to pull back--something we need to do if we're ever to wean ourselves off an economy based on endless war.

Even as it is, I highly doubt even Putin believes it's in his best interests to try to march through Poland or other eastern NATO partners. This isn't 1950s Hungary we're talking about, or 1960s Czechoslovakia, where the Russians already had bases and where they had achieved the total infiltration of the "defending" militaries.

I doubt anybody seriously expects to see Russian tanks in Warsaw or Prague anytime soon, let alone Berlin or Paris, rtight wing hysteria notwithstanding.